then after like three episodes of season 8 the show runners just tell the actress to stare off into the distance kind of cockeyed for two episodes and we're just supposed to accept her burning innocent people alive for no reason?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38226161)

either way it's a far cry from having the presence of mind to follow strategy early on (attacking the iron fleet from directly above to limit their ability to fire scorpions) and then burning thousands of innocent people for no reason after the opposition has surrendered.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38226207)

OP doesn't know what she is talking about.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38226320)

At the very least the actress is so comically bad that it was the impression that I frequently got from her dialogue

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38226177)

Or crucified that one anti-slavery master then literally told his son to marry her or die

Or when she burned that witch alive for turning drogo into a zombie when he was a brutal warlord who fucking deserved it and the witch had every right to want revenge against him

Or when she burned the tarlys alive

Or when she locked that prostitute friend of hers alive in that vault in quarth to slowly starve to death when the girl was a literal sex slave who was just trying to stay alive

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38226238)

1. she's always been a brutal despot, justifying it to herself constently

2. everyone close to her other than the final dragon and the black dude have died. her brother, her husband, her dothraki advisor girl, her old knight guy, her ser friendzoned, 2/3rds of her dragons, her black friend girl. she's feeling angry and vulnerable.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38226225)

2. she murdered the slave masters

3. Walked into scalding water

4. Roasted the tarleys

5. Wanted to roast kings landing

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38226438)

I thought she'd been portrayed as, on balance, a reasonably just and competent leader til now. some people have pointed to harbingers of madness I may have forgotten/not picked up on, but it's wrong to lump every act of violence on her part into some narrative that she was going to turn villain. she claims to be the rightful monarch. the tarleys, after losing in battle and being fully informed of the consequences of their decision, were given a fair opportunity to acknowledge her claim to the throne and join her cause. they refused. indeed the same choice was given to all her adversaries surviving the battle, not just ones from powerful families or with something to offer in trade, and many chose to bend the knee and be spared.

within the context of the somewhat more ancient/medieval ethics of the show's time period, executing the tarleys and others who refused seems to me a perfectly reasonable and not despotic result. claiming, correctly or incorrectly, that she's been portrayed in the show as mostly "good" up until now is not akin to claiming she's been portrayed as infinitely merciful or christlike.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38226706)

her advisors were like "uh don't do that society will collapse and everyone will die"

she said "fuckkk u i am a strong independent womyn who don't need no man" invaded, set herself as ruler, society collapsed, and tons of women and children starved to death or were rapemurderpwned

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38227376)

I've also seen it said elsewhere that the actress who plays Dany is one of the weakest actors on the show and that writers/showrunners were frustrated that it was very difficult to show nuance or conflict in her character once the final product was on screen.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38226639)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbiA8RpM9ZM

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38226651)

If they were more balanced (as the books have been), this would be less strange.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38228492)

because she's hot as fuck in this show and everyone hates her and starts picking people like missandrei as being hotter.

i'm not saying she's meryl streep, but in got she's done just fine

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38226530)

excluding very minor characters like i'm sure some whore in S1 was megafine

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38227380)

2) mixed girl is better looking

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38226641)

these days Dany looks like Queen Elizabeth II with her droopy wrinkleface

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38238402)

In Mereen they liked her - popularity can conceal the worst impulses of a the female species for a while - or bring it out.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38226735)

But as everyone has noted, she's always had vignettes of targaryen ultraviolence

You could probably also make the case that her dragons kept her grounded (heh), as well as all her advisors who pushed back but especially her dragons

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38226752)

https://twitter.com/kturcioss/status/1127762725990555653

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38226755)

the part where Qyburn got pushed and died instantly was hilarious

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38226760)

Sandor also ignoring cirscie and letting her pass was good

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38226992)

Also, that Tyrion translation joke was such a fucking dud. I feel like they have one writer on staff who is horribly unfunny and just pushes all the bad stuff in.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38226997)

almost everything she ever did after that was retarded on some level. fuck that bitch.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38226764)

But i found it highly believable that after she got done burning the defenses on the dragon (and having lost 2 of her children, her best friend, her friendzone, and her bf - plus everyone hates her), that she'd just go fucking nuts and start burning shit.

