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thewallisweeping · 3 years

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Honestly if GRRM wanted to write Sansa as a murderous psychopath then he could have . Sansa's flaws are geared towards the teachings of the society that she has internalized to her own detrimental which she needs to shed in order to trust her instincts and navigate the world . @ry@ didn't automatically start killing people in Feast Dance . It's a thing that is happening since the end of AGOT . D@ny burns a woman alive at the end of AGOT . Sansa hasn't even done anything remotely to that scale of violence and we are already 5 books in and if GRRM wanted then he could have shown Sansa killing and torturing people in small scale since AGOT / ACOK before things get heated up and explode in TWOW but he didn't . Lies , manipulations , not wanting to see the truth - these are the things that Grrm is exploring of Sansa's since the first book and this is where her demons lie not in murder and unhealthy streak of vengeance .

They're truly desperate to "prove" Sansa is worse with her weapon of MeAn WoRds than the other two spilling blood deliberately.

And yes, Ar.ya gas been violent as early as AGOT, as @ladyoflemoncakes and @sansaissteel have pointed out (and one got bullied for, not surprisingly, but hypocritically by the "SaNsA BuLLiEd My FaVe" crowd. The lack of self-awareness....!!!). Her first instinct to dealing with anger is to hit and scream in people's faces. She even does it to Sansa in the Trident scene when Sansa didn't do anything to her. Fans seem to think this is admirable passion for justice. It's... not. It's the same wolf's blood that drove Lyanna and Brandon to early graves. It's what makes Ar.ya the morally gray character her fans say Sansa is.

Dani has been taught violence is acceptable by Viserys, which is very sadly how a lot of abuse victims grow up thinking. Some choose to escape the cycle of abuse by refusing to do to others what was done to them but some don't. Dani is the latter. Despite my horror at things she does, I still pity her for that. She could probably be a compassionate person if she wanted to be, if she decided to reject Targ supremacy, classism, and violence as an acceptable tool. But she's afraid of being so powerless again, and it has made her go in the opposite direction to feel safe.

Sansa hates violence. She's horrified by Joffrey hurting animals, hurting peasants (even though antis expect us to think she hates the smallfolk?), the thought that he might torture Margaery gives her the courage to warn the other girl despite her fear of her abuser punishing her. The only person she will end up killing or ordering the death of is Petyr, a guy who helped kill her dad, murdered her aunt in front of her, threw her best friend into sex trafficking, and has manipulated and groomed Sansa herself all the time he's been acting as her protector. No where else. Where's the blood on her hands, exactly?

The dragons and direwolves symbolize their owners. Drogon is a bully to his brothers, always hungry and quick to take what he wants. Nymeria has been wild since day 1 and eats children. Lady is described by Ned himself as "gentle and trusting", and at her most aggressive, she growls at a dangerous man who SHOULD be growled at. Think of what all this says about the three girls and how fans treat the gentle one much more harshly than the ones actively hurting people.

You're right, GRRM has had ample opportunity to make Sansa look like a monster. And he must be taking his sweet time because I've pored over the books and I'm still waiting to see the black heart in our dear Harlot of Lemons 🤷‍♀️

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thewallisweeping · 3 years

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Quora Time: Do you think GRRM is surprised at how bitter some fans are about Daenerys' end?

link: https://qr.ae/pGq4nV

Kelsey as usual…. bit of a long read, as I also add in two comments people leave and what was her response

Said it before, I’ll say it again: If Daenerys wasn’t incredibly popular, there’s no way that GRRM could use her as a vehicle to make this particular point. Where people erred was in relying on her popularity to guess her outcome — if she’s popular, she must get a happy ending, right? — and not seeing it for what it was — an attempt to answer a question I know probably everyone has asked: How do cult-of-personality despots gain such massive followings?

The bitterness is baked in. I’m sure plenty of dictator-admirers were bitter when their idols crumbled away or were overthrown or revealed for what they truly were or whatever. If people weren’t bitter, the experiment would have failed.

