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Game of Thrones spinoff A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight ordered to HBO series

TimeIsAPredator said:
She was always nuts. She only got into the idea of being nice to people and protecting them when they started praising her and parading her around on high.
She freed slaves so they would worship her.
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Exactly. From season one she is shown as manipulative. Back then it was a survival mechanism but she also used it to her advantage to further long term goals when she made Drogo fall in love with her. She loved him too but make no mistake - it started with her wanting control over his Dothraki.

Everything she did was not born out of altruism. Free the slaves? Sure, noble thing but you also gain a workforce and powerbase that is beyond loyal to you. Gain control of slave eunuch soldiers? Sure, noble thing to free them from their slavers but you also gain an elite fighting force that is also utterly loyal to you.

She was always a calculating person and the show never hid that, most people just stopped at the surface and only saw the positive sides but once she arrived in Westeros the veil started slipping and finally came off when she burned the Tarly's needlessly and allies started to abandon her. So her final turn during the assault on King's Landing was just the final step in a long journey.
 
It feels like people desperately don't want to acknowledge that GoT's Showrunners intentionally and repeatedly gaslit the audience about the nature of Dany's character despite the evidence that they did so being clearly documented.
 
She consistently punishes disloyalty severely and sometimes cruelly.
Up to Westeros people fall in line for the most part.
Once in Westeros, she recognizes the existential threat of the night king and put aside her ambitions for a moment.
But after that she goes right back to demand loyalty, except now the people defy her at every turn.
The North refuses her, Cersei’s forces deprive her of several allies and loyal servants, including her second to last dragon and the people dare to not welcome her with open arms.
She knows she will never get unconditional worship, so back to ultimate punishement she goes.
 
DigificWriter said:
It feels like people desperately don't want to acknowledge that GoT's Showrunners intentionally and repeatedly gaslit the audience about the nature of Dany's character despite the evidence that they did so being clearly documented.
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Providing strong evidence of Danerys' true nature throughout the show since the beginning is not an act of avoidance. It's proving that there isn't any gaslighting at all.

The only desperation I'm seeing is your insistence of such gaslighting (without evidence!)...and your absolute refusal to say their names. David Benioff and D. B. Weiss!
 
I refuse to name GoT's Showrunners because they're hacks who killed their own careers.

And the Season 6 example I cited - which is the episode where she kills all the Dothraki women - is just one instance where horrific actions taken by Dany were described as heroic in the Inside the Episode featurettes.

Others off the top of my head are Episode 6 of Season 1 where she baits Viserys into mistreating her in front of Drogo and thus causes Drogo to kill him, the Season 2 finale where she retrieves her dragons, burns the House of the Undying to the ground, and buries Xaro and her traitorous handmaid alive, Season 3 episode 4 where she 'acquires' the Unsullied, the Season 3 finale where she liberates Yunkai, Season 4 Episode 4 where she publicly executes the slave masters of Mareen, and Season 5 Episode 2 when she incites a riot in Mareen.

I could keep going, but I think I've sufficiently made my point.
 
DigificWriter said:
I refuse to name GoT's Showrunners because they're hacks who killed their own careers.

And the Season 6 example I cited - which is the episode where she kills all the Dothraki women - is just one instance where horrific actions taken by Dany were described as heroic in the Inside the Episode featurettes.

Others off the top of my head are Episode 6 of Season 1 where she baits Viserys into mistreating her in front of Drogo and thus causes Drogo to kill him, the Season 2 finale where she retrieves her dragons, burns the House of the Undying to the ground, and buries Xaro and her traitorous handmaid alive, Season 3 episode 4 where she 'acquires' the Unsullied, the Season 3 finale where she liberates Yunkai, Season 4 Episode 4 where she publicly executes the slave masters of Mareen, and Season 5 Episode 2 when she incites a riot in Mareen.

I could keep going, but I think I've sufficiently made my point.
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I'm sorry - how is this gaslighting the audience?

First of all she didn't bait Viserys, he simply couldn't handle losing the influence he thought he had ( but never did) and couldn't deal with the fact that his weak and subservient sister suddenly became a woman of influence when she got close to Drogo. That set him over the edge and he came barging into the tent drunk and made the mistake of his life.

All the other things you mention just show how ruthless she was but much of the audience simply refused to see beyond the surface because she only killed bad people up until she came to Westeros. The showrunners, as much as they dropped the ball when there were no more books to give them close guidance, did this perfectly in hindsight right in the open without pushing everyone's nose in it and that makes Daenerys' character so fascinating over the course of the show.
 
I've apparently been misusing the term 'gaslighting' my entire life, so let me amend my terminology: the GoT Showrunners blatantly, openly, and repeatedly lied to audiences about the nature of Dany's character and narrative arc for 71 of 73 episodes by consistently categorizing and describing her actions - no matter how horrific - as those of a Hero (and thus leading the audience to idolize her), only to suddenly and unearnedly turn her into a monster at the 'eleventh hour'.
 
