#(SHE is waiting to become the scourge again; it's that or the maw)

[eighthdoctor]

What about Lor'themar? He still talks to her and isn't incompetent. They're practically best friends by Horde standards.

Ehhhhh sort of. I'll pull the relevant Lor'themar quotes:

Sylvanas could command from the rear, but that’s what Lor’themar is for. She’s far too useful in the front lines to seclude herself, and she…trusts…Lor’themar. Mostly. Enough. He can handle command.

“Without you to lead? Who did you leave in command, Lor'themar?” “Who is a competent, if not inspired, general.”

Proudmoore snorts. “Would she listen to Lor’themar if he told her to fall back?” Under her eyes, the Stormwind infantry moves forward and the orcs charge without waiting for orders. To the rear of the Horde a figure just identifiable as Lor’themar begins gesticulating angrily. Geya’rah listens to Sylvanas because she values her own life. Lor’themar doesn’t inspire that sort of fear, and Geya’rah, like so many orcs, suffers from an excess of honor and a remarkable lack of sense. Grudgingly, Sylvanas says, “She would not.”

Will Baine and Lor’themar care enough about the Forsaken to support their position? She can’t say.

So what can we take from this?

Sylvanas is comfortable leaving Lor'themar in command of the Horde army, even though there's no real sin'dorei presence and so he's technically outside his bailiwick. She has faith (borne out in Interlude 1) that he won't get too creative or reckless and will do the best he can, but she also doesn't believe he can keep Geya'rah in line.

Overall: Pretty good confidence in Lor'themar as a military leader.

Unfortunately: Approximately zero confidence in Lor'themar's willingness to go out of his way to help the Forsaken.

In other words, Sylvanas trusts Lor'themar to help her when it's in his own best interest. She does NOT trust him to do anything even moderately inconvenient that would benefit her, which is fair because he wouldn't.

Trust is easy when you're trusting someone to do something that benefits them. It's much, much harder when you're hoping they'll put themselves at risk to help you.

#blorbos from my games #the power to manipulate belief #asks for ts #Anonymous #also shoutout to sylvanas being unsure if baine would support the forsaken #guess who doesn't know he's on a boat right now #that'll be a fun surprise for her later #worth remembering that at this point in bfa literally every horde leader EXCEPT geya'rah (hysterically) #is at least privately considering What If A Different Warchief #this includes lor'themar #(and thalyssra. who has instead been nerdsniped into helping.) #anyway so to come back to the original ask: #in addition to the obvious reason to not date lor'themar (wrong gender) sylvanas is also not willing to be vulnerable around him #she knows that he'll use that against her if things go badly enough #while with jaina she can't. not. she STILL thinks jaina would use it against her but she can't stop herself #she also KNOWS that lor'themar thinks she's vaguely unstable #(this is to be fair to him a vast step up from everyone else who wouldn't use 'vaguely' there) #she knows he is waiting for her to go fully insane; to be the scourge again #(SHE is waiting to become the scourge again; it's that or the maw) #so the idea that now. now we're getting to jaina looking at sylvanas and SEEING HER AS SHE IS. #not as she was; not as rumors; not as her worst actions #just as a complicated and deeply traumatized person #THATS super new

[brazenautomaton]

Fixing Afterlives: Bastion, Pt. 1

As it is, Bastion doesn’t work. The Forsworn don’t just have a point, they are obviously, objectively correct. Kyrian discard all their memories and attachments in a way that is horrifying, in order to perform a job that a robot could do, in order to aspire to be something lame and boring. There is nothing cool about what they do and nothing good either; every single time they tell you about what they do it’s supposed to make you sad, not proud. A little of that is fine, it’s Death. But come on. The anima diverter daily for Bastion is a test where you judge if souls should pass on or not, and on WoWHead, the adequate summary of the right answers is “If one of the answers seems more evil or horrible, that’s the one you pick.”

In fact, Bastion can’t work as it is right now, because of Maldraxxus. The Maldraxxi are the defenders of the Shadowlands, right? So all the courage and martial prowess and avenging angel-ness Bastion wants to have cannot be what they are About, the presentation wants them to be glorious and valorous warriors but they don’t have to fight anyone. And the presentation wants them to be wise and impartial but their job requires no discretion, they’re ghost UPS. They can’t be About anything cool, and to be wise and impartial, they can’t be DOING anything at all!

So here’s the fix to their concept: Maldraxxus is the afterlife of warriors, the endless skeleton war, the unending conflict where there are always an infinite supply of fighters willing to leap to the defense of the Shadowlands. Maldraxxus is the Shadowlands’ defensive team. Bastion is the offense.