It calls back to that story where Tyrion talked about that kid who just liked smashing bugs. She went berzerk riding a dragon and just wanted to burn it all down.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38226986)

The fights don't have to be even. It was great TV watching team Dany destroy all those dudes and then start running up the score. It's much more satisfying than dicking with the rules to make it an even fight (like inventing SAM dragon killing cross bows when everyone else fights with pointy sticks).

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38227002)

remember in season one when she burned a hero (dothraki rapepwned a whole tribe, left one woman alive, she got revenge by killing drogo, dany roasted her alive)

remember when she executed someone loyal to her without any sort of trial

remember when she threatened to burn qarth to the ground because they calmly, politely, and peacefully wouldn't let a stranger with dragons enter the city and sleep there for free

dany basically acted like joffrey most of the series but no one seems to have cared because she has tits

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38227373)

>jon snow is dany's nephew

>they've been fucking and now jon doesn't want to anymore

>all allies would rather jon be king

>dany has no friends left

>honkhonk.png

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38229295)

melisandre is the other one with nice tits

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38229962)

I also like how, at least after this episode, Jon Snow's heroic character arc is completely soiled and he turns into an extreme cuck and gets got just like his hero/uncle Ned Stark.

I get that it all happened too fast for some people's tastes, but I still found it satisfying.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38229368)

1) She warned the city

2) She blamed the proles for not overthrowing Cersei like the slaves did to their masters

3) Her beheaded black friend's last word literally means burn the motherfuckers

4) She knew the people needed to fear her if they weren't going to love her

5) Genghis Khan did the same shit to Beijing (surrender or I burn the motherfucker down) and people don't call him crazy

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38230459)

The "craziest" thing she ever did imo is lock up her dragons. The rest seemed strategically reasonable. This last part was a strategic mistake on her part but not a "crazy" one. And not half as bad as the locking up her dragons fiasco.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38230567)

The timing of Daenerys' choice to annihilate the citizens of King's Landing after hearing the bells and acknowledging the surrender of Cersei's forces is completely logical and in no way poor storytelling. At this point, her victory is confirmed and absolute. Now, the revenge she's been planning since her childhood can take place. She doesn't need to placate anyone any longer. There is no more need to frame herself as a liberator, or a "different kind of Targaryen."

It seems very sensible that while building an army overseas she would need some appeal other than appearing as the conquering foreign power she was, hence she crafted the narrative that she was there to free people from oppression, in order to obtain their support. On returning to Westeros, she needed to distance herself from the still relatively fresh memory of her ancestors to obtain allies there, so she presented herself as someone who would be a more merciful ruler than prior Targaryens. Allying against the White Walkers was clearly something that irked her, as it cost her resources and did not directly aid her in her ultimate revenge agenda, but doing to both allowed her to appear as a heroic messianic figure (as she had done overseas) and to eliminate a future threat to her empire.

There is no character conflict I can see between her words and actions in prior seasons and the actions taken after securing her victory at King's Landing once you accept that she is just as skilled as lying as anyone else in the story, if not more so. She said what she needed to in order to gain power, and once she no longer needed to keep up any pretenses she did what she had been planning to do all along.

Daenerys set herself apart from other supposed "gifted liars" of the setting by not succumbing to arrogance or vulnerability. Other gifted dissemblers, like Petyr Baelish, fell prey to arrogance, at some point allowing themselves to essentially brag about their skill in deception, thereby exposing themselves as deceivers. Varys the Spider fell prey to vulnerability, attempting to sway others to share his ideals, as with his appeal to Tyrion, rather than keeping his agenda unspoken and acting independently.

There were moments where her mask had slipped previously, as others have noted, where she betrayed her ultimate intentions to take her vengeance in fire and blood. Anytime others saw through her false persona she snapped a bit, as she showed obvious anger when Sansa and others did not praise her more for the role she and her forces played in defeating the Night King.