So no, I don’t think GRRM is surprised by the bitterness (and he’d also surely know that at least some bitterness is rooted in the storytelling quality and not the ending itself). What I think might surprise him — and hey, I’m not in his head — is people’s denial regarding Dany’s final intended trajectory and a refusal to look inward to see what it was about her that got them hooked. You might say he did his job with her a little too well. Instead of thoughtful introspection, the result is, “Nah nah nah I can’t hear you, it isn’t actually supposed to be like this, Dany’s actually gonna get a happy ending because I said so!” People use the show’s shitty quality as a crutch to avoid a rather unpleasant reality; that might surprise him, that people so adamantly refuse to believe that the ending (its overall tone and outcome, anyway, if not the process toward it) is actually the ending.

—————————————————————————————–

I am also adding in two comments she replies to which are fascinating.

Comment 1: The first part is rather unfair. ‘Dictatorship’ in a pre-modern agricultural society is very different to what we suppose is a tyrant today. A king with supreme power did not exist within the same context as such a person in a fully nationalized society.

There is no historical favor done by comparing Louis XIII to Saddam Hussein. Both consolidated power and crushed the aristocracy for ultimate power, but they are not the same. Governing in a disconnected society with minimal ability to project power and where 90% of people live on a subsistence level does not garner the same cost.

Using contemporary associations of a “dictator” to color Daenerys as a tyrant for wanting ultimate power is simply a false assumption and does nothing to comment on the danger of Messianic figures. Augustus was considered divine, but how else does a leader entrench their support without mass media, broadcasting, or literature (most people are illiterate)? The Chinese emperors thought they had a divine mandate, that does not make them the same as Kim Jong-Un.

Daenerys having a hunger for power or wanting to crush the land-owners under her own authority is not Stalinism, we are considering a very different time with very different standards

ANSWER:

The setting may be in a pre-modern time, but the people reading the material are modern and have sensibilities to match. That’s why something like Dany abolishing slavery draws such support; would you argue that that should only be appraised in a purely historical context?

That’s the double standard I see people use quite often with Dany: When she does something moral in a mostly modern sense, it’s great and she should be commended. When she does something immoral in a mostly modern sense, she’s a product of her time and shouldn’t be judged for it in modern terms. I have no particular beef with the “Dany’s just doing what Augustus did, back off” argument, except that it isn’t applied consistently or evenly, in my experience. Mostly I see people use it as an excuse to mitigate her culpability or accountability or flaws. Nor do I see similar arguments used to excuse the brutality of more obviously villainous people like Tywin or Ramsay or Gregor. Gregor and the Brave Companions didn’t do much that the historical Free Companies didn’t or wouldn’t have, but I’ve never seen anyone make that point as a way to wave off criticism of their actions. (Nor do I think it’d play well if anyone did.)

I’d also argue that Dany as a character has quite a lot in common with generic 20th-century dictators in terms of her trajectory and methods, despite her being placed in a medieval setting. To me it’s a very basic concept of, “Don’t root for a tyrant just because you might agree with them politically or find them personally likable.” You may disagree; that’s your prerogative. But a story that has nothing to say to modern audiences about how they perceive morality, leadership, authoritarianism, etc., is … useless, isn’t it? Dany’s not a historical figure; she’s fictional. There’s no reason she can’t also be used as a morality play for a modern audience. If there’s nothing for modern audiences here in terms of analysis, what are we even doing?

(I also don’t see Augustus, the Yongle Emperor or Louis XIV defended with the frankly frightening at times intensity that Daenerys is. If the point is that she isn’t the focus of a cult of personality, insofar as it’s possible for a fictional character, then some of her fans never got that memo. If anyone’s ever gotten rape threats writing about Augustus on Quora, it’s news to me.)

“Augustus was considered divine”

Ah, but how many people actually believed that he was divine, and how many people went along with it for the cause of political expediency? (I’m noting the passive voice, here.) Caligula supposedly rewarded the guy who claimed to see Julia Drusilla ascending to heaven as a goddess — did the guy actually see this, or recognize an easy payday?