Bastion does not engage in army-against-army conflict, they have individual heroes. And they are out there in the mortal world, invisibly, serving as guardian angels, inspiring as muses, fighting invisible forces, tipping the scales of Fate to have the right outcomes. Fighting extra-dimensional beasts who prey on the mortal realm to invisibly protect them, fighting down incarnate ideas of malice and ruin, but also influencing things directly or by subconscious example. Every Spirit Healer is from Bastion and they are the ones who decided “your time is not yet up”. When we get really lucky to allow ourselves to triumph over the Legion or the Scourge, it’s because Bastion was ensuring it happened, fighting for us. Bastion is supposed to be affecting things out there, making things turn out Right, instead of being powerless observers. They are the muses of artists and the muses of battle. They inspire. They lead, invisibly.

That’s why they need to be wise and free of bias -- you cannot favor one side of mortals over the other. Mortal beings need to beat the Scourge, but the Horde does not need to triumph over the Alliance and vice versa. Your job is not to punish mortals for being bad, you damn well need to be boosting both sides when there are champions and the valorous in both. You cannot go out there and say “these Orcs up here in Redridge are all evil and shit and the Alliance deserves the win so I’m just gonna go all in on defending them,” that’s not how it works, you reward individual valorous efforts on both sides. How Fate Should Go does not include taking sides in purely mortal conflicts.

So obviously you cannot be biased. You are something Beyond the mortal realm which means you can’t take sides. You actually do have to discard these attachments, and while we’re here, we need to actually make that process empowering. Right now all it does is show you “hey, happy memories, well, fuck you, gotta get rid of them.” Make more than zero effort to make this make sense. Show the aspirant in pain and yearning because of those memories and the fact they can’t come back. Don’t make them forget who they were, make them become at peace and move on.

Now obviously that won’t be convincing to everyone. And that’s fine. It just means there’s some ambiguity instead of the Forsworn being obviously right about everything.

There are four races/types in Bastion: Kyrian, Forsworn Kyrian, Stewards, and Constructs. Only two are represented in Soulbinds: you have two Kyrian and a Steward. 

Kyrian are the expression of what Bastion IS, so we already covered their changes.

Constructs are anima robots. Why are there anima robots here? It’s really bad in the current version because the Kyrian job can be done by a robot so why not just make them do it? Instead, we take that idea and we make it About something: these machines aren’t Constructs, they are Principles. A Principle is a robot made of rules and ideals, the things that are thought by mortals but bigger than any mortal. Codes of honor and ideas that work beyond any of us as individuals. There, that’s it, that change of presentation is all you need to do to justify why robots are there. The changes to Bastion’s fundamentals are what makes them fit in.

Stewards are creepy. Really creepy. They serve the same role as dredgers, but the fact that dredgers bitch and moan and complain all the time lets us see them as individuals with goals and not creepy brainwashed victims. A dredger isn’t a slave, they are a worker; but work sucks and they wanna be at the pub. A steward, with one exception (Forgelite Prime Mikanikos who is busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest and also by far the best Bastion character) appears to have no personality and is a brainwashed slave. 

So, first off, make it clearer that they are helpful because they are The Desire To Aid, that’s the thing they’re About. With the way they speak and act, I think what they are supposed to be in story terms is lightly comic relief, also similar in role to Dredgers but with opposite implementation. The creepiness and one-dimensionality make this fail, all their hoots and hoos and silly talk isn’t funny. They need to be cheesier. They need to be 90’s Saturday morning cartoon sidekicks. They need to be a (much) less obnoxious version of Snarf.

They need to tell awful, awful dad jokes. Just the worst. The kind that are so bad they loop back around to funny again but you’re still groaning and they’re just there like “Eh? Eh? Geddit? Geddit?” By doing something that is helpful, that we recognize as an attempt to help and that some Steward characters can explicate to us really does help (it dampens anger and fear because all of your negative emotions are refocused to that HORRIBLE pun), but that clearly NOBODY would brainwash them into doing, now we can trust their helpful efforts are borne of sincere desire and carried out to the best of their ability by their own personal interpretation.

Forsworn Kyrian, right now, are only antagonists. The ideological change of giving up on the law of Bastion makes you turn a darker indigo color scheme (which is actually really good because these are creatures of Beyond, creatures who are on a fundamental physical level About something, their beliefs changing their physical makeup makes sense!) and then become a bad guy. Forsworn are all only antagonists. We’re going to change that. Kleia is going to become Forsworn. And still be a heroic character and your Soulbind, even though this isn’t a game balance thing and so Pelagos will still probably outclass her in every way seriously that Mastery buff is fucking bananas for anyone who cares about Mastery.

