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How Hollywood fails strong female characters _ Red Chill Cinema · Honey Badger Radio

• 1:15
  Hello, and welcome to Honey Badger Radio. My name is Alison and I
• 1:18
  will be your host. And with me is Brian who does all the things
• 1:22
  in the background. So give him a big thank you, very much appreciated.
• 1:26
  And it was indeed my fault that it's starting a little late. I
• 1:30
  had numerous questions that Brian was fielding, So thank you to Brian very much
• 1:36
  for helping us out with that. All right, well just me like not
• 1:38
  you guys, just me, no, no here all right. So this
• 1:42
  is red Chill Cinema and we are going to be covering Hollywood's how or how
• 1:49
  Hollywood fails strong female characters, in particular Game of Thrones. I was about
• 1:57
  to say House of Dragons, but that's not correct Game of Thrones. It's
• 2:00
  his very very own dragon Hitler denaries denaries Targarian, and there we go.
• 2:07
  So we're gonna have a discussion of denaries Targarian. I figured it was time
• 2:10
  to do another red chill just enjoy about media, you know, as opposed
• 2:16
  to going right into the the deep end of the dark cesspool that is modern
• 2:23
  culture. I'm really curious what the just as an aside, I'm really curious
• 2:30
  what the next group of people that we're going to have to advocate for,
• 2:37
  like the next stigmatized group of people, because they're sort of running out of
• 2:39
  ones with that are sympathetic. You know what I mean. People are sympathetic,
• 2:45
  Gay people are sympathetic, Black people, minorities, puppy. Yeah,
• 2:51
  like I said, like, we really are running out of sympathetic peoples.
• 2:57
  Yeah, well why not. It's female evil. It is. I don't
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  know if you saw, but like there was this, uh, I don't
• 3:05
  know, it's like a little viral video about this new show, The Acolyte
• 3:07
  and the people involved, Leslie Headlin's people like that were being asked like whether
• 3:14
  they you know, by the interviewer and these sort of softball interviews that are
• 3:17
  just puff pieces to promote the show, like they were like light side or
• 3:21
  dark Side. They were like dark side, dark side, like all of
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  them, you know, and they were also saying, well, you know,
• 3:27
  like they're both it's like two sides of the same coin and this kind
• 3:30
  of duality thing, and it would like it was it was sort of showing
• 3:32
  that while also showing these older videos of George Lucas explaining that you know,
• 3:40
  like what like that that these things are essentially the story of good and evil
• 3:47
  and virtue and vice essentially, So yeah, contrast that. But I mean,
• 3:53
  anyway, this isn't about Star Wars. I don't mean a derail,
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  But it is about female villains, right, yes, it's ultimately what I'm
• 4:00
  talking about, constant attempt to like rehabilitate them or frame them as not being
• 4:04
  villains, because of course, holding women to any kind of standard is misogyny,
• 4:10
  which is why we can even consider an ancient genocidal tyrant like Jezebel to
• 4:15
  be an unfairly maligned victim. Exactly, exactly, Yeah, it's I mean,
• 4:23
  I guess that is the last thing. It's basically just like the last
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  first puppy is female evil not existing, like basically just like, oh well
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  that's just do you know her backstory? Do you know the lore that makes
• 4:42
  it all? Okay? So anyway, well if men just said yes,
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  you know all the time, then women wouldn't be villains, right because women
• 4:50
  who you know, female villains don't actually aggress against other women. That never
• 4:56
  happens. All right, So before we again, I want to remind everyone,
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• 5:45
  Okay, I guess we'll just start like just get it. So have
• 5:48
  you seen any of this this video? I'm aware of the Denarius apologia.
• 5:57
  I mean, honestly, I don't mind her as a villain. I think
• 6:00
  that well, she could have had a much better villainous arc if they had
• 6:06
  taken a little bit more time with it. I saw the villainous substrate,
• 6:14
  the villainous basic materials were already there for Dinaris. It's always it was always
• 6:20
  obvious that she was going to go that route in my opinion, even in
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  the book, Like I read the first chapter with her, and I'm like,
• 6:28
  is Martin presenting this woman as somebody who's going to go seriously south?
• 6:31
  Because I'm getting that vibe from her. So I feel like her villainous arc
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  was was actually foreshadowed. It was one of the few things that I felt
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  was relatively foreshadowed. Well, I think people are just making excuses for her
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  because you know, she's a cute girl. Well, I don't know about
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  that. I think that I think that there is I don't know. It's
• 6:56
  like the female power fantasy, you know that cole Te or Tieldre has talked
• 7:00
  about. It's like it's I don't want to butcher it, but it's sort
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  of like a woman doing something, you know, really dishonest, manipulative and
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  getting away with it is like the power fantasy. So I don't know.
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  I mean, yeah, I know it is. It's like the male power
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  fantasy is more physical and the female one is more social. But I think
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  that even that women the male power fantasy is being able to save someone who
• 7:30
  needs them, right, Yes, yes, it is yes, Or alternatively,
• 7:32
  if you want to go with the feminist and form male power fantasy,
• 7:35
  it's being able to have sex with whom, consensual sex with whomever you want,
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  and drive a really fast car or whatever Gilgamesh had before his pre ink
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  Do character arc. You know, But honestly, from what I've seen,
• 7:51
  most men just want to be able to protect their loved ones. That's their
• 7:56
  power fantasy. That's why they they are drawn to superhero and why superheroes always
• 8:01
  to be superheroes. They always have this character arc in which they learn to
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  set aside their unselfish interests and don't use their power for that. They use
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  their power for the greater good. Just it's just I don't know if they're
• 8:13
  accurate, but it's just it's gross. Like I'm not gonna say that Coltrane
• 8:18
  or the Megtal creators are wrong when they say that's the female power fantasy.
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  Certainly there's a lot of apologia for female villains, victims, female villains in
• 8:30
  these stories and among the fan base, so I can't say that's not true.
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  It's disappointing. If it is. Yeah, And honestly, if if
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  you're a woman who's like, oh, that's not true, I'm not like,
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  just don't be like that. Honestly, the only way that you can
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  disprove this is is to live up to being better than that. And I
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  guess you know, there is like a maybe we could say that men also
• 8:54
  have a sort of a fantasy about being the villain. What do you think,
• 8:58
  like, because sometimes it's fun to be you know, I just be
• 9:03
  like my annoying boss. It could just blow blow their health, you know
• 9:05
  that kind of Yeah, I mean there is there is a desire to get
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  revenge. But I think that I don't think that's like, uh, I
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  don't see it as a power fantasy because I think that it's not like the
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  default setting for men. But again, I think that I think the main
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  difference is is that I think the main the main distinction is that when men
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  the reason why men are encouraged to pursue virtue is because there is a framework
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  that they have to operate within that is supposed to reward that. But also
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  there is a strong incentive to pursue it. And I think that women don't
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  have the same incentive I think that they're just forgiven for everything, and so
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  like they have to almost invent things. Well, it's not that females don't
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  have virtue, it's that that we don't. We don't expect it from them,
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  we don't ask it as And this is something that really aggravates me,
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  especially when I see the apology of for female villains, but also female criminals,
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  Like why would I want to look at a woman who has done something
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  horrific like, for example, stabbing her partner to death or stabbing her children
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  to death and listen to people give excuses why she shouldn't be punished, why
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  should society treat her better? Like why why should I enjoy watching a woman
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  who had who is villainous or lacks virtue not be treated, not be punished
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  as a woman. Why should I enjoy that? Because the thing is that
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  it makes being virtuous, controlling your temper, being a person who tries to
• 10:54
  live up to principles meaningless. I mean it, ultimately it doesn't because you
• 10:58
  have to give yourself your own meaning, but it is still sort of it's
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  irritating because, like I said, if well, like I didn't say what
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  I'm trying to say, is when you treat virtuous women in the same way
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  as you treat villainous women, there's no point in being virtuous. I mean
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  there is because it's God its inherent benefits, but it you know, it's
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  like it's a slap in the face, right, And you're basically saying that
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  the only salient factor that a woman has is being a woman, Like that's
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  it. Yeah, just just her womanhood. That's the only thing that matters
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  about her, Like, not her choices, not her decisions, not her
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  actions, now how she affects others, Just being a woman. And I
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  can't imagine something anything more frustrating and pointless. Yeah, not to mention,
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  like not to mention, like your value you just as a woman, by
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  definition, is something that you have not too much effect over. I guess
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  you can use makeup and and and cosmetics and and plastic surgery to change some
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  aspect of it. But we're all heading towards the grave, right, we're
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  all heading towards old age. What value do you have then? So what
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  you're given, the value given only ever depreciates and you want to invest in
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  that? Yeah, all right, Well back, let's get to the video.
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  So this is called how Hollywood failed Denaris. So I'll just I'll just
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  see what they say. Yep, Zadris goes Hey the stupid defensive language diners
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  jel Masment and Valeria with pat extent. It sounds Italian like, yeah,
• 13:01
  they're they're trying to Yeah, it sounds a little Italian. I don't know.
• 13:05
  Balamunungos go by Gate, Maxio Hiloni, Pilos. Yeah, this is
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  so do you don't if you don't know what's going on. Denaris pretty much
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  declared war on slavery, you know, the British Empire, except you know,
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  the British Empire didn't commit as much many atrocities in pursuit of ending slavery
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  as she did. So yeah, okay, so that I mean, that's
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  that's because she has this sort of idealist idea of a world without slavery.
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  I'm not like, one of the things that they could have really established is
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  why she's so obsessed with ending slavery, because I do not recall why wasn't
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  she like didn't she live as a slave for a little while or something?
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  No, not before she became obsessed with ending slavery. She was just basically
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  paired off with this I guess universe's version of a stereotype about the Mongols in
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  order for other to gain an army to get his thrown back. Essentially,
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  so she was never really a slave, and if she was, she certainly
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  was treated significantly better than slaves in general. So yeah, I don't think
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  she was a slave, but she was very obsessed with ending slavery, and
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  she did various things in the pursuit of that that are a little questionable,
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  shall we say, But ultimately, if you think about it, when now
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  and I've watched the full arc, in the end, she basically she freed
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  the slaves so they could all be her slave, so she could essentially treat
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  the world like her dollhouse and construct it in whatever image that she felt she
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  wanted, and basically an image of ad adoration of her. And the way
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  that I interpret the final scenes is that in the end she was presented with
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  a dilemma that meant that she wasn't the one people would turn to for salvation,
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  and because she wasn't, she just burnt everything to the ground. So
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  you know, like, yeah, sure she's trying to end slavery, or
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  if you look at it from another point of view, she just wants all
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  the slaves to herself. Yeah, and she wants the masters to be slaves
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  too. So yeah, I mean, there you go. But let's find
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  out what this individual. I mean, this extended intro is a little annoying,
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  but let's keep I can skip past it you want for a little while
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  longer, Okay, not too long? What? Yeah, it's only not
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  too long. The Tragedy of him Mars Park airing. In twenty eleven,
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  George R. Or Martin did an interview with The New York Times magazine.
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  In this interview, Martin expresses his misgivings about Hollywood adaptations, which he views
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  as simplified versions of rich texts. After his career as a screenwriter, Martin
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  went back to writing novels because he grew tired of the continuous polishing and cutting
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  that goes along with making literature digestible for film. In the interview, he
• 16:51
  states, everything you can't do in television and film, of course you can
• 16:55
  do in prose because you're everything there. You're the director, you're the special
• 16:57
  effects coordinator for the costume department, and you don't have to worry about a
• 17:02
  budget. He didn't have problem selling the property though for millions of dollars.
• 17:08
  Yeah, I mean I don't. I don't. Yeah, I'm not seeing
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  that reflected. It's your actions. It's not exactly principle. Yeah, he's
• 17:15
  like, well, I hate these adaptations as he's like burning money for to
• 17:19
  like for Yeah, I know, so trite and low class foist this on
• 17:29
  your audience. Then, yeah, why didn't you just forego the adaptation?
• 17:33
  Said no, my principles are such that I cannot accept all of this gigantic
• 17:40
  bags of cash. I can't accept these gigantic bags of cash. I have
• 17:45
  to reject them, and I have to finish Winds of Winter. I can't
• 17:51
  be part of that. It's going to distract me from finishing, finishing the
• 17:53
  story. Nope, that's not what he did. Not only did he totally
• 18:00
  accept money from the adaptations, apparently without any concern. I mean no,
• 18:10
  Well, maybe he had a concern, maybe he had a qualm, maybe
• 18:11
  they gave him reassurances. But here's the thing. The adaptations ended up being
• 18:17
  the end of his story, right, and he isn't. That isn't gonna
• 18:22
  change anytime soon. I know everybody's holding out hope, but at this point
• 18:26
  it doesn't seem like he's gonna finish. So he not only did he accept
• 18:30
  his work being turned into an adaptation, he accepted that adaptation being the final
• 18:37
  word on his work. Okay, this, I don't know what else to
• 18:42
  say with this. It's a bitter digression. But I you know who was
• 18:48
  very protective of their ip though. You know who was like someone that didn't
• 18:52
  want anyone trying to adapt his work and also had an R in his uh
• 18:57
  an r R in his name. But let's get into more of the video.
• 19:03
  Yeah, yeah, because it's not really about Martin. No, it's
• 19:07
  not really about that. Martin was initially apprehensive about allowing Hollywood to adapt his
• 19:11
  series because he viewed it as something that was fundamentally unadaptable. The gratuitous sex,
• 19:17
  violence and sheer density of his text was something that he was unwilling to
• 19:19
  sacrifice for the big screen. But as we entered the twenty tens and the
• 19:23
  television show as We Knew It grew into a formidable beast, the serialized cinematic
• 19:29
  masterpiece. Things changed when Dan Weiss and David benny Off approached Martin with a
• 19:33
  book to season authentic adaption of A Song of Ice and fire. It was
• 19:37
  difficult to resist. He said, he meet a lot of people in Hollywood
• 19:41
  who say, yeah, I love it, I love it, I love
• 19:44
  it, But it doesn't seem quite real that I could tell, or at
• 19:48
  least it seemed to me that David and Dan were real and they wanted to
• 19:51
  make the kind of show I wanted made. I'm just pausing there for the
• 19:55
  banana because I don't know how she's going to be about this. Although I
• 19:59
  will say that True Detective, now, that is a great show, very
• 20:03
  good show. Highly recommend it. Only season one, though every season is
• 20:07
  it's his own self contained story, so you don't have to watch anything else.
• 20:11
  But the first season is a complete it's a it's a flat circle,
• 20:17
  all right. Anyway, Okay, I just wanted to comment on this.
• 20:21
  Mm hmmm, all right. So he had he sat down with these people,
• 20:26
  these individuals, and they talked about the story. At any point did
• 20:30
  he say something like, yeah, I'll have it done by the end,
• 20:33
  by the time we get there, because it because the way that I'm seeing
• 20:40
  this set up is that, oh, it's these guys who are to blame
• 20:42
  for all of this. But I mean, he had didn't have the series
• 20:45
  done and they knew that going in. Was that discussed? Like did he
• 20:52
  did? Was any concern? I mean this again, this is a digression,
• 20:55
  but I'm I'm sort of bocking at this idea that George R. R.
• 20:57
  Martin is a victim of the showrunners. Yeah, I agree, because
• 21:03
  it just doesn't I mean, like, even if you say, oh,
• 21:07
  they adapted it poorly, are you telling me that they First of all,
• 21:12
  did he say he was going to get this done for them to be able
• 21:15
  to adapt the final books? I mean, how can you claim that?
• 21:21
  How would you claim that something is unadaptable and yet work with the people who
• 21:26
  tried to adapt it and you have an unfinished product? Like are you just
• 21:30
  you know what I mean? Like, are you just like, well,
• 21:33
  I know that my work is so it's unadaptable because it's so dense, there's
• 21:37
  so much going on, but I'll let you guys do it. And also
• 21:41
  I'm not going to finish it. Like what was the conversation that they had,
• 21:45
  Like you're saying, Okay, well I'm going to get this done.
• 21:47
  Were they saying, well, when we get to this point, how are
• 21:49
  we going to resolve it? Like? Did he just hand over this property?
• 21:53
  To these these individuals and then just sort of skate away. Like I
• 22:00
  mean again, in this scenario, I don't think you can really put like
• 22:06
  say that Martin is the victim here, But you know, I guess we're
• 22:11
  going to try. Well, yeah, I think that the Uh. I'm
• 22:14
  assuming the person who wrote the essay is a big fan of the books and
• 22:19
  has problems with the show, and she's trying to make both of those things
• 22:25
  work in her head at the same time. But I don't know it's easy.
• 22:27
  You just like the show is different. But the thing is that there's
• 22:32
  no indication that that to bring it back on topic, there's no indication that
• 22:36
  Martin didn't intend Danny Denari's to be the ultimate villain. And there has been
• 22:45
  some information that's come out that, you know, they didn't create this ending
• 22:51
  in a vacuum like they they were given direction by Martin. And I think
• 22:56
  that's pretty big. That's a pretty big state, Like, it's a pretty
• 23:00
  big aspect of the story to just invent whole cloth. So but what I'm
• 23:06
  getting at is, if Martin had these discussions with them, sat down with
• 23:10
  them, talked to them, knowing that his work was unfinished, they must
• 23:12
  have talked about what they were going to do, either that he would have
• 23:18
  a finished piece by the time they got there, or how they were going
• 23:22
  to finish the story once the once the show caught up with the writing,
• 23:27
  or if they didn't then he really like, I mean, he's talking about
• 23:30
  how oh I adaptations herp aderp well, that you didn't even have the most
• 23:37
  essential conversations about adapting your unfinished work, how it ends? Okay, all
• 23:45
  right, let's watch some more. Yeah. Ways and Benioff, under the
• 23:48
  watchful eye of Martin, faithfully brought a Song of Ice and Fire to life.