How much do we really know what Joe Pleb thought of Augustus? Or about Louis XIV, or Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great and so on? Caesar’s campaign in Gaul may have killed and enslaved millions — did anyone ask those people what they thought of him? When making the “historical figures played by different rules” argument, aren’t we relying on historical analysis and documents that come down on the side of power, i.e. what the king/emperor and his retainers say and do will be recorded, not so much for everyone else? Wouldn’t that surviving documentation be more likely to put the autocrat in the best possible light (because it was written by people who worked for said autocrat, or the autocrat himself)? Is there that big of a difference between historical tyrants and more modern ones, or is it a matter of documentation, bias in the surviving record, and who does or doesn’t have newsreel footage? If Saddam Hussein lived in the 13th century and most of what you knew about him came from a history book based on Baghdad court documents and letters, would you evaluate him in the same way? You mention a lack of mass media, broadcasting, etc. — that goes both ways. Nor do I think that “Augustus could get away with it, Saddam couldn’t” makes any difference in the morality of what they did or whether we should or shouldn’t now approve of what they did. It means just that — one got away with it, the other didn’t — no more, no less (and I think a big part of the problem is the Great Men approach to history, but that’s for another day).

Comment 2:

If what you’re saying is actually GRRM’s intention, I’d hate him for it. Save yourself reminding me that George can write what he wants. I know that. And I can hate who and what I want.

Rather, the question was aimed at whether GRRM is surprised that some fans find a story in which Dany is the bad guy is completely unacceptable. That someone is only a fan of ASoIaF as long as Dany is the heroine. The character that exists in the mind of the reader is more real to them than what the author actually has in his mind. If the difference is too big, then at some point the reader realizes that the story he was a fan of actually doesn’t exist and turns away bitterly.

GRRM’s idol is Tolkien and his declared goal is to give the end of ASoIaF the same “tone” as LotR. Assuming GRRM intends what you say, my judgment is that he failed. Tolkien did not end any of his heroes as bitterly as Daenerys and therefore no reader of LotR is as unhappy as the Dany-focused readers of ASoiF.

Answer:

I think couching it in terms of “unacceptable” or not misses the point and is useless as far as discourse. There will ALWAYS be SOMEONE for whom the story was “unacceptable,” no matter how it ended. SOMEONE was always going to be disappointed, maybe severely so. You seem to be arguing that Daenerys fans have the monopoly — God knows why — on getting the ending that they want. To which I’d reply, bullshit, for multiple reasons. This isn’t fan service based on a character’s popularity, and Dany having a happy ending misses the point of her arc.

I also don’t see how it’s GRRM’s problem that certain people misled themselves into thinking or misinterpreted the story to mean that Daenerys was the sole center of gravity and ultimate final hero. You thought you were reading The Daenerys Targaryen Story, and you weren’t, and, what, that’s GRRM’s fault? He should have foreseen that a subset of fans would have a frankly unhealthy-as-fuck fixation on Dany, to the point where it affects their mental and emotional well-being (seriously, therapy), and thrown out his own road map just to keep them happy?

The sense of self-entitlement is mind-blowing. “Wah, give me the ending I want or I’ll toss my toys out of the pram!” Do you have any idea how you look with this? It’s embarrassing, or it should be.

And, yes, GRRM admires Tolkien. That doesn’t mean he set out to recreate LOTR from whole cloth or just update the same basic story to make it gritty. He’s been pretty open about his issues with it (e.g. Gandalf’s resurrection). One area of critique was the “Aragorn tax problem,” i.e. we don’t really know what Aragorn did on an administrative level as a ruler after he became king. That’s part of what ASOIAF is looking at — winning the throne is the easy part, and it’s the beginning, not the end. GRRM seems very interested in how people do as “bean counters,” doing the boring stuff, which is actually the bulk of what governing really is. It’s not glamorous or high-profile, and it’s boring, but that’s the work. And Dany sucks at it. It’s not just that she’s a tyrant; even if she weren’t, she wouldn’t be cut out, in terms of skill set, to actually govern a place in the long term after she’d conquered it. That’s also the point: Being a good conqueror doesn’t make you a good governor, and if you can’t govern, you’re not going to be queen.