Not when you meet her, though. The existing storyline of Bastion is you go there because “hey what the fuck are these Kyrian doing in the Maw serving the Jailer” but in Bastion itself nothing much is happening other than kicking pebbles down the street. You get the intro from Kleia, you go see some very low-importance things, then the Forsworn attack for the first time, and you spend the rest of the zone quest on hold with the Archon’s hotline to tell her “hey there are Forsworn this is a problem”.

Now, when you get there to ask “hey what the fuck”, Kleia is still not doing much more than kicking pebbles down the street, bored off her ass, extremely enthusiastic about someone new so she can DO something. But the Forsworn conflict already exists: it’s just not relevant to her because she stays out of it, figures that it’s above her pay grade, and she hangs out at the Welcome Center which nobody gives a shit about because there’s nobody to get welcomed so it isn’t relevant. She just knows there’s been some discussions. 

We get the anima drought reinforced the first time we enter Bastion because we have to power down the other cores to get enough juice for the greeting machine, but then it isn’t really a good way to sell it because that’s the kind of thing we do all the time even when there’s no shortages of anything, that’s how WoW PCs interact with machines. So we have the player scrounge up anima from the other Principles to power up the greeting machine, and it’s not enough, it runs out of juice halfway through, and Kleia gets embarrassed and tries to finish the rest of the process by reciting it from memory (and not getting it all quite right, which is another chance to show us things about her).

Kleia is excited to have someone to run through the orientation process, and she explains that FIRST there was an anima drought, and then as if that wasn’t bad enough, THEN the Arbiter got conked out and the flow of souls to Bastion stopped. This is important, because in the story as is, the anima drought appears to be completely explained by the flow of souls all going to the Maw, since they are presented at the same time and the flow of souls is the flow of anima. When you find out the drought is because of ol’ Denny hoarding it, you go “wait how does he have any to hoard when it all goes to the Maw?”

So for right now you need to walk the Aspirant’s path to get an audience with the Archon because right now things don’t seem desperate and urgent. You go to Aspirant’s Rest and get the flight point, and you go to meet Kleia’s soulbind, Pelagos. Two things need to change right here.

One: something more needs to be happening here than “Pelagos was a dipshit and tried ascending alone despite that being not how it works at all, go in there and fight the monsters,” so do something instead of almost-nothing.

Two: Loath as I am to say something actually needs less representation compared to its original, Pelagos can’t be transgender. You find out later on, in the Kyrian covenant quest line maybe? That Pelagos’s mortal body was a woman, but his true spirit is a man. That’s great, that’s something that should come up. The problem is, Pelagos is also the fuck-up, the one we see fail all the time so he can (ostensibly) show resolve and get back up again. But Blizz didn’t show barely any details about Pelagos’s life for fear of backlash -- we don’t even know who played him -- and whether or not it is valid or invalid or that was a cover to avoid admitting this was to not offend China, Blizzard still won’t DO it. So we have this character who is battling this doubt and failure in his past but we’re not allowed to know what they are. Pelagos is cisgender so we can go into detail about what he fucked up. Kleia might be trans instead (why she is so gung-ho about Ascension), or we can have Kleia sell the Ascension process as good by mentioning that the Paragon of Wisdom, Thenios, was born a woman in life but Ascension made him into a true ideal. This can also justify a bit more screen time for Thenios and then something for Tim Russ to do. He was already Tuvok, he doesn’t need more humiliation. But whoever it is, their gender only comes up once and never again because now they’re the right way around and the former body doesn’t matter.

So what’s happening at Aspirant’s Rest? It’s a holding pen for souls. See, as it is now, you find out about the flow of souls into the Maw right away, but then all the way through the main quest and into the Kyrian campaign quest they apparently don’t know, and you don’t tell them, and then it’s a surprise when you finish the quest where you follow the guy in Redridge and have to take him to the Maw, and that’s dumb, they should know, you should have told them.

So now the Kyrian know that everyone is default-judged to the Maw. And they know this is what has to happen, this is the machinery of fate that drives the universe, but they are compassionate and know these souls do not deserve it. So they’re scamming as much as they can. Whenever possible (which they lament is not often enough, not nearly often enough), they find some loophole or corner case to count someone as not ready to be judged, and stick them somewhere in Bastion so they can wait until the Arbiter’s awake again to judge them. They can’t do much, but they can do a little, so they do that.