• 23:52
  The overarching themes, messages, and immense details from the books were all
• 23:56
  there, and the show was a massive success. It was into life rualized
• 24:00
  high fantasy on a low culture medium, which was adored by nerds and normy
• 24:03
  for like. It brought to life an immense ensemble cast, giving each character
• 24:08
  attention and flushing out the nuances of their arcs over many seasons. Perhaps the
• 24:12
  most beloved and recognizable face to come out of Game of Thrones was Denaris Targarian,
• 24:18
  portrayed by Amelia Clark. Beyond her beautiful looks, Denarius was a favorite
• 24:22
  because her storyline always stood out amongst the rest. I'm just pausing there for
• 24:26
  the banana. You want to say anything about that or should we just keep
• 24:30
  going? Okay, Well, I'm gonna I mean, she hasn't come to
• 24:37
  the conclusion of how her storyline stood out among them. Well where I think
• 24:41
  she's about to explain how she get there, all right. The mysterious cultures,
• 24:47
  beautiful landscapes, and epic conquests of essos were a far cry from the
• 24:51
  slow burning political character drama occurring on the other side of the narrow seat that
• 24:57
  will I give her. The denarious Stone line was far more interesting. Like
• 25:03
  I didn't be quite frank that the way that these other cultures were rendered was
• 25:07
  really simplistic and stereotypical. But that's not really a problem with the show.
• 25:15
  I think it's also a problem with the books. Like I'm I'm actually probably
• 25:19
  going to read other I have I have read I have read Martin's short stories,
• 25:29
  and I actually find it better than his writing on Song of Iris and
• 25:33
  Fire, more interesting, actually more nuanced in terms of their characters. So
• 25:38
  I'm actually going to try out some other of his books just in case this
• 25:42
  is an issue just with his approach to this particular subject matter. Yea,
• 25:48
  So I mean it's like, I'm not saying he's a bad writer. I
• 25:52
  am a little bit like I can't agree with how he's approaching the the adaptation
• 25:57
  thing and what happened and if and I don't think we can absolve him of
• 26:02
  responsibility for whether or not the show ended in a debacle. But but the
• 26:10
  the the the these the cultures depicted in estro ESROs that wasn't really that great,
• 26:17
  honestly, And I don't and again I don't think it was the show.
• 26:22
  They weren't really that detailed. Basically, they just felt like these are
• 26:29
  the villains. Yeah, it wasn't much deeper than that from what I remember.
• 26:37
  Yeah, I mean, well, let's let's take let's take the Death
• 26:40
  Raki. You know, they're supposedly based on the Plains, Indians and the
• 26:49
  Mongols, so the Mongol Horde this is the yeah yeah, sure, well
• 26:56
  okay, here the problem with that is, for example, and this is
• 27:03
  a big thing, like where is the material culture? Like if you probably
• 27:08
  the Mongols would be the closest. Basically, Martin says that he it based
• 27:14
  that based them on these cultures. He listed some Plains Indian culture, Plains
• 27:18
  Indian or Plains Native Please don't kill me for that. Plains native ethnic groups,
• 27:26
  and the Mongols. And yet, and he said, but with a
• 27:29
  dash of fantasy. But there's not really anything based on those cultures in there.
• 27:34
  Like, for example, if we're basing them on the Mongols, the
• 27:37
  Mongols didn't wear clothing like that. And I mean, they were very big
• 27:42
  into trade and fine things, so they would have worn silk brocaded robes and
• 27:48
  stuff. And and but the the way that they're portrayed is more of like
• 27:52
  a stereotype about Plains people than the actual reality of what Plains people looked like.
• 27:59
  Because even I mean, I don't even want to say even Plains natives
• 28:03
  had very intricate clothing. You know, the buckskin was almost like a type
• 28:08
  of cloth, and then it was very elaborately decorated. So when you look
• 28:15
  at these cultures in a way, they did have like a in some cases,
• 28:22
  they had a very compelling visual presentation overall, but then you look at
• 28:27
  the material aspects of their culture and sort of lacking. This is a big
• 28:30
  digression. I apologize, but yeah, let's let's keep going. I'm just
• 28:36
  digressed book version begins her journey with nothing. She lives in fear of her
• 28:41
  delusional brother, but her innocence allows her to dream wistfully of a better future
• 28:45
  for herself. As the show goes on, we watched Genaris use her hopes
• 28:48
  and dreams to overcome bleak situations and make the most of what she has.
• 28:53
  However, Danneris is not without flaws. Often naivity prevents her from seeing the
• 28:59
  new wants of the world around her. She makes broad, sweeping decisions and
• 29:03
  fails to understand things beyond what they are on the surface. The earliest example
• 29:07
  of this is at the end of season one, when Danaries witnesses some dolph
• 29:11
  racky men attempting to rape a woman after they have pillaged a village. Denaris,
• 29:15
  ignoring the advice of her handmaidens, orders the men to stop and brings
• 29:18
  the woman under her consort. All Right, I'm just pausing there again.
• 29:23
  Okay, did you read the first chapter? And also, like subsequent chapters,
• 29:33
  the first chapter where we're introduced to Denaries, she displays a detachment from
• 29:40
  other people's experiences and suffering from the very first chapter. All right, and
• 29:45
  then her response, any I know her brother was abusive and awful, but
• 29:52
  still he has molten gold pulled port on him and dies holently in front of
• 29:59
  her, and her only statement is something like he wasn't of the dragon because
• 30:07
  he didn't resist the heat of the molten gold, right, And it's like,
• 30:11
  yeah, there's something wrong with this woman. There's something deeply screwed in
• 30:18
  her brain, and it was there from the beginning. The problem is is
• 30:22
  I think people who have this kind of superficial analysis don't notice that because they
• 30:27
  latch on, are they It's almost like they smooth out the moral problems of
• 30:33
  female characters, like the fact that she doesn't have emotional responses to certain things.
• 30:40
  She has emotional responses when it comes to the things that she wants,
• 30:42
  but outside of that, like there's a there's a disconnect with her ability to
• 30:48
  empathize. It's very clear, and I'm not like, yeah, sure it
• 30:52
  props to her that she wanted to intervene to prevent this woman from being raped,
• 31:00
  but uh, and and the other thing is that she's trying to present
• 31:02
  this as a flaw, like she's so naive she doesn't realize how evil the
• 31:06
  world is. That's not a flaw. Okay, this is a flaw.
• 31:08
  All right, people need to know this. This is a flaw. A
• 31:12
  flaw is how a character is hurting others. That's a flaw. It's not
• 31:21
  Oh she's so clumsy. Oh she's naive. She just wants to see the
• 31:25
  world it's still beautiful, and she can't deal with the world as No,
• 31:29
  these are not flaws. The character traits, but they're not flaws. A
• 31:33
  flaw, for Denaries is how she hurts others. Okay, and it's it
• 31:37
  may not be clear at first because she doesn't really have the opportunity to do
• 31:44
  so, at least is the story until the story goes further on. But
• 31:49
  okay, let's let's keep going. All right, let's play some more well
• 31:52
  Leieving she has saved this woman named miry masdur Danaris thinks she is out her
• 31:56
  gratitude and service, she blindly trusts the woman who claims to be a healer
• 32:00
  to cure call Drogo's festering wound, ignoring the culture of the dolth Racy.
• 32:07
  Skeptical Drago got that wound defending her his wife from her strange behavior. Yeah,
• 32:15
  so he she she said, let's free these these these people we've been
• 32:20
  fighting rating and one of his I think second incommit or one of his underlings
• 32:28
  basically challenged him and wounded him, and he managed to kill the guy.
• 32:34
  So, in challenging the dath Raki traditions, she gets her husband killed essentially,
• 32:40
  But that's not really I mean fair enough. She couldn't have foreseen that.
• 32:47
  Yeah, yeah, But at the same time, if we're dealing with
• 32:51
  a culture that harsh anyway, let's keep going, which is, she allows
• 32:58
  Miriam Steward to perform blood on cal Drogo. Unbeknownst to Danny, Miry Masdor
• 33:02
  had never intended to help her. In Mary Masdour's eyes, Danny's people had
• 33:07
  slaughtered her village, repeatedly raped her before Danny had found her, and blasphemously
• 33:13
  burns down her temples. In her eyes, Danny was a villain who had
• 33:16
  brought her into captivity. Ultimately, Hey, isn't that the chick that falsely
• 33:21
  accused Mark Pearson? Is that the lady which one the blood the blood healer
• 33:30
  lady from that episode bloshomously burns down I know that. Okay, I can't
• 33:35
  remember her name, sawad fores is her name? I can say it because
• 33:39
  I'm not in the UK, but Sowad foress Is is an actor that was
• 33:44
  on Game of Thrones. I think she played this temples in her woman her
• 33:50
  right here, this woman, and she accused Mark Pearson of sexual assault.
• 33:55
  I think this is the woman that did that. Just a bit of trip
• 34:00
  for you guys. She falsely accused him. I think it's this woman,
• 34:04
  but I don't don't hold me to it, and I know it's a woman
• 34:07
  that was on this show though. Yeah, I remember that her look was
• 34:12
  pretty weird for this kind of show. But yeah, I think you're right.
• 34:16
  I think it is that that individual. She's got black hair instead of
• 34:21
  blonde. Well yeah, but I'm pretty sure she's wearing a wig hair and
• 34:24
  would run her into captivity. Ultimately, Danny's naive beliefs that she had saved
• 34:30
  this woman led to the death of her husband and her unborn child. This
• 34:34
  flaw is inherent to the character of Danaris. We watch her approach different cultures
• 34:37
  and cities with the same overarching belief that she is here to save people.
• 34:42
  We watch her ignore the customs and norms of these cultures and instead bestow upon
• 34:46
  them her own beliefs. For example, so basically she is she believes that
• 34:53
  to her problem is that she is a white savior. I mean, I
• 34:58
  don't want to put it that way, but I have a feeling that's where
• 35:00
  this is going. But she doesn't understand all these other cultures and how complex
• 35:05
  they are, and she's another ignorant white woman who hass the same people.
• 35:09
  She didn't say that, but that's what it sounds like anyway. Well,
• 35:13
  she crucifies the slave masters in Marine without a trial because she believes slavery is
• 35:17
  wrong, but she does not understand that slavery, however, unjust is the
• 35:22
  economy in Marine, the system which holds it together. She enters cities intending
• 35:25
  to help people, but leaves them more damaged and lawless in her wake.
• 35:30
  For me, this is what made okay. Also, there's something that's sort
• 35:35
  of being glossed over. She uses a slave armory to do this. Yeah,
• 35:39
  I mean technically there was like a scene where she says, I'm giving
• 35:43
  you your freedom who wants to work? But these were men or boys who
• 35:47
  were castrated and taught their entire life to obey, Like you can't like,
• 35:53
  basically, that's just making yourself feel better. The only way not to be
• 35:59
  complicit and that system is to not use your slave army period And the fact
• 36:02
  that she's using a slave army to free the slaves is a pretty dramatic irony,
• 36:07
  I would have to say. And and ultimately it's it does indicate a
• 36:15
  little bit of pragmatism, I suppose on her part, because she's willing to
• 36:20
  use slavery when it benefits her and when it can lead to supposedly the ends
• 36:24
  that she wants. Again, I don't know, I'm not exactly sure why
• 36:29
  she was so obsessed with the ending slavery. I mean, in particular because
• 36:31
  she's part of that system. No doubt she had slaves of her own when
• 36:36
  she was younger, because she was living in the house of a very wealthy
• 36:38
  merchant. But so she's like obsessed with this. Not sure why, because
• 36:45
  I thought she would be obsessed with getting her thrown back, or it was
• 36:50
  suggested she might be, but then it sort of switched to this. So
• 36:54
  my personal opinion, this could have been like even the desire to free the
• 36:58
  slaves could have been better established, or even having a pragmatic reason for doing
• 37:05
  it, like destabilizing the current power structure so she can gain power and add
• 37:09
  these groups to her trousseau or her you know, like her lands as a
• 37:17
  conqueror. But it's yeah, anyway, I think that the motive was not
• 37:23
  very well established. But let's continue, all right, Danny an amazing conqueror,
• 37:29
  but a terrible ruler. I believe that naivete is Denari's tragic flaw.
• 37:34
  It is here I will argue that nat has not planned for Genaroes Turgerian to
• 37:37
  become a villain, but rather a tragic hero. And in this video I
• 37:42
  will demonstrate how the showrunners have greatly misinterpreted this concept the Greek foot, like
• 37:47
  when she like goes bananas. All right, let's play that now. I
• 37:52
  think she's getting to her actual art. The way that she establishes it is
• 37:55
  she is acknowledging that Denari's completely ignores the cultural situation and the economic situation.
• 38:05
  So Marine, which is an interesting there was one I guess city that was
• 38:10
  more of like a of a Spartan I suppose type of slave owning society.
• 38:16
  So there's like you, there's Sparta, and then there's a place like Rome,
• 38:21
  right, and there's different attitudes towards slavery. I know that this is
• 38:24
  probably gonna get us maybe banned, but not all forms of slavery were the
• 38:31
  same. So you have the spartan form of slavery and more of an archaic
• 38:36
  form of slavery in which the slaves are considered livestock because they failed to fight
• 38:45
  and win or die in the process. So the way that that older like
• 38:50
  like more archaic attitudes towards what we consider human rights. Whereas basically, if
• 38:57
  you weren't willing, if you weren't able to defend yourself physically through violence,
• 39:04
  and you were willing to submit yourself to slavery, you became human livestock.
• 39:09
  And if your parents did that, you were born as human livestock. So
• 39:14
  it was a stigma, like it was basically you failed to put freedom above
• 39:21
  life. So if you chose, if you were a human who chose servitude
• 39:25
  and life before freedom, you were no longer considered human. You were considered
• 39:31
  to have the instincts and the base nature of an animal. So turning you
• 39:37
  into livestock was acceptable. You see what I'm getting at. Yeah, yeah,
• 39:42
  and turning your children into livestock was acceptable. It's probably why you see
• 39:46
  things like it wasn't the Kimbri, but there was a Battle of the Kimbri,
• 39:52
  where Rome basically finally defeated the Horde, the northern barbarians that were,
• 40:00
  you know, impinging on northern Italy, or perhaps it was like southern France,
• 40:06
  but anyway, somewhere there. And when the line of the like the
• 40:14
  German barbarians, when it broke, the men started to run and the women
• 40:20
  would slit their throats. Their own women would slit their throats that the fleeing
• 40:23
  men, and then they would kill themselves and their children. So it was
• 40:28
  a complete self annihilation. So you lost, you killed yourself because the alternative
• 40:35
  was to lose your right to consider yourself human. And so, I mean,
• 40:42
  there's that attitude towards slavery. It's the much more of the archaic attitude.
• 40:45
  There was more of the Roman attitude towards slavery, which was actually distinctly
• 40:51
  different. And the other thing is that you can see why Spartans had to
• 40:52
  be so tough, because they had to be able to physically subjugate their slaves
• 40:59
  at a moment's notice and prove that they were human, that they were willing
• 41:05
  to preserve their sense of freedom even to the point of death. That's why
• 41:08
  they were such, there were hard asses, but the Romans had and I
• 41:14
  think Marine with bringing this back to the story, that the city of Marine,
• 41:19
  which is where Denaris really shows her stripes, in my opinion, her
• 41:23
  tyrannical stripes. The City of Marine is I think more closely based on Rome,
• 41:29
  just judging from all of the kind of stereotypical stuff that's going on in
• 41:31
  the story. So I think it's based on Rome. And again, the
• 41:36
  Roman system of slavery was different, So how is it different? Essentially it
• 41:40
  was a legal classification. So it wasn't like a permanent state of being.
• 41:47
  It wasn't that you were not human, It was that you were legally classified
• 41:52
  different, but not even maybe you owed like you had debts and you did
• 41:58
  that. Well, let's put it this way, like they would bring they
• 42:01
  would bring slaves in. If you were a productive, productive slave, if
• 42:06
  you if you got a job, you earn money, you participated in society,
• 42:12
  you could buy your way out of slavery. There was manumission through basically
• 42:17
  purchasing your contract. So and this was possible, made actually pretty pretty possible.
• 42:23
  In fact, there was a slave who said that it was that it
• 42:25
  was fairly you know, with some effort, you could get out of it
• 42:30
  in like fourteen years or something. And and it was made more possible because
• 42:37
  the professions in Rome were mostly available to women and slaves. So the the
• 42:43
  the jobs that men were allowed to take were basically farmer, fighter, and
• 42:47
  statesman. That's it. So women did a lot of the other stuff.
• 42:52
  I mean they could own property and get other people to do the labor.
• 42:54
  But so there was there was the ability to there was that kind of mobility
• 42:59
  in their society for people who were seen as slaves, and buying your way
• 43:01
  out of a contract is very different than being a slave by virtue of your
• 43:07
  ancestor having given up your right to be considered human. Yeah, so there
• 43:12
  was a different And the other thing is that if you think about it,
• 43:15
  this particular system, because Rome started with some pretty marginal people from the get
• 43:20
  go, it is about the only way that you can really redeem a system
• 43:28
  like the overall system that Rome existed within, which was very much like slavery
• 43:31
  was just a thing back then period. But they had created a system in
• 43:37
  which slaves could eventually be freed, and they actually were freed from the previous
• 43:44
  system, which is if your parents were subjugated in war, you were a
• 43:47
  slave. That's it, your livestock done. You just exist in that.
• 43:52
  You just exist as a lesser being now. And they constructed a system where
• 43:58
  you could actually rehability, hate people and get them into a productive get them
• 44:02
  productive materially, like in terms of their in terms of their work, bring
• 44:08
  you in, get them productive freedom, and then build your society like that.
