GiuliettaMasina

I had to Google as I was unfamiliar w/Lynch, and one of the first things to pop up was this video. 😂😂😂😂😂😂 The press conference you mention here starts at around 26 seconds in.

I'll be pleasantly surprised if we aren't :).

This is not what happened on screen. From the moment June stifles his protest, her hand remains over his mouth until she climaxes. When she does remove her hand, he lies flat and expressionless. The camera then cuts to June, and the scene ends on her. The next scene, is him looking happy to June to her face, but changing expressions when her back turns. At this exact moment the voice-over discusses a woman committing rape. Yes, but some victims do not fight at all. Even ones that theoretically could. Especially ones being ones assaulted by people they know and love (the most common type of rape). Especially ones being assaulted by people who have some type of power of them. Freezing is a perfectly natural and very common response to an attack. People can provide zero physical resistance and still be raped. I absolutely believe there is a chance that June could have reacted with violence to a more assertive protest from Luke. June's default response is to act out, often violently, in ways that make little sense and that she may even regret later. I do think it's more likely that she'd return to her room, sulk, and wake up the next day intent on destroying his life. And considering his current life consists of sharing living expenses with June's best friend, raising and clearly bonding with June's child to whom he has no biological claim, and (it seems) making a living by raising money for refugees using June's story, this is a threat she could easily follow through with. If Luke didn't have time to weigh the odds of provoking June's ire in time to physically stop June before she finished, I'm not going to blame him. I don't know if Luke will consider it rape (honestly, I expect that he won't for lots of reasons), but I really don't think he'll feel happy or a "little" worried about June's actions. If my partner who I hadn't seen in years, because they had been kidnapped and repeatedly raped, decided unilaterally that our first sexual encounter should involve them silencing my dissent to a sexual act? Well, I probably wouldn't get the law involved, but I'd certainly be a "lot" worried. I'll refer again to the camera focusing on Luke's changing expression just as June's voice-over says "she'll rape you...". If this was the show's way of communicating that Luke was "happy to get laid" that's some real shoddy directorial/editorial decision-making.

We can agree to disagree over this fictional incident. We can even disagree that the word "rape" should be used to describe this type of sexual assault culturally. It's really only in living memory that its definition has started to evolve from "forcible" to "lack of (informed) consent." But, it's not true that most rapes, even if we just include rapes of women by men, are perpetrated via overwhelming physical force. People can be coerced into sex for all types of reasons. It happened on this show in "Milk." What's-his-name-rebel was able to almost coerce sex out of June and actually coerce sex out of Janine even after explicitly saying he not would not use violence. Not only did he not stop June from leaving after she refused, he didn't even kick the pair out (the actual threat he did use) right away. Sometimes the resources/power a person has is enough of a threat that violence is not required. I don't think it's an accident that this episode showcased all the various ways in which June has more power than the average refugee. And that's without even delving into the racial aspects--June and Luke are U.S.ians, they have been acculturated to a specific cultural dynamic re: (even consensual sex) between white women and Black men.

^^ Agreed. The word "wait" may mean "stop, for now," but you still gotta stop to wait. June did not. There are degrees of non-consensual acts of sex, but they're still non-consensual acts of sex. That's rape as far as I'm concerned. Of course, victims are free to define their own experiences and how they want react to them (granted they hurt no others), so if Luke forgives June or choses to see it a different light, that's his prerogative.

I agree with those that are of the opinion that both the Royals and MT came off poorly, but that the Royals, as the hosts, were definitely the bigger assholes here. Not to defend MT too much (shudder), but I'd also point out that the opportunity to hunt the stag was unexpected even to the Royals. They canceled everything they had planned the day before the Thatchers arrived because they couldn't resist the opportunity to hunt a stag that large. So (in the show universe at least), it's quite possible the Thatchers didn't prepare for such an intense outdoor activity because no such activity was planned in advance. Maybe they were expecting more along the lines of "sitting in the audience of local athletic events" than "stalking an animal in the mud for 4+ hours."

I'm pretty sure that the ex and daughters mentioned it in one of their interviews. Something along the lines of Carole wanted to keep the animals as pets, but Don saw it as a business.

That story was real specific, which is why I give it some credence. Either way, given the way most people view sex work, I don't blame her for this lie.

See, I read that more as the line HE fed her. Seems straight out of a manipulator's handbook. Now, does Carole (still) believe in this so-called "meet-cute"? I'm with you on no. But, she may have at some point, and I don't fault her her lie on this point. On other points, though...

I'm with those who aren't convinced Carole did it. I mean, I wouldn't be shocked if she did, but I'd need a lot more evidence. If she was a sex worker when they met (I think her origin story is fiction, too), that says a lot worse about Don than it does about her. One thing I am convinced of is that Don was no different than Doc or Joe. Someone who preyed on vulnerable people and animals and got a kick out of flouting reasonable laws. And, like them, he not only had plenty of enemies, he also took plenty of stupid risks.

In classical theatre the hero is brought down by their own hubris. Dany has done almost nothing but follow her advisors this season. If they'd given the death of Rhaegal any meaning this might look more a like a Greek tragedy (e.g. she needed two dragons to win the Battle of Kings Landing, and resorted to scorched earth techniques when she realizes there's no other way to win). Nietzsche revers ancient Greek tragedy and disliked naturalist theatre. He also believed a chorus was an essential element of tragedy. The purpose of the chorus is to tell us how to feel; tragedy is not about intellectual stimulation, but about catharsis. Wanting to "trick" your audience is neither Greek nor Nietzschean. Brecht's epic theatre was inspired by a (mis)interpretation of East Asian dramaturgy and also deliberately eschewed realism. In a common example of Brechtian staging, actors remain visible to the audience even when they are "off-stage" in the action. Revealing the mechanics of theater is