Varys saw through her ruse to see her true agenda, and he died for it. Whether through fear or misguided love, she managed to keep most of her pawns in line until she could make her victory absolute. Once her victory was certain, she no longer needed to worry about appearances, and she could do what she'd intended to all along - make everyone in Westeros pay for what they did to her family.

The only criticism to the show runners on this is the claim that she made the decision in the moment as a result of mounting stresses. They may have done this to "soften the blow" for some viewers who (like so many characters within the fiction) fell in love with the persona Daenerys presented, rather than truly understanding the character herself. Clearly this was what she had been planning and dreaming of for her entire life. A liar never wants to be exposed, and becomes angry and stressed when someone sees through their deceptions. If anything it must have been a blessed release for her to stop pretending and to see her dreams fulfilled.

This was not a queen "going mad" - this was clearly the endgame she had been working towards the entire time.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38231179)

The show gave zero indication that if Jon had kept silent about his heritage that she would have gone genocidal anyway. She was ready to take a gentler path until Jon apparently spurned her love (despite saying "I love you") the day before the attack.

There is plenty of groundwork there for Dany ultimately going this route in the books. But it is glaringly obvious that show fans are rewriting the last 7 years to avoid this version of her story being absolute dogshit.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38231316)

The reality is that Jon Snow is more likable and has a better claim to the throne. She also now knows that everyone else knows too. So what's left for her? Fear. She said so herself. She still has a dragon. So that's what she used. It won't work but from her POV it is her best bet.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38235982)

THEY HAD ALREADY SURRENDERED.

What were they going to do, rebel to keep Cersei has queen? They hated her. She literally blew up the queen they actually liked and ruled like a despot. They would have been fine with Dany.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38236014)

And again, this is what got her father killed. You'd think she'd learn from his mistakes.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38238336)

It’s said that when a Targaryen is born, the gods toss a coin in the air and the world holds its breath to see how it will land: madness, or greatness. And in the penultimate episode of Game of Thrones, "The Bells," the world finally saw that madness take hold of our purported hero, Daenerys Targaryen.

This character turn sparked instant debate and backlash for the most-watched episode of the HBO series. How could the woman who was set up to be Westeros’s savior, who learned from past tyrants’ mistakes and who outright said she would not burn King’s Landing turn so quickly on all of the morals she held dear? How could the daughter of the Mad King who promised to break the wheel, to be better than those who came before, become the same evil that these characters have fought so hard to destroy?

While I do agree that Season 8 has done a pretty shoddy job explaining its character motivations -- particularly in bringing these character traits in Daenerys to the forefront -- Game of Thrones has been setting up this about-face for its Khaleesi since the beginning. Like with the best and most devastating of this show’s plot twists, from Ned Stark’s beheading to the Red Wedding, Daenerys’s dark side has been in front of us all along.

The Mother of Dragons

The Daenerys Targaryen of Season 1 is an innocent, but one whose entire life experience is colored by an unjust banishment from her home and an ingrained sense of purpose. Because the two most influential people in her young life -- Illyrio Mopatis and her older brother Viserys -- told her from the beginning that the number one goal for any surviving Targaryens was to return to Westeros and reclaim their rightful seat on the Iron Throne, the backbone of her upbringing were basic ideas of revenge and betrayal.

Of course, Daenerys always thought her cruel brother Viserys, who was clearly mad from the start, would be the one on the Iron Throne. It’s only when she married Khal Drogo and he killed Viserys that she even gained the opportunity to one day return to the Seven Kingdoms and sit on that spiky chair.

Showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss point back to Daenerys’s reaction to Viserys’s death -- when she calmly watched him die in a horrifying manner and rationalized, “He was no dragon” because fire cannot kill a dragon -- as a worrying reaction early on. It’s one of the first instances of the audience dismissing a dark personality trait in a main character because we are rooting for them.

Daenerys became our stereotypical heroine when she walked through the flames, unburnt, with three baby dragons draped around her. But let’s not forget the cold-blooded murder of Mirri Maz Duur that led to the dragons being born. Daenerys initially tried to show the old witch mercy by trying to save her from the Dothraki, only to have that perceived kindness repaid with a curse. In that moment, Daenerys learned that giving mercy to those who seem vulnerable can be a weakness - one that robbed her of her husband and unborn son. Burning Mirri Maz Duur seemed justifiable after what she did to Dany’s family, but it was still a pretty chilling moment for the Mother of Dragons.