• 44:13
  I mean, if you think about it, it's almost like a it's
• 44:16
  more of a rehabilitation of a previous attitude towards slavery than anything. And yes,
• 44:22
  I know this is this is more like the ideal description rather than necessarily
• 44:25
  completely the reality. But compare Rome to everywhere else, like Rome was the
• 44:30
  light. Yeah, I hate to tell you. So if Marina was based
• 44:35
  on Rome, they already had an incredibly liberal approach to slavery and their economy,
• 44:44
  their entire economy, or a good portion of their economy, was driven
• 44:46
  by the process of freeing slaves. So you know, you participate in the
• 44:52
  economy. After a certain amount of time, if you are productive, you're
• 44:55
  able to purchase your contract, get out, or you know, pay your
• 45:00
  master back, get freed, move and become a freedman. So like right
• 45:06
  there, the way that Danny is approaching the one and again what the first
• 45:09
  city seemed like it was more on the Spartan model, like slaves are permanently
• 45:15
  and under class, the stigmatized under class. The second city, it's like,
• 45:20
  h do you really want to destroy that? Because I can tell you
• 45:23
  that the amount of slave cities that you can can free, specifically get rid
• 45:30
  of slavery. And how do you construct a new economy in a world that
• 45:35
  is based on slavery? I mean, all of this stuff is not considered.
• 45:38
  So and and and again she really starts like the the where the rubber
• 45:45
  meets the road for her authoritarian tendencies was in Marina, Maria or whatever I
• 45:52
  think it was. Marina. Okay, so let's keep listening, all right.
• 45:58
  Philosopher Aristotle wrote, a perfect tragedy should imitate actions which excite pity and
• 46:02
  fear, this being the distinctive mark of tragic imitation. The character between these
• 46:07
  two extremes that of a man who is not eminently good and just, yet
• 46:12
  whose misfortune is brought about not by a vice or depravity, but by some
• 46:15
  error or frailty. For me, Deanaris's error is this naivity I speak of.
• 46:22
  Let's rewrite the show with Denaris as a tragic hero. If we ignore
• 46:24
  season six to eight and begin again in Marine, we could watch Genaris as
• 46:29
  she continues to use ruthlessness in her fight to liberate the oppressed. I'm just
• 46:34
  pausing it there for the banana, and now that she's like beginning this point,
• 46:39
  one of the things that she did is well, she actually put to
• 46:44
  death the whole class of people based on the fact that they were the ruling
• 46:47
  class. One of whom she killed was actually an abolitionist, but she killed
• 46:53
  him because he was part of the ruling class. So she wasn't making decisions
• 46:58
  based on any kind of understanding of the individual character, but just based on
• 47:02
  class, just based on groups. So she was engaging in collectivist punishment at
• 47:07
  this point. And the other thing that she did was there was some kind
• 47:10
  of insurrection and she brought a bunch of the elites to her dragon pit,
• 47:17
  and she in front of these these these people that she'd gathered up, as
• 47:22
  I guess suspect ringleaders, she executed one of them. In fact, she
• 47:28
  I think she executed the father of one of them, so she had him
• 47:31
  burnt to death. And then she put she she just is like, oh,
• 47:37
  well, I was going to execute you all, but I've decided to
• 47:38
  give you clemency for this moment, so you'll go back to your slave cells
• 47:43
  or you're sorry, your prison cells. So she sends the guy these these
• 47:46
  people back? Are these these men back? And uh? And then the
• 47:52
  next scene she decides to marry the one whose father she just flambayed. Now
• 47:58
  now correct me if I'm wrong, but sequence and all the the the the
• 48:05
  relationships between these characters. But so she goes into that guy's cell and she
• 48:10
  basically says, yeah, you're gonna marry me, Like are you fucking kidding
• 48:15
  me? Like that, Like that whole sequence is one of the most psychotic
• 48:22
  things I've seen in the entire show. Like if any of the male characters
• 48:29
  had done that, they'd flembade the mother of a woman that they were holding
• 48:32
  captive and almost executed themselves, Like they just stopped her at the moment of
• 48:37
  being executed, like well maybe not today, and then went to their chamber
• 48:42
  or their their cell and said, oh, we're married. We're getting married
• 48:45
  now. I'm sorry. They would consider that man the epitome of evil.
• 48:50
  But for some reason, Denaries gets a freaking pass. I wonder why,
• 48:54
  h we need some jeopardy music. Hmm, like let's keep going, Yeah,
• 49:04
  let's keep going. She continues to be despised by the people who flourished
• 49:07
  in the former system and becomes increasingly frightened due to many attempts at her life.
• 49:12
  With the help of her army, she is forced to abandon Marine,
• 49:15
  leaving behind a political vacuum. Maybe now with no strings, she thinks the
• 49:19
  time is nigh to sail to wester Ros and take the iron throne, and
• 49:22
  begins a campaign in West Ros to gain more support. Why did she go
• 49:25
  after Marine in the first place. I didn't watch it, so I don't
• 49:32
  have the answer to that question. I know it's rhetorical. It's just like,
• 49:39
  okay, let's keep going. It is mixed because the small folk remember
• 49:43
  a harsher time under the mad King, and Danares becomes increasingly frustrated. In
• 49:47
  haste, she burns Circe and the Red Keep, but in doing so accidentally
• 49:52
  sets off the wildfire and burns Innocence. Due to the muddled flow of information
• 49:55
  in West Ros, the small folk and nobility think this was intentional, so
• 50:00
  she is now feared by her people and hated by potential allies. This is
• 50:04
  when Danaris descends into madness, becoming like her father. Well we see,
• 50:07
  No, my dear, No, Denaris wasn't descending into madness at that point.
• 50:14
  That's just when it became clear to you Denaris was already beyond the pale
• 50:20
  in Marine and what she was doing in engaging in collective punishment, in terrorizing
• 50:27
  this man and then forcing him to marry her like this. If she had
• 50:30
  been a man, you wouldn't be saying this. You wouldn't be saying,
• 50:36
  well, you know, we should soften his later behavior. Well, okay,
• 50:43
  but then you're making a yui. You're not actually fixing anything. You're
• 50:45
  basically Denaris was here. When she was in Marine, she was this evil
• 50:51
  right, And you're saying, well, we could have made Denaris going further,
• 50:55
  we could just have made her less evil. Well, she her peak
• 50:59
  of evil was almost in Marine, like the only thing that reduced how much
• 51:06
  she could actually do was the big Dragon was gone for a while. So
• 51:09
  her peak of evil like ugh, just just sort of creepy, grotesque evil
• 51:15
  was in Marine. And I mean in terms of actual damage. You know,
• 51:21
  she just goes up. But in terms of moral depravity, she's pretty
• 51:25
  bad in Marine. So you can't just ignore that, be like, oh,
• 51:29
  well she's fine and marine. No, she's only fine because you didn't
• 51:31
  notice. And you didn't notice because you didn't care. You're like, oh,
• 51:37
  these people like they're just they're just slavers, they're just Nazis. We
• 51:40
  don't have to care about Nazis. We can, we can engage in collective
• 51:46
  punishment of over whoever the loudest voice declares the Nazis. So basically the morality
• 51:52
  of our society is whoever can convince the most amount of other people their opponent
• 51:58
  is a Nazi is the one who wins and gets to kill the Nazi.
• 52:01
  Like anyway, so she was still she was already engaging in collective punishment.
• 52:07
  She was already engaging in like forced marriage for God's sake, and presumably also
• 52:14
  like considering the force on the guy if that, if that marriage was in
• 52:17
  any way consummated, I would I would pin rapists on on Denarius too.
• 52:23
  So you know, well, I think that you're saying, no, just
• 52:28
  just don't have her become more evil like and that she became more the premise
• 52:31
  is that she became more evil in West Ross. Yeah, she's pretty evil
• 52:36
  and marine, don't. It's a matter of degree, not it's a matter
• 52:39
  of not kind but scope. Shall we say, do you understand what I'm
• 52:45
  saying? Yeah, okay, Yeah, just she just let her evil.
• 52:50
  She just she got her evil on. But it was already there, she
• 52:52
  got her evil on in Westress. But also, I mean, honestly,
• 52:55
  if there was ever a country, or a continent or a people that could
• 53:02
  justify tyrannical rule, it's West Ros. I'm sorry, like, I have
• 53:09
  absolutely no almost no sympathy for anyone in West Ros. I have yearned to
• 53:14
  meet a sympathetic character from West Ros. Let me think, Let me think
• 53:19
  that for true? Is that? Am I going to stand behind that?
• 53:24
  The original king in House of Dragons was sort of sympathetic? Okay, let's
• 53:30
  go. Manness is not an innate consequence of the pure Tragarian bloodline, but
• 53:37
  it's the product of her fatal flaw, her desire to help people, but
• 53:39
  her inability to understand the nuances of oppression within political systems. In this story,
• 53:45
  Danny is a tragic hero. But this did not happen in the show.
• 53:50
  Yes, because it wasn't intended, do you honestly? So you think
• 53:55
  that Martin sat down without his property finished and they never had a conversation to
• 54:00
  what happens if they get to the point where no, no, he's I'm
• 54:05
  pretty sure he's already said that. The showrunners actually were, they were looking
• 54:09
  at this in terms of what he had actually told them, so that he
• 54:15
  was actually part of the ending to some degree, or at least they he
• 54:20
  gave them an outline of what he thought would happen. Yeah, And the
• 54:24
  other thing is your condemnation is basically you're just just just whitewashing Marine, like
• 54:30
  you're just pretending it didn't happen, Like the psychotic shit that happened that she
• 54:35
  did in there just didn't happen. Okay. Oh, and the other thing
• 54:39
  is that what really queued me in in Marine. One of the things that
• 54:45
  really cued me in is she engages in this kind of horrific torture and an
• 54:54
  assassination. Can you imagine you're being marched in a group to a dragon pit
• 55:00
  to be flombayed, dismembered, and eaten by a dragon, and the first
• 55:05
  person in front of you has just been flombayed dismembered. He's like, his
• 55:08
  blood is splattered over your face, and this woman's just sitting there yeap,
• 55:13
  next one? Oh wait, no, oh what clemency. I'll save you
• 55:17
  her later. I don't want to overfeed my dragons, Like can you imagine
• 55:22
  that? And then and then that same woman has a problem with gladiatorial combat
• 55:30
  between men who have consented to be gladiators. That was clarified, and she's
• 55:37
  so there's these two guys facing off as gladiators for her honor, and it's
• 55:44
  established that they have consented to do it because they want to earn their freedom
• 55:47
  or whatever. And she's like, oh my god, this is so crass.
• 55:52
  Why because it's not violence that you explicitly determined was correct in your ski
• 56:00
  Like, she's not offended by violence, that's the thing. She's only offended
• 56:05
  by violence when it exists outside of her control or something that she doesn't think
• 56:12
  is morally correct according to her fucked up morals. But she's absolutely fine with
• 56:19
  horrific violence as long as she feels it's justified. That's terrifying, like and
• 56:27
  and and then okay, so how much violence can she justify? Like really,
• 56:30
  that's what the story became It's like, how much violence can Denaries justify?
• 56:35
  All right, she can justify nuking entire city? Well there you go,
• 56:40
  Okay, all right, the guidance of Martin and in an effort to
• 56:45
  move on to other projects, the showrunners werenegued on their promise to produce an
• 56:51
  authentic adaption and again cutting corners, lady, what was there to adapt?
• 57:00
  He didn't finish it. They were nagged on their promise to do an authentic
• 57:07
  adaptation. Well, if there was a promise to do an authentic adaptation,
• 57:10
  that would require a thing to adapt and who renegged on their promise to have
• 57:17
  a thing to adapt? Like this really sounds like this didn't end in the
• 57:22
  way this. Denari's fangirl who didn't see Denaries already jumping off the slippery slope
• 57:30
  and marine doesn't like the fact that the fact that Denaris jumping off the slippery
• 57:36
  slope and marine ended with her being Dragon Hitler, Like, I mean,
• 57:44
  that was one of the best parts of the freaking show. I had no
• 57:46
  problem. Well, okay, let me put it this way. I watched
• 57:52
  it and Denaris arc I felt like they could have focused on it more and
• 57:59
  they could have taken more time with the culture she was a part of.
• 58:02
  I don't know why we spent so much time in westros with except unless you
• 58:07
  were establishing the idea that her coming over like I I can't believe, like
• 58:17
  unless they're trying to establish the fact that the west Rosian, the Wastetrosian are
• 58:22
  so awful that they deserve Dragon Hitler. I don't know why we spent so
• 58:27
  much time with them, I honestly don't. It would be much more fun
• 58:31
  to spend time with Denari's and allow the descent into madness, or not even
• 58:37
  madness, because it wasn't madness, it was just ideological possession. To allow
• 58:44
  that descent to ideological possession play out a little bit more slowly, a little
• 58:49
  bit more concretely, and do the right kind of writing to really bring it
• 58:52
  out. But as for the broad strokes of her character arc, no problem
• 58:58
  with it. I thought that was I mean, in terms of broad strokes,
• 59:00
  it was well done. It could have been slowed down, it could
• 59:02
  have been clarified. They could have spent a little bit more time letting it
• 59:07
  cook and presenting it better. But broad strokes it was great. I mean,
• 59:12
  that was the best part of it. It could be that the money
• 59:15
  was drying up, or the contracts were you know, for the actors were
• 59:22
  running out and they were doing they were going to be doing other projects.
• 59:25
  I know a lot of these people from this show went on to do other
• 59:30
  things, most of them failures, but they still were you know, they
• 59:34
  had other obligations. So there could be other things in motion that made it
• 59:40
  to where that that was going to happen. I could. I could see
• 59:45
  that. So anyway to do some more m yeah, sure, let's get
• 59:51
  through this firmed abandoning important political powers such as Dorn and simplifying intelligent characters like
• 59:58
  Tyrian, the showrunners are speedily bulldozing their way to the end. Nothing has
• 1:00:02
  made this more clear than Danaris's two episode Turned to the dark Side. As
• 1:00:07
  I said, is verseless and oftentimes too ambitious. But from where she stood
• 1:00:12
  in season eight, episode one, just four had great fire. She would
• 1:00:15
  never burn innocent civilians after they have surrendered. Okay, I could see it,
• 1:00:27
  honestly. The thing. The real thing that bugged me was that wasn't
• 1:00:30
  that wasn't really done well in terms of a craft level. But I can
• 1:00:37
  get into that. But lady, she's already, Like you're saying, oh,
• 1:00:42
  she wouldn't burn innocent civilians. The dudes that she was killing were innocent.
• 1:00:49
  Like I know, you're like, oh, they're on the top of
• 1:00:51
  the slavery pyramid. Yeah, but we're on the top of a slavery pyramid,
• 1:00:54
  lady. It's called the world reserve currency. We print money. Other
• 1:01:00
  people give us shit, and they live in horrible circumstances in order to make
• 1:01:02
  that product that we get, you know, and that and that situation was
• 1:01:07
  was earned through men killing, killing, and dying in war. So you
• 1:01:14
  know, I'm pretty sure that future generations will look back in us and think,
• 1:01:16
  oh, yeah, we should be burned to death by dragon Hitler because
• 1:01:20
  none of us are innocent. That's bullshit. That's collective punishment. Like first
• 1:01:24
  of all, when you're going to a city like Marine, maybe ascertain their
• 1:01:29
  actual philosophy and if it differs from perhaps the previous city that she she took
• 1:01:34
  over, which was a bit more black and white, because it was more
• 1:01:36
  like a Sparta. Sorry Sparta was a slave pyre like it was, it
• 1:01:40
  was not. It's not something that we should admire too much. I mean,
• 1:01:45
  I guess you could admire the fact that they were so hard ass.
• 1:01:46
  But other than that, they were they were squalid and and sort of hateful.
• 1:01:53
  I don't like Sparta, sorry, but but you know, but they
• 1:02:00
  were more archaic. They had that attitude that if you did not fight and
• 1:02:06
  die fighting, if you allowed yourself to be subjugated, you lost your right
• 1:02:09
  to be considered human because you put your own survival, your instinct for survival,
• 1:02:15
  over your desire for freedom. And that was the demarcation between being human
• 1:02:20
  and not being human. All right, that's a big difference. And yeah,
• 1:02:23
  so she took over Sparta. Might makes right, she may force them
• 1:02:27
  to free the slaves. She's actually buying into that particular, that particular framework.
• 1:02:31
  She's the mightiest, she makes the rules. But then you get to
• 1:02:36
  a more mercantile society like Marine at Marine, and they have a different approach
• 1:02:43
  to slavery. That approach you can actually work with, like you know,
• 1:02:47
  couldn't you have I don't know, made money and helped the slaves earn out
• 1:02:52
  their contracts or helped teach them ways to earn out their contracts, like or
• 1:03:00
  I mean, there's something workable there, especially considering everywhere else is the shithole
• 1:03:07
  that you first conquered, Like, can you be more in partnership with the
• 1:03:12
  attitudes of the Marina Marine, like their attitudes if they're more progressive, because
• 1:03:17
  they sound like they're more progressive. In fact that if that is based on
• 1:03:22
  Rome, they were more progressive compared to everyone else. Saying a slave can
• 1:03:27
  earn their way out of slavery. Holy shit, you're not saying they're permanent
• 1:03:30
  livestock. What the hell are you a bunch of freaking hippies down there,
• 1:03:35
  Like you could work with that, and she made no effort. Instead,
• 1:03:38
  she's just executing the people responsible for this system with no willingness to see any
• 1:03:45
  kind of nuance outside of who she has decided what collective groups are wrong and
• 1:03:52
  what collective groups are right. And incidentally, it ultimately seems to fall down
• 1:03:57
  on Denaris wants everyone to be her slave and do what she says. So
• 1:04:00
  when she went to King's Landing, which was the city that she flombayed,
• 1:04:06
  like she knuked the entire city, and she was looking on the walls of
• 1:04:13
  the city, so she had her dragon perched and she's watching all these people
• 1:04:16
  like fleeing in terror from her. I think that the reason why she did
• 1:04:24
  it logically. Logic in her mind was that because she knew she would never
• 1:04:30
  be recognized as their savior. And the reason why she would never be recognized
• 1:04:36
  as their savior is because there was already a targarian. They found out there
• 1:04:42
  was a secret targarian who was already a big part of who'd already done things
• 1:04:48
  to save parts of the parts of Westros. So she had a contender,
• 1:04:55
  and that contender had a stronger claim on the throne and was also not directly
• 1:05:01
  threatening everyone. So that threat to her and that feeling like she was the
• 1:05:05
  one who was saving everyone that she had to share the spotlight, that's what
• 1:05:10
  drove her to do it, in my opinion. Now, that could have
• 1:05:14
  been more clearly stated if they wanted to go there, or more clearly expressed
• 1:05:18
  somehow, Like I totally agree that that wasn't that was not developed as much
• 1:05:25
  as it could be, but it was there. And now the moment when
• 1:05:29
  she makes her decision to kill everyone and to enact this collective punishment, she
• 1:05:36
  probably and this is a craft issues, this is a writerly craft issue.
