Game of Thrones 8.05 "The Bells" 5/12/19 [Show discussion]

[Sam_Stone]

@Sauron

I think you’re confusing the actions of the Dothraki horde with those of Dany, who specifically requested the women who were captured – including Mirri Maz Duur – be placed under her authority to PREVENT them from being raped and murdered.

And yet, she passed cages filled with child slaves, and did nothing. And she watched peasants being murdered and their belongings taken, and did nothing. She loved the man who caused it all. The women were in the process of being raped, and I suspect that touched too much of a nerve for her. But it doesn’t matter - tyrants have always have had the capacity to be merciful and kind when it suited them, and I’m sure they believed it at the time. Caring for people right in front of you is a good way to tell yourself that you are a good person while people you can’t see are being slaughtered by your actions.

My son had never seen Game of Thrones, so I’m now watching it with him. It’s fun watching again with someone who’s never seen the show. Anyway, today’s episode was the one where Daeneris is almost poisoned, and Khal Drogo responds by promising her the seven kingdoms. The scene is on Youtube, so you can see Daeneris’ face as Khal Drogo says:

@Khal Drogo

I will take my khalasar west to where the world ends and ride wooden horses across the black salt sea as no khal has done before.

I will kill the men in iron suits and tear down their stone houses.

I will rape their women, take their children as slaves and bring their broken gods back to Vaes Dothrak.

And how does our child-loving Khaleesi respond to Khal Drogo’s promise to rape Westerosi women and enslave Westerosi children? Well, it seemed to me that she was looking at him with a combination of pride, love, and lust. She didn’t look horrified, she didn’t later say, “No, that’s not what I want! I want to rule through love.” Nope. If Khal Drogo had lived, he would have taken his horde across the sea and raped and murdered until she was on the throne. And she was totally okay with that. And she still loved the guy deeply, knowing that he was one of the biggest monsters on the planet, being the biggest, baddest leader of a culture that exists ONLY to murder men, rape women, and enslave children.

There’s no Doubt that Daeneris was capable of compassion. She’s not a sociopath. I’m sure it truly hurt her to see the body of the boy her dragon killed. I’m sure her reaction when seeing those women being raped was honest. But tyrants through history have been able to compartmentalize and separate their feelings from ‘what must be done’. Hell, they even showed us that King Robert, who used to be just as moral and honorable as Ned, was broken down by the years of compromises and hard decisions to the point where he could easily order the death of a girl he’d never met and who was currently no threat to him and probably never would be. Just in case. But that doesn’t mean he couldn’t have true feelings for his family, or that he would coldly murder someone in his presence.

In the same way, soldiers have been able to go to war and commit unspeakable acts from a peacetime perspective, including bombing buildings where they know children are, or bombing entire cities full of civilians. Then they can come back to civilian life and risk their life to save a puppy. Humans are capable of compartmentalizing these things - we probably had to learn to do that to stay alive.

[Sam_Stone]

@Johnny_L.A

Has anyone heard the idea that Arya is already dead?

The only thing that made me go ‘hmm’ temporarily is that the blood they put on Masie William’s face seemed to intentionally evoke the cutline for swapping a face. She had a line of blood across her forehead, which then went down the side of her face and curled under her chin. For a second I thought we were going to see that face come off and someone else be under it. But I think that was either accidental or it was just another thing to throw us off a bit.

Riding away on a pale horse is also an indication of death, if not for her, then for someone else. But yeah, if it turned out that she was dead and they find her body in the rubble, people will look back at that scene and say, “Oh, of course. That horse didn’t exist - this was her being taken off to wherever the dead go.”

But I think she’s still alive.

[Johnny_L.A]

@Sam_Stone

The only thing that made me go ‘hmm’ temporarily is that the blood they put on Masie William’s face seemed to intentionally evoke the cutline for swapping a face. She had a line of blood across her forehead, which then went down the side of her face and curled under her chin. For a second I thought we were going to see that face come off and someone else be under it. But I think that was either accidental or it was just another thing to throw us off a bit.

Riding away on a pale horse is also an indication of death, if not for her, then for someone else. But yeah, if it turned out that she was dead and they find her body in the rubble, people will look back at that scene and say, “Oh, of course. That horse didn’t exist - this was her being taken off to wherever the dead go.”

The idea is that she rides off on a pale horse. Some people think that the horse is the one ridden by the leader of the Golden Company (or something like that), and the producers made a point of the horse being killed. The little girl Arya tries to save is carrying a white toy horse. Arya is repeatedly shown being trampled by the stampeding crowd.

@Sam_Stone

But I think she’s still alive.

As TroutMan said, it would be a pointless reveal. I’d be disappointed if she were dead, as I can’t see how her death serves a purpose (aside from GRRM being all like, ‘Ha-ha! People die for no reason! Too bad, so sad!’).

[Colibri]

@Johnny_L.A

The idea is that she rides off on a pale horse. Some people think that the horse is the one ridden by the leader of the Golden Company (or something like that), and the producers made a point of the horse being killed. The little girl Arya tries to save is carrying a white toy horse. Arya is repeatedly shown being trampled by the stampeding crowd.

I can’t think of another case in which this show has done that kind of a fake-out. In fact, I don’t think they’ve shown anyone appearing as a spirit or ghost after death. I don’t think they’ll start now. I also can’t see it serving any kind of plot point now.

[Unreconstructed_Man]

@Colibri

I can’t think of another case in which this show has done that kind of a fake-out. In fact, I don’t think they’ve shown anyone appearing as a spirit or ghost after death. I don’t think they’ll start now. I also can’t see it serving any kind of plot point now.