This guy, okay, you died, BUT, there’s a necromancer just two zones over, and your body is still intact since I dragged it to safety, and, I mean, he’s PROBABLY going to call back your soul and bind it to your body in service, so there’s no point in having you judged, you’re just coming back, right? And you, Night Elf! Okay, you got your head blown off, but, remember that angelic voice shouting “NIGHTELVESEVOLVEDFROMTROLLS!” a moment before your demise? And you know, Trolls who worship Bwonsamdi go straight to De Otha Side without being judged. Maybe you would have wanted to pledge yourself to older gods, but you never got the chance to make that decision, so, hey, you know, it would only be right to let you make that choice before you are given your judgment! And you, guy, did you know that all those patrons from the Slaughtered Lamb across the street who came into your business were warlocks? Yup, all of them, and they didn’t wash their hands either. Fel contamination. Can’t, ooh, you know, hey, might be a demonic stain on your soul, demons don’t have an afterlife like us, gotta be reborn in the Twisting Nether! Going to have to consult some demons to figure out where you go. Better wait here.

Aspirant’s Rest and the temple beneath are a soul refugee camp, and the souls within are scared and angry and don’t know what is going on and the Kyrian can’t explain it or they will all completely flip out. The Kyrian are trying as hard as they can in the limitations they have and this sells it. 

Pelagos is down there. The risk is not that he will be killed -- he is not mortal, he does not die -- the risk is that his well-meaning attempts to keep things calm might ignite the powder keg down there. And those souls can’t die but they WILL go directly to the Maw if fatally injured, which is why they have to be kept penned where Larion won’t eat them and Principles won’t drag them off. Pelagos fucks up here and you have to fix it but it’s not a suicidally stupid error while doing something that has no relevance to the player, it’s an understandable mistake biting off more than he can chew while doing something the player understands. Player, Kleia, and Pelagos go down to Aspirant’s Crucible to get certified as an Aspirant and get in line to talk to the Archon. 

In the existing story, you go and peer into a memory flame thing and have echoes of your heroic battles drawn forth, and you fight them while a character narrates your heroic deeds. They might be based on what expansions you played in, or might be random? Anyway, in this case, you gaze into the flame of memory, she starts to narrate your heroism, and… nothing. “Ah, there are supposed to be visions conjured here, so you can display your valor against them once again. It… it doesn’t… hang on, I might know what the problem is…”

A voice comes. “Then how about you display your valor against me, champion? A little sparring wouldn’t hurt, and I’m eager to see what you can do.”

It’s Uther, hell yes it’s Uther.

#World of Warcraft #my fiction #fixing stories #wow

[solautumn]

8. [ Bastion ]

 “Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.”                                          ― Shel Silverstein  

A lot had happened between the initial wave of Scourge invasions, and Solarian struggled to make sense of it all. The shadow magic within him was experiencing an awakening of the likes he’d never felt before, and news quickly spread that the veil between the mortal realm and that of the beyond had been breached. Mawsworn appeared and plucked faction leaders and vanished. Those who remained made a stand in Ice Crown and found a way through the veil, through the Maw of death itself, and a way had been opened back home.

The afterlife realms of the Shadowlands were in danger. Their anima-- the essence of mortal souls resulting from their experiences and actions in life-- were being poured directly into the Maw instead of going to the realms in which they rightfully belonged. Treachery and deceit abounded, and where once a perfect harmony existed to grant souls rest in infinite afterlives, now there was only despair as they plummeted to eternal suffering.

It was a lot for a young priest to process. Worse yet came when his beloved Sandellis was deployed with a troop of Illidari to the realm of Maldraxxus. What was supposed to be an in and out mission turned into a blood bath. Solarian wasn’t privy to all the details, but the troop returned with injuries and short a few men. Solarian trekked out to Orgrimmar to find the lists of the deceased and missing, and found Sandellis Emberstrider among the missing. His heart dropped to his stomach, and he felt sick. Weeks of waiting and trying not to think of the worst were useless. He was missing, and left behind someplace he couldn’t follow. Solarian felt helpless at first, staring at the list through misty eyes, as others shoved him aside to get to the same lists. The shadows within him surged as he rubbed the mist from his eyes and clenched his lower jaw.

How could they leave him? How could they lose him? He’s NOT dead. You have to find him.

Mortals were never meant to cross beyond the veil. In fact, many of those who had gone would not come back. Solarian refused to believe that Sandellis would be one of those who were doomed to perish there. He would go into the depths of whatever hell to drag him back out, but as he stood there shoved aside, he knew he couldn’t do it alone.

Solarian took a few days to get ready, leaving his work at the Dalaran hospital to cross the portal into Oribos, which was bustling full of people. Mortal people. Once there, those mortals who entered were given a choice to align with one of four covenants. The Necrolords of Maldraxxus were militant, unyielding and ruthless. Above all, they valued strength and power, testing those to a melee of survival of the fittest. Solarian would be eaten alive. The vampiric Venthyr of Revendreth were eternal punishers of irredeemable souls. Despite his growing hunger for justice, he didn’t want to risk becoming lost in a lust for blood and retribution against those deemed unworthy. The Night Fae of Ardenweald were servants of powerful nature souls as they went through the autumnal and winter stages of eternal rest, but were under the threat of Drust invasion. Solarian could see himself there, but it was the Kyrian who caught his attention the most.