• 1:05:40
  There should have been an external stimulus that sparked that that genocidal rage and the
• 1:05:46
  external stimulus should have been like the head, because they actually executed one of
• 1:05:51
  captured and executed one of her chief advisors and friends, and they should she
• 1:05:59
  should have just seen the head of that woman on a sike, on a
• 1:06:01
  spike or something, and then that would have just went boop. And I
• 1:06:05
  think a lot of people would have bought it more if they had had that
• 1:06:09
  external stimulus. You're not really supposed to have characters just act, you know,
• 1:06:14
  without an external stimulus, Like there should always be something that they're reacting
• 1:06:17
  to externally, especially in movies. So to have her just fly up to
• 1:06:21
  the to the wall and cling to it and then look around and then just
• 1:06:26
  suddenly start to flambay people is always not going to read very right. But
• 1:06:30
  that's just a craft thing. Just imagine instead that she flies up to the
• 1:06:34
  wall, sees her friend's head on a pike, and then starts killing people
• 1:06:39
  because she's already shown that she's a believer in collective punishment. Yeah, this
• 1:06:44
  this city allowed her friend to die or executed her friend. All right,
• 1:06:49
  there you go, bought a big insult. Okay, all right, I
• 1:06:54
  got I got a couple of super chowels and a super chat so cool.
• 1:06:58
  Richard Bierre gives us five bucks and says, manifest Or methinks that perhaps Manifestel
• 1:07:03
  hails from West Rows Great Indoors gives us five dollars and says, punch some
• 1:07:11
  slave owners in the face and then flammbay them with your raven moon dragon hashtag
• 1:07:16
  spirit cooking. And then I got a super chat from Albert Nata retro for
• 1:07:21
  five dollars Canadian and he says, slaves fighting as gladiators to earn their freedom
• 1:07:27
  are not doing so of their free will, their choices compromise based on being
• 1:07:31
  slaves. That's not the point. Yeah, you're miss You're missing the point.
• 1:07:35
  But anyway, the point is that they are engaging in Actually, I
• 1:07:39
  think they were convicts of some kind fighting for the criminals. Criminals, I
• 1:07:44
  mean generally the Glade, the Glad Glad. A lot of the gladiators were
• 1:07:47
  criminals. But but but regardless, they had chosen to gauge in the fight.
• 1:07:53
  Now, maybe it's not consent by your standard, but it also does
• 1:07:58
  not explain why she's found with executing a person by dragon but not gladiatorial combat.
• 1:08:05
  Like I'm pretty sure the guy didn't consent to being dismembered and eaten by
• 1:08:09
  a dragon either. Okay, all right, let's get back to the video.
• 1:08:15
  For Aristotle, the defining moment in a tragedy is catharsis the release of
• 1:08:18
  these feelings of pity and fear, The moment the spectator sees themselves in the
• 1:08:23
  protagonist and experiences a release of emotion when that character meets their fate. It
• 1:08:28
  is the moment Oedipus finally realizes his part in the plight of his people,
• 1:08:30
  exclaiming about himself, no man living is more wretched than Oedipus. It is
• 1:08:35
  the moment Macbeth knows it is his blind ambition that led to the death of
• 1:08:39
  his wife, the downfall of his rule, and his inevitable end. As
• 1:08:43
  an audience, we know the character does not deserve such a terrible demise,
• 1:08:46
  but we understand the route that got them there. This has been portrayed in
• 1:08:49
  Martin Juliet. Yeah, she's talking about that. She's talking about tragic heroes.
• 1:08:59
  What on television before. A perfect example is Breaking Bad, where Walter
• 1:09:02
  White begins his journey with pure intentions, but over time it becomes clear that
• 1:09:06
  his flaw is his desire to make something better of himself, to prove to
• 1:09:11
  himself that he is capable, and this leads to his demise. We reach
• 1:09:15
  Catharsis as we watch him die, his reputation destroyed and his loved ones alienated,
• 1:09:19
  but the seeds are planted from the beginning. There are several moments of
• 1:09:24
  Catharsis and Game of Thrones, which makes it such a compelling story. We
• 1:09:28
  reach the end over and over and over again, but like life, the
• 1:09:31
  plot keeps going. We understand why respectable characters like ned Rawld Catlin are over
• 1:09:36
  and die. We do not think they deserve such a brutal punishment, but
• 1:09:41
  we reach Casarsus when we see them realize their mistakes. Game of Thrones.
• 1:09:45
  I'm pausing there for the banana, just to make sure it's safe. Don't
• 1:09:50
  come after us, bro Us, Who is this? Broi Deschanel, Good
• 1:09:59
  God, why would she? Forty four hundred thousand subscribers were just at ten,
• 1:10:02
  so who cares? Right? Thrones is unconventional, turning the tropes of
• 1:10:09
  high fantasy on their head, but it is still a story, and like
• 1:10:13
  many other stories, it should reach a satisfying end. A moment of Catharsis
• 1:10:17
  the ultimate moment would be when we see Denaris, someone we've been rooting for
• 1:10:20
  but who we've grown weary of due to her inability to understand her flaw,
• 1:10:25
  finally realize that flaw the moment she meets her demise. But as wife and
• 1:10:30
  Benioff have demonstrated throughout the past couple of seasons, they are determined to keep
• 1:10:33
  the story unpredictable and have been bending the logic and core themes of the show.
• 1:10:38
  Is to me essentially this individual. Essentially this individual says that her fatal
• 1:10:43
  flaw is not her black and white moral thinking, and specifically, what's interesting
• 1:10:51
  is that there is a point and the previous aspect of the previous seasons,
• 1:10:56
  way back when I think it's the guy who's her hand like her second in
• 1:11:01
  command, basically describes how her father just basically never questioned himself morally, so
• 1:11:11
  he was self righteous, he felt like he was always doing the right thing
• 1:11:14
  and never questioned himself morally. And then she does exactly the same thing.
• 1:11:17
  In fact, she says, are you comparing me to my father? And
• 1:11:23
  because she gets offended, and he says, no, I'm not, I'm
• 1:11:26
  not. I'm just saying that this is this is what your father did.
• 1:11:29
  You're not necessarily your father, and then she becomes the same as her father,
• 1:11:33
  Like, I mean, it's pretty clear, and that was I think.
• 1:11:36
  Well, before the show we ran out of runway, charge more failed
• 1:11:45
  to start, you know, paving more runway for the showrunners. So I
• 1:11:48
  think that you're just missing what Denaris's true fatal flaw is. It's not that
• 1:11:56
  she's not multicultural enough. I guess it's not that she's unable naive. That's
• 1:12:04
  not really a flaw, by the way, No I know, but that's
• 1:12:08
  what she said. She said that she was naive, Like literally from the
• 1:12:11
  very start, you're wrong, because a flaw has to be hurting other people.
• 1:12:15
  Her problem is that she believes she's right. She doesn't have doubts,
• 1:12:21
  okay, and she is committed to this idea of collective punishment. She's not
• 1:12:30
  looking at this scenario that people should be judged by their individual actions. She
• 1:12:34
  sees people in terms of groups. And these groups are this person from this
• 1:12:40
  group did me wrong, therefore they're all to blame. Or this person from
• 1:12:44
  this group harmed the slaves, therefore they're all to blame. Right now,
• 1:12:48
  up to this point, she has taken on slaves as sort of like a
• 1:12:56
  purse puppy. So you know, i'm i'm, I am justifying my morality
• 1:13:01
  based on how whether or not this person liberates or enslaves people, which is
• 1:13:08
  fair. You know you don't like slavers. But like I said, there's
• 1:13:11
  a bit of a gradient there, like if like again, if you think
• 1:13:14
  about it, if Marine is based on Rome, you can almost think of
• 1:13:16
  Rome as like a way, like a transition point where you're starting to rehabilitate
• 1:13:21
  people from a previous attitude that was much worse. Right. But regardless,
• 1:13:27
  she thinks of she thinks of people in terms of groups, and initially she
• 1:13:33
  judges those groups based on her purse puppy, which is slaves, right,
• 1:13:41
  and then she she basically executes them based on group guilt. Once you get
• 1:13:46
  to Westros, there are no slaves. So who is she gonna judge everybody
• 1:13:50
  on morally her own manifest destiny, herself, and whether or not they offend
• 1:13:58
  her? Right, I mean that seems to be fairly well supported based on
• 1:14:02
  the stuff that was said about her and her actions. But let's say,
• 1:14:08
  because she doesn't have something to externalize to feel like a savior, for with
• 1:14:13
  Westros anymore, because the slaves are not like, they don't have slaves.
• 1:14:15
  I think they have serfs. Not quite sure the difference in West Ros,
• 1:14:18
  but apparently there is. All right, Yeah, okay, let's keep going.
• 1:14:24
  Okay, I got a couple of superchats. So Albert Dita Richel sent
• 1:14:27
  us to two superchats, two daughters Canadian and he said in the first one
• 1:14:31
  Walter White was a scumbag, not a hero. He misspelled White, corrected
• 1:14:36
  in the other super chat where he says White, not Wire. Sorry,
• 1:14:40
  So yeah, got it, Thank you, and we're going to move on
• 1:14:45
  now to the next part of the video. Ignoring the character arcs of people
• 1:14:47
  like John in order to shock the audience. When Aria jumps out and kills
• 1:14:51
  the Night King, only shocks the audience because it's unexpected. But this shark
• 1:14:56
  is not accompanied by catharsis. Rather, it's just followed by feelings of confusion
• 1:15:00
  and even frustration. What why would we have catharsis based on who killed the
• 1:15:04
  Night King? You've just established that we have catharsis when the tragic hero realizes
• 1:15:09
  their flaw at the moment of their demise. That's not the that's not the
• 1:15:14
  arc like Aria Stark's arc if there, if you could really consider it,
• 1:15:17
  one is just a basic heroic. I mean, she doesn't have any personal
• 1:15:23
  realization about anything that she does to others that she has a Catharsis Like,
• 1:15:28
  it's not there, And I don't think because she's not a tragic hero.
• 1:15:32
  Yeah, well, okay, wouldn't wouldn't it be the What I think she's
• 1:15:36
  trying to say because people were talking about that scene, isn't the issue that
• 1:15:44
  people were expecting John Snow to be the one to defeat the Night King,
• 1:15:48
  Because I mean that's what everything seemed to be building up to, and it
• 1:15:53
  just seemed like a big fuck you, and they just took it away from
• 1:15:56
  him and they just had her do it. And I don't know if that
• 1:15:59
  was simply you know, like, oh, we're betraying all of the expectations
• 1:16:03
  here we go subvert it, you know, and it was kind of like
• 1:16:06
  yeah, and people were like, what the fuck? And I think that
• 1:16:11
  that badly? Really. Yeah, Well, that's what she's commenting on is
• 1:16:15
  that that didn't it didn't give us Catharsis because it in our I guess what
• 1:16:19
  she's saying is we should have well, the viewers were expecting it to be
• 1:16:26
  John Snow to be the one, but it wasn't. It was Aria Stark,
• 1:16:29
  and they were like why, And then because I think that I don't
• 1:16:33
  know. I think that this is one of the things about Game of Thrones
• 1:16:36
  that is frustrating and why I don't watch it is that I think that there's
• 1:16:42
  more interest in doing things that have never been done in this way before,
• 1:16:46
  specifically to subvert expectations, and not all of it lands, and you get
• 1:16:51
  this sense that like nothing has there is no order two things, everything is
• 1:17:00
  ever right. And so when Denaris snaps and just like burns everything down.
• 1:17:03
  I think another reason why people are upset, even if it's been like sort
• 1:17:08
  of projected, even if you can see that, is that what we get
• 1:17:11
  out of it is the Targarian father was crazy and evil, the Targarian brother
• 1:17:15
  was crazy and evil, and Denaris was crazy and evil. Yay Targarians.
• 1:17:19
  I guess, like, what do we get out of that? Why do
• 1:17:21
  we even know these people? Like there's like there's nothing redeeming, right,
• 1:17:26
  There's like no redeeming character, So who do you root for? You?
• 1:17:30
  You even said that Denaris probably had the most interesting arc, Well, what
• 1:17:32
  does that say about everybody else? Like, and like what do we what
• 1:17:36
  do we care about the Starks? What do we care about the uh,
• 1:17:41
  you know, the the Lanisters, So like who gives a shit like that?
• 1:17:44
  Well, the Lanisters were fun because they were so bitchy to each other.
• 1:17:46
  Actually, honestly, the first the first five seasons were tolerable because of
• 1:17:51
  the Lanisters. And then when Taiwan died, it's like Atarian no longer has
• 1:17:58
  somebody to sort of spa are with, so it became less fun. Yeah,
• 1:18:02
  but I mean you can you have a whole show of Tyrium being a
• 1:18:04
  starky asshole, Like can you really do that for eight seasons and keep people
• 1:18:09
  engaged? Well? They try, like we need yeah, but we need
• 1:18:12
  more man Like I'm sorry, I just oh, definitely I can't get into
• 1:18:15
  that show. That's like, I'm sorry, I just I can't. Having
• 1:18:18
  having analyzed it extensively for a long time, I think that the appeal of
• 1:18:24
  the show is like the the people who are arguing. We would say it's
• 1:18:29
  about losers who really are sort of psychopathic getting into a negative spiral, yeah,
• 1:18:39
  you know, and just and it's like it's failure porn almost and yeah,
• 1:18:46
  and that's fine if you like that. I'm I'm still trying to contend
• 1:18:53
  with how to judge that kind of writing because it definitely has its own standards,
• 1:19:00
  and one day I will figure out the particular standards it needs to be
• 1:19:03
  judged by. But because I know that what I talk about in terms of
• 1:19:09
  writing craft is not really apply to it. The other thing is that I
• 1:19:13
  think there's judging from House of Dragons, there's a lot of focus on creating
• 1:19:18
  these kind of emotional set pieces, and there's not as much focus on making
• 1:19:24
  them connect, you know, making them have a logical progression, even in
• 1:19:30
  terms of the characters. So there's not a sense that the characters are very
• 1:19:34
  consistent. Everything just leads up to these these emotional moments, and the setting
• 1:19:42
  is sort of sacrifice for that. Characterization is sacrificed for that. So if
• 1:19:47
  you can have if you can just change the character radically just to make the
• 1:19:51
  emotional moment more impactful, you'll do it. So it's like rule of Cool,
• 1:19:59
  except Rule of Drama. I think TV Tropes has a and Rule of
• 1:20:02
  Drama really take into an extreme that everything is sacrificed for it. Characterization setting,
• 1:20:08
  et cetera, commuity lore which you know it's fine, it's I don't
• 1:20:15
  know how to judge that. I guess the way that you judge it is
• 1:20:19
  how well it evokes these emotions it's trying to hit. But for me,
• 1:20:27
  the feelings of alienation over what you have to distort to be able to manufacture
• 1:20:31
  these emotions or these these these moments of high emotion maybe obscuring whether or not
• 1:20:40
  they're hitting the notes that they want. Like I'm trying, I'm basically trying
• 1:20:44
  to figure out a framework to understand how this is appreciated. You know,
• 1:20:48
  a framework to say, Okay, this is well done. If you if
• 1:20:54
  you're going for disconnected, dramatic moments, this is well done. This is
• 1:20:59
  not well done. I'm trying to find a standard. It's it's different,
• 1:21:02
  it's a it's such a very different form of writing. Yeah, it's unique,
• 1:21:09
  and I don't want to say it's unique. It's well, it's not
• 1:21:12
  unique anymore because I see a lot of other properties are approaching writing in this
• 1:21:15
  way. It reminds me of a way of describing how to write stories.
• 1:21:23
  Whereas and the way that you do it or a process is that you get
• 1:21:27
  these index cards and you think about really powerful emotional moments, so things that
• 1:21:34
  bring a lot of feeling to the audience. So they might be the moment
• 1:21:41
  that the hero confronts the villain and he's being beaten down, but he gets
• 1:21:45
  up one last time and he figures out some trick that that gives him that
• 1:21:49
  little extra edge to overcome the villain, you know. Or it could be
• 1:21:53
  some massive confrontation. One of the ones that are in this particular framework that
• 1:21:59
  seems to be very appreciated is this kind of Oh, I'm smashing the patriarchy
• 1:22:04
  and I'm learning that I'm everything I never needed to be just as a woman,
• 1:22:09
  I don't need to be anything but female. I have everything I need.
• 1:22:13
  That kind of cathartic I guess cathartic moment seems to be popular today and
• 1:22:18
  to to sort of understand, okay, so you would you would make these
• 1:22:24
  kind of these index cards based on the kind of emotional moments you want to
• 1:22:28
  hit your emotional points right, and then you would construct a story around it.
• 1:22:33
  And it almost feels like we got the we want to hit these emotional
• 1:22:39
  moments, but we don't have the stage of constructing a story to make make
• 1:22:44
  the emotional moments make sense. Does that he's stand what I'm saying. Yeah,
• 1:22:47
  Well, that's the thing. You can't just have emotional moments like you
• 1:22:51
  have to like and you have to like communicate something that I mean, if
• 1:22:55
  you want it to be successful, it has to be something that we all
• 1:22:58
  as humans can really to not just like some people. I can't be too
• 1:23:02
  niche because that's the problem with today's entertainment is it's all like, oh,
• 1:23:05
  but don't you want to hear about my story, my story of like discovering
• 1:23:11
  like well I don't know, like how hard it is to be a woman
• 1:23:13
  or whatever. It's like, no, actually I don't. I prefer something
• 1:23:15
  that's a little like that we can all like say, oh, yeah,
• 1:23:18
  I've experienced as I felt this, because I don't know if emotional moments are
• 1:23:23
  enough if people haven't experienced those emotions or haven't well thought about what it might
• 1:23:29
  be like to experience something, you know, like losing a child or something.
