I Need a Hero!

When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.

This is really something, TBH

asoiaf scenes: [2/?]

May I tell you a secret? You’re not a golden lion. You’re just a pink little man who’s far too slow on the draw.

PEDRO PASCAL as Oberyn Martell Game of Thrones (2011–2019)

Richard Madden as Robb Stark in Game of Thrones

THE GREAT HOUSES OF WESTEROS

♕  Dragons always preferred to attack from above, Dany had learned. Should either get between the other and the sun, he would fold his wings and dive screaming, and they would tumble from the sky locked together in a tangled scaly ball, jaws snapping and tails lashing. The first time they had done it, she feared that they meant to kill each other, but it was only sport. 

You don't have to like Daenerys to acknowledge that having two mad queens in a story which has consistently either vilified or victimized women in power, while men who have neither the ambition nor the qualification for it just get power handed to them, is not a win for feminism.

There is only one god, and his name is Death. And there is only one thing we say to Death: not today.

“Tis a big and beautiful world. Most of us live and die in the same corner where we were born and never get to see any of it. I don’t want to be most of us.”

Game of Thrones (2011 — 2019)

I am no ordinary woman. My dreams come true.

a song of ice and fire.

In Tyrion VI of A Dance With Dragons, we hear about the gossip former slaveowners from Yunkai are spreading about Daenerys: 

It is also in this chapter that Tyrion gives us a look into GRRM’s own thoughts on Daenerys through his monologue: 

In Game of thrones 8.06, Tyrion says to Jon: 

One thing that’s clear from the books is that Tyrion and Dany will bond over being fellow exiles, isolated from Westeros, deemed monstrous, marginalized and traumatized by their families and oppressors like, treated as evil by the corrupt people in power whom they fought against. Book!Tyrion would never frame Dany’s killing of evil men as a bad thing, not the least because Tyrion himself (on the show and in the books) has killed evil men, he is much morally darker in the books, and because he appreciates Daenerys for who she is: a mother, a liberator, a breaker of chains. Of course in the headspace Tyrion was in for most of ADWD he was thinking of Dany as his path to revenge, but that he realizes what her role is, as the breaker of chains, showcases that he understands that Daenerys is fundamentally compassionate and empathic at heart. That she is a mother to her people. These are qualities Tyrion obviously appreciates, and would never revile or condemn. 

This is also important because Tyrion has been treated as a monster by his family and society his whole life, simply because he’s a dwarf. He knows what it’s like to hear people spreading all sorts of vile rumors about him. His own sister, Cersei, called him ugly and monstrous. When Oberyn and Elia Martell visited Casterly Rock and laid eyes upon an infant Tyrion for the first time, Oberyn notes that Tyrion wasn’t a monster; he was just a baby. These men here are talking about Daenerys as if she is the epitome of evil. Yet without even meeting her, Tyrion knows that this mother of dragons is above all a rescuer. Tyrion’s interactions with Jon Snow in AGoT already told us that Tyrion knows how to cut through the heart of the lies corrupt people and corrupt institutions tell us, and this is clearly an important example of that. 

This makes the fact that D&D had Tyrion be the mouthpiece of their “Dany was always meant to be evil” agenda even worse. They really sat their and wrote a disabled man framing a revolutionary woman’s actions as a bad thing, as if cheering her on was wrong or misguided. Not only is this OOC for book!Tyrion, but it’s also explicitly ableist. Tyrion’s life is shaped by the ableist abuse he’s faced from his family, the isolation and trauma he’s gone through, and being treated like a monster by people no matter how hard he fights for them. Tyrion has been victimized and traumatized by the very types of evil men Daenerys has killed before. 

If that isn’t bad enough, the line they feed to Tyrion is extremely similar to what literal slaveowners say about Daenerys. The slaveowners in the books explicitly hate the fact that she is a shining queen, a breaker of chains. They call her a temptress, a sorceress, a lust-filled bitch. Tyrion on the show is basically echoing this sentiment: she is an evil person because everywhere she goes, the evil men cower in fear. 