Comment Again from same person

That’s all well and good, but then George is lying to himself when he talks about trying to achieve the same “tone” as the LotR end. Because he can’t do this and at the same time set his little trap with Dany. One excludes the other.

Answer:

Fair enough, but as you say, that’s your judgment, which is pertinent to you and only you. (For one thing, not everyone would agree that GRRM would miss LOTR’s tone entirely based on what he did with one single character.) And he might have set “his little trap,” but you walked into it all on your own. At some point, you maybe need to accept your own free will and accountability and stop blaming the author. He didn’t force you to root for Dany at knifepoint.

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thewallisweeping · 3 years

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So this is unpopular but I’m insanely curious hence I’m using tumblr and not Twitter or Reddit lol. I’m not the biggest fan of Dany in the books and to the others who don’t like her either I wanna know why. This isn’t a hate post, I want to see if others share my opinions. Feel free to comment what you think!

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thewallisweeping · 3 years

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Sansa is Ned, Lyanna,Alyssane,Jenny etc. Your fav is so uninteresting originally that u hav to borrow the traits of other characters to give it to her.GRRM spells out Arya Lyanna similarity but stans think Sansa is LYANNA2.0.Why don't you compare her with Cersei like how both abused their siblings when they were young or Lysa that how both of them allied with LF to kill Lord of Eyrie?Ppl don't hate Sansa but her stans make everything in the story about her.

Are you still in my ask box? Oh my God, you really are stubborn as an ass… I’ll give you that.

Sadly enough your brain cells are below the average ass.

You tell me that Sansa is like Cersei and Lysa almost in the same sentence that you try to convince me that people “don’t hate Sansa”.

Ever heard of something like contradicting oneself does make the argument a little less persuasive?

Honestly your asks let me feel second-hand embarrassment in an almost uncomfortable degree. And your thoughts seem to revolve around Sansa far more than mine.

My only consolation is that loss of brain cells is not contagious, certainly not over the internet.

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thewallisweeping · 3 years

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"I have something Viserys never had. Dragons. Dragons are all the difference” —Daenerys III, ACOK. Did Dany mean that only difference between her and Viserys is she have dragons?

She was talking about conquering the Seven Kingdoms, so in that regard it is true that the dragons are the difference:

Why do you think the political institutions in the Seven Kingdoms are so weak?

GRRM: The Kingdom was unified with dragons, so the Targaryen's flaw was to create an absolute monarchy highly dependent on them, with the small council not designed to be a real check and balance. So, without dragons it took a sneeze, a wildly incompetent and megalomaniac king, a love struck prince, a brutal civil war, a dissolute king that didn't really know what to do with the throne and then chaos.

—FIL de Guadalajara - December 2016

And the full quote is full of foreshadowing:

Yet even crowned, I am a beggar still, Dany thought. I have become the most splendid beggar in the world, but a beggar all the same. She hated it, as her brother must have. All those years of running from city to city one step ahead of the Usurper's knives, pleading for help from archons and princes and magisters, buying our food with flattery. He must have known how they mocked him. Small wonder he turned so angry and bitter. In the end it had driven him mad. It will do the same to me if I let it. Part of her would have liked nothing more than to lead her people back to Vaes Tolorro, and make the dead city bloom. No, that is defeat. I have something Viserys never had. I have the dragons. The dragons are all the difference.

—A Clash of Kings - Daenerys III

"buying our food with flattery. He must have known how they mocked him". She will buy allies in Westeros, she won't be loved.

"Small wonder he turned so angry and bitter. In the end it had driven him mad. It will do the same to me if I let it." She will turn angry and bitter and "mad."

"Part of her would have liked nothing more than to lead her people back to Vaes Tolorro, and make the dead city bloom. No, that is defeat." Don't worry, you will make King's Landing a dead city and that would be your defeat.

"I have something Viserys never had. I have the dragons. The dragons are all the difference." The smallfolk killed dragons once and maybe they will do it again.

Thanks for your message.