• 1:23:32
  I think what you're bocking at is is actually this focus on experience rather
• 1:23:40
  than achievement, because again, a lot of these emotional moments, they for
• 1:23:46
  me, they're not like especially in what I'm noticing in House of Dragons,
• 1:23:50
  they have these emotional beats, but they're not built up well in my opinion,
• 1:23:58
  yeah, not earned. And and I think that what that's what you're
• 1:24:02
  you're sort of focusing on that that that and a lot that's missing is the
• 1:24:09
  emotional beat of triumph over self. Right, that's completely gone. But let's
• 1:24:15
  let's let's finish this off because we got a few minutes left, and I
• 1:24:17
  don't want to speak of the tragic hero. Aristotle states it follows plainly in
• 1:24:23
  the first place, that the change of fortune presented must not be the spectacle
• 1:24:27
  of a virtuous man brought from prosperity to adversity. For this move, it's
• 1:24:30
  neither pity nor fear. It merely shocks us. Okay, trail of Deniers.
• 1:24:35
  I want to point out that I think she's trying to use people's upset
• 1:24:40
  over Arius Stark to strengthen her argument that Denaries should have been shown as a
• 1:24:45
  tragic hero. But again, I don't think she's got the flaw. Right,
• 1:24:50
  you know, it's not Denari's naivete, it's her self righteousness. Well,
• 1:24:57
  again, they could have written her as a tr hero, but they
• 1:25:00
  would have had to have thought more carefully about all of the other shocking stuff
• 1:25:04
  they wanted to put in the show. Like that's the thing, Like you
• 1:25:06
  got to take into account fascination. Yeah, if you want to whatever whatever
• 1:25:11
  was in there, but whatever it is, if you want us to feel
• 1:25:15
  as though there is an arc or that there's a tragic figure you know,
• 1:25:19
  or whatever, you you can't you got to set it up, but like
• 1:25:24
  you got. But that means that you need to have a universalized framework that
• 1:25:30
  that you know that we all understand that when John snow didn't get to kill
• 1:25:34
  the you know what is he called the White King or whatever, when he
• 1:25:40
  didn't get to kill that guy and she did it, like we knew that
• 1:25:44
  that was wrong, Like there was something wrong with that or like the viewers
• 1:25:46
  that's why they were upset. And yeah, you might say, well that
• 1:25:49
  you didn't write the story, but it doesn't matter. It's like what we
• 1:25:53
  expect, like we have we there is there is such a thing as a
• 1:25:59
  story that that people want to see and they have an emotional connection too.
• 1:26:03
  They want to see it resolved in a certain way. And if you don't
• 1:26:08
  project it in or have some kind of foreshadowing. You're just going to shock
• 1:26:14
  people, and then they're going to feel as though you only did it to
• 1:26:16
  shock people and not because you thought that it made a lot of sense and
• 1:26:20
  that and that will make people feel a little bit robbed because they'll be like,
• 1:26:24
  well, that's that, doesn't you know, that's not what I wanted.
• 1:26:27
  If you wanted Aristark to be the one to kill the whatever ni king,
• 1:26:31
  then I mean, obviously she did it, but I mean if you
• 1:26:33
  wanted it to pay off better, then there would have been some other things
• 1:26:38
  you could have done to set it up. I don't know what, but
• 1:26:40
  because I wouldn't watch the show, but I figure that that that's what it
• 1:26:45
  is. It's it's like you you just can't pretend like the the substrate of
• 1:26:54
  story in the in the broadest, most symbolic sense, is not something that
• 1:26:59
  people are looking for, you know, like they're looking for that and if
• 1:27:02
  they get it, even if they don't know that's what they're they're asking for,
• 1:27:06
  even if they think you know that they want something like new that you
• 1:27:12
  can bring them something satisfying in a new way. Complenty of options, But
• 1:27:17
  I don't think that I think that's what it is like Denaris is dissatisfying because
• 1:27:23
  they didn't set it up correctly, even if because I think most people didn't
• 1:27:27
  see it that way. And part of it probably did have to do with
• 1:27:30
  the fact that she seemed to be, you know, a tragic figure.
• 1:27:34
  At the beginning, she was under you know, the the care of her
• 1:27:41
  brother or whatever, who wasn't really cool with her, and then she she
• 1:27:44
  was basically like, gave it given to cal Drogo and and and from there
• 1:27:49
  it just looks like, oh, she's a she's being victimized. And but
• 1:27:54
  then but I think a lot of people don't see it deeper than that because
• 1:27:58
  they're just shown what they say seem so if you wanted to do this better,
• 1:28:02
  you just have to set it up better. Yeah, yeah, well
• 1:28:06
  but again, she can't just invent another freaking tragic flaw for denerics and say
• 1:28:13
  no, it's actually this. No, it's pretty clearly self righteousness. There
• 1:28:18
  is this inclination towards seeing group guilt, like why do you think she punished
• 1:28:25
  an entire city for the death of probably for the death of her friend and
• 1:28:28
  also for denying you know, defying her right. Yeah, you know,
• 1:28:31
  it's just that is that is the way. And honestly, I know this
• 1:28:35
  is awful, but maybe this this ties into like Coultrane saying that women like
• 1:28:41
  villains. It's not that I necessarily like Denaris or I admire her as a
• 1:28:46
  character, but I appreciate the fact that she's so proactive. Like, yeah,
• 1:28:54
  that sounds horrible, but when it's really difficult, Like the worst kinds
• 1:28:59
  of characters to get people interested in are the ones who don't do anything,
• 1:29:03
  who even villains are more fun. And that's one of the reasons why villains
• 1:29:09
  often have a more appeal than heroes. And that's I think to men or
• 1:29:12
  women, is because villains do stuff. They take initiative, they make plans,
• 1:29:17
  you know, they they they they are interesting to find, they have
• 1:29:20
  goals. Heroes are just like, yeah, we got to oppose the villain.
• 1:29:24
  The villain actually has a goal and a motive and interesting things going on,
• 1:29:29
  and that's I think why people like villains. So that's one of the
• 1:29:32
  reasons why I actually like Danny as a villain. She's she's and you can
• 1:29:36
  get away with that with villains. You can make them really proactive, you
• 1:29:42
  can make them, you know, really forceful in their goals in a way
• 1:29:45
  that you just can't do with with heroes. And it's not about aspiring to
• 1:29:51
  be a villain. It's just like like she's talking about Catharsis or she's talking
• 1:29:56
  about just living out an aspect of of of a part of a part of
• 1:30:00
  being human that you really can't indulge in. Right, Yeah, it's but
• 1:30:05
  it's not like, oh yeah, I admire this person. No, outside
• 1:30:10
  of their proactiveness, but that But that's like I said, I like Danny
• 1:30:15
  as a villain. That doesn't mean I thought that she was someone you to
• 1:30:17
  aspire to or a role model. No, maybe you didn't, but a
• 1:30:23
  lot of women did. I think that's why they're upset about how it went.
• 1:30:26
  Yeah, because they didn't know this. I mean, yeah, I
• 1:30:29
  know, but they didn't want to notice. Yeah you didn't. Like ladies,
• 1:30:32
  If you're upset about Dannari's turning to the dark side, it was there
• 1:30:35
  from the beginning. Like if you were noticing it. The problem is that
• 1:30:40
  you have this lens that you're not seeing her morality. I mean, remember
• 1:30:45
  like women were like lens. Mothers were naming their children after this character.
• 1:30:50
  Oh good lord, that's like that's well it's hilario. It's true. So
• 1:30:56
  but look, I got a super chat from Albernida retro for two an says
• 1:31:00
  Chuck Norris should have killed the Night King. I mean I would have find
• 1:31:02
  a more entertaining bit of subversion, that's for sure. But should we finish
• 1:31:08
  this off or do you want to move to the next Uh? Do you
• 1:31:10
  want to move on to the other? I just wanted to give you a
• 1:31:12
  heads up, Like when you do your rent, you don't change to your
• 1:31:16
  face. Sometimes I forget I have to do it manually. So oh I
• 1:31:20
  got ya, Okay, gotcha? All right, let's keep going. Then,
• 1:31:25
  all right. Systemise is the abrupt change from prosperity to adversity. The
• 1:31:30
  seeds of ambition to the point of madness were never planted early on, so
• 1:31:33
  this was never her tragic Yes, they were in a very short period of
• 1:31:36
  time. Oh wait wait, ambition to the point of madness no, No,
• 1:31:41
  self righteousness and collective guilt taking, guilt blaming, yes, yes she
• 1:31:47
  was. She was. She was engaging in collective punishment like and she was
• 1:31:56
  self righteous like she che. Based on even that one bit of dialogue,
• 1:32:01
  it starts to frame the whole situation is she's latching onto a cause in order
• 1:32:08
  to virtual signal. In other words, that all is an aspect of narcissism,
• 1:32:14
  right, like narcissists often latch on to causes to virtue signal. And
• 1:32:21
  it could have been exactly the same thing that happened with Denaries. So you
• 1:32:27
  know, you're I think she just has the fatal flaw wrong and you can't
• 1:32:33
  change that. Like does Denari's fatal flaw being naive naivete consistent with her taking
• 1:32:41
  a bunch of people to the dragon pit to execute them, allowing her dragon
• 1:32:47
  to flombay, dismember and dismember one of them, and the guy's blood is
• 1:32:54
  literally splattering on the other ones. And then she's like she's like waving the
• 1:32:59
  dragon to come come get the next one. Then she stops and says,
• 1:33:01
  oh wait, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm not gonna kill you today.
• 1:33:04
  Like that is torture, friends, that is like flat out torture.
• 1:33:10
  And then we find out that obviously these these men can't be that bad because
• 1:33:14
  she's willing to marry one, all right, So and again she's brought these
• 1:33:18
  these men in because apparently one of them is responsible for or they could be
• 1:33:26
  part of the insurrection against her. I believe that was the reason. I
• 1:33:29
  mean, it's a lot of a lot of material to remember, so folks.
• 1:33:31
  But but again, it was collective guilt. She's executing people based on
• 1:33:35
  collective guilt. That ain't fatal flaw. Naive take lady, that ain't it.
• 1:33:43
  You're barking up the wrong tree there, okay, versus flaw from the
• 1:33:49
  naive quest to free the oppressed to a psychotic, unyielding thirst for power.
• 1:33:55
  Denars never enters aster for a marine for the sake of power alone. She
• 1:34:00
  enters them to gain the love and trust of the people she frees. Her
• 1:34:02
  goal is to undo archaic systems of oppression, and this compliments her tragic flaw.
• 1:34:08
  The moment she enters wester Ros, she benevolently gives up her quest in
• 1:34:12
  armies to help John fight the White Walkers. But all the while the showrunners
• 1:34:15
  also attempt to portray her as a cold, power hungry tyrant. Here,
• 1:34:18
  her actions in Quest are all consistent with the flaw the show has been building
• 1:34:23
  towards. She loses her long about characters like one hundred percent, you're wrong
• 1:34:27
  about the flaw. It doesn't matter that her her cause, you think her
• 1:34:30
  cause was just She wasn't engaging in it because of justice. She was engaging
• 1:34:38
  in it because she wanted to be seen as a savior, because she's probably
• 1:34:41
  a narcissist. Okay, it doesn't matter howes her cause is. She could
• 1:34:46
  be saving the frickin' orcas she was still doing it to be worshiped, and
• 1:34:51
  when she came to a point where she wasn't going to get what she wanted,
• 1:34:57
  she engaged in more collective punishment. She literally apparently does not see people
• 1:35:02
  as people, but just people who will adore her versus people who will defy
• 1:35:10
  her. Okay, I mean, like I said, this seems consistent to
• 1:35:14
  me. Again, it would have been nice to have really worked a bit
• 1:35:17
  more on the craft, hammered home a lot of the key scenes necessary to
• 1:35:23
  clarify all of this, But in the broad strokes, I see what they're
• 1:35:26
  getting at. And again I really doubt and I'm pretty sure Martin has said
• 1:35:30
  that he did talk to them about how he wanted his story to end.
• 1:35:33
  So I don't think that when they had that conversation and there was no source
• 1:35:39
  material to adapt, that they just went completely on their own, and in
• 1:35:45
  my mind they inferred from stuff that was being written about Denari's before they ran
• 1:35:53
  out of material. If that was the case, if they weren't giving direction
• 1:35:57
  by like I can't beginning. He doesn't have the source material to end it,
• 1:36:01
  and they don't have the discussion of how is it going to end if
• 1:36:03
  you don't finish it, like I don't think so okay, yeah, all
• 1:36:09
  right, So with little to no development, Assyrian Jorra Regel and Messende not
• 1:36:15
  because of her choices, but because the plot needed her to lose them.
• 1:36:18
  Her change of fortune is not built upon Overtime does not give us a clear
• 1:36:23
  and consistent path to see how she arrived here, and therefore, when Danny
• 1:36:27
  lays waste to King's landing after the city surrenders, we can no longer empathize
• 1:36:30
  with her because there has been no consistent route that has driven her to this
• 1:36:33
  point. Therefore, we do not experience catharsis as we watch Danny need her
• 1:36:39
  demise. Wait, there's no been no consistent what that brought her to this
• 1:36:45
  point. We go Backrooch that has driven her to this point. Therefore,
• 1:36:51
  for time does not give us a clear and consistent path to see how she
• 1:36:56
  arrived here. And therefore, when Danny lays waste to kings, okay,
• 1:36:59
  let me let me put it, they did not give a clear and consistent
• 1:37:01
  path for somebody who can't connect the dots. Yeah, when I'm watching this,
• 1:37:08
  I'm like, yes, they need to clarify things. But in broad
• 1:37:11
  brush broad strokes, it was there. It was there from definitely from marine.
• 1:37:16
  You just chose not to see it because you thought that that it's justified
• 1:37:23
  to behave in this way to a group of people based on nothing more than
• 1:37:29
  where, what, what status they were born into? Right, you thought
• 1:37:33
  that was justified, so you didn't see it. You thought it was okay.
• 1:37:38
  It thought it was okay for Denaris to execute people by dragon. Right,
• 1:37:43
  you thought that was okay based on the fact that they might be potential
• 1:37:46
  conspirators. Right, you thought that was okay because you know they're rich eat
• 1:37:53
  the rich, right it. Well, yeah, they brought it all to
• 1:37:58
  its final conclusion and we found out the true nature of someone who will do
• 1:38:03
  that. And I don't think this individual like that, you know, And
• 1:38:10
  now she's inventing a new tragic flaw for Denaries, which again was never was
• 1:38:17
  never really like the naivete is not a tragic flaw first of all. Also,
• 1:38:24
  it's really hard to compare to Greek because we have a different narrative focus
• 1:38:32
  now, or we in the West, I mean, Greek is more archaic,
• 1:38:36
  so we have more of a focus on these kinds of moral character arcs
• 1:38:42
  like the er example is, of course the story of Christ, the Passion
• 1:38:45
  of the Christ. But this idea of temptation of flaws in other words,
• 1:38:50
  things that you either have the potential to harm others or you are harming others
• 1:38:55
  and confronting that, and yeah, like it's just this is not, this
• 1:39:03
  is not You can't compare a modern tragedy and a modern byronic hero, or
• 1:39:10
  a tragic hero with a Greek tragic hero. It doesn't like it's like the
• 1:39:15
  storytelling values are more archaic. Okay, let's just finish this off. We're
• 1:39:18
  almost done, right there is we can no longer empathize with her because there
• 1:39:24
  has been no consistent route that has driven her to this point. Therefore,
• 1:39:29
  experience, why would you want to enter Denaris could have been a tragic hero,
• 1:39:38
  but she okay, all right, all right, how are you going
• 1:39:42
  to demonstrate that she has overcome her naivete. Oh, I guess what she's
• 1:39:50
  gonna say is that she's gonna I don't know, Flombay the Red Keep and
• 1:39:55
  k Kirsty and then get executed by the people of King's Landing, which I
• 1:40:00
  guess would make the people of kings Landing the villain rather than Denari's. But
• 1:40:09
  that's that isn't her, that's ultimately not Denari's is responsible. First of all,
• 1:40:14
  it just completely ignores the shit that happened in Marina, which you can't
• 1:40:17
  ignore in Denari's characterization. But also it essentially just means that Denarius is a
• 1:40:25
  victim. It's not that she has a flaw that's hurting others. Is that
• 1:40:30
  her flaw only hurts herself, like in the end. That's not even Catharsis.
• 1:40:35
  First of all, how would you demonstrate that she realizes it's her naivete?
• 1:40:41
  I mean, the thing about Macbeth is they realize it's his that's the
• 1:40:45
  one that's like post that's not archaic. So he realizes it's his ambition that's
• 1:40:50
  causing the downfall and the destruction of everything, right, so he has that
• 1:40:55
  moment of Catharsis. Sure, how are you gonna have a moment of Catharsis
• 1:41:00
  about my naivete. I was just too good for this sinful earth, and
• 1:41:05
  that's why I'm dying. Like what like even allowing for her premise that naivete
• 1:41:13
  even is a tragic flaw outside of archaic like Greek stories, where the locus
• 1:41:20
  of control is not put on the individual, like that's that's the big difference,
• 1:41:26
  Like, yeah, you can have a Greek tragedy because the gods just
• 1:41:29
  hated you, and it's it's totally outside that. We don't like those though
• 1:41:32
  anymore, We don't tend to write those. We like the locus of control
• 1:41:35
  to be on the individual. We want the tragic and first of all,
• 1:41:40
  when did Macbeth become a hero? Actually, come to think of it,
• 1:41:44
  what the hell? Why the hell is she presenting Macbeth as a hero.
