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esther-dot · 4 months

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What upsets me the most about the dumbass Sansa vs Arya thing (other than it only existing because antis hate Sansa that much) is that... what does it add to the story? This isn't fandom stuff, this is something antis genuinely want for the story, but what does it ADD? What is the POINT? What value does these 2 siblings fighting against each other would give to the story? To the message and theme? It's even more worthless than the boring Cleganebowl shit.

Sansa and Arya, two siblings from the main family of the series that the story centers on, fighting and hating each other is detrimental to literally EVERYTHING. ASOIAF is LOADED with family dynamics that are actually toxic and destructive to the members. We have the Targaryens, we have the Greyjoys, we have the LANNISTERS. Westeros is so bereft of families that love each other, making the ONE family that genuinely love each other and doing their best to reunite hate each other is so... just spit on GRRM and the effort he put into House Stark, why don't you?

I don't want to sound like a pretentious ass, but these people should not read a series like ASOIAF if they're gonna let their petty feelings and opinions impact the series as a whole. They can hate Sansa, but if they hate her to the point where it impacts their reading of the series, then put it down and go read something simpler. Or just stick to fanfics because their disturbing hate fantasy will never be canon, sorry antis

(about this ask)

I talked about this before and now can’t find the post, but Arya and Jon fans who hate Sansa are holding her responsible for the problems with society that Martin is criticizing. They are missing that society is being criticized from different angles to allow us to see all the ways it’s hurting people. Rather than realizing it isn’t the little girl who caused their pain, with them we are getting two critiques (coming from different directions) of their world. Jon is excluded, Arya is expected to conform.

Jon wants in, Arya wants out.

And of course, Sansa suffers as well. She may fulfill the ideal in a way that Arya cannot, but that doesn’t save her. We have Elia and Lyanna which is another picture of conformity/non-conformity —both of them die. There is a much larger part of the story here that is the driving force of what these characters suffer, it’s a shame to dismiss all of that in order to hate on Sansa.

I have no gatekeeping instinct. I’m happy to read different takes (within reason — absolutely no Sansa hate which is why I don’t do much with anyone beyond our corner), I have read and written Martin critical stuff, I don’t mind people coming away with different interpretations. I enjoy that (within reason), and that’s a part of who I am beyond fandom so that isn’t gonna change. I simply decide, “well, I certainly never want to hear from that blogger/that part of the fandom again,” but as far as I know, they’re an angry 13yo who will reread the series in a year or two and realize, oh, the Sansa and Arya conflict is created by external forces, and actually, they can understand the pressures Sansa struggled with as well. I’m a big fan of leaving room for growth, and literature has a special way of allowing us to see things in new ways and helping us evolve as I individuals. I’d never be in favor of taking it away from anyone no matter how much I think they misunderstand it. You never know what the future holds and if one day, they’ll get it.

Also, I don’t have a perfect grasp on what Martin is doing myself. The endgame of some of the characters strikes me as….uh, less realistic, and more, whimsical, so unless I’m gonna throw out my books, I’m not gonna pretend to be more deserving than any one else. I will filter and block though because when it comes to Sansa haters:

making the ONE family that genuinely love each other and doing their best to reunite hate each other is so... just spit on GRRM and the effort he put into House Stark, why don't you?

So, uh, not to annoy you further, anon, but I didn’t call what I had written “wish-fulfillment” for nothing. 😬 I definitely think expecting the Starks to kill each other is absurd, but as a Jonsa, I’m not sure how Arya would be able to accept that relationship, and I do wonder if it’s Martin’s way of allowing tension and conflict within the Starks even upon their reunion. Maybe I worry for nothing, but Jon is Arya’s person, he made her feel love and accepted, for him to be in love with Sansa…I worry that Arya would feel displaced, and how quickly Martin would find a resolution there.

Many others have previously looked at how Martin seems to have no problem writing brothers / guys having healthy relationships, but likes to have sisters at odds. There’s a dearth of healthy female relationships, so it’s an opportunity for him to break that pattern, and if Arya was accepting of it I suppose it could be a contrast to the Cat/LF/Lysa mess. That may be the goal he’s working towards, and to your point, that adds to the story in sadly lacking area. All the same, while I do think the Starks love and will be loyal to each other, I’m not sure how warm and cozy things will be on the page? I have some concerns about what he’s making room for. But that is the benefit of being in a fandom with so many emotionally mature fic writers who value and prioritize female relationships. I get to read healthy relationships either way!

