#Welp guess I get to vehemently deny the existence of the last three episodes of a series

[coronation-eyes]

This is off-topic when it comes to this blog but I’mma rant about Game of Thrones for a second because if anyone knows what its like to get utterly betrayed at the one yard line, it’s you guys.

(major spoilers for GoT under the cut)

They just...they took a heroine that millions of women look up to......and they turned her into a psychotic villain at the last second. 

Danaerys was the Breaker of Chains, okay. Her mission in life was to free slaves and make the slavers pay dearly for being horrific to other human beings. She totally had a “savior complex,” wanting to just whoosh in and free people and be done with it. But instead of getting her shit together and heading to the seat of power she wanted to overthrow, she made the mature, wise decision to stay in her most recently liberated city and learn, not only what it means to rule, but what it truly means to free people. She dealt with the aftermath, she learned from her mistakes, she saw the nuances behind the culture she wildly disrupted. She took several huge steps to not just being a queen, but a thoughtful, powerful, knowledgeable monarch with respect for her subjects. And where did her motivation come from? From her own history of being sold and used like cheap cattle, of having to reclaim every inch of personal and royal power literally from the ground up. For many years and 7 out of 8 seasons, this was her story. She didn’t want to be like her father, mad with power and wantonly laying waste to innocent people. She wanted to be better.

And then, in TWO out of THREE episodes left in the entire series, she goes fucking insane. They shoved tragedy at her to try and justify her heel turn, nevermind that she has weathered worse in season one, and (plot twist) it didn’t work. She was Danaerys one minute--fierce and compassionate and A+ at doling out poetic justice to those who deserved it--and a repeat of her crazy father the next, literally laying waste to thousands of not only innocent, but innocent and surrendering people. Now she’s the villain they get to try and cut down for the series finale.

Some people point at certain things as “foreshadowing” of her “inevitable” fall to madness over the seasons, namely how whenever her family was mentioned someone was bound to bring up the old saying about how a Targaryen would be born and “god would flip a coin” as to whether they’d be batshit or not. And, like, that never once occurred to me as being remotely foreshadowing because, fucking excuse me for believing in women, but the entire point of Dany’s entire character was that she was one of the good ones. That the other characters who would lean on that saying out of fear or reticence did so because they didn’t know what the audience knew--that Dany was d i f f e r e n t. She wanted so desperately to break us free from our cycle of despots and drunkards and greedy assholes, and to do so realistically and with time-period appropriate strength and brutality (’cause tyranny isn’t brought down with polite requests). 

I would have accepted a lot of different endings for Dany that didn’t include her becoming queen. This is Game of goddamn Thrones, after all. Nice Things are very few and far between. I was ready for her to die before claiming the throne for any number of reasons. Hell, I’d almost accept these past two episodes as canon if, in the finale, she wakes the hell up and realizes what she’s done + she doesn’t deserve the throne after all. Because then at least she’d still be Dany in the end, for fuck’s sake.

AND ANOTHER THING: look me in the eye and tell me we don’t need messages about embracing flawed-but-good leaders right now, 18 months from an election where we can kick a real despot out of office. And instead, what’s the message over ten million people are watching right now? “Even the leaders who really seem decent, different, and wanting to help you, they’ll wind up being just like everyone else.” Fuck that wildly incorrect cynicism. Fuck the character assassination of a woman I have loved and looked up to for eight years. Fuck the straight dude showrunners who have explicitly told us over the years that they don’t listen to their audience, period. And honestly, fuck 2019 and it’s inability to have ANY satisfying fictional endings fucking ANYWHERE thanks to every professional writer wanking off at the feet of sUbVeRsIoN.