It’d also be a terribly anti-climactic way to kill off arguably the show’s most popular character.

[Acsenray]

@Sauron

• Dragon breath should either melt stone (Harrenhal) or cause it to explode (King’s Landing), but it shouldn’t do both

@Fear_Itself

I don’t understand the problem here. Different kinds of stone react differently to dragon fire. Harrenhal stone melts, Kings Landing stone explodes. They don’t look the same, why would they react the same?

@Quercus_alba

It might be more a quality of the type(s) of stone involved–Harrenhall could have been more metallic or crystalline perhaps, King’s Landing more porous, allowing rapid vaporization of water with explosive effect. For that matter, they were different dragons, too.

Yeah, I was going to respond “sez who”? Dragons are fantasy creatures. Dragon’s breath is a fantasy substance. Who says that if you show dragon’s breath doing X at one time then it mustn’t be able to do Y at another time. No one in the context of the fiction made such a rule.

We know that at least once dragon’s breath melted part of a castle, and that at least once it blew up much of a fortified city. And once the breath of a zombie dragon tore down a magic wall of ice.

That’s not enough of a sample to draw any conclusions about the limits of dragon’s breath or to label that an inconsistency.

[Colibri]

Really, the reason Drogon’s breath exploded the stone rather than melting it in this case was that this was a lot easier to show with practical effects. Considering the amount of destruction called for, CGI of melting stone would have been cool but prohibitively expensive. This way they could just blow stuff up and film it in the normal way. Sure you can fanwank reasons for differences between the walls of Harrenhal and King’s Landing but that’s the reason.

[Sam_Stone]

@Unreconstructed_Man

It’d also be a terribly anti-climactic way to kill off arguably the show’s most popular character.

I agree - except for the possible scenario that George R.R. Martin intended for her to die in the rubble, and the showrunners couldn’t just accept that and added a hero’s mystical death scene as fan service.

I don’t think she’s dead, but if she is I think you can fanwank that scene as being acceptable because Arya definitely had given herself to the house of black and white and in so doing gained magical powers or the attention of the God of Death, and so she gets a supernatural ending. In a fantasy show, I’m okay with that. The line of blood around her face could even be used to show that now that she was dead, she was about to be faceless or something. Or now that the magic had worn off, the blood line that marks where the faces go has now appeared.

But no, I don’t think she’s dead. I think she has to show up in this week’s episode, even if it’s just a failed attempt to get close to Daeneris and she remains in the background. But if someone comes to John and says, “We found Arya’s body in the rubble” I wouldn’t be terribly surprised.

[Acsenray]

Nitpick: Daenerys

[Johnny_L.A]

@Acsenray

Nitpick: Daenerys

A question about that: They pronounce her name ‘dan-erris’. Shouldn’t it be ‘deen-erris’, like in Aesop?

[silenus]

Not in High Valyrian!

[duality72]

@Unreconstructed_Man

It’d also be a terribly anti-climactic way to kill off arguably the show’s most popular character.

There’s also the possibility that that was Arya’s farewell scene and she won’t appear in the next episode. Then the audience can draw whatever conclusion they like.

Still kind of lame, but after the Ghost and Sam farewell…

[SlackerInc]

@Bijou_Drains

some viewers believe what they want and it does not matter what is in the show. For example some people are 100% sure Tony Soprano

You really should have spoiler boxed that. In response to what you said:

[Moderator Note]

I edited out the spoiler in the other post, as well as the spoiler in yours.

Colibri

[SlackerInc]

@DrCube

My recollection is that the Unsullied were required to choose a different insulting name (like “Maggot” or “Puke”) out of a hat each morning, and that was their name for the day.

So everyone in the company has to learn everyone else’s names afresh each day?

@Ashtura

The hunger strike was to avoid being poisoned.

That’s an interesting theory, which meshes with mine upthread. But how long can she keep that up? And what about water?

[Colibri]

@SlackerInc

That’s an interesting theory, which meshes with mine upthread. But how long can she keep that up? And what about water?

I had the impression her lack of appetite was real, but coincidentally thwarted Varys. If she was worried about that, she could have had someone of unquestioned loyalty like one of the Unsullied prepare her food, or use some other strategy. And the first person she accused of betraying her to Tyrion was Jon, and poison would never have been Jon’s way.

[DrCube]

@SlackerInc

So everyone in the company has to learn everyone else’s names afresh each day?

I believe I was mistaken about that. Grey Worm says something like “the name I had on the day I was taken as a boy is cursed, but this name is lucky, because it’s the name I had the day Daenerys Stormborn freed me”. So maybe I overextrapolated. A quick search doesn’t show me anything from that episode that says they literally got assigned different names each day though.

[nightshadea]

theres this MSN

is this last season that bad?

[jsc1953]

I have a feeling of vague dissatisfaction about the major confrontations between characters, and I think it’s because of: fight choreography. Or rather, the lack of it. We could have had thrilling duels between swordsmen – not necessarily Errol Flynn/Princess Bride level, given the use of broadswords…but instead we just get grappling and grunting and eye gouging.

A missed opportunity.

btw…according to the “Revealed” video, Jamie vs Euron was “Dane Bowl”, since both actors are Danish.

[DigitalC]

@nightshadea

theres this MSN

is this last season that bad?

No, season 8 is just the culmination of a lot of bad choices leading up to this. There is very little they could change to make it better. There are things they could change to make people less angry, like the way they chose to show the battle for winterfell or the death or rhaegal, but the overall story would stay much the same.

[nightshadea]

note i started another thread other the petition so this wouldn’t get hijacked …