#dot chat

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nocheiraia · 4 years

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Opinión impopular: Las Serpientes de Arenas/Aegon VI (Young Griff) merecen matar a la Montaña más que el Perro.

Unpopular opinion: The Sand Snakes/ Aegon VI (Young Griff) deserve kill the Mountain more than The Hound.

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riocat01 · 4 years

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#game of thrones #fuck d & d #fuck you benioff and weiss #anti d&d #anti dumb&dumber #anti cleganebowl #fuck cleganebowl #cleganebowl was shit #sandor clegane is not dead #sandor clegane is alive

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thebluelemontree · 5 years

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Thoughts on the Mountain being the literal embodiment of Sandor's trauma and disillusionment with knighthood and justice? It seems fans of Cleganebowl tend to miss this even though it's hardly subtle - even fans on reddit who were ambivalent towards Cleganebowl. Sandor has his own mountain to conquer and it's not Ser Robert Strong. I think Sandor might give him the gift of mercy but that would be a totally different motivation than "revenge" like the show had with his character.

The fact that this even has a pay-per-view spectacle name like “Cleganebowl” just shows how ridiculously overhyped this is in the fandom. I’m not saying any kind of confrontation in the future between Sandor and Robert Strong is impossible or even improbable. I doubt whatever that looks like will live up to their expectations. If they’re sorely disappointed it doesn’t turn out to be a revenge-fulfillment fantasy, well, that’s on them. You’d really have to ask the fans why they love the idea so much. It could be that they’re on their first reading and breezed through it for the plot. I certainly missed things that were “hardly subtle” the first time. Or maybe it just ain’t that deep for some people? This is why I don’t get involved in the general fandom anymore. It’s not an interpretation I consider informed or one that I am on board with. It’s just a headcanon some people like. Since you asked for my thoughts, I have lots of thoughts about why “Cleganebowl” isn’t going to be a thing and why that’s a better story.

I don’t blame Sandor for ruminating on revenge for most of his life. Wanting to strike back at your tormenter is normal and understandable. Especially when the people and institutions that were supposed to be on the victim’s side ended up protecting and rewarding the perpetrator. Revenge may seem like Sandor’s only means of experiencing a sense of justice and perhaps finally finding some relief from his PTSD. It’s a coping mechanism, which is why he reacts with such indignation at the idea of anyone else stealing Gregor’s death from him. The fantasy only stays alive as long as Gregor is alive. In Sandor’s mind, if Gregor dies by any other means, then so does any chance for catharsis. Fantasies are a safe place where one always finds the satisfaction they hoped for; however, that doesn’t mean Sandor wants to be a kinslayer like Gregor. There’s also evidence that Sandor is actually terrified of facing Gregor in reality.

During the night of the feast at the Hand’s Tourney, Sandor is drunk but definitely not in a celebratory mood. Initially, we might write off Sandor’s coarse behavior toward Sansa as nothing more than a defective personality. There’s more going on though, and easier to connect the dots with a re-reading. It’s Sandor that mentions killing his brother in his first lines to Sansa (unprompted) and then steers the conversation immediately back to Gregor (unprompted). That speaks to the thoughts that have preoccupied his mind and a subconscious urge to let them out.

“Come, you’re not the only one needs sleep. I’ve drunk too much, and I may need to kill my brother tomorrow.” He laughed again.

…

“You rode gallantly today, Ser Sandor,” she made herself say.

Sandor Clegane snarled at her. “Spare me your empty little compliments, girl … and your ser’s. I am no knight. I spit on them and their vows. My brother is a knight. Did you see him ride today?”

