• glk [none/use name]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Danaeres story was so orientalist that her 'turn' made me think that there was a deconstruction hidden there that got lost in adaptation.

    • BojanglerGTX [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 years ago

      I think at that point GRRM never actually wrote the books for the last few seasons (fans are still waiting lol) but be might have said what he was going to do in those books to the TV show writers. But since it was never fleshed out, the TV show writers apparently decided to make the last few seasons "not fleshed out". Or, they just weren't capable of original writing that wasn't copying the (allegedly good) source material.

      • KobaCumTribute [she/her]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Or, they just weren’t capable of original writing that wasn’t copying the (allegedly good) source material.

        That's pretty much it. They got a lot of praise for doing a pretty faithful adaptation of a series that overall is not only competently written but also does a good job of telling a whole lot of extra stories at once without actually doing so through mentions of things that are happening or did happen (that is to say it gives a very good impression of an actual world that keeps turning even when the protagonists aren't looking and even in places they've never heard of before), and which largely broke the mold for fantasy stories in a way that wasn't explicitly chauvinist like the Wheel of Time.

        And that praise went to their heads and so they started writing more of their own content and doing more of that awful "alright here's an actor woodenly reading off a few pages of backstory while literal softcore porn plays out in the room" thing that critics praised them for, and every single bit of original content that went beyond a line or two of witty dialogue added to an existing conversation generally made no sense and actively punched gaping holes in the plot so when they ran out of book and had only a vague idea where to go they just kept running with it and revealed that they were in fact absolute hacks all along.

        As for the books themselves, it's hard to tell where Dany's story is actually supposed to be going, because it's following a bunch of different trains of thought that actively contradict one another: you've got a strong core point that one can't just waltz in as an outsider and fix a brutally fucked up system overnight, and it shows that when you collaborate with aristocrats and slavers for mild reforms all you get is a White Terror happening in the background, but then it also tries to make a point that you can't just butcher all the aristocrats and slavers and elevate the former slaves to rule themselves because then "they'll just start butchering each other too and they don't know how to do logistics or lead or something, idk" which is either peak liberal brainworms or a pretty accurate assessment of what happens when power is upturned without a solid ideological and material framework for reorganizing society to be more equitable (such as the French Revolution pivoting away from a mass movement to a liberal dictatorship with a new aristocracy and an elevated bourgeoisie).