I saw an ad for the upcoming House of the Dragon and I was thinking how there was a time when I would've been pumped for GOT related content but that was before one of the best shows ever crashed and burned. I also decided not to give them another dime till GRRM finishes the books (if he ever does). Luckily I read them all between seasons 5 and 6 so I feel really bad for people who read the first one back in the 90s. It is funny but to this day I won't start a fantasy series if it isn't complete. I remember when I read Wheel of Time it felt so good to read a completed series.
Do you blame GRRM or D&D more for how the show ended? I know the Night King isn't in the books like the show (but I bet the books will have a better resolution to the dead). I also have to wonder if wokeness had anything to do with the decline of the show. Arya is one of my favorite characters and I know they claim they had planned for her to kill the night king all along but I can't help but think if the show had been made 5 to 10 years prior that Jon Snow would have had a more substantial role. I get GRRM likes to subvert tropes (in a good way unlike hollywood) but I think at the very least he should've fought the Night King, or him and Arya together, although they seem to not like the idea of men and women working together.
I also wonder if the reaction to Sansa getting raped had anything to do with the direction of the show. To this day I don't understand all these screeching feminists who get so worked up over a fictional rape but can't seem to find any sympathy for victims of ACTUAL sex trafficking. The Song of Ice and Fire is a brutal world. Plenty of men get tortured and attacked but I will never understand why men can be killed left and right but if someone says a cross word to a woman then the screeching harpies show up on social media.
Eh, taking offense at slavery is very much out of place in the world in question, particularly because she did not have a reason for being offended by slavery. It is often stressed that close to no one objected to the institution of slavery until the 18th century, although slavery was banned in certain jurisdictions, and you could generally not enslave co-religionists. It is probably the usual 'Murrican 'slavery' nonsense.
Daenerys is not a SJW, because she was actually trying to do good. I do not think that is true for our sociopathic friends. You may say that like her, they do terrible things in the name of ideals, but I am not sure that these are ideals they actually hold.
Medieval laws of war allow you to slaughter everyone in a city that is taken by storm. It's not considered charming or edifying, but it's certainly not "Nazi".
It made little sense. You seem to like it because it upset the right people. But there was little grounding for what happened. It came out of the blue and for no reason at all. And it seems to me that Bran is the true villain, if you think it out.
When you study the world history of slavery it is pretty amazing that objections to it only started on a large scale in around the 1700s
That's actually not entirely true. St. Thomas Aquinas taught that slavery was a sin in the 13th century. Several Medieval and Renaissance popes condemned slavery, as well. On the Eastern side of Christianity, slavery was mostly phased out by the 11th century in the Byzantine Empire.
So in short, the institutional powers of the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church were greatly responsible for the end of slavery in Europe. (Serfdom wasn't much better, but it was progress.) I suspect that anti-Christian bias is a big reason why pre-Enlightment abolitionism is swept under the rug.
Thank you! I didn’t know that. I’ve been meaning to read up more on St Thomas Aquinas. I remember Thomas Sowell saying that it would be very beneficial to American students to teach slavery from a global perspective as well as talking about current day slavery. But you are right. The heads of school boards would not want to discuss church officials helping to end slavery.
Well I dissagree. I think it made sense. She was always a dictator in the making, reluctantly saying and doing what she had to do to get what she wants. And then when it was in her reach she grabbed it.
She didn't want to take power and then rule with a bunch of senators and commitees and negotiate between interest groups and sit in on meetings.
She wanted to rule with absolute power, and for that she needed to be feared. So the mask came off. The slaughter of the city was nessecary, not only to rule out any hope of a challenge, and to make it clear that she was the sole power, but also because she wanted to be a deity and the people of Kings Landing were never going to adore her. This was a convenient way to make room for the hordes of immigrants she was going to import to worship her.
And "she wanted to do good". No, I don't think so. She "freed" the slaves had them do her bidding. This is like freeing the slaves in America and then putting them to work picking cotton under even harsher disiplin.
If she was good she wouldn't have ruthlessly destroyed entire societies to fix a wrong. This is classic SJW stuff - there's a thing we don't like, therefore we must burn it all to the ground. She wouldn't have crusified an entire people if she wasn't a monster. She wouldn't fail to show mercy. She wouldn't take rightous pleasure in the suffering of others.
And yes I did like the ending mostly because it ruined a massive global feminist wank session, but I also think it's a completely an ok plot twist, with a lot of foreshadowing. Maybe I wasn't much surprised because I already saw her as a feminist icon SJW, and thus always assumed that behind the mask lived a hateful and wretched creature filled with ruthless rightousness and genocidal intent. More pleasently surprised that the showrunners had the balls to portray SJWs as they truly are.
Now everything that had to do with the ice zombies on the other hand, and Arya's pretty much entire story (which had so much potential until she developed superpowers and became a wizard), the Bran "journey", all that really makes no sense and is just absolute garbage they came up with on the spot.
In what way? I don't remember much of him. His story atch was so excrutiatingly boring that I was half zoned out during most of it.
Eh... I don't regard that as a bad thing. Interest groups are a grave evil, and they would not exist in a medieval world to begin with. Interests would exist, but they are the grandees and magnates.
No ruler will survive if he is not feared. It is a lesson as old as Machiavelli. Robert Baratheon said so himself. It is not out of love for the ruler that they behave themselves, but for fear of consequences when they do not. When Daenerys attempted to be loved, then bad things happened.
That was not clear to me.
The mere fact that they were free meant that they were also free to refuse to do her bidding. They followed her voluntarily, which is what freedom is.
This part is true. One of the bad legacies of the French Revolution.
Yes, it was extremely boring. But he made sure to destroy Daenerys' state of mind by telling Jon of his true identity at the most inopportune moment, probably knowing what would happen as a result and that he would become king.