And what did Sandor see Gregor do when he rode that day? Straight-up murder an ill-prepared, inexperienced knight for no reason except that he could. In front of the king, in front of the Hand, in front of everyone. Once again, Gregor totally got away with it. Ser Hugh’s body was whisked away, quickly forgotten, and the blood on the ground was covered up. Sandor has probably not seen Gregor for many years. We know Sandor never revisited his family’s home and Gregor rarely left his keep except for tourneys. Sandor also never consciously intended the conversation to go as far as revealing the secret of Gregor’s attempt to murder him and the following injustice that compounded his trauma. He just sort of spilled into it. He’s less inhibited by the wine, but Sandor also seems to be disassociating while he’s re-experiencing his trauma. Sansa describes his sudden silence, his hunched over body language (making himself small), and his ragged breathing, which seems indicative of a panic attack. So Sandor’s initial laughter at the prospect of facing his Gregor the next day was really a paper-thin façade. His irritability and snappishness alongside pounding the alcohol all night don’t speak to someone who is relishing the idea of finally having the opportunity for revenge. Quite the opposite. It’s dread. Taken all together, Sandor seems to have been triggered by Ser Hugh’s murder, which mirrors the “accidental” death of their father. Sandor immediately left for Casterly Rock because he knew he was next. For the duration of the tourney, Sandor is reasonably on high-alert for another attempt on his life, which is why he says he “may need to kill his brother.” The keyword here is “need,” not “want.”

Fate did end up giving Sandor the perfect opportunity to kill Gregor the following day. When an enraged Gregor attempts to kill Loras Tyrell, Sandor intervenes and saves his life. If Sandor had killed Gregor at that moment, it would hardly be regarded as kinslaying. It would be a clear case of necessary lethal force to stop an attempted murder of a defenseless person. He might have even been rewarded for it by an overly-generous King Robert, inheriting all the Clegane lands and incomes, taking everything from Gregor in one stroke. As Ned notes, Sandor never takes a mortal strike at Gregor’s unprotected head even though he could have. When the king commands them to stop, it’s Sandor that immediately kneels in obedience. As Sansa told him in her own way, true knighthood is defined by how one chooses to act. So did Sandor really need or want to kill Gregor as he believed? Or was it Sandor himself that needed to change? In that way, “Cleganebowl” has already happened. Sandor won by choosing to be a better person, forgo revenge, and selflessly act for others. It might sound hokey, but it’s true. The moment he decided to live up to those ideals is the moment he overcame his fear of Gregor. The novels do make the point that those ideals should be a person’s guiding light, even if one’s efforts go unrecognized or unrewarded. Brienne sums this up in “no chance, no choice” when she decides to try to protect the orphans from the outlaws in Feast. In this case, Sandor is recognized and rewarded while Ser Gregor was seen for the shitbag that he is.

Likewise, vengeance against Gregor has already been taken by Oberyn Martell, who has just as much reason to hate Gregor as Sandor. The Martells have endured murdered loved ones at Gregor’s hands. Those crimes have gone unanswered for years while the perpetrators are protected by the powerful. Oberyn succeeds in making Gregor suffer horribly before dying (albeit without the confession that Tywin gave the order), but at an extreme cost. Oberyn himself is destroyed in his determination to expose Tywin’s culpability. His longtime partner, Ellaria Sand, is left grieving along with the rest of his family. His loss is permanent and irreplaceable to them. The cycle will begin again through some of his children seeking to avenge his death, this time with innocents caught up in the violence. See Ellaria’s impassioned anti-revenge speech.

But GRRM has aligned the stars in such a way that Gregor will experience a karmic justice that has poignant parallels to Sandor’s trauma.

“He is dying of the venom, but slowly, and in exquisite agony. My efforts to ease his pain have proved as fruitless as Pycelle’s. Ser Gregor is overly accustomed to the poppy, I fear. His squire tells me that he is plagued by blinding headaches and oft quaffs the milk of the poppy as lesser men quaff ale. Be that as it may, his veins have turned black from head to heel, his water is clouded with pus, and the venom has eaten a hole in his side as large as my fist. It is a wonder that the man is still alive, if truth be told.” – Qyburn, Cersei II, AFFC.

