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Why GoT is Executing Jonerys Inadequately

And before all of you people come for my throat, I want to preface this by saying that this is not an anti-jonerys post.

Alright everyone, onto my analysis.

Coming from a serial shipper: Most ships, in my opinion, can have the potential to work in canon. All they need is a proper execution. Is Jonerys a cool ship? Sure. But is the ship being done justice by the show? Absolutely not.

The execution of Jonerys by the directors is where I think things are going a little south.

Let me just say that I think Jonerys as a ship has a LOT of potential. Jon and Dany are both good looking individuals, bound by a kinship that is currently unknown to themselves, with important goals in their character arcs that compel them to move forward:

-Dany wants to rule the seven kingdoms. -Jon wants to defeat the Night King and the army of white walkers. Their motivations are different, but how both characters interact with each other, (keeping these motivations in mind) can be interesting and compelling, and can make for a good ship in canon.

However, my concern over the handling of this ship directly relates to the way it’s currently being written. There’s a concept in writing that most authors and creators try to emulate, which is called: Show, Don’t Tell.

According to wikipedia, this concept is defined as: “a technique often employed in various kinds of texts to enable the reader to experience the story through action, words, thoughts, senses, and feelings rather than through the author's exposition, summarization, and description.”

And THAT, folks, is exactly where we’re experiencing problems. And before I try and invalidate all of what’s happened thus far, yes- Dany and Jon did have a nice cave scene where they gazed into each others eyes and exhibited... something. Attraction? Tension? Anticipation?

But that’s it. That’s literally all of the sparse pickings that the audience has been hand fed by the directors. And normally this wouldn’t be a problem- this sort of interaction is good stuff for a ship. The problem stems from the *extra* things GoT has coupled with the cave interaction.

Instead of being shown in anything other than a 2 minute cave scene that perhaps these two characters could be having feelings for each other (or at the very least attraction) we are given an offhand remark from Davos about Jon staring at her good heart, and then an after credit explanation from the writers, where they’re basically like, “lol yeah, Jon and Dany are attracted to one another.”

Okay, I’m sorry but that’s just not good enough.

Ships randomly popping up out of the blue just because you want to make them happen make for poor writing. How about giving us scenes where Jon and Dany talk to each other and get to know each other beyond the titles they bear? Or at least give us a few more scenes where the audience gets a feel for how these characters regard each other?

Because before this cave scene, we weren’t given anything that relates to romantic-implied subtext or scenes. In fact, it seemed more like Jon and Dany’s conflicting goals were creating rifts between them more than anything else. When writers don’t give a relationship proper exposition, but then randomly tell us: “oh yeah btw they like each other”, in the end it just feels forced and unnatural. And do I dare say it? Kind of like fan service. Do you want your ship to be simply fan service, and not based on any real in-show exposition and compatibility?

I want you guys to take off your shipper goggles for a second and view this objectively. Pretend for a moment that you don’t ship Jonerys, that you don’t read fanfiction, and you don’t use tumblr or any other website where ships are romanticized through gifsets and fanart. Has this show convinced you enough that these characters, through the tiny amount of interaction they’ve had together, have anything more than a slight neutral interest in each other?

In my opinion, the answer is no. And yet we’re being told that they do, instead of shown.

But perhaps you don’t that care about how this ship works out within the scope of the story. That’s fine, to each their own. I’m not telling you to not ship Jonerys, I just want to inspect the portrayal of this ship in a critical lense. I also want to say that it could be done better.

And if you don’t care about the way the show does it, and you merely care about the (better) portrayal of the ship being done through fan works, then that’s fine too.

Thought? Rebuttals? Opinions? I’m not here to fight or engage in flame wars (no pun intended) so if you try and pull that shit with me don’t expect to get any sort of response.

I’m hoping that the majority of us are able to take valid criticisms of this ship seriously without getting (for lack of a better term) butthurt about it.