Known on Azeroth by few as spirit healers, the Kyrian lived lives of eternal service, serving as angelic guides that ferried lost souls from the land of the living to the Arbiter in Oribos who would send them off to their rightful place in the afterlife. They were ordered and purposeful, and valued humility, righteousness, virtue, and above all service. While there were nuances Solarian still couldn’t wrap his head around as well as much to learn yet, he could build rapport with them and gain access to other parts of the Shadowlands with the help he needed.

Bastion was unlike any place he’d ever seen before. The skies were ever blue with portals to other realms and rushing conduits of cloud-like energy from where the Kyrians swooped across the skies. He wondered what it would be like to have wings, to fly as they did and see infinite realms of existence.  Water ran clearer than any he’d ever seen, and brimmed with life. The golden grass the color of his hair glimmered in the sun, softer than any grass he’d ever seen on Azeroth, and tall with plants and groves sprawling beautifully across the landscape. Animals grazed freely, and he was ever mesmerized by the swift runners with their singular gleaming horns proudly pointed skyward. Everything was very much alive. It was temperate, sunny, and perfect. So perfect that he struggled with the idea of this being only temporary.

I’m not supposed to be here. But I want to be.

It was enough to almost make him forget about the desperate need to find his beloved. This was, after all, where souls came to shed their mortal burdens to be reborn as proud Kyrians. But he was no such thing.

He was even assigned a steward on a daily basis. The fluffy owl-like beings came in all sizes. Some days, his steward was taller and broader than him, other days, his steward as no bigger than a gnome. As he understood it, they were beings born from Death’s magic, and served the Kyrians as aides, fixer-uppers of machinery, and general companions.

There was no true night time in Bastion, but a comfortable shade would blanket the land on occasion, and during that time, he would lay down to sleep. Despite the quiet desperation he felt to find Sandellis, Solarian had to be patient. It would not do to rush things and get himself lost or worse. So he began by doing what he did best, healing those that needed it in places of rest, aiding in the collection of herbs. Cataloging their uses and making use of them. It had only been a few days when he was studying the delicate Death Blossom with its petals like wings. If picked incorrectly, the bloom’s essence would wither away.

That’s when he heard the priestess Emilia reach out to him through his mind, just as she had back home. It was a welcome surprise to find someone he knew, someone who could help. There was no training session to be had, but the reassurance that he wasn’t alone, and that she could help him try to locate Sandellis felt like he had been walking in the right direction after all.

Here, he could hear his shadows more clearly. He could pay attention to the whispers that yet lingered within him. Solarian needed to remain alert. He needed to continue building rapport, and taking advantage of this opportunity to learn about the Kyrian history, how they located and ferried souls, and how they trained. He would work with his assigned steward, tag along with trainees as they ventured out beyond Bastion and learn as much as he could about the other realms and build rapport with them, too. Perhaps it would even do him good to work on his physical strength and meditate to find his center again. Learning how to properly use a weapon wouldn’t be such a bad idea, if he could lift one.

                                                  🌱🌱🌱

#My writing #Solarian Autumnsong #c: Sandellis #c: Emilia #WRA RP #WRA Horde #WRA Horde RP #Wow Rp #Kind of a quick update to where he's at and what he's doing ICly! #still figuring stuff out but I'm feeling good #I love this expac so far!! #Will he stay Kyrian? Will he switch covenants? Stay tuned to find out!

[nomnomzombies]

8x05: Dany’s Inferno, fulfilling the YMBQ, the Fall of the Golden Queen

> Part 2 < “Two Graves, The Pale Mare”

> Part 3 < “Going Forward”

This is probably going to be the longest of the analyses. Also on the docket is “Two Graves and The Pale Mare,” and “Going Forward, Political Jon.” I still have a final to finish today, so I’ll be updating this post with links as I get the other pieces posted.

I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to format this, since I have a handful of quotes from A Storm of Swords to contrast to the sack of King’s Landing, so we might have a point of reference when we look at the series of events. So I have them at the top, numbered, and I’ll be referring back to their number as they become relevant.

These chapters are quotes that involved the overthrowing of Astapor, Yunkai and Meereen. I’m going to be using these (9) quotes as points of reference throughout my analysis, in reference to Daenerys, to compare the four instances in which Dany has sacked a city.  