While Gregor wasn’t burned, the thickened manticore poison is slowly causing his all his organs to mortify as it spreads. Essentially, Gregor’s body is “melting” and decaying from the inside out, while he’s still alive. The same inhuman strength and size that exacerbated his sadism are now turned against him. Where average-sized men would have mercifully died long before, the poison takes a much longer time to coarse through him and to reach a level of fatal organ failure. That lifetime of opiate abuse prevented Gregor from receiving any effective pain management. He must feel every second of that “exquisite agony.” While young Sandor received treatment from a maester, Gregor’s attending maester is Qyburn. He intervenes when Cersei wants to call for Ilyn Payne to put Gregor out of his misery. Instead, Qyburn requests that Gregor be moved to the black cells so that he can conduct vivisection experiments on him and his screams will go unheard. When Gregor finally does die, he is beheaded, and his face is obliterated by flesh-eating beetles. The skull is sent to Dorne as recompense for Elia and her children, while the truth Tywin’s involvement remains suppressed. In the end, he was expendable, used up, and his suffering was buried in secrecy deep in the black cells. Sound familiar? Oh, but wait, there’s more. Gregor doesn’t even have death to look forward to. He’s taken Sandor’s place as Cersei’s shield, but this time as a headless undead slave. He has no voice, no identity except the one his master gave him. All he can do is serve and obey like a toy knight on strings…

Given all of this, what on earth could Sandor possibly do that could top what GRRM has already done to Gregor? I think karma has ticked all the boxes here. We’ve seen Gregor do horrible things to a countless number of people. Each of his crimes can’t be answered an eye for an eye. That’s impossible; however, George made Gregor’s end even more of a nightmarish version of what he did to Sandor specifically. Likewise, the Hound also dies with parallels to Gregor, but with opposite outcomes. Both brothers suffer festering mortal wounds (in Sandor’s case, from the Mountain’s men) that are killing them slowly. While Gregor confesses what he did to Elia and her children, he is incapable of remorse. Sandor’s confession before dying of his moral failures is full of remorse and empathy for those who suffered because of him. You can read more in detail about his confession here. The difference between Sandor’s mortal wounds and Gregor’s is that Sandor’s represents a purging of all the rot and sickness (his worst traits) inside him. He can be saved, and he will be saved by a holy man, an elder brother that will protect him and heal his wounds instead of inflicting them. Gregor was always rotten inside, so he’s damned. Sandor experiences a symbolic “beheading” when the Hound’s helm is placed on the grave. He is granted a rebirth and a second chance to remake his life as a better person. His identity can be reclaimed. Gregor is sentenced to undeath and Robert Strong is just an empty helmet. The message is clear that the only person Sandor needed to kill to set things right was the Hound, not Gregor.

That makes it more likely that in the future that Sandor will be in a position to put down Robert Strong in defense of others, just as he defended Loras at the tourney. He’s been made into a weapon too dangerous to exist. Mercy implies feeling empathy for his brother, and I think that might be asking Sandor to be a saint. I’m not against that idea, but I don’t believe Sandor’s redemption or character arc requires it. Sandor has experienced some dramatic changes on the Quiet Isle, but his feelings towards his brother’s fate might be more complicated and conflicted. If we liken Gregor’s undead servitude to being wighted by the Others, no matter how bad a person is, no one deserves to be enslaved to another. I think we need to see where things are going in the next book to understand exactly what George wants to say about that.

#valyrianscrolls #sandor clegane meta #sandor clegane #gregor clegane #clegane bowl #valyrian scrolls #anti cleganebowl #revenge #anti revenge #revenge narratives #oberyn martell #ellaria sand #character parallels #house clegane #anonymous #my meta #self reblog

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birdinthewinterwinds · 5 years

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✨.Some.✨ ❄.Got'memes.❄

.to light up your mood.

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itmustvebeenthefairies · 5 years

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the mood for this evening

#game of thrones #game of thrones spoilers #daenerys targaryen #jon snow #arya stark #jaime lannister #sandor clegane #the hound #cleganebowl #cersei lannister #tyrion lannister #brienne of tarth #a song of ice and fire #got spoilers #got season 8 #anti d&d #fairy'sposts

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3holmes · 5 years

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If Arya mercy kills Sandor, or he dies at all, I riot. You're telling me the only way to bring Sandor peace is to kill his brother, who isn't even his brother anymore but a damn zombie. Then he dies? That's his story? I'll hunt down d&d and slap them twice each across the face.

