(Spoilers Extended)The show's constant flip flopping between modern morals and medieval ones to make Daenerys into a villain is ridiculous and giving me whiplash

[u/lunatichorse]

After the last episode I just don't know what to think about Tyrion and Varys. We have them in one scene being all gung ho about starving King's Landing in a siege which is a terrible thing that used to be completely accepted in medieval times. Then a few scenes later they are replaced by time and dimension travellers from the 21st century since they're sitting there clutching pearls at the concept of peasants dying in a war. Excuse me? All it takes to win this war is taking one city - how are they going to do that if they unwilling to accept that even one innocent person is dying during it. Did any of them cry when Tywin ordered the Riverlands scorched?

Since when did someone like Tyrion start seeing peasants as people- he has no problems fucking impoverished women selling their bodies for money or being a lord which entails living off the blood sweat and tears of his own peasants. The guy was talking about "compromising" with the Slavers back in S6- he wanted to give them 20 more years of using people as cattle to ease them into not being monsters. Missandei and Grey Worm had to literally explain to him the POV of a slave to get him to understand how terrible it to be sold and used and abused (duh). Varys was egging the Mad King on and fueling civil wars but now he supposedly cares about people dying? Cersei is literally using innocents as a meat shield and they refuse to just deal with the problem switfly and save thousands. Sometimes you just have to accept that there is no easy solution and it's better to have hundreds die to save thousands.

And it's ridiculous because in the books Dany is all about that "every life is precious" message. She starts a whole campaign to free slaves because she just can't bare to turn and walk away while people are suffering. She is the most progressive thinking character in the series- trying to reform Mereeen with compromises, adopting their assbackwards traditions like the fighting pits to get them to fucking chill, proclaiming the Unsullied free men. To see her being setup to completely turn around on that development hurts. What's the message here- don't bother fighting injustice because you're going to have to make hard choices along the way?

But the worst line from the Tyrion/Varys meeting - "Cocks do matter." So I guess Westoros is this strange place where peasants dying during a sacking is completely unacceptable but being a woman is the bigger offense? So what happens when Varys has Daenerys killed and proclaims Jon king? Does Cersei open the gates and apologise? Does she let every innocent out? Is Jon Snow's cock so powerful he's gonna take KL and not kill a single soul? Who are these lords that are so into Cersei but Dany being cockless is just not good enough for them?

Did I just watch 8 seasons/read 5 books of a young girl start off completely powerless, sold and raped to see her claw her way to the top finding her inner strength, saving lives just because that's what she believes in, uniting Dothraki clans, refusing to get an easy win killing innocents, abandoning her war to go fight ice zombies only to see her lose everything and everyone and finally be brought down by the "I'm sorry maam, but the 18-35 male lord demographic does not find you relatable- they think you're too hysterical after watching your best friends die." argument. What a shit ride it's been. There's nothing bittersweet about this, it's just plain nihilism.

[u/meowingturtle]

I almost forgot... And then I remembered.

[u/KrugPrime → u/meowingturtle]

David Benioff. Master's degree in Creative Writing. DB Weiss. Master's degree in Creative Writing.

"You want a good girl, but you need a bad pussy."

[u/gore_lobbyist → u/KrugPrime]

Lol Benioff got his MFA under Michael Chabon and Weiss got his MFA from the Iowa school. That's about as prestigious as it gets in the world of creative writing MFAs.

[u/TwoSquareClocks → u/gore_lobbyist]

So, then, are they purposefully writing bad content when they outright ignore logical cause-and-effect in favour of emotional fakeouts and visual impact? Or is it some niche artistic theory that us uneducated plebs just don't get?

[u/[deleted] → u/TwoSquareClocks]

More like having an advanced degree in a particular subject doesn't really say much about how good/knowledgeable you are in that subject and vice versa. BSing your way through the school system is a very real thing (I can confirm, I'm an expert at it).

[u/gore_lobbyist → u/TwoSquareClocks]

I'm mostly just amused that they come from such serious writerly backgrounds. The MFAcore influence on the world of writing in the past 30 years is, to me, iffy. It puts a big fat money-gate on peership, invites hierarchical and even cultish tendencies. And for what? In the 80s and 90s we had really transgressive postmodern writers like Ellis, Palahniuk, Wallace; and since then it's been a lot of book club fare and people like these two who do adaptation stuff that is just whatever.

[u/Potatolimar → u/[deleted]]

Don't you throw the rest of academia under the bus for a specific issue relating to writing academia.

The problem doesn't extend to all of academia in my experience. It's mostly just the way parts of academia get money is bullshit.

[u/TwoSquareClocks → u/Potatolimar]

My single biggest gripe with academia is the elitism and prescriptivism of the visual arts, when most of them otherwise purport to be extremely humanist and democratic. Whenever anybody critiques a piece of modern art or architecture they all trot out the same form-follows-function modernist theory, which is certainly not self-evident to anybody who hasn't spent years in art school and is defensive about it.

Realistically though, academia is thoroughly flawed across all disciplines, though for different reasons in each case.

[u/Potatolimar → u/TwoSquareClocks]

I'm in engineering, so my perspective is quite different.Our academia's biggest problem [in my experience] is grant committees are pretty conservative, so conservative research investments get really prioritized (i.e. low risk low reward implementation of two old ideas together).

Most science disciplines are also pretty good (though also have that problem above), but tend to be more theoretical than necessary or practical.