ASOS Daenerys III  

(1) “Unsullied!’ Dany galloped before them, her silver-gold braid flying behind her, her bell chiming with every stride. “Slay the Good Masters, slay the soldiers, slay every man who wears a tokar or holds a whip, but harm no child under twelve, and strike the chains off every slave you see.” She raised the hapry’s fingers in the air.... and then she flung the scourge aside. “Freedom!” she sang out. “Dracarys! Dracarys!”  

“Dracarys!” they shouted back, the sweetest word she’d ever heard. “Dracarys! Dracarys!”

ASOS Daenerys IV

(2) “When he was gone, Dany threw herself down on her pillows beside her dragons. She had not meant to be so sharp with Ser Jorah, but his endless suspicion had finally awoken her dragon. ‘He will forgive me,’ she told herself. ‘I am his liege.’  ….. She felt very lonely all of a sudden.”  

(3) “On the morning of the third day, the city gates swung open and a line of slaves began to emerge. Dany mounted her silver to greet them. As they passed, little Missandei told them that they owed their freedom to Daenerys Stormborn [titles, titles] ….

“Mhysa!’ a brown-skinned man shouted at her. He had a child on his shoulder, a little girl, and she screamed the same word in her thin voice. ‘Mhysa! Mhysa!’ …..

Dany felt a lightness in her chest. ‘I will never bear a living child,’ she remembered. Her hand trembled as she raised it. Perhaps she smiled.”  

Daenerys V

(4) “I am the blood of the dragon,’ Dany reminded herself. Her thoughts were spinning in circles, like a rat chasing its tail.”

(5) Inside Meereen the slavers would soon be reclining on their fringed tokars to feast... whilst outside her children went hungry. A sudden wild anger filled her. ‘I will bring you down,’ she swore.

(6) “How could you? What did the Usurper promise you? Gold, was it gold?” The undying said that she would be betrayed twice more, once for gold and once for love. “Tell me what you were promised.”

“Varys said... I might go home.” He bowed his head.

‘I was going to take you home!’ Her dragons sensed her fury. Viserion roared, and smoke rose grey from his snout. Drogon beat the air with black wings, and Rhaegal twisted his head back and belched flame. ‘I should say the word and burn the two of them.’ Was there no one she could trust, no one to keep her safe? “Are all the knights of Westeros so false as you two? Get out, before my dragons roast you both. What does a roast liar smell like? As foul as Brown Ben’s sewers? Go!”  

Daenerys VI

(7) Dany broke her fast under the persimmon tree that grew in the terrace garden, watching her dragons chase each other about the apex of the Great Pyramid..... From here she could see the whole city... And beyond the walls...

‘Do all gods feel so lonely?’  

(8) “This one is content to stay with you, Your Grace. Naath will be there, always. You are good to this—to me.”  

“And you to me.” Dany took the girl by the hand. “Come help me dress.”  

(9) “I want your leaders,” Dany told them. “Give them up, and the rest of you shall be spared.”  

“How many?” one old woman had asked, sobbing. “How many must you have to spare us?”

“One hundred and sixty-three,” she answered.  

She had them nailed to wooden posts around the plaza, each man pointing at the next. The anger was fierce and hot inside her when she gave the command; it made her feel like an avenging dragon. But later, when she passed the men dying on the posts, when she heard their moans and smelled their bowels and blood..... Dany put the glass aside, frowning. ‘It was just. It was. I did it for the children.’

For the first time since the season premiere, I actually found myself wishing that we’d gotten a little bit more of Dan’s POV last episode—not a lot! (she’s eaten up enough of the season as it is) But there’s a real difficulty in trying to understand what was going on through the character’s head. Because, as it is, we don’t even get the chance to see how she’s engaging with the smallfolk. When I was writing out my initial outline, I’d entertained the idea that part of the reason that she burned the city was because she hadn’t been engaged by the smallfolk as she had in the past. In Yunkai (3) when Dany is greeted by the slaves, she describes a wholesome feeling—one that contrasts the feelings of emptiness and loneliness she experienced earlier in the chapter (2). It would make a lot of sense if we were seeing her saviour complex roaring its ugly head. She goes to the North and feels as though she should be heralded because she put her conquest on hold, but when the people don’t love her, she’ll accept their fear.  

So what happens when she comes south, again? We hear the conversation between Dany and Tyrion.

Interestingly, when he enters the tactical room to tell her of Varys’ betrayal, he’s quite perfectly framed to be standing in front of the dragon’s maw. Now, “Three Heads” tinfoilers may feel a sense of foreshadowing and absolution, but I think it’s more likely to either be alluding to 1) Tyrion’s possible execution or 2) a reference to the fact that Dany is no longer herself, but she is the dragon now. In their conversation, she’s overtaken with paranoia and grief... just because she happened to be right about the fact that she was betrayed doesn’t take away the fact that she was waiting to be betrayed.