#sandor clegane #the hound #anti-cleganebowl #sansan #sandor x sansa #sansa x sandor #sansa stark #the unkiss #ive already made a post like thus and i dont care

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gameofnormies · 5 years

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Can someone make an edit of GRRM rugby tackling David Benioff off of the red keep

#asoiaf #sandor clegane #cleganebowl #anti got #game of thrones

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frozenrevenant · 5 years

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#cleganebowl #sandor clegane #gregor clegane #anti game of thrones #game of thrones #the bells

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manhcester · 5 years

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while certain character arcs have been poorly executed, sandor’s is the only one that was actually very off from where i believe his book counterpart is going

#cleganebowl is pure fanservice and ruins the entire point of his character which is letting go of his anger and need for revenge #got spoilers #sandor clegane #anti d&d #asoiaf #got

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agentrouka-blog · 2 years

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Hey. I really like your blog. I wanted to ask your opinion on Cleganebowl in the books? Will it happen?

Hi there and thank you!! 😃

I don't think we'll have a Cleganebowl in any sense of meaningful confrontation.

Gregor is a) already dead, and b) incapable of remorse. Sandor can neither kill his abuser in revenge, nor gain any kind of emotional catharsis in confronting him.

Gregor has been killed in physical agony by Oberyn's poison, and he has been turned into the toy knight he brutalized his own brother over by Qyburn's dark arts. It's done for him. He's toast. Whatever he is now, he is only a tool for whoever commands him.

So whatever confrontation may arise now will only ever be between Sandor and Sandor. He allowed his trauma to turn him into a shadow of his monstrous brother. Rape and murder and cruelty? Tastes the same, with or without a knighthood. He saw that the world was unfair and decided to be cruel in return, and pretend that he had no choice. Easier than fighting a losing battle. The anti-thesis of Brienne.

When Sansa sings the Hymn of the Mother to him he is defeated because there is a choice, and he has the power to make it.

Right now, he has the option of living out a quiet life of repentence on the Quiet Isle, but the fact that Stranger remains in the stables, waiting, suggests to me that Sandor will choose something else. Stranger, death.

If we do meet him again, and if he encounters his brother's revenant, the choice is likely to be how he dies. Some egocentric vengeful battle against a shadow if his own trauma, or - for once - serving a purpose and being brave.

I'm honestly not sure which way it would go.

#anti sandor clegane #gregor clegane

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arya-starkk · 7 years

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probably an unpopular opinion, but i’d rather see jon and danys fight than fuck?. Given the assumption that lyanna and rhaegar got married, jon has a stronger claim to the throne than dany,; being the last lawful, living heir of the last targ king’s oldest song and all. and since dany’s strongest claim to the throne right now is the right of succession, what the fuck would she do if she found out about jon’s heritage and therefore his stronger claim. Over and over again we hear dany saying that to rule over the seven kingdoms is her ‘birthright’ but what if she were to lose that? she sure as hell didn’t do all the shit she did just to give up because the throne isn’t hers by name alone.

tl;dr:

you: *anything to do with jon and dany that isn’t targbowl*

me, an intellectual: Targbowl.

#i'm not even saying i WANT jon to be on the iron throne #i just want to see dany's reaction to finding out it belongs more to him than it does to her and what she's going to do about it #game of throne #jon snow #anti jonerys #and ESPECIALLY if one of the dragons decided to buddy up with jon since he's a targareyn #yooooooo #i need this like i need cleganebowl

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ladyxanatos · 5 years

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Daenerys Targaryen is the main character of GoT… by accident

(Credit where credit is due: I am building on meta I’ve seen floating around fandom in other places)

Game of Thrones is now Daenerys’ story. Before S8, GoT arguably had three main characters: Dany, Jon, and Tyrion. But S8 retroactively changes that and the story is now Dany’s and Dany’s alone.

Every single character (with one exception I’ll get to later) who survives to S8 has their entire narratives and character arcs hijacked and redirected into serving Dany’s narrative. Everyone and everything is diverted into maneuvering Dany to her end point. The entire overarching story, and all the characters’ individual stories that comprise it, warps and bends itself completely out of shape in service to the Mad Queen reveal.