• 1:41:46
  But anyway, we want the tragic flaw to be a result of decisions the
• 1:41:51
  individual makes, not just random shit that happens because you know, the gods
• 1:41:57
  got upset with you or you accidentally had sex with your mom. Right,
• 1:42:00
  that's where we want it. Now, where is the where is the locus
• 1:42:04
  of control? With Denari's how is it centered on her that she can have
• 1:42:12
  a cathartic moment when she realizes that she's the problem. Naivete isn't realizing that
• 1:42:17
  you're the problem. Naivete is having an ideal that does is incompatible with the
• 1:42:21
  shitty world of west Rows. That's like, that's like, no, that's
• 1:42:27
  even within her context. She's not this is not this is not creating what
• 1:42:31
  she thinks she's creating. All right, let's keep going, all right,
• 1:42:35
  Hollywood, she is instead of her verbial evil villain. This is the tragedy
• 1:42:41
  of Game of Friends. In the end, wisn. Benioff proves Georgia or
• 1:42:45
  Martin right, Well that okay, it's over. It's no sound all right,
• 1:42:50
  it just suddenly cuts off. Okay, great, So they prove George
• 1:42:56
  R. R. Martin right, which is that adaptations are ship except there
• 1:43:00
  was nothing to adapt. So honestly, guys, at this point, Game
• 1:43:06
  of Thrones wasn't written by Martin. It was written by these guys, Like,
• 1:43:12
  I mean, you're never gonna you're probably never gonna get an ending by
• 1:43:15
  Martin. So the real critical part, you know, the part where you're
• 1:43:18
  all everything you're writing is leading up to, which is the ending. I
• 1:43:23
  mean, the beginning is really important because if you don't stick the beginning,
• 1:43:26
  nobody's gonna read it. But the ending is what makes the story. Well,
• 1:43:31
  I hate to tell you, but Game of Thrones wasn't written by Martin.
• 1:43:38
  In fact, Game of Thrones was apparently if he does finish it,
• 1:43:42
  it's going to be adapted by Martin from the show, like I'm sorry,
• 1:43:46
  Like he's abandoned it. What where was the adaption coming from. There was
• 1:43:51
  no runway. There was no further runway unless they had like a long conversation,
• 1:44:00
  and even then, it's not an adaptation. It's the execution. They
• 1:44:03
  didn't adapt Martin's end. They maybe at best executed his suggestions and at worst,
• 1:44:16
  well no, at worst they executed his suggestion, or at worst they
• 1:44:19
  just invented it all by themselves. So they either executed his will or this
• 1:44:26
  was just completely novel. But there was no adaptation, and if Martin was
• 1:44:30
  so worried about his work being adapted, he should have finished it at least
• 1:44:35
  like, oh man, okay. So that was that. I do have
• 1:44:43
  I do have a thank you, And I also wanted to ask if we
• 1:44:45
  could play one of our animations as a filler when we go to the next
• 1:44:48
  part. I don't know if I yeah, i'd have to have that set
• 1:44:56
  up in advance, and I do, all right. So I want to
• 1:44:58
  thank the Great Indoor for sponsoring this show, and he has supported us to
• 1:45:02
  the tune of two hundred and fifty dollars. So thank you, great endurers.
• 1:45:09
  At the time, I actually appreciate the change of pace and the change
• 1:45:15
  of focus like this is this is a little bit easier to talk about,
• 1:45:18
  and it's also something that I It's a topic that I appreciate because I am
• 1:45:23
  a I'm a writer, and I like my particular hobby horse is how men
• 1:45:29
  and women are depicted in fiction. Not from a feminist lens, of course,
• 1:45:33
  but from basically a non feminist lens, and which doesn't justify like my
• 1:45:42
  non feminist lens basically applies accountability and reason equally to male and female characters.
• 1:45:48
  That's why it's non feminist, because it's about equal obligations and responsibilities, not
• 1:45:55
  just equal rights. All right, So if you enjoyed the show, actually,
• 1:46:00
  before we get into that, before we get into that, I'm going
• 1:46:01
  to tell you guys, go to my channel, my personal channel. It's
• 1:46:05
  I believe at gender addic on YouTube, and we are going to continue this
• 1:46:10
  discussion. We're going to get into more House of the Dragon and keep going
• 1:46:15
  on it and hopefully that all that'll be fun. So consider going there and
• 1:46:18
  watching us there. But it's gonna be at least the horizontal part of this.
• 1:46:24
  This video is going to be moving from to a different location. So
• 1:46:30
  at gender addic, please go there and watch us there. And once again,
• 1:46:34
  if you want to send us a comment at any time or even after
• 1:46:39
  the show is done, you want to comment on anything that we talked about,
• 1:46:42
  you want to correct me on something, you want to say, you
• 1:46:45
  appreciate this content, You understand where I'm coming from. I am, once
• 1:46:48
  again really trying hard to understand and appreciate the appeal of the kind of writing
• 1:46:55
  that Martin has been engaging in with Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon.
• 1:47:00
  If you want to send us a comment, tell us we're not screaming
• 1:47:01
  into the void. Feed the badger dot com slash just the tip. You
• 1:47:04
  want to explain to me the appeal, feed the badget dot com slash just
• 1:47:09
  the tip. I will read whatever you send and we will read it out
• 1:47:13
  and the next reason like show that where it's reasonably on topic, and if
• 1:47:18
  you want to support the show, you can do so it feed the Badger
• 1:47:20
  dot com slash support. Make sure we can continue to do this content because
• 1:47:25
  you are the reason why we're able to do that. And it's always appreciated
• 1:47:28
  when people get their support in earlier rather than later, because you know,
• 1:47:31
  I am a very nervous person and Brian probably is. He's probably I don't
• 1:47:38
  think he's a nervous person, but maybe he doesn't like dealing with nervous people,
• 1:47:41
  so it helps him to h So, once again, feed the Badger
• 1:47:44
  dot calm slash support and back to you, Brian for right. Yeah,
• 1:47:51
  so we're going to be going over to just Alie's channel for a little bit.
• 1:47:56
  I'm gonna hit the standby so you're you'll see stream starting while I switch
• 1:48:01
  over, So go to Allison's other video. This will continue over there.
• 1:48:09
  So if you guys like this video, please hit like subscribe. If you're
• 1:48:12
  not already subscribed, hit the bell for notifications, leave us a comment,
• 1:48:15
  let us know what you guys think about what we talked about on the show
• 1:48:17
  today, and please please please share this video because sharing is Caring. Thank
• 1:48:20
  you so much for coming on today's episode of Red Chill Cinemon. We'll talk
• 1:48:25
  to you all in the next one one. Hi everyone, this is Honey
• 1:53:05
  Badger Radio. Welcome back if you're still tuning in, and hello for the
• 1:53:11
  very first time if you're on my channel. So, Hi, I am
• 1:53:15
  Alison. I'll be your host, and this is Brian. Hey, I
• 1:53:19
  remember my name. I'm doing good, all right, So we're going to
• 1:53:24
  talk about House of Dragon. I have watched the first two episodes of the
• 1:53:30
  second season. I've also watched the first season, plus a good portion of
• 1:53:34
  Game of Thrones. I don't necessarily remember everything that happened in Game of Thrones,
• 1:53:39
  so if I make mistakes, just tell me in the comments. I
• 1:53:42
  apologize. And this has basically been my journey to try to understand the appeal
• 1:53:49
  of the try the kind of content that Game of Thrones is and House of
• 1:53:56
  the Dragon is, and to try to figure it out, to figure out
• 1:54:00
  the appeal, to figure out the kind of metric that it should be measured
• 1:54:04
  by. If that makes sense, so I can understand how to approach it.
• 1:54:10
  It's gonna move my thing up a little bit. There we go.
• 1:54:13
  And so Yeah, it's basically just an exploration of a genre that doesn't necessarily
• 1:54:19
  appeal to me if it is its own kind of genre. Like honestly,
• 1:54:24
  epic fantasy lately has been really dark, so I don't know if it appeals
• 1:54:29
  to me as much. But then anyway, So what I've discovered is that
• 1:54:32
  Game of Thrones and House the Dragon appears to be about people who are failures
• 1:54:43
  and sort of psychopathic losing, which that sounds like I'm being dismissive, but
• 1:54:51
  I'm not. I'm not being dismissive. Apparently there is an appeal to that,
• 1:54:57
  and I'm guessing it's like a Catharsis, like those people aren't as bad
• 1:55:01
  as I am. Or maybe it's being able to feel like the people in
• 1:55:09
  charge are actually creating us morons that are worse than everybody else, which,
• 1:55:15
  you know, I mean, considering considering what we're dealing with, I can
• 1:55:20
  I could see the appeal, you know, well, you know, like
• 1:55:25
  the W E F and yeah sorows and all of that. I don't know,
• 1:55:30
  though, I don't know that a lot of people are aware of that.
• 1:55:34
  I think they're just watching the show because they just want some fantasy to
• 1:55:41
  consumes it's content, you know, and it's like it at least it depicts
• 1:55:48
  what it's depicting. Well, right, it gets uh. But and in
• 1:55:55
  the previous show I talked about how maybe it's it's an aspect of a type
• 1:56:00
  of storytelling in which you basically the way that it works is that you take
• 1:56:05
  index cards and you write your big emotional moments on them, and you want
• 1:56:12
  to hit those emotional moments. And it's a very legitimate form of storytelling,
• 1:56:15
  except usually after you figure out the emotional moments you want to hit. In
• 1:56:19
  fact, I write in that way too, so I really appreciate it.
• 1:56:23
  You tend to go back in and try to figure out how to make them
• 1:56:26
  make sense in the context of your characterization and your storytelling. And I feel
• 1:56:30
  that, particularly House of Dragons and trying to think how to praise this,
• 1:56:39
  I think that even Game of Thrones, like the original few series like the
• 1:56:44
  original series sort of maybe falls down a little bit actually less than House of
• 1:56:48
  Dragons now, but falls down a little bit on making the characterization consistent and
• 1:56:54
  the story building details as well. All right, so let's talk about House
• 1:57:00
  with Dragons Season two, episode two. Okay, Okay, all right.
• 1:57:06
  So in the previous episode, one of my concerns is that they're presenting things
• 1:57:13
  in the way that they are because they want to absolve the female characters of
• 1:57:16
  all culpability. Of course, that just makes them feel proactive and that everybody
• 1:57:21
  under their command is outside of their control, which is really their fault.
• 1:57:26
  But but regardless, so we do find out now that raner Us is not
• 1:57:34
  taking responsibility for her ambiguous statement of I want aim in Targarian and or I
• 1:57:43
  want aim in high time or no, I think it's Targarian, right,
• 1:57:45
  all right, So where we're at in the story is I think, okay,
• 1:57:51
  sorry, it's it's really difficult to explain this, all right. So
• 1:57:56
  the two the basic the praisic premise of the story is it's two men at
• 1:58:00
  odds over the succession of the throne. We have, on the one hand,
• 1:58:04
  we have sorry written ares Ryanis who was declared heir by her father despite
• 1:58:15
  the fact that Westros never has had a female regent, and but this is
• 1:58:24
  this was a contentious maneuver and uh and the other person who has approached getting
• 1:58:31
  gaining power over the throne in a conventional way, she's given birth to the
• 1:58:35
  future king, who incidentally she married the father of the princess, the the
• 1:58:42
  the heir apparent. She gave birth to the current occupant of the throne,
• 1:58:48
  a younger, younger son of the king, who he did not declare his
• 1:58:53
  heir. He's he kept to his elder daughter by another wife. So they're
• 1:58:59
  both contending over the throne, and you know, so there is back and
• 1:59:04
  forth, and at this point in time, the mother of the heir,
• 1:59:11
  the male heir, has basically enacted a coup and put her son on the
• 1:59:15
  throne, except that there's there is again this kind of wishy washiness. So
• 1:59:21
  did she really want to do it? Was it just the diet, the
• 1:59:25
  words of her dying husband that made her do it? That kind of thing.
• 1:59:29
  And in response, the one of the supporters of the princess went to
• 1:59:35
  the coronation flombayed a couple hundred people to you know, send a statement,
• 1:59:42
  but didn't kill the king or the usurping mother and then left. And that
• 1:59:47
  wasn't apparently a declaration war though, that was just an opening salvo of terse
• 1:59:56
  negotiations, I guess. I mean, you'd think that somebody taking a weapon
• 2:00:01
  of war and opening fire at your coronation, that that would be considered an
• 2:00:06
  active war. And it certainly is an active terrorism. I'm pretty sure that
• 2:00:13
  you know, when when when another power around the world kills a couple hundred
• 2:00:17
  Americans the US in a bombing, the US might or might consider that an
• 2:00:24
  active terrorist maybe not an active war, but on US soil, that would
• 2:00:29
  be an active war. But apparently that West growths just it's just built different.
• 2:00:32
  It doesn't do that. So that wasn't that wasn't the declaration of war
• 2:00:36
  as far as I can tell. All Right, So as a result of
• 2:00:41
  the tensions, the women start saying, well, I gotta get my friends,
• 2:00:46
  I gotta get my I gotta find out who are my allies because they
• 2:00:49
  can apparently can't do anything on their own. They need a collective. So
• 2:00:53
  they go send out runners to all the lords in Westros to say are you
• 2:00:57
  on my side or not? And there's a tagline for the show is it
• 2:01:00
  all must choose? Okay, so this is this is a big part apparently
• 2:01:03
  of this politics. And now we pick up the story again and after Rahneries
• 2:01:12
  sends her second son, the completely personality less one, and he gets eaten
• 2:01:18
  by the second son, the dragon of the second son of Allison, so
• 2:01:25
  that that's the queen, the Queen Dowager, And apparently that also wasn't cause
• 2:01:31
  for war. I do want to point out that Rhiners got her son killed
• 2:01:36
  by by putting him in that much danger, but that regardless, apparently that
• 2:01:41
  wasn't caused for war. Or it was because Rayner's subsequently created blockade of the
• 2:01:49
  capital of the country, King's Landing, which in any other circumstance, any
• 2:01:57
  other history, part of history, if this was really but this was based
• 2:02:01
  on humans, creating a blockade would be an act of war. Yeah,
• 2:02:10
  but apparently it's still we're still we're still in question on the war thing.
• 2:02:16
  We're we're one party, the princess, the princess heir to the throne,
• 2:02:23
  is blockading the other party. But apparently we're still not not completely sure on
• 2:02:29
  the issue of whether or not we're at war. Mm hmmm. That that's
• 2:02:34
  still up in the air. Okay, so they're the fuck where are they
• 2:02:44
  building up? Okay? Yeah, you're right, maybe they can build it
• 2:02:46
  higher. I don't know, like it feels like you if you build,
• 2:02:49
  if you keep building, at some point, the payoff is going to be
• 2:02:53
  really like a wet fart. But anyway, so that she's blockading. But
• 2:02:58
  what's really interesting about the entire sequence of her losing her second eldest son and
• 2:03:02
  then leading up to this blockade is apparently and when we pick up in the
• 2:03:10
  second season, she's lost her her second son, right, And there was
• 2:03:13
  an end like this, this dramatic final moment in the first season when Alison
• 2:03:18
  learned or sorry, Ranais learns she's lost her second son, where the camera
• 2:03:24
  gets close on her and she looks really determined and angry, and I'm like,
• 2:03:29
  hey, that's a declare war phase. No, nope. Now we
• 2:03:36
  open up on the second season and she's grief stricken and waffy like and and
• 2:03:43
  but but the thing is, okay, find it fair enough, she's grief
• 2:03:45
  stricken and waffly. In her immediate moment of grief, she seemed determined and
• 2:03:49
  angry and ready to declare war. But we open up and she's grief stricken
• 2:03:54
  and waffly again. So all right, fair enough, okay, But here's
• 2:03:57
  the problem, Right, the sequence of events has this grief stricken mother Raneri's
• 2:04:02
  okay, find out that her son was murdered by her opponent's second son.
• 2:04:08
  She finds this out and then apparently orders a blockade. Okay, right,
• 2:04:15
  In every reasonable appraisal of the situation, the blockade is a declaration of war.
• 2:04:20
  You don't usually blockade people because I don't know, you want to invite
• 2:04:25
  them over for tea, or you're hoping to help their financial assystem. You
• 2:04:30
  blockade people to make them suffer so they concede to your terms, or to
• 2:04:33
  reduce their military capability. Right, that's why you do that. That is
• 2:04:39
  an active war. But apparently Rhineri's ordered this active war in her grief.
• 2:04:45
  But then she found more grief that she had in process, so she goes
• 2:04:48
  off. She leaves all her underlings dealing with the blockade. She goes off
• 2:04:56
  to find her son and her husband. The Prince Consort is sort of chomping
• 2:05:04
  at the bit, bitch bit to do something, so he's like, he
• 2:05:09
  approaches the aunt who who at the terrorists who killed a couple hundred people at
• 2:05:14
  the coronation, and she's like, bitch, let's go do something proactive,
• 2:05:18
  like you know, we're we're doing this blockade. The biggest threat to the
• 2:05:20
  blockade is this this other dude's big dragon that killed my steps on. Right,
• 2:05:27
  let's go kill me, you know, protect the blockade, avenge the
• 2:05:30
  death of my steps on. Bada boom, bada bing, you know.
• 2:05:33
  And she's like, oh, yes, that's a man. I can't believe.
• 2:05:38
  I can't believe you want war. You're such a You're such a you're
• 2:05:42
  such a creature of war. Man. I'm like, bitch, you just
• 2:05:46
  didn't act to terrorism like he's he's saying, let's go after a legitimate military
• 2:05:53
  target. Is the problem that he's not saying we should go after a bunch
• 2:05:57
  of innocents who have nothing to do with the conflict, like we should.
• 2:06:00
  It's not war crimey enough for you, it doesn't violate the Geneva Convention enough
• 2:06:05
  for you. Like it's a legitimate military target. It's literally a weapon.