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thewallisweeping · 3 years

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He burned men alive with wildfire, and laughed as they screamed. And his efforts to stamp out dissent led to a rebellion that killed every Targaryen, except two.

#dear ser barristan the old #i would like you to know that you are in fact very wrong about that number #and there are in fact four remaining trueborn targaryens #maester aemon #daenerys targaryen #viserys targaryen #oh and aegon vi targaryen #son of elia #the sun’s son #but you’d remember him if you didn’t canonically hate dornish people #(yes ik this is show and aegon doesn’t exist there but i saw an opportunity to shit on barristan and i ran with it)

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thewallisweeping · 3 years

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Whenever a defense of Daenerys shows up in my feed, one thing I’ve observed is they are very much focused on her feelings as a defense, rather than an examination of her actions and the effects of those actions.

And like, that is certainly a way to examine a character, but fairly myopic if you ask me, in the context of a series that’s focused in a very big way on institutions of power and the effects they have on their individual and collective spheres of influence. Dany is one of the biggest centers of power in the entire series with entire geographical regions under her control, with a potential reach that is far greater. Regardless of her feelings or even her intentions (which, you know, agree to disagree I guess), I’m far more interested in her actions and their effects.

She’s doesn’t get a pass in my analysis of her, just because she has a conscience. The fact that she has a conscience and is fully human is what makes her a great character, and worthy of all that scrutiny.

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thewallisweeping · 3 years

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Anonymous asked a question

love your blog and everything in it. I want to have your opinion on these dany asoiaf as a proof of how dany was a good ruler meereen:

Making trade deals with Lhazar and the hinterlands and trying to sell the little that Meereen currently has.“You spoke of help. Trade with me, then. Meereen has salt to sell, and wine …” “Ghiscari wine?” Xaro made a sour face. “The sea provides all the salt that Qarth requires, but I would gladly take as many olives as you cared to sell me. Olive oil as well.” “I have none to offer. The slavers burned the trees.” Olives had been grown along the shores of Slaver’s Bay for centuries; but the Meereenese had put their ancient groves to the torch as Dany’s host advanced on them, leaving her to cross a blackened wasteland. “We are replanting, but it takes seven years before an olive tree begins to bear, and thirty years before it can truly be called productive. What of copper?” “A pretty metal, but fickle as a woman. Gold, now … gold is sincere. Qarth will gladly give you gold … for slaves.” “Meereen is a free city of free men.”

Planting grapes and wheat and replanting olive trees.

“Our stores are ample for the moment,” he reminded her, “and Your Grace has planted beans and grapes and wheat. Your Dothraki have harried the slavers from the hills and struck the shackles from their slaves. They are planting too, and will be bringing their crops to Meereen to market. And you will have the friendship of Lhazar.”

Building an irrigation ditch to bring water to plant beans. “Not a hole. A ditch, to bring water from the river to the fields. We mean to plant beans. The beanfields must have water.”

Training knights and organizing the Brazen Beasts“…Skahaz, make me a new watch, made up in equal parts of shavepates and freedmen.” “As you command. How many men?” “As many as you require.” Reznak mo Reznak gasped. “Magnificence, where is the coin to come from to pay wages for so many men?” “From the pyramids. Call it a blood tax. I will have a hundred pieces of gold from every pyramid for each freedman that the Harpy’s Sons have slain.”

Providing the refugees that come to Meereen with medical aid and food. “I will not turn away from them,” she said stubbornly. “A queen must know the sufferings of her people.”

Holding court herself, listening to and conciliating the needs and demands of both freedmen and former slavers and making several pro-freedmen decisions Dany listened quietly, her face still. When he was done, she said, “What was the name of the old weaver?” “The slave?” Grazdan shifted his weight, frowning. “She was … Elza, it might have been. Or Ella. It was six years ago she died. I have owned so many slaves, Your Grace.” “Let us say Elza. Here is our ruling. From the girls, you shall have nothing. It was Elza who taught them weaving, not you. From you, the girls shall have a new loom, the finest coin can buy. That is for forgetting the name of the old woman.”