You have to realize that Dan & David are rich white men who are invested in a reactionary agenda. They have ties to capital, and so of course they’ll end up writing a script that sounds eerily similar to what literal slaveowners from the books say. They are normalizing and justifying this rhetoric, which is incredibly dangerous. The fact that Dany antis echo the very same things the slaveowners in the books say about Dany isn’t just because they hate Dany; it’s because they genuinely believe the things these evil men, and men like D&D, have to say about revolution and eradicating oppressive systems. Show!Tyrion’s version of eradicating slavery is compromising with slaveowners, telling them that slavery can continue for seven years, and rewarding them with prostitutes. This is not only something book!Tyrion would be appalled at (no matter how dark and morally gray he is in ADWD), it’s ableist to have a disabled man treated as a monster and brutalized by evil men turn around and say that Dany is evil for killing those types of evil men. 

And of course D&D chose Tyrion to utter this line. On the surface it sounds like a cool, witty line, like something Tyrion would say. Not only that, but Tyrion is a disabled man, after all, and so D&D are sending the message that hey, our ending isn’t rightwing and reactionary, because a marginalized man who’s been abused and brutalized is the one saying this, so he must be right and we must be right by extension. Tyrion in 8.06 is channeling D&D’s thoughts on Dany in a grotesque anti-parallel of Tyrion channeling GRRM in Tyrion VI, ADWD. Jon snow, former bastard turned “rightful” heir to the Iron Throne, honorable adoptive son of honorable Ned Stark, is the one who kills Dany, solidifying this theme. “People who’ve experienced marginalization are the ones claiming that Dany is evil for killing evil men so hurrah! We’re right and there’s nothing reactionary or rightwing about this ending at all!”. You all fall for it, eat it up, praise D&D, claim this was “foreshadowed”, all because you hate Daenerys, abused little girl who became a powerful liberator and queen, and fail to realize the OVERTLY racist, bigoted, rightwing, and reactionary ramifications of this message. 

Right now, we’re living in a time where the President is getting away with telling four congresswomen of color to go back to their “broken, crime-infested” countries. In Game of Thrones, the “savage” brown and black soldiers who fought for Daenerys are sent packing home, and even the Wildlings, who are white, go back north of the destroyed Wall. The oligarchs in Westeros are no longer “forced” to interact with “barbaric” people from strange cultures and different lands, and it’s presented to us as a good, natural, bittersweet, happy ending. Order is restored. The only independent kingdom is a white one ruled by the sister of the king. The kingdom ruled by brown people that retained its independence for centuries is paid dust. Breaking the wheel? No thanks, let serfs and slaves continue to be serfs and slaves. How about a democracy? Nah, that’s stupid. The King should be selected by all the high-born lords and ladies. You see the parallels, right? D&D are actively feeding into the rightwing, white supremacist, patriarchal propaganda machine by validating the kind of white-majority, racist, xenophobic, classist, exploitative, misogynistic world Westeros is. Again, you people fall for it, not only because your hatred of Daenerys blinds you, but also because your faves got their happy endings, and we’re supposed to like the people in power now, because they’re “good” guys, so all is well. The new face of Westerosi oppression, power, and hegemony are the hero’s we’ve rooted for, so of course it’s a good thing and a good ending, and couldn’t possibly signify anything racist or patriarchal. 

I’m not surprised that people in the game of thrones fandom echo the exact same rhetoric that literal, actual slaveowners say about Dany in the books. Most got fans are very racist, and hilariously enough Dany antis often tread right into ethnonationalist, xenophobic rhetoric when they’re hating on Dany. So of course they say the same things slaveowners say in the books. What I do want to point out is 1) how ableist it is that D&D had Tyrion be the one to be their mouthpiece, and 2) what message this is spreading, especially in relation to the books. This isn’t deliberate. D&D hate Dany because she is a revolutionary queen, and they killed her off and framed her as an evil, mad queen because they’re warning us that if oppressed people gain power and uproot their oppressors, we’re going to end up charred like the citizens of King’s Landing.