The Breaker of Chains

Daenerys’s entire ascension to ruler of the Slaver Cities has left a trail of blood and bodies behind. She killed the warlocks of Qarth and left Xaro Xhoan Daxos (and her handmaiden Doreah) to die in his empty vault. She had the Unsullied kill the masters in Astapor when she became the Breaker of Chains. She crucified the masters of Meereen in response to their cruel use of slave children to mark the path to the great city. She burned all of the Khals alive in Vaes Dothrak when they dared try to make her a Dosh Khaleen.

In each of these situations, we rooted for Daenerys to succeed because we saw the world from her perspective, and these people were “evil,” based on her experiences. Game of Thrones never did anything to dissuade us from the viewpoint that she was a hero, not a tyrant. But Daenerys made a mess in Slaver’s Bay, pure and simple, and she never proved herself to be an effective ruler. In Meereen she attempted to be just and kind, but when it came time to subdue the mutineers that rose up against her, she destroyed the city and left the entire country behind with a pretty weak support system in order to conquer a different continent altogether.

Check out IGN's speculation on Daenerys's villainous trajectory from the Season 6 episode "Blood of My Blood" below:

It seemed like Daenerys had learned from her prior mistakes when she did make it to Westeros. She found allies in the Martells and the Tyrells. She helped the North defeat the Night King and save the world. Back in Season 7 in "Stormborn," she opted not to torch King’s Landing when Ellaria Sand suggested it, specifically saying, “I am not here to be queen of the ashes.” She tried to take the peaceful route, tried to do what was right, and where did it leave her? Surrounded by strangers who did not want her as their queen, with all of her friends and allies dead, advisors who sided with her enemies to seat someone else on the Iron Throne, and citizens who do not love her as their “Mother.”

On top of it all, the one truth that had been ingrained in her from as far back as she could remember -- that her brother, and then her, should sit on the Iron Throne -- was challenged when she learned that another person, more loved by the people than she was, had a better claim to rule.

Protector of the Realm

Of course, all of this criticism of Daenerys is ignoring the character development Game of Thrones did to set up her as the hero of this story -- because as with any of us, we are the heroes of her own story. For all these decisions that do seem mad or cruel in retrospect, Daenerys still is the woman who freed slaves, locked her dragons away for accidentally killing one child, and tried to help other nations because it was right, not because it was convenient to her. She wanted to fix the injustices in the world and we cheered for her as she tried. She was our Khaleesi who was promised, and we loved her for it.

We only saw Daenerys's story through her own lens.

But that doesn’t mean she’s a ruler without flaws, and as much as Game of Thrones is doing a one-dimensional job examining her dark turn in Season 8, it did a similarly bad job challenging her as our hero in previous seasons. By Daenerys being so removed from the rest of our main characters, we only saw her story through her own lens, and those of people like Jorah and Missandei, who were devoted to her. The biggest changes in our perception of her in Seasons 7 and 8 have been because we’re suddenly seeing her through the eyes of our other heroes, specifically Sansa Stark, Tyrion Lannister, and Varys. (Only in episode 5 did Jon Snow seem to let his puppy dog infatuation with Daenerys fall aside.)

It’s similar to what the show has done with Arya Stark, who we cheer on as the slayer of the Night King and heroine who may save the day, without paying much attention to the fact she’s also become a cold-blooded assassin who put aside her humanity for many seasons to murder a trail of people who had slighted her and her family.

Daenerys’s story is now running parallel to itself, with her conquering Westeros instead of Essos. In the Seven Kingdoms, Jon Snow is our Daario Naharis, Tyrion Lannister is our Hizdahr zo Loraq, and Cersei Lannister is a concentrated version of the Sons of the Harpy. Whereas we cheered when Daenerys raged against Meereen, taking out their fleets with her dragons and sacking the city, now she is doing that on the audience’s “home turf.”