Jon’s parentage and Targaryen heritage are only relevant because of how they impact Dany’s arc and mental state. The Long Night must precede the fall of King’s Landing because Jorah must die in order to further weaken Dany’s mental stability and further isolate her from “good” advice, and also to put her and her forces in a generally more vulnerable position. Arya kills the Night King try to undermine Dany’s status as the Savior and minimize Dany’s importance to the North. Sansa mistrusts and hates Dany for no reason other than feeding the conflict between Dany and the North, while feeding into Dany’s own trust issues and paranoia. Jaime can’t get redemption because a character we care about has to die in the King’s Landing firestorm doing something “noble” (i.e. protecting his sister-lover). The travesty that is the characterization of Varys and Tyrion is solely in the service of the Mad Queen narrative (there’s more than enough meta on that already in existence, I don’t feel the need to add much to it).

The whole entire story warps around Dany’s supposed villain arc. Every character has their individual arc trajectories, which had been painstakingly laid out over seven seasons, completely dismantled and reassembled with only one goal: Dany’s demise. Every characters’ story is now subordinate to Dany’s.

This also means that since the end of all these characters’ narratives is the sole purpose of bringing about Dany’s death, this retroactively means that their arcs in their entirety, across the whole eight seasons of GoT’s run, are now about Dany. Making Daenerys Targaryen the sole main character of Game of Thrones, because she is the epicenter that the entire narrative revolves around.

And the best part is that this was done completely by accident and through the sheer incompetence of the showrunners. They were so desperate to vilify Dany and had also imposed such a strict and completely artificial time constraint on themselves, that they had to wreck their whole story to make it happen and as an (I’m very confident) unforeseen consequence the whole story is now about Dany and no one else.

This is why, in the last half of the final episode after Dany’s death, the show and all its characters feel strangely and suddenly…rudderless. The whole reason for being of the show and every last one of its surviving characters is dead, taking all the heart and the meaning with her, and now we’re stuck watching a bunch of characters just kinda jangling pointlessly around inside an empty, vacuous narrative devoid of meaning.

That’s why the second half of the finale feels so odd and it’s so difficult to stay engaged with it, and ultimately its why the ending Stark Victory Montage falls incredibly flat, ringing absolutely hollow despite Ramin Djawadi’s best musical efforts to try and force the audience to feel something--or just anything at this point.

And so, that is how D&D, in their petty small-minded zeal to destroy a female character whose religious imagery and savior narrative had spun wildly out of their control making her more popular than their white male faves, accidentally made Daenerys Targaryen the main character of their show, while they were actually trying to vilify and discard her like garbage, in a twist of dramatic irony.

They also retroactively made Dany a tragically maligned messianic figure, because they utterly failed to actually vilify her or make her the Mad Queen. They worked so hard to make every character around her incessantly talk about nothing but her madness, bending every character to serving her narrative, but then “kinda forgot” to write her as Actually Mad. All they succeeded in doing is painting her as a ruthless military commander who mercilessly refuses to accept an enemy’s surrender, which sure, is morally yikes, but is not a sign of actual madness.

A great example of just how bad this laziness in the writing gets is the way D&D use quasi-nazi-esque imagery to hurriedly frame Dany as Evil in the last episode, but don’t actually fill that imagery with content to match. Dany isn’t proposing racial cleansing (stop calling the destruction of King’s Landing genocide, omfg. Words mean things. And destroying a city =/= attempting to wipe out an entire race. Get off my lawn) or presenting the Unsullied or Dothraki (or herself an a Valyrian) as the Master Race; she’s not spewing nazi propaganda. She’s talking about conquering the world, but many leaders throughout history have had that goal, and they weren’t nazis by default. But D&D still use that cheap visual shorthand to try and quickly prejudice the audience against Dany, because they “kinda forgot” to write her an actual villain arc.

So, not only is everything now about her, but Dany is now a tragic failed messianic figure, Jon is now her Judas who literally betrays her with a kiss, and she is murdered by characters and a narrative that have framed her as Mad while in actual fact she is not. So, not only is this now The Story of Daenerys Targaryen, it is specifically The Tragedy of Daenerys Targaryen. By accident.

Now, for that one exception I of spoke of earlier. The only character in S8 to not have their whole arc hijacked in service to Dany’s tragedy, and the reason Cleganebowl is so satisfying, is Sandor Clegane. His arc remains purely his own and he remains on the trajectory he had been on since the beginning.

