Does this really need a spoiler alert?\u00a0 OK, spoiler alert. \u00a0Don’t have a meltdown.<\/p>\n
Dany touching the Throne of Swords in the snow in 8.6 completes one of the dream-visions she had in the House of the Undead in the last episode of Season 2.\u00a0 In Season 2 she resisted the dream-temptations given her by her captors, and woke up to roast them using her new baby dragons\u2019 fire-power. \u00a0(For more on this topic of Dany resisting temptations of power in Season 2, see this link<\/a> to an earlier post on this blog.) \u00a0Finally succumbing to her desire for the Throne in season 8 totally fits her character, and her delusions.\u00a0 Her speech to Jon in 8.6 (and Clarke\u2019s acting) were just right.\u00a0 Note how her \u201cbreak the wheel\u201d speech was actually about the power to reinvent the wheel, absolute tyranny calling itself freedom, etc.\u00a0 Only Tyrion is able to appreciate the irony of that.\u00a0 However, the white savior narrative generated around Dany remains intact, unfortunately, in both Martin\u2019s text and HBO\u2019s eight-season interpretation.\u00a0 For more on the sad ironies of this at a moment when writers of color are doing remarkable things in the \u201cFantasy\u201d genre, see below.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n So if the old maester-scribe whose name I can\u2019t remember included all the details of HBO\u2019s Season 8 in the big book of chronicles that Sam decided to call A Song of Ice and Fire<\/em>, that means George RR Martin is being cast now as basically a copyist<\/em>, not really an author\u00a0 Ha ha.\u00a0 Since the ending is already done, what\u2019s taking Martin so long to transcribe it & present it as his own?\u00a0 If you\u2019re curious about this, I have an answer at the end.\u00a0 It\u2019s only partly tongue-in-cheek.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Not sure we should be happy with Brienne\u2019s fate, either as a knight or as a scribe.\u00a0 After getting betrayed by Jaime, she is rewarded by having to write down the heroic version of Jaime’s story, without any mention of the many things they did together??!!\u00a0 (Remember the bath scene and the months on the road, etc., not just the bed they finally shared.)\u00a0 Women can be writers as well as knights, but they still must serve the patriarch\u2019s narrative?\u00a0 Sorta complicates the feel-good equity moment of Brienne\u2019s knighting, no?\u00a0 She\u2019s finally gotten Knighted and then was on the sidelines while the last battle played out.\u00a0 Now \u2026 what?\u00a0 What does an unemployed Knight do all day?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Drogon has learned something important about human beings:\u00a0 thus the melting down the Throne of Swords. \u00a0Of course, without a Throne to fight over, humans probably find something else to fight over, given the stuff we\u2019re made of.\u00a0 I thought Drogon\u2019s morphing from Alien-like monster to the mourning of their* \u201cmother\u201d was pretty powerful, and even better I liked the way in which \u2014 admit it \u2014 the Jon Is Toast story-line we all expected was suddenly changed.\u00a0 The dragon understood that maybe the Throne caused all the fighting, so like a Zen master with fire-power they melt down what everyone thought they wanted. \u00a0Clever, \u00a0But see next topic. \u00a0*we don’t know Drogon’s gender, do we?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n So the solution is parliamentary democracy (but with 6 kingdoms rather than 7) and with all the different \u201ctribes\u201d living in their separate spaces, developing their own mostly self-sufficient economies along with enough trade with each other to bind them together via mutual trade networks.\u00a0 Is that really the solution for eternal peace?\u00a0 Economically, perhaps it makes sense: countries with extensive trade networks tend not to go to war with each other.\u00a0 (However, see the point about Braavos bankers below.)\u00a0 But there\u2019s an ethnic\/racial subtext here.\u00a0 Isn\u2019t the GoT ending Multiculturalism Light?\u00a0 Which is in fact Ethnic Nationalism Heavy?\u00a0 That is, every tribe to their own Territory and things will all be fine?\u00a0 Dothrakis back to Dothraki-land, the Unsullied to Naath, Wildings with their new adoptee Jon to North of the North, Yara back to the Iron Islands, \u00a0\u2026 you get the picture.\u00a0 What are the implications of this Fantasy for the world, including the US, after 2016?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Characters-of-color story-lines in Game of Thrones<\/em> got repeatedly under-written and under-developed by the show-runners and script-writers throughout the 8 seasons.\u00a0 Which means that on TV \u201cfantasy\u201d is reaffirmed as the domain of Whiteness (especially Celtic whiteness) just at the moment when<\/em>, in print, really revolutionary scripts about what Fantasy can be and can do are being authored by writers of color!