• 2:06:10
  It's a living weapon, but it's literally a weapon. So he's saying,
• 2:06:13
  let's go after their biggest fucking weapon and neutralize it. And just like she's
• 2:06:18
  like, oh, you're so you're so blood thirsty. I'm like, he's
• 2:06:21
  the only one here who's making any sense. You're at war. You have
• 2:06:28
  a blockade, the threat to your blockade, presumably you want to keep that
• 2:06:32
  blockade running is the big motherfucking dragon that can flombay the the smaller dragons that
• 2:06:40
  are keeping your blockade in operation. Like, if your enemy has a weapon
• 2:06:45
  that can defy what you're doing to try to inflict pain on your enemy to
• 2:06:49
  get them to concede, don't you think taking it out is a really big,
• 2:06:54
  tactical, intelligent maneuver. And yet and then she she has the audacity
• 2:07:02
  to say the queen is grieving, bitch, she ordered the blockade. She
• 2:07:10
  can't be grieving that hard, Like, what the hell is It's so freaking
• 2:07:15
  convenient. Maybe is her weakness too, The day is her week. It
• 2:07:23
  goes around, it goes around. I'm just astounded. It's like he's being
• 2:07:29
  presented as the bad guy, right, He's like, I'm the bad dude.
• 2:07:32
  And it's because he's saying, let's go after a legitimate military target that
• 2:07:36
  threatens our blockade, which the which the queen specifically ordered us to do.
• 2:07:42
  And the other chick is like, no, it's not war crimy enough for
• 2:07:44
  me. She's grieving. I mean, if if you wanted me to go
• 2:07:48
  after a bunch of peasants having like winter festival, I do that, Like
• 2:07:51
  I'm totally flombay those fuckers, But a legitimate military target that's so bloodthirsty.
• 2:07:59
  Yeah, okay, So Damien is the guy that we're pinning all the shit
• 2:08:05
  on today, all right, So Queenie goes off in Grieves, or sorry,
• 2:08:13
  Princess Ranarius goes off in Grieves, even though she's already basically declared war
• 2:08:20
  dealing with the war. You know, declaring the war. You know that
• 2:08:24
  that was fine? Again, you're blockading your enemy, You're declared. That
• 2:08:30
  is a declaration of war. Sorry, friends, it is. So she
• 2:08:33
  declares war, but she can't prosecute it. She can't deal with the details
• 2:08:37
  right now because she got go grieve, so she leaves it to her underlings.
• 2:08:41
  But the thing is that apparently she didn't delegate a fucking thing. She
• 2:08:45
  didn't tell the one she didn't tell between the two her two major underlings,
• 2:08:50
  who is actually making the decisions about the blockade? Right, So they're getting
• 2:08:54
  into this argument just basically resolved with, oh, Damien, you're so bloodthirst
• 2:09:00
  for wanting to go after a legitimate military target in a war. Okay,
• 2:09:05
  sorry, I might be repeating myself. I'll try to move on from that
• 2:09:09
  it's just so egregious, all right. So Damon the Queen comes back,
• 2:09:18
  or the Princess, I'll call him the Princess Granera is the princess who was
• 2:09:22
  named the heir, and then there was the queen who is ruling as the
• 2:09:26
  dowager. Okay, So the princess comes back from her grief. She finds
• 2:09:31
  her the dragon of her son that's obviously dead. She comes back from her
• 2:09:37
  grief, she stumbles into the council meeting with all of her underlings, and
• 2:09:43
  although she could apparently clearly declare a blockade after her son was done, she
• 2:09:50
  is now so stricken with grief she's barely able to function, and she just
• 2:09:56
  stumbles up there says the following, I want Aimoned Targerian, who is incidentally
• 2:10:01
  the person who killed her son. Okay. Damon is like, oh,
• 2:10:05
  hey, military target, cool, let's go do it, and so he
• 2:10:09
  contracts the stupidest assassins. We covered this last time, but then I'm going
• 2:10:15
  somewhere with this. He basically contracts the three stooges, except there are only
• 2:10:20
  two of them. Actually no, there's three, but the one with the
• 2:10:24
  brains is the dog, and he contracts them to go and fumble around the
• 2:10:30
  palace until they just happened to run into their target. And because he didn't
• 2:10:37
  clarify exactly what they were supposed to do if they didn't find Aimed, when
• 2:10:43
  they kill another of a grandson rather than Aimond, who's the second son,
• 2:10:50
  they kill the son of the first son. I know there's a lot of
• 2:10:52
  freaking characters. I really apologize, but they basically just kill a kid a
• 2:10:56
  grandson because they kill them instead and he didn't specify. We go back to
• 2:11:03
  Rner's finding out about all of this killing that's been happening, and Damon once
• 2:11:11
  again gets chewed out. But I want to point out something. The entire
• 2:11:15
  sequence that ended with the kid getting killed, the grandson getting killed started with
• 2:11:20
  Princess Raneri saying I want Aimon to Targarian, right, And then we have
• 2:11:26
  a brief stop where the idiot assassins ask Damon, Okay, well what do
• 2:11:31
  we do if we can't find Aimon Dargarian? And we just briefly pause on
• 2:11:35
  him smiling ambiguously or just looking flat ambiguously something, and then we go back
• 2:11:41
  to them fumbling around and eventually killing and grandson. Go back to Raneres confronting
• 2:11:48
  Damien about this whole thing, and she's basically accusing him of ordering them to
• 2:11:56
  kill the grandson. And of course we as the audience, were like,
• 2:12:01
  oh yes, call him out, sister. He's caused all this trouble for
• 2:12:05
  you. He's caused the war, you know. And I'm like, okay,
• 2:12:09
  So he has to take responsibility for the misinterpretation of an ambiguous smile.
• 2:12:15
  Why doesn't she have to take responsibility for the misinterpretation of I want Aiman Targarian
• 2:12:20
  the murderer of my second son. Like, what the hell did she mean
• 2:12:24
  by that? Oh wait, she's gritty being hmm okay, all right.
• 2:12:33
  That's one of the things that really bugged me about that whole thing. I
• 2:12:39
  wish people would stop calling a guy who regularly gets laid an insult. I
• 2:12:43
  think they're doing it because they think he's a misogynist. That this is Sir
• 2:12:48
  cris Crispin Cole or whatever the hell his name is. Oh my god,
• 2:12:52
  Well, she's he is being blamed for the fact that Tweedledum and Tweedlede were
• 2:12:56
  able to assassinate the grandson of the queen. He's being blamed because he was
• 2:13:03
  poorking the queen while they did it, except he set a night watch.
• 2:13:07
  The guy can't be expected to be defending the castle twenty four to seven.
• 2:13:11
  But uh yeah, apparently the actor Fabian Frankel, who played this character,
• 2:13:18
  Kristen Cole, he is limiting his comments on Instagram because people are giving him
• 2:13:24
  so much hate as though he's actually the person now that he plays on the
• 2:13:28
  show. So I don't know why the person, I don't know why the
• 2:13:35
  character is getting so much hate that. Oh my god, So they're harassing
• 2:13:41
  him, yes, because of misinterpretation of his character. Okay, well let
• 2:13:45
  me let's just talk about the character. Okay. The guy cannot be expected
• 2:13:50
  to be guarding everyone twenty four to seven. He set the night watch.
• 2:13:52
  The night watch failed to watch, apparently, And this is this is actually,
• 2:13:58
  this is really hilarious, Brian, you would love this. Okay.
• 2:14:01
  So when we ended episode two, the palace was completely deserted, right,
• 2:14:07
  tweedled Dumb and Tweedledee were able to wander wherever they wanted. They could eat
• 2:14:11
  as many tapestries as they could possibly, they could be just just they could
• 2:14:16
  have had a rave and nobody would have noticed. Been just dancing with gloves
• 2:14:22
  sticks and deep cheese, and nobody would nobody would have even perked up an
• 2:14:26
  ear. It was completely deserted. The palace was completely deserted. So tweedledumb
• 2:14:31
  and tweelted. They had this large argument in the middle of an echoing hall
• 2:14:35
  about you know, where where's our target? We gotta kill this kid,
• 2:14:39
  we gotta kill Amen Targaran. Has anybody out there doesn't know that we're here
• 2:14:43
  to kill Amond Targaran. Well, let me say it even louder. Hey,
• 2:14:46
  dude, why can't you find where Ermin Targarian is? Because we're here
• 2:14:50
  to kill him. I'm like, okay, well, so much for stealth,
• 2:14:54
  but you know, stealth is not an important It's not an important skill
• 2:15:00
  for an assassin. God no, so they they're they're just wandering through this
• 2:15:05
  empty palace. The kid gets killed, and instantly when we return to the
• 2:15:11
  palace like this must be minutes after she the queen finds out that her grandson
• 2:15:16
  is killed. The palace is like Grand Central Station. There are literally crowds
• 2:15:22
  and crowds of people running up and down freaking uh stairwells across floors and I'm
• 2:15:31
  like, no, there guards suddenly like you know, not when they're needed,
• 2:15:37
  but after they could have been useful. There are a whole bunch of
• 2:15:39
  guards. I'm like, no, it's understandable if there are a few,
• 2:15:46
  there are less people around the palace. But there are things that would be
• 2:15:50
  occurring even in a palace at night, things that you have to do at
• 2:15:52
  night, you know, blanketing fires, dealing with fires, like empty seeing
• 2:16:00
  bedpants, like all this kind of stuff that has to happen at night,
• 2:16:03
  Like a lot of cleaning would be happening at night. None of that's occurring.
• 2:16:09
  And then suddenly the whole place is like just like everybody's moving, so
• 2:16:15
  it's completely deserted. And then suddenly there's so many people, like lots and
• 2:16:20
  lots of people. Because the excuse was that before there just wasn't that many
• 2:16:24
  guards or staff. And I'm like, well, they suddenly all appeared and
• 2:16:28
  it was too late, and I'm like, anyway, it was. It
• 2:16:33
  was ridiculous. But the guy set a Kristen Cole set a night watchman.
• 2:16:43
  So he set somebody up to do the work in the night. I'm gonna
• 2:16:46
  raise my thing here. Sorry, guys, you gonna see some stuff behind
• 2:16:50
  the scenes. So he set this night watchman up, so he can't be
• 2:16:56
  blamed for the fact that somebody was not doing his duty, right, because
• 2:17:00
  that wasn't his duty at that time, it was. It was somebody else
• 2:17:05
  who was responsible. Right, Okay, so he's he's I'm just trying to
• 2:17:13
  gather my thoughts here. I can't believe that he's getting a harassment for this.
• 2:17:18
  You know that they call him an insult the the actor, yeah,
• 2:17:24
  on the on the internet. Yes, yeah, I'm the guy an insult
• 2:17:31
  of course they are. The very well paid male actor clearly doesn't get laid.
• 2:17:37
  Yeah, well he's even getting laid on the He's he's he had sex
• 2:17:41
  with the Princess Regent, probably not consentually on his part, but now he's
• 2:17:46
  having sex with the Queen Bowerger. Like the guy gets around anyway. Guys,
• 2:17:52
  that's really repulsive, Like this is really bad behavior that they're going after
• 2:17:56
  this guy for nothing thing. But anyway, so he said a night watch
• 2:18:03
  so it's not his responsibility that the kid got killed. Of course, it's
• 2:18:07
  being put on anyway. So he has this ridiculous good lord, he has
• 2:18:20
  this situation where you know what, I'm not even remembering what happened. But
• 2:18:24
  he confronts one of the guardsmen. I don't think he was involved in the
• 2:18:30
  actual failure or something. It's hard to it's hard to actually remember everything that
• 2:18:35
  happens or follow the story sometimes, yeah, because things don't really logically flow
• 2:18:43
  into each other like they're just like like I said, there are these these
• 2:18:46
  emotional impact moments that don't have connective tissue. So he so Kristen confronts one
• 2:18:52
  of the guards and blames him for being dirty because he's apparently this is some
• 2:18:58
  really heavy handed symbolism about Kristin being upset about his own It's a send up
• 2:19:05
  of Conservatives. You know, Kristin and the Dowager are basically presented as the
• 2:19:11
  conservative faction and there of course adulterizing and they feel guilty about it. And
• 2:19:18
  he's projecting it onto this other guy by saying, oh, your cloak is
• 2:19:22
  dirty, even though honestly, when I watched that scene, I was wondering,
• 2:19:26
  Okay, Kristin is his direct superior. He doesn't get up and salute,
• 2:19:31
  there's no discipline, there's no sense of hierarchy, like where's that?
• 2:19:37
  But anyway, then he confronts this guy and says, you can you can
• 2:19:43
  redeem yourself because your brother went off with the princess, the heir to the
• 2:19:48
  throne. The princess. You can redeem yourself by going and killing the princess.
• 2:19:54
  And I'm like, I know this show is trying to make me,
• 2:19:58
  hey this man, But once again we see a man saying, let's go
• 2:20:07
  after a legitimate military target. Yeah, that would be the person who is
• 2:20:15
  directly responsible for the blockade that's causing all of the small people suffering. That's
• 2:20:24
  that's what a blockade does. It's going to cause them to starve and die.
• 2:20:28
  So Crispin's like, yeah, let's go after the person who's doing that.
• 2:20:31
  He's putting up the blockade, is directly responsible for this blockade. Of
• 2:20:35
  course he doesn't say that. He's like, let's go after Anaire's because she's
• 2:20:39
  responsible for killing this kid. So because you know, the point is that
• 2:20:43
  it's actually Damon who's responsible for killing the kid. So, and it's being
• 2:20:48
  unfairly blamed on Ranieres. And that's so unfair, right, Brian. It's
• 2:20:56
  so unfair that a woman is getting blamed for the actions of a man.
• 2:21:01
  Good Lord, We'll just blame her for her own actions. She declared the
• 2:21:05
  blockade it's causing everyone to suffer, and she's a legitimate military target. Like
• 2:21:09
  you know, in a world where assassination is political commentary, you know,
• 2:21:15
  assassinating the person that's blockading your city and causing everybody to starve and probably will
• 2:21:22
  eventually cause disease if it's not lifted, that seems to be like a legitimate
• 2:21:26
  you know, it's within the realm of reasonable. Of course, again,
• 2:21:31
  the motive for him to say it is seen as oh, he's projecting.
• 2:21:37
  This is the other thing. All of these characters do not act like they're
• 2:21:43
  part of some kind of near modern like. I mean, it's a high
• 2:21:48
  Middle Ages, if not Renaissance. They don't act like they're part of that
• 2:21:52
  kind of I mean, it was a hugely hierarchical structure, but it was.
• 2:21:54
  There was hierarchy, there was dignity, there was expectations of comportment.
• 2:21:58
  The characters do not act like that. They act like like they're like the
• 2:22:07
  people who are in adult daycare. Like you remember that woman who's like a
• 2:22:11
  yes, a hat. When I go to work, I start my day.
• 2:22:15
  Yeah, here's all the fun I'm having, Like there's almost no actual
• 2:22:22
  work it's all like meetings focus on drama, and this focus on personal emotion.
• 2:22:33
  So for some reason, we are going to assassinate the person the the
• 2:22:39
  the the rival to the throne that's causing who's who's already declared war with a
• 2:22:43
  blockade. We're going to assassinate them, not because they're the rival to the
• 2:22:48
  throne who's caused the blockade, but because this dude is personally upset at the
• 2:22:54
  fact or personally blames her for the death of their heir. You know.
• 2:23:00
  I mean, that's a legitimate reason too, but of course we know that
• 2:23:03
  she's not really responsible. It's Damien. And again I called it. I
• 2:23:07
  said, I think the way that they're framing this is that they're gonna blame
• 2:23:09
  everything on the men. They're going to try to make it so that this
• 2:23:13
  entire conflict is because of men. And I think that's sort of panning out
• 2:23:18
  because again, but it's not panning out as in this is what they're writing.
• 2:23:24
  It's panning out as in, this is how it's being interpreted. Right,
• 2:23:28
  Because again, if Damon has to take responsibility for his strange little smile
• 2:23:33
  leading to the miscommunication, does Rahaneras not have to take responsibility for her literally
• 2:23:39
  saying I want aman Targarian, I want you to kill this this person,
• 2:23:45
  or I want no. She didn't say that. She just said I want
• 2:23:46
  him. I don't know. Maybe she meant to say I want him for
• 2:23:52
  tea. You know, in this context, are you following any of this?
• 2:23:58
  I'm sorry, I'm probably not saying it for well, it's all right,
• 2:24:01
  I'm just here to be a receptacle, so you can dump. Go
• 2:24:05
  ahead and dump your criticisms, frustrations, whatever. I haven't watched the show
• 2:24:11
  and I don't plan to, so I don't really have that I like,
• 2:24:16
  I would really like this show to start making sense in terms of what it's
• 2:24:20
  doing militarily, to be honest, like, I would really like it to
• 2:24:24
  start making sense, and these people to stop acting like extremely emotionally fraught teenagers
• 2:24:31
  and start acting like the advisors to heads of state and heads of state.
• 2:24:37
  You know, yeah, you know, and and this this this excessive amount
• 2:24:41
  of retarded drama. I'm sorry. Damon had a very good point when he
• 2:24:50
  said, let's go after a legitimate military target. Renee's the terrorist aunt.
• 2:24:56
  I'll just call her terrorist aunt. Terrorist Aunt did not have a legitimate rejoinder,
• 2:25:01
  I'm sorry. If Rneri's can declare a blockade, she can get schlep
• 2:25:05
  her ass back to her to her advisors, and prosecute the war that she
• 2:25:13
  has started. Because the blockade that is one hundred percent the start of the
• 2:25:16
  war. Okay, that is where war starts. That is the beginning of
• 2:25:20
  a war. There is now war. Rhneris has declared war. She has
• 2:25:24
  taken the first actions to prosecute an or war. If she can do that,
• 2:25:28
  she can stay there and either delegate the prosecution to the war. Make
• 2:25:31
  it very clear between terrorist Aunt and designated demon which one she wants to make
• 2:25:39
  the decisions for her. She should have delegated and then gone off and grieved,
• 2:25:43
  or she should have stayed and dealt with what she did, which was
• 2:25:48
  declare war with that blockade. Right, and the fact that Damon is making
• 2:25:52
  reasonable suggestions like let us go take out a military target that is a threat
• 2:25:58
  to our block that is not something that is like, it's not a bad
• 2:26:05
  thing. Right. Once Rnire's declares war, you have to wage it,
• 2:26:15
  you know, you have to be tactically minded. And it is absolutely rich
• 2:26:20
  for terrorist Aunt to go after him for being blood thirsty rich. Okay,
• 2:26:28
  that's assuming that these characters are supposed to stay consistent episode to episode. Sir
• 2:26:33
  Cole saying that we should take out the other claimant to the throne that is
• 2:26:39
  declaring war on us, aggressing against us by having a blockade, causing suffering,
• 2:26:46
  by trying to starve us to capitulate to whatever terms she sent. That
• 2:26:50
  is legitimate, especially in the time period that we're talking about, which is
• 2:26:54
  apparently the High Middle Ages. Assassinating a rival claimant to the throne legitimate,
• 2:27:01
  legitimate military tactic, especially after that rival claimant has declared war on you.