Complaints that S8 “throws out Sandor’s character development,” opining that S6 was somehow about “redeeming” him from his vengeance quest, must be from people who…didn’t actually watch S6.

Sure, the Hound encounters a septon (I refuse to call him Meribald) with whom he forms a fledgling bond, and this septon opines that “violence is a disease” and “you don’t cure a disease by giving it to more people,” sure. But then when the guy is murdered by rogues from the Brotherhood, Sandor immediately picks up an axe, tracks them all down, and murders them gruesomely in an act of vengeance, effectively spreading the disease of violence to yet more people.

This ain’t a guy who just turned away from his path of vengeance; this is a guy who’s just reestablished that vengeance is his whole entire arc. S7 also supports this, by having Sandor confront his brother in the Dragon Pit and declare, “You know who’s coming for you. You’ve always known.”

So, S8 Cleganebowl was not “out of nowhere” and was completely in keeping with where Sandor, on the show, was always headed.

Sandor Clegane’s arc remains his own in S8, he’s never sidetracked by hand-wringing about Dany’s “madness” or plotting Dany’s downfall, and he remains on the track he has always been on, which is why his arc resolution is so satisfying (even if we can debate the morality or thematic soundness/faithfulness to the books’ anti-vengeance themes). Although he does die in Dany’s firestorm at King’s Landing, which fire he and his brother burn in is arbitrary. Sandor Clegane is the only character with an arc that stays clear of Dany’s blast radius.

Literally every other characters’ arc gets caught in that blast radius, which is why Dany takes down not only the entire show but all of its characters (save one) with her, and retroactively becomes its main character.

#daenerys targaryen #game of thrones #death tw

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thebluelemontree · 5 years

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Well, that's just super I guess that Sandor waited until they were in the RK to say "hey don't be like me. Revenge ruined my life" and not like at some point on the road to KL. No, D&D, you don't just get to slide that line in at the last minute and get credit for having some great insight. In fact, it makes it worse. They are saying they did understand that much about Sandor's character and decided to throw his life away on Cleganebowl that didn't bring him any satisfaction and only led to more suffering. And it changed nothing about Gregor's fate. He would have died anyway in the collapse of the RK or been consumed in fire. It's not poetic. It meant nothing at all. Nothing. This is Sansa's rape all over again with the reasoning that once they made the decision to make Sandor go to KL, death in Cleganebowl was the only possible outcome. They knew it wouldn't serve his character in any way and they still wrote it, literally tossing him in the incinerator like garbage. I was so willing to forgive a multitude of sins if they just let him go in a somewhat respectful send off. He was not even worthy of that much.

And Sandor is just one of many such disrespectful character assassinations in this episode. I'll have more thoughts tomorrow, but I just want to also say, guys, I'm sorry if I in any way got anyone's hopes up. I truly am. I'm really upset with myself right now for even stopping to consider that something good could still happen that I could get behind in some way. That there would something in the ending that felt true to Martin's vision and message. Just something that even had some internal show logic that I could at least be okay with. I was honestly willing to give D&D some credit as writers if that happened. I was stupid. Really fucking stupid and I'm sorry.

#got spoilers #got season 8 episode 5 #sandor clegane #cleganebowl #anti cleganebowl #anti got #got negativity #fuck you d&d #i wanted to vomit #i literally felt my stomach twisting #even your show version deserved so much better than this #rape mention tw

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batmansymbol · 5 years

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thoughts on episode five

i’ve seen some people online describe tonight’s treatment of daenerys as “dehumanizing” and i’m honestly stunned by this response. i thought tonight was a fantastic exploration of how someone who is deeply human, and deeply sympathetic, can do something terrible.

i think daenerys’s story is tragic. i also think that from a narrative standpoint, it’s unexpected. fandom has been spinning its wheels about Dark Dany for so long that it’s easy to forget that this is genuinely an unusual route for her arc to take: who would have thought back in the earlier books & seasons that daenerys’s actions didn’t signal a righteous come-from-behind heroine, but the first acts of a detailed buildup into a dark, complicated anti-heroine?