DigificWriter said:
I've apparently been misusing the term 'gaslighting' my entire life, so let me amend my terminology: the GoT Showrunners blatantly, openly, and repeatedly lied to audiences about the nature of Dany's character and narrative arc for 71 of 73 episodes by consistently categorizing and describing her actions - no matter how horrific - as those of a Hero (and thus leading the audience to idolize her), only to suddenly and unearnedly turn her into a monster at the 'eleventh hour'.
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Do you not have your own eyes, your own mind and your own intelligence to figure out a character and need to be told what to think by the showrunners? Yes, what she did was heroic by freeing the slaves, freeing the Unsullied, killing the slavers etc.

Are you then still unable to look beyond this and see the darker undertones of the show when it comes to her as early as season one when she asks her handmaidens how to become better at sex in order to control the man ( not spelled out but also not hard to figure out). Do you think she did that out of love for her rapist slaver warrior husband or do you think it has something to do with her desire to rule Westeros and re-conquer it with a massive Dothraki horde?

Authors routinely do this to their characters to mislead the audience in order to make the twist even more impactiful and while the final seasons felt rushed and slapped together so her turn felt sudden for many when you look at the show as a whole it was always building to that.
 
DigificWriter said:
This analogy doesn't work because the evidence of the Showrunners repeatedly lying to the audience about Dany's role in the story and the nature of her character was openly documented on video for all to see.
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The only thing the showrunners show you that matters is what is in the episodes.

In the episodes Dany was clearly a power hungry egomaniac. Her power base was also a load of brutal pillaging, slaving, rapists. If the Dothraki were on the Lannister side the narrative would be very different for the same group.
 
Jesus, this is a thread about A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Why are people spending all this time relitigating the way Game of Thones shot its own cultural relevance in the head?

Apple Bowl will be here soon! I knew about the twist with Steffon Fossoway and yet somehow the show managed to make me think "Oh, are they changing this?" - which made the expected outcome hurt more again. But gotta love Raymun. Shame we didn't get to see Egg recruiting the others, and it's kinda funny that Humfrey Beesbury got not even a line.

Considering how many Targaryens there are in House of the Dragon and how much more screen time they have than the ones in this show, it's crazy how Egg, Baelor, Maekar, Daeron, and even Aerion are much more compelling than they are. (With all due respect to Paddy Considine.)

ETA: Thread, not threat! :shifty:
 
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Thestral said:
Considering how many Targaryens there are in House of the Dragon and how much more screen time they have than the ones in this show, it's crazy how Egg, Baelor, Maekar, Daeron, and even Aerion are much more compelling than they are. (With all due respect to Paddy Considine.)
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Yuuup. Precisely my point a few pages back (although for me its Matt Smith).
 
One last thing on the Dany front before I move on: the problem with the "it was there all along" argument is that it supposes that thousands of people ignored the evidence of where Dany's story was going despite it supposedly having been crystal clear onscreen, which just doesn't hold weight based on the societal climate at the time of the series' broadcast.
 
Thestral said:
Jesus, this is a threat about A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Why are people spending all this time relitigating the way Game of Thones shot its own cultural relevance in the head?

Apple Bowl will be here soon! I knew about the twist with Steffon Fossoway and yet somehow the show managed to make me think "Oh, are they changing this?" - which made the expected outcome hurt more again. But gotta love Raymun. Shame we didn't get to see Egg recruiting the others, and it's kinda funny that Humfrey Beesbury got not even a line.

Considering how many Targaryens there are in House of the Dragon and how much more screen time they have than the ones in this show, it's crazy how Egg, Baelor, Maekar, Daeron, and even Aerion are much more compelling than they are. (With all due respect to Paddy Considine.)
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We have seen only tiny bits of the current crew compared to the HotD Targaryens so I can't agree.
What do we know about Maekar other than him being a brick or Daeron compared to the black and Green family members ?
I assume they are only more compelling because you find the show more compelling and it's nothing to do with characters or actors.
DigificWriter said:
One last thing on the Dany front before I move on: the problem with the "it was there all along" argument is that it supposes that thousands of people ignored the evidence of where Dany's story was going despite it supposedly having been crystal clear onscreen, which just doesn't hold weight based on the societal climate at the time of the series' broadcast.
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Have you met people. If anything in my experience the fact so many people fell for Dany proves she was evil. There are a myriad of examples around the world where people openly admitted to being despots and got elected to the highest office. Humans are stupid and easily fooled.
 
TimeIsAPredator said:
Have you met people. If anything in my experience the fact so many people fell for Dany proves she was evil.
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At the risk of 'showing my politics', I've got the following rebuttal to this notion:

Senator Elizabeth Warren
Representative Alexandra Ocascio-Cortez

These are two of the most high-profile individuals to have accepted the GoT Showrunners' consistent heroic characterization of Dany through the first 71 episodes of the series, and they also happen to be two of the biggest figures who currently stand in opposition to what's happening in the US right niw, so the idea that they were 'snowed' and overlooked Dany having always been heading towards madness and tyranny is just nonsensical.
 
Sorry for the tangent.

Swinging back on-topic, it will be interesting to see how we go from where we are now - with Maekar fighting against Dunk out of family obligation - to whatever ends up happening to set up Season 2 of the series.
 
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