This may be a bit of a sidenote, but the first thing that I actually started analyzing about GoT was the music, all the way back in 2016—I picked up on the fact that, in season 5, Jon had gotten his own character theme, and this is how I knew that he wasn’t actually dead. Fast forward to season 6? When Dany is burning the Khals, you hear the scary dragon theme (not the inspiring one). In this scene, when Dany turns back to stare out over the Blackwater, we hear the scary dragon theme again—I'd guess it was played by a single bass or cello.. Certainly not an orchestra. There is no unification; there’s no chorus of people heralding the might of the dragon. It is only the dragon.

Then we hear the conversation between her and Jon

but the most important part, here, is the piece where she simultaneously threatens Sansa and attempts to bring Jon back into her bed. Immediately before Jon enters the room, we see Dany and Grey Worm saying their goodbyes to Missandei in the form of tossing her collar into the fireplace. This moment is emphasizing the state of Dany in mourning the last person who provided a barrier between Dany and her worst impulses. I mentioned in my 804 analysis that Missandei has given awful advice, but the presence of Missandei was enough to remind Dany of how loved she was. Dany understands that the situation between her and Jon is not the loving connection she wishes it was. In the 804 bedroom scene, she acknowledges that fact when she says that Jorah loves her—this is contrasts to the dynamic between her and Jon.  

When Jon stands before her, he looks terrified. He just saw Dany burning Varys alive without so much as a trial—the complication of this interaction may have to do with Jon’s beheading of Janos Slynt at the Night’s Watch (there wasn’t a trial for that, either, but the circumstances were entirely different, as Janos was speaking out against him in a room full of people rather than conspiring behind Jon’s back). Conversely, however, Jon is probably also scared shitless because he knows that all of this is coming about because of his decision to tell Sansa and he’s worried that he will also be burned. This interaction begins to feel as though Jon is on trial.  

The reason that none of this is just, however, is that neither Jon nor Varys have done anything that they didn’t tell Dany they would do. Varys told Dany that he would first confront her before conspiring, which he did. Jon told Dany that he was going to tell Sansa and Arya, which he did. As demonstrated in quote (6), Dany is very quick to perceive things as betrayals, despite knowing that the situation is just more complicated than that. In (6), she demands to hear Ser Barriston’s reasoning for going undercover as Arstan Whitebeard, and in the end, she sends him to go into the city with Ser Jorah anyway. She still denounces him. Jon’s ‘trial’ and Varys’ execution is not madness. It is Dany’s flawed reasoning in action. Just as Ser Barriston’s quote demonstrates, “Your father gave people the justice he thought they deserved.”

At the end of it all, Dany concedes “Let it be fear, then.” aka if I can’t manipulate you into loving me, then I will accept your servitude through fearing me.  

We have the scene in the Throne room, Tyrion negotiating with her to surrender at the sounds of the bells. The most important part about this scene, however, is when Dany tells Tyrion that Jaime’s been taken prisoner and then tells Tyrion that “The next time you fail me will be the last time.” As we saw in 804, Dany is understanding how to be clever. And like she was not very clever in having a prisoner to manipulate Cersei, she now has a prisoner to manipulate Tyrion. The only reason that Jaime is still alive is because Dany needs to manipulate Tyrion into continuing to do her bidding. Varys had no one to use as leverage, and he was not useful as leverage against anyone. So here, we once again see the value of political prisoners. Dany doesn’t have access to Sansa right now, so she uses her words to constantly remind Jon about Sansa; Dany takes Jaime prisoner and reminds Tyrion what happens to people that she believes betrayed her.  

Once we see Dany’s Inferno begin by destroying the Iron Fleet and taking out the scorpions, we (as the audience) are at an impasse because, so far, what we see Dany doing is very reasonable war tactics. She’s disarming the enemy and providing an avenue for her ground forces to neutralize the opposing forces. She lands Drogon on the battlements, and we see how fucking terrified the people are of her. This is, not only, because of the fact that Drogon is the equivalent of WWII bombers, but also because Cersei has invested a lot of time into brainwashing the smallfolk into associating Dany with a blood thirsty conqueror. This is the point that I’m wishing that we’d had a moment of Dany taking in the townfolk, because I do want to have at least a modicum of reference to how she’s dealing with their reaction to her. However, based on the knowledge that we have from Jon’s ‘trial,’ it’s fair to assume that she’s embraced the fact that she will be ruling through fear. This plays into the conversation that Cersei and Sansa had at the siege at Blackwater when Cersei says, infamously, “make certain they fear you more than they do the enemy.”  