daenerys is interesting. she is real. she's always had to make difficult choices, and they all conceivably point toward this end as much as an end where she was a right and just queen. i understand wanting a different end for her, because my heart breaks for her and the queen she could have been, but for once in my life i truly don’t understand thinking that this is bad writing or a massive D&D fuckup. this has been cued and foreshadowed for a long, long time, dany being forced to walk a razor’s edge between mercy and what she sees as justice, and it is disconcerting to me that people can’t see those questions right there on the screen.

and the moment that she hears the bells! that’s the strongest empathetic moment i’ve felt all season: the entire crushing weight of all she’s endured to reach this point, and how dissatisfying it is here on the cusp of her total victory and the annihilation of her enemies. i felt all the paradoxical loathing she feels for her prize, her golden jewel, and everything it’s taken from her. i really felt the entire terrible weight of the throne. if that’s not what this series is about, then what is?

i should mention as a caveat that i have always wanted more anti-heroines whose moral choices are given the weight that male characters’ so often are. this quote from a gillian flynn interview with the Guardian feels relevant here:

More generally, it's true of all Flynn's novels that her women can be reliably predicted to outdo the men in their capacity for moral depravity. Flynn identifies herself as a feminist, but does she worry that she's damaging that cause in the quest for narrative shocks? "To me, that puts a very, very small window on what feminism is," she responds. "Is it really only girl power, and you-go-girl, and empower yourself, and be the best you can be? For me, it's also the ability to have women who are bad characters … the one thing that really frustrates me is this idea that women are innately good, innately nurturing. In literature, they can be dismissably bad – trampy, vampy, bitchy types – but there's still a big pushback against the idea that women can be just pragmatically evil, bad and selfish ... I don't write psycho bitches. The psycho bitch is just crazy – she has no motive, and so she's a dismissible person because of her psycho-bitchiness."

i don’t think daenerys falls fully into this category, but i think the same logic is applicable. wanting her to have been a good queen is just a different story. i don’t think either path is a lesser story, or a less problematic story. they’re just different.

i thought this was a gorgeously shot episode. full of mythic dust and light! the moments when arya saw the horse in the ruins, and all of cleganebowl, were the sort of High Fantasy high fantasy that this series doesn’t really indulge in all that often, because it’s usually more interested in grubby, earthy interpersonal interactions. i loved those images, especially intercut with the agony of the burning of the city.

i loved tyrion’s goodbye to jaime in the tent. and as much as i hoped that jaime was going back to kill cersei and that what he’d told brienne was a ruse, i found myself satisfied with the conclusion of the lannister twins’ lives. i maintain that it nearly unravels jaime’s series arc, but somehow ... i still liked it?

i was satisfied with how it concluded the valonqar prophecy, at least! "unexpected gentleness” is something i do NOT associate with this series at all, and yet the idea that cersei died in a moment of comfort, with jaime’s hands around her throat to gently turn her face to his, was, i think, actually kind of beautiful. cersei was a violent narcissist. she perfectly fits the flynn type described above, pragmatically evil, bad and selfish. she had an ugly heart and lived a life full of ugliness, and yet something in me is still soothed by a moment of consolation, even when given to a character who doesn’t deserve it.

that said, my jaime x brienne heart is broken forever and part of me will be inconsolable until i die. going to read a shitload of fanfic tonight, friends.

i loved arya’s goodbye to sandor. her saying his name really cut through the armor they wear. i loved the moment of vulnerability maisie williams let through on arya’s face when she really grapples with the idea of winding up like the hound. we haven’t seen her look that young for a long time, and i thought it was really effective.

so, overall, i’m a strong positive on the episode itself as a whole. and yet a lot of it didn’t hit me the way it really should have. i think the buildup has been questionable this whole season. i don’t think you feel the cut corners fully as they’re happening: i think you really feel them during climactic moments like the one in this episode, where you’re wondering why something isn’t quite the punch in the stomach it should have been. i didn’t cry at varys’s death, or even jaime’s death, and jaime is one of my favorite characters in all of fiction, and i cry very easily. i attribute this to the deep flaws in episode four and, to a decent extent, episodes one and three.

i was dreading this episode off the heels of last week, but i’m now looking forward to next week’s conclusion. i think that’s a reasonably strong endorsement.

#game of thrones #game of thrones spoilers #personal #got spoilers #got #essay #got meta

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