There’s no better example of this dichotomy and conflict as a viewer than in “The Bells” when we compare the look on Grey Worm’s face to Jon Snow’s after Daenerys goes in to torch the city after the bells start tolling. For Grey Worm, this attack is revenge, and in previous seasons set in strange lands, we might have been cheering as he got it. But on Jon’s face, we only see horror, as he sees a person he trusted -- we all trusted -- choose violence instead of mercy and destroy the place they were supposed to save.

Queen of the Ashes

Game of Thrones’ biggest disservice to Daenerys in these past couple of seasons has been its decision to keep the audience at arm’s length from these characters. Instead of getting the intimate “perspective” scenes that mirrored the POV chapters in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels, which really put us in the characters’ heads and allowed us to follow their thought processes, the TV show has opted to keep their motivations a secret until a surprise plot twist that’s meant to shock us. (Exhibit A: Sansa and Arya teaming up to kill Littlefinger after the audience was led to believe they were being turned against each other.)

Daenerys accomplished what her father, Mad King Aerys, never could. He wanted to 'burn them all.'

A lot of these plot threads involve dissecting more than just what is shown on the page, and it will be a huge disappointment if Game of Thrones doesn’t dig deep into Daenerys’s psyche to explain her motivations so the audience can understand her violent choice in the final episode. She was treated as a one-dimensional villain in “The Bells,” and the showrunners’ explanation for why looking at the Red Keep was enough to make her choose murder over mercy, even after she’d already claimed victory over King’s Landing, is pretty shallow.

What’s more poetic is the fact Daenerys accomplished what her father, Mad King Aerys, never could. He wanted to “burn them all,” torching King’s Landing and its ungrateful residents with Wildfire before Jaime Lannister killed him to become the Kingslayer. Many years later, Daenerys carried out Aerys’s sadistic wish - it’s just hard to track why, when Daenerys never previously expressed a desire to make the residents of Westeros suffer, only Cersei.

It doesn’t help that the showrunners explicitly said Daenerys wasn’t a Targaryen ruler like her father only three years ago. "I think Dany's been becoming a Targaryen ever since the beginning of Season 1," said David Benioff in the “Inside the Episode” for the “Battle of the Bastards,” with D.B. Weiss adding, "She's not her father and she's not insane and she's not a sadist, but there's a Targaryen ruthlessness that comes with even the good Targaryens." Maybe they forgot a very key “yet”?

Fire and Blood

As IGN’s Game of Thrones reviewer Laura Prudom examined in her review of “The Bells,” Season 8 hasn’t dedicated much time to tying these pieces together, trading character development for shock value and making Daenerys’s sudden cruelty towards civilians seem like a complete departure from her established goals. It’s why Daenerys’s turn feels so out of left field even when the show has been laying the groundwork for a Mad Queen Daenerys from the start. The characters around her might have only started questioning her tyrannical streak this season, right as we’re approaching the endgame, but it was there all along.

It’s interesting how much “The Bells” mirrors Season 7’s “Stormborn,” where Daenerys meets with her advisors to discuss her plan for taking the Iron Throne. Yara Greyjoy and the now-dead Olenna Tyrell and Ellaria Sand encourage her to enact the same plan Dany roughly ends up using in Season 8, torching King’s Landing with her dragons and destroying the Iron Fleet. (Ironically, Tyrion Lannister challenges Ellaria’s bloodthirstiness by saying “we don’t poison little girls here,” when little over a season later that’s exactly what Varys tries to do to Daenerys in virtually the same room.)

Olenna advises Daenerys: “Commoners, nobles, they’re all just children, really. They won’t obey you unless they fear you.” In the penultimate episode of Game of Thrones, Daenerys finally chooses fear. Maybe it was madness, maybe it was ruthlessness, but this choice was waiting for her to make it all along. The real question is how she can come back from it -- if she can come back from it -- and whether Game of Thrones was ever about breaking the wheel after all.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38236313)

"Please make sure to give me a heads up when you plan to overthrow me."

"Will do!"

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38240554)

https://i.redd.it/3bb87thmz6z21.jpg

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4260213&forum_id=2#38257914)