I don’t think that Dany burned the smallfolk because she wanted them to fear her, however. As I established in my “Gold and Silver” analysis; Drogon is Dany’s ‘throne.’ She feels the most powerful when she’s on his back, and the two have merged into a singular identity.  

In quote (7), we are illustrated with a direct comparison to what Dany was seeing on the back of Drogon as she was staring down the Red Keep,

“Do all gods feel so lonely?”

Dany (in the books) is as obsessed with prophecy as Rhaegar was, and she’s seeking men to fulfill the ‘three heads of the dragon’ prophecy, as she fancies herself to be Aegon she needs men to be Rhaenys and Visenya.  

In quote (9) we see Dany has an anger problem. Quote (8) illustrates that when Dany is angry, her dragons respond in kind. So, as Dany is isolated atop Drogon (and I brought up in a little vent that every time Dany climbs on top of Drogon, she is escaping reality), staring down the Red Keep, she starts to get angry that Cersei isn’t ringing the bells. And since she has no one to check those impulses, and is instead in her own little world, her and Drogon begin reciprocating rage.  

Missandei’s last words were, “Dracarys!” as quote (1) provides that it’s Dany’s favourite word when she’s feeling angry and powerful. On top of the world, she’s always loved to watch people burn and die. And here she is, on top of the world, staring down the Red Keep and seeing the entire symbol of her family’s dynasty in the hands of Cersei Lannister. It doesn’t matter that they’re surrendering, because she’s already angry. She’s already seething and ready to burn Cersei to the ground.  

Grey Worm is angry, too. The whole point of Grey Worm’s arc is not that “he’s a ruthless killing machine,” but the fact that he can once again feel. The Unsullied go through a process of dulling their physical and mental/emotional sensations. The fact that Grey Worm threw the spear without command, but rather precedent, from Daenerys illustrates how much he loved and cares for someone (“Love is the death of duty”). Grey Worm is in pain.  

Dany is the YMBQ

We see Cersei standing at the same balcony that she observed the Baelor explosion. While it can be easily explained as “that’s just the best balcony to look over the city,” we can’t deny the fact that this symmetry gives us (the audience) the idea that Cersei has a plan. We are expecting her to pop off some grandiose, Machiavellian scheme that proves that Cersei was baiting Dany into. Instead, we find Cersei regressing into a Janos Slynt.  

GOT 409 (sidenote: I’m trying to type up this dialogue but both Janos and Jon are JS so fml)

Slynt: “Bars of those gates are four inches of cold rolled steel.”  

Snow: “THOSE ARE GIANTS RIDING MAMMOTHS!”  

Slynt: “There’s no such thing as giants... stories for the children...”  

GOT 805

C: “All we need is one good shot.”  

Q: “All the scorpions have been destroyed...”

C: “The Red Keep has never fallen.”  

Q: bitch it’s falling rn

And let me say. Cersei. Deserved. Better. If we look at everything that Janos Slynt was: King’s Landing trash. And upjumped.... whatever he was—I don’t even remember if he was a sellsword or what before he was commander of the City Watch. Cersei Fucking Lannister deserved better than to be equated to Janos Slynt on her failure. /rant

So how does this make Dany the YMBQ? (Younger, more beautiful Queen)  

The YMBQ is meant to “cast [Cersei] down and take all that [she] hold dear.”

Once Dany goes on to assault the Red Keep after burning the Western half of King’s Landing, we have a distinct shot of Drogon blasting out the Lion sigil on the stained glass window. All throughout the series, Cersei has never stopped referring to herself as “The Queen,” even when she had moved on to being Queen Regent/Dowager Queen/Queen Mother. Cersei has insisted that King’s Landing is her home, twice, when Tywin tried to have her marry Loras and move to Highgarden and again when Tommen tried to convince her to move back to Casterly Rock. Cersei’s core identity is derived from the Iron Throne. In the siege at Blackwater, when Cersei thought the battle was lost, she was ready to meet her end via suicide sitting on the Iron Throne. She was ready to kill herself and Tommen. Now, though, she wants to live and attempts to flee to save her unborn child. And instead of meeting death on the Iron Throne, she meets it in the basement. So, all that Cersei holds dear: “The Queen” title, King’s Landing/The Red Keep, the Iron Throne, Cersei’s unborn child’s life. In one afternoon, Dany takes it all. And casts Cersei down (into the basement, specifically)

#game of thrones #got #got spoilers #got s8 #got s8e5 #8x05 #the bells #analysis #got meta #my meta #daenerys targaryen #cersei lannister #jon snow #tyrion lannister #drogon #ymbq #asoiaf