• 2:27:05
  Why is he seen as evil? Like, okay, this is war.
• 2:27:13
  Okay. If Rnarius didn't want war, she shouldn't have started a freaking blockade.
• 2:27:18
  If she didn't want war, she should have abdegated her throat. It
• 2:27:20
  doesn't matter if she thinks that that her children are gonna die. But yeah,
• 2:27:26
  then if you think your children are going to die, then fight the
• 2:27:30
  war that you started. Oh good lord. And so this show is trying
• 2:27:35
  to present the men in the wrong. They're on the wrong. Kristen is
• 2:27:39
  only in the wrong insofar as he's allowing personal petty bullshit to motivate him.
• 2:27:45
  But his choice is perfectly within the realm of reasonable in the process of war.
• 2:27:50
  I mean, hell, killing Raynerius at this point will cease, will
• 2:27:54
  cause a lot of suffering of everybody. People are suffering. Now it's a
• 2:27:58
  blockade, there's they're not getting necessary medical supplies, all of the other crap.
• 2:28:03
  Right, So she is causing suffering. She's causing the population of kings
• 2:28:09
  Landing to suffer. Assassinating her is legitimate. Now it's not. It's not
• 2:28:16
  like justice. I mean, in this day and age, it would be
• 2:28:20
  you know, very bad. And even then killing a supposed regent or a
• 2:28:24
  potential regent was also sort of but still take out. I mean, if
• 2:28:31
  you consider the coup, and I know we don't consider the coup to be
• 2:28:33
  legitimate, they are in they are in the throne. The people who are
• 2:28:37
  involved in the in usurping the throne, and they did have a claim according
• 2:28:41
  to the law of the land. So if they are the legitimate government,
• 2:28:46
  what rayneris is doing is terrorism. Even not even if we just recognize the
• 2:28:52
  rival claimants to the throne, killing her still is politically on the table.
• 2:28:56
  She is presenting herself as a political power. She has to deal with the
• 2:29:01
  consequences of that, and one of those consequences is a potential assassination. You
• 2:29:05
  don't like that, then seed from period, especially at that time. Anyway,
• 2:29:11
  So Kristen Cole is giving a reasonable is presenting a reasonable option. One
• 2:29:18
  of the problems that I'm having with this is that assassination in this setting is
• 2:29:22
  so freaking easy. Yeah, Like Tweedledum and Tweedledee just wander around the palace
• 2:29:30
  until they find a target. This guy is the twin of a guard in
• 2:29:35
  the other castle, and apparently this guard has access to the queen's chamber.
• 2:29:46
  Okay, and there's actually a really hilarious seed. I don't it's something that
• 2:29:50
  you won't notice unless you watch carefully. But when the twin confronts the other
• 2:29:58
  twins, So you got the two twin. One is on one side,
• 2:30:01
  one is on the other. Oh my god, it's symbolism. Brian his
• 2:30:03
  brother's killing each other. We're still war. Oh my god. It so
• 2:30:07
  delicious Catharsis. Anyway, So you got these two freaking twins killing each other
• 2:30:13
  in the queen's bedchamber. No other guards, by the way, nobody's like
• 2:30:16
  hearing swords classing in the big queen's bed chair or the sorry the princess,
• 2:30:22
  the princess air rhaners, so I keep calling her queen. I really apologize.
• 2:30:26
  I'm making this more confusing. So they have these two guards, these
• 2:30:31
  two men fighting with swords in the princess's chamber. Nobody else comes by.
• 2:30:41
  Oh my holy freaking god, I'm like okay, And then the queen and
• 2:30:46
  the handsmaid, her handmaiden are stuck in there, and so she sends the
• 2:30:50
  handmaiden out and she's like, go fee, go get help, Like shit,
• 2:30:54
  there the whole, the whole, Every guard in the pal in this
• 2:31:00
  castle should be right there, but no, Okay, who cant help?
• 2:31:03
  But tell people things are happening. And then somebody comes and their night Some
• 2:31:09
  dude comes with a sword and his like night shift. Yeah, it's like
• 2:31:15
  just I don't know. He jumped right off the right off the toilet to
• 2:31:18
  go protect the queen. They couldn't find one that was suited up, even
• 2:31:24
  though the guy who was the the the uh who is the twin infiltrating the
• 2:31:31
  palace, he passed a whole bunch of other guards going up. Now we
• 2:31:35
  can only find one dude in a white in a in a night shift with
• 2:31:39
  the sword. Anyway, so he comes in and he's like getting to the
• 2:31:46
  queen, and he's like, save yourself and us all this rack thom and
• 2:31:50
  she runs towards the door and it's locked. I can't open the door.
• 2:31:58
  Somebody locked me in front the outside. I'm like, how did the handmaiden
• 2:32:03
  leave? Why didn't she use that door? Why is this door locked?
• 2:32:11
  Why is it locked? Why is the queen's chamber locked for or the princess's
• 2:32:15
  chamber locked from the outside? Who put a lock like that there? Hmm,
• 2:32:22
  Like, isn't that the exact opposite of security? Seems that way.
• 2:32:28
  Security is an unknown plot in West Rows. So anyway, we have these
• 2:32:33
  Shenanians and one of the guards kills the other guard and then commits suicide because
• 2:32:39
  symbolism, right, I think she eventually gets out of the room. So
• 2:32:46
  there you go. There was success. And see what else happens? Oh,
• 2:32:50
  yes, she banishes her husband. Jeez, he could have helped you
• 2:32:54
  there. I feel so bad for Damon. He has to take responsibility for
• 2:33:05
  misinterpreting. I want aim and targarian. No, he has to take response,
• 2:33:11
  but also responsibility for other people misinterpreting a smile. He didn't even say
• 2:33:16
  anything, But he has to take responsibility for their misinterpretation. She won't take
• 2:33:20
  responsibility for basically telling him I want aim and targarian bitch, what was he
• 2:33:24
  supposed to? What was the interpretation of that? But she won't take responsibility
• 2:33:28
  for it. But he's got to take responsibility for what he done. Oh
• 2:33:33
  good Lord, which once again again killing the writer of the dragon. That's
• 2:33:39
  your biggest military threat, legitimate military target. I think that these women,
• 2:33:46
  I think these men are just being treated like the problem because they're actually competent.
• 2:33:56
  They're actually they're actually dealing with reality as it is. Oh good Lord.
• 2:34:01
  Anyway, so Damon is off doing other things. Honestly, I wish
• 2:34:05
  the show would just switch to him. Now, let's just go see Dating
• 2:34:09
  adventurest's let's go see let's go see dime store. Elrick of Melbourne Adventures,
• 2:34:18
  No, not Melbourne. You know Elrick? You know Eleric, Yeah,
• 2:34:22
  el Rick. You know that's almost been made into a thing multiple times.
• 2:34:28
  I don't know that. I don't think we want that, though. I
• 2:34:31
  don't think. I don't think Hollywood's in the place it needs to be a
• 2:34:33
  fan made thing. Absolutely, it needs to be a fan made thing.
• 2:34:37
  So Hollywood needs to not keep its mits on that it's a melon bone.
• 2:34:41
  A melon bone, I don't know, but you know there there already is
• 2:34:46
  The Witcher, which is essentially a rip off but also went to shit probably
• 2:34:52
  always. I mean, Henry Cavill was trying to make it work because he's
• 2:34:56
  a big fan of the Sores material, but he couldn't do it. Man,
• 2:35:00
  which aer is dead, so okay, I'm just it would be any
• 2:35:07
  one of these men would make a better story, I hate to tell you,
• 2:35:11
  because they're proactive. They're actually dealing with the circumstance as it is.
• 2:35:15
  I mean, and I mean, I'm I'm sure it would have been,
• 2:35:20
  but I just don't see like the entertainment industry doing it justice. I think
• 2:35:24
  they would just bastardize it and destroy its doesn't have to take responsibility for saying
• 2:35:31
  something ambiguous, but Damon has to take responsibility for an ambiguous smile like that's
• 2:35:37
  just it's fucking I just hope he left for a better show. Mm hmm.
• 2:35:43
  Anyway, it was, it was a thing that happened. It was
• 2:35:50
  a thing that I watched, and again I'm finding it difficult because it's it's
• 2:35:56
  got these emotional moments, but it seems to sacrifice any kind of consistent characterization
• 2:36:01
  or plot setting to uh to really and what are the high towers freaking?
• 2:36:07
  What is Auto freaking? Like? Auto is the father of Allison the Queen
• 2:36:11
  Dowager. What does he? He keeps saying, we got to hold fast,
• 2:36:15
  hold fast to what you're You're you're experiencing a blockade. A blockade is
• 2:36:20
  going to reduce your military effectiveness. That's the point. One of the points
• 2:36:24
  of a blockade is to basically starve you so you can't wage war? Right,
• 2:36:30
  what are you holding fast for? You're just gonna sit there being starved
• 2:36:33
  for? What do you have some big like military thing that's gonna happen,
• 2:36:39
  that's gonna totally turn the tides of war. If you don't, you shouldn't
• 2:36:43
  be holding holding fast. You should probably be baiting them into some kind of
• 2:36:48
  pitched battle, depending on what what is available to you. It's just it's
• 2:36:54
  like, it's not it's not a war. It's not It's not the kind
• 2:37:01
  of war you would expect from history. It more is like two women waging
• 2:37:07
  a kind of cold war, you know, and and you know, we
• 2:37:11
  gotta we gotta choose, you gotta choose sides, you either with me or
• 2:37:13
  you with her, you know, and just say it's just it's awful crap,
• 2:37:18
  and it's and what's really egregious. I know that this I've heard that
• 2:37:22
  this is based on the anarchy where I think it was Henry the First of
• 2:37:26
  England gave his throne to Matilda, Empress Matilda, which was his daughter,
• 2:37:33
  and then there were other claimants to the throne because he couldn't get all all
• 2:37:39
  the lords to support her, and there was other Shenigans, and so it's
• 2:37:43
  not really based on Elizabeth versus Mary, Mary of Scott's. If they had
• 2:37:50
  based it on Elizabeth versus Mary of Scotts, it would have probably been a
• 2:37:54
  lot more interesting. But again, as I've said multiple times, both of
• 2:37:58
  those women represent two different philosophical approaches to well basically social expectations, mores,
• 2:38:07
  religion, et cetera. So they represented something. They represented a conflict more
• 2:38:13
  than just I don't even know what what Rhineris and Allison represent. I guess
• 2:38:18
  I guess they's supposed to be the conflict between being a modern empowered woman,
• 2:38:22
  Princess Raneres and Alisons, who's a conservative tradwife or something. Hmm okay,
• 2:38:30
  yeah, that's the way that they made this conflict relatable because we couldn't we
• 2:38:35
  couldn't look at two women with strong opinions about well, basically a social philosophy
• 2:38:43
  like Catholicism versus Protestant protest Protestantism, Like, we couldn't look at that like
• 2:38:48
  that. Those are basically social, like they're philosophies, you know, there
• 2:38:52
  there's there's there's spiritual, religious and moral implications to them. We can't look
• 2:38:58
  at two women with cons having a political disagreement about how best to rule the
• 2:39:05
  country. You can't look at that like then that's a legit. That's something
• 2:39:09
  that's interesting because it's about hey, which system works, which system you know
• 2:39:13
  maybe works politically? I mean, does that sound more interesting than this?
• 2:39:22
  And so you have scenarios in history and which women were at odds, But
• 2:39:26
  there was a hell of a lot more depth to it than this. There
• 2:39:31
  was reasons, you know, like Queen Elizabeth wasn't necessarily in charge because she
• 2:39:35
  wanted to smash the patriarchy. Nor did Mary, Queen of Scott's it's because
• 2:39:39
  she wanted to advocate Betore a particular type a philosophical system, a particular type
• 2:39:45
  of religion. She had convictions, she had principles, right, That's interesting.
• 2:39:52
  Principled people fighting, principal people contending with each other over principle. It's
• 2:40:00
  really interesting. Magneto and Xavier, the best parts of their of the representation
• 2:40:05
  of their relationship is that the contention between people who have different principles, neither
• 2:40:11
  of which is completely wrong or completely right. Maybe Magneto's more wrong than right,
• 2:40:15
  fair enough, but you know, like this is this is interesting stuff.
• 2:40:18
  And what we get is two women who I don't even think they have
• 2:40:24
  any convictions whatsoever? Doeser is ray NAIs convinced at least convinced that she needs
• 2:40:31
  to have the throne, as Allison convinced that Rayneras shouldn't have the throne.
• 2:40:35
  Are there any convictions at all? Or are these women just for floating through
• 2:40:39
  life and the men are doing everything, even though the men are apparently doing
• 2:40:43
  it wrong, even though everything that they're recommending is actually a legitimate military action.
• 2:40:48
  You know, like the only thing so far that Raynera's has done is
• 2:40:52
  start a war. You know, fine, you started a war? Why
• 2:40:56
  was it just because your son was killed? Do you have any convictions?
• 2:41:01
  Do you have any principles? Do you have like, like I said,
• 2:41:03
  even the conviction that she should sit the throne something like she's just oh,
• 2:41:09
  it's so freaking It's like every time I watch this, I'm like, why,
• 2:41:15
  yeah? Can we can? We? Is it? Is it because
• 2:41:22
  this is aimed at an audience of women, and Hollywood doesn't think that women
• 2:41:28
  can handle a discussion of philosophy or principle or convictions, like it all has
• 2:41:35
  to be about this inability to ship and get off the pot. I mean,
• 2:41:43
  I don't know how many times Allison's father has to tell her that it
• 2:41:48
  probably war will be necessary. Bitch, you're big blockaded? Mm hmm what
• 2:41:54
  do you fuck do you think that means? So anyway, this is episode
• 2:42:03
  two in we're visiting why women should should not be leaders? Yeah, and
• 2:42:13
  it really bugs me that Rhaneris will not take responsibility for a misinterpretation and we
• 2:42:18
  had this whole Okain, What really drives the point home that this is ridiculous
• 2:42:22
  is there was this whole sort of lecture that the king got that everybody heeds
• 2:42:28
  the word of a king. The king speaks, everyone listens. Raneri speaks,
• 2:42:35
  says something really ambiguous, supposedly ambiguous. I don't think it's that ambiguous.
• 2:42:39
  Damon listens, but it's not her fault. But when a king speaks,
• 2:42:46
  if people misinterpret what he says, it's his fault. But when a
• 2:42:50
  queen speaks, if people misinterprets what she says, it's their fault. And
• 2:42:56
  also if that very person is in turn misinterpreted, that's his fault. That's
• 2:43:03
  what I've learned. I've learned that once again. Nicholson what what is it?
• 2:43:11
  What is his first name? Mad's Nicholson's shining and shining? Oh Jack
• 2:43:18
  Nicholson, Jack Jack Nicholson's character. Well, Jack Nicholson is the actor.
• 2:43:24
  The character's name is Jack though Jack Nicholson. But I think it was in
• 2:43:28
  another film where he plays an author. Oh as good as a guess,
• 2:43:35
  as good as it gets, and he says, I think of a man,
• 2:43:37
  how do you write? How do you write women? So well?
• 2:43:39
  He says, I think of a man and I remove? What does he
• 2:43:43
  say? Logical accountability? That accountability? Yep, reason and accountability is reason
• 2:43:50
  and accountability Yeah, but wouldn't that be great, Like, wouldn't wouldn't a
• 2:43:58
  series on take the women in history? Because this is I'm not like pulling
• 2:44:03
  this out of my ass Like they had convictions. Like every time I read
• 2:44:11
  about women in history that were in power, they do not look like Alison
• 2:44:16
  or Princess Raneres. They had convictions. I mean, even if the conviction
• 2:44:22
  was my family should be in power, they had them, and it was
• 2:44:26
  interesting to watch them pursue those convictions in the face of conflict and opposition.
• 2:44:35
  That's what made them. That's what makes women in power in history fascinating.
• 2:44:41
  Why is that not here? Like can anybody name Alison or Ryanerius's conviction?
• 2:44:46
  I mean, I think somebody said that she she wants to be queen because
• 2:44:52
  of her father. Well, then she's just got her father's conviction. That's
• 2:44:58
  I want to see her. I want to see what her goal is,
• 2:45:05
  what her what she wants to, what she wants to bring you to the
• 2:45:07
  realm, anything anyway, anything to hang your hat on. Okay, all
• 2:45:16
  right, so I think that this has been adequate, So I will Oh
• 2:45:22
  wait, I think we got super chows. Maybe Nope, we don't.
• 2:45:26
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• 2:45:28
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• 2:45:52
  guess, uh do you want to I can? I can take us Yeah,
• 2:45:56
  I can take us out because I'm still running it on on obs.
• 2:46:01
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• 2:46:20
  you so much for coming hanging in on this on this on this uh what
• 2:46:24
  do you call it? Retrospective? On on uh? Also the Dragon Yeah
• 2:46:33
  yeah, episode two Yeah, and we'll talk to you guys in the next
• 2:46:35
  one. Have a good one, everybody. Our machines, dude, Okay,
• 2:46:41
  they are literal machines. They are talking point machines. They are impossible
• 2:46:48
  to deal with, especially if you have like especially if you have like a
• 2:46:50
  couple of dudes who have good memory. On top of that, too,
• 2:46:54
  holy shit, you're fucked.