Reznak would have summoned another tokar next, but Dany insisted that he call upon a freedman. Thereafter she alternated between the former masters and the former slaves.

i’m just wondering. some of these kinda sounds like she didn’t really care for a long term and shady… i think. and also meereen was kinda a shithole under her rule so it’s a long ass lines, feel free to ignore this ask. and thank you in advance :)

Hi there!

Your ask was one of the asks that vanished when I deleted one ask - don’t ask me why it vanished - tumblr….

It took the liberty of organizing your ask somewhat and will try to answer to the different points.

First of all, thanks for the compliment!

Dany in Meereen is making a genuine effort, that is true enough. But she is bored by the tediousness of it all and by the slow progress she makes (which is addressed in some of the examples you gave). Olive trees need time!

In the famous essay that deals with Dany’s arc in Meereen, the Meereenese blob, the author argues that Dany’s politics had better results than she herself realized that the peace would have been availabe even if it would have meant decades of stable rule.

This sort of fits in the overall trope that GRRM uses quite often with Dany: The crossroads where she could have chosen peace and the effort of building but chooses violence and destruction and her ‘destiny’ instead.

So I think, some of the her methods are not that bad and they seem to be sensible, but there are also some twists. In some cases GRRM shows that the problems Dany has have their origin in her own politics before she came to Meereen and in other cases he shows that she is a hypocrite.

The first example shows that the lack of olive trees is at least in part due to Dany’s aggression. The Meereenese tried to stop her advance by putting the resources to the torch - a drastic and desperate measure but not an uncommon method. It ties in with another motive that GRRM picks up time and again: That Dany leaves a wasteland behind her (it happened already in AGOT when the Dothraki left a long path of brown grass behind them). And she tells Xaro at this moment that she will not sell slaves. This is revisited later when she decides that people can sell themselves into slavery and takes a cut from the profit - Hypocrisy.

I think the whole: She plants olive trees and waters beans is her attempt at peace - an attempt she abandons at the end of the book. It shows how difficult it actually is to plant and let grow. It’s not something that is to be done in the blink of an eye.

Her building an army and paying her armed men is only sensible. She needs these people to enforce her rule after all. I’m not sure why this should be ‘good’ ruling. It’s just ruling imho.

The refugees that come to Meereen: This is one of her occasional bouts of benevolence, I think. She has those. And indeed she later learns the suffering of her people (at least if you think that she got diarhoe, the bloody flux, when she had fled from Meereen). So this might be foreshadowing as well.

The scene with the weaver Elza is also about her hypocrisy: It looks like she has the interest of the weaver in mind, but she judges and sentences the former master for forgetting the name of the woman - and again later in the book she herself forgets the name of the little girl that was killed by Drogon - because she is not important enough.

I think you have to see these little scenes in context. One context is that GRRM shows us that peace would have been available. He also shows us that Dany makes an effort - at least for a while.

But all that is turned moot when she gets more and more impatient. GRRM throws shade on her seemingly nice and benevolent actions in the last chapters of ADWD when she reintroduces slavery, abandons her effort for peace, is bored by the work, forgets Hazzea’s name and decides that she does not want to plant trees after all.

All that is “what could have been, if Dany had kept working for peace” and it is also: look at her, this is what she says and here in the last chapter, there is what she does.

In some scenes the hypocrisy is shown within the scene itself:

A rich woman came, whose husband and sons had died defending the city walls. During the sack she had fled to her brother in fear. When she returned, she found her house had been turned into a brothel. The whores had bedecked themselves in her jewels and clothes. She wanted her house back, and her jewels. “They can keep the clothes,” she allowed. Dany granted her the jewels but ruled the house was lost when she abandoned it. (ADWD, Dany I)

How can Dany not see that this is herself? Dany practically sentences against her own right to return to Westeros!

So, yes, some of the decisions Dany makes in the first chapter of ADWD might have been successful. Some of her measures might have ensured a stable rule.

But we will never know. Because it is Dany who ultimately decides against all that.

“Dragons plant no trees.”

Thanks for the ask!

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