\u00a0 Hopkinson, Solomon, (Marlon) James, Jemisin, Belleza, Adeyemi, and many others, not to mention ancestors like Delany and Butler (and I\u2019d add Le Guin) \u2026<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The writers had no idea what to do with \u201cYara\u201d either\u2026.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n On the other hand, Sansa\u2019s shut-down of mansplaining at the 8.6 postwar council meeting was priceless.\u00a0 Her new Northern crown was pretty cool too, design-wise.\u00a0 Anyone else notice how her hair got redder and redder over the last few seasons?\u00a0 She\u2019s definitely going full Celtic on us.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Speaking of supply-lines and finances, a favorite topic of the new Sansa, aren\u2019t the bankers from Braavos rather pissed with this \u201cending\u201d?\u00a0 What happened to all their investment money?\u00a0 Who pays those Lannister debts?\u00a0 The negotiation scene between the Bankers’ representative and King \u201cBroken Man\u201d Bran has great comic potential, but we didn\u2019t get to see it.\u00a0 Would be even better if Bronn \u201cCoin Man\u201d Bronn were at the table.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Speaking of comic potential, the best scene in 8.6 that no one\u2019s mentioned is this one:\u00a0 reluctant Hand Tyrion nervously rearranging all the chairs before the committee meeting, in the hopes that it wouldn\u2019t turn out to be the usual mixture of stuff that happens when human beings meet to set up subcommittees, which is boredom, subtle insults mixed in the all the niceties, and god-awful new work assignments for all, report back to us on your \u201cprogress\u201d with those sewers next week please.\u00a0 If you didn\u2019t laugh during the discussion of brothels, something is wrong with you.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Yeah, Ser Davos might have been a better King than Bran.\u00a0 Hint:\u00a0 always vote for the \u201cDo I have a vote?\u201d person.\u00a0 But of course Bran has so much charisma and will be great, just great, at persuading people to do what they don\u2019t want to do\u2026.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Bran probably can foresee that all the different \u201cnations\u201d or \u201ckingdoms\u201d will be fighting again in a generation or two, if not within the next decade.\u00a0 If the big previous long war was triggered by adultery and a kidnapping, some similar knuckleheaded business could re-light antagonisms again, regardless of trade networks, right?\u00a0 And while the surviving leaders were deliberating over \u201cwhat government should we go with?,\u201d why didn\u2019t anyone ask Bran to warg ahead and see if he can see what the future holds?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Jon certainly is slow-witted.\u00a0 As was the dialogue between Tyrion and Jon in the jail.\u00a0 If those speeches about Duty and Love went on much longer I would have asked for a Drogon intervention.\u00a0 But Jon got a good ending.\u00a0 Did you notice that we heard Ghost\u2019s whine off-camera before Jon reunited with him and atoned for his ignoring Ghost in the earlier episode? I know I was being emotionally manipulated by the show-runners at that moment \u2026 yet I sure did enjoy it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What happened to Arya\u2019s white horse?\u00a0 Re-joined the Dothraki?\u00a0 Her lines about heading \u201coff the map\u201d and \u201cwest of Westeros\u201d were my two favorites in the Finale, along with our being reassured that she had Needle with her for the journey.\u00a0 Guess she listened to the advice she got from Sandor Clegane about revenge.\u00a0 RIP Sandor.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n So where do dragons go to bury their dead, and what do they do afterward?\u00a0 Sad to think there will be no new dragons born.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Perhaps George R R Martin hasn\u2019t published the final books in this series because he\u2019s discovered another manuscript full of stories excluded<\/em> from the Song of Ice and Fire<\/em> canonical volume that Samuel Tarly showed us in 8.6!\u00a0 Martin has sometimes been at home trying to collate and cross-reference the two, but mostly that labor is proving so difficult that he repeatedly leaves his writing desk in the dark to go celebritize under the bright lights at Comic Con and other events\u2026.\u00a0 It\u2019s not true that \u201cnothing can stop a story\u201d:\u00a0 celebrity fan adulation can.\u00a0 Hmmm.\u00a0 Perhaps Martin should hire not Bran the Broken but Bran the Story-Man to be his ghost-writer?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Does this really need a spoiler alert?\u00a0 OK, spoiler alert. \u00a0Don’t have a meltdown. Dany touching the Throne of Swords in the snow in 8.6 completes one of the dream-visions she had in the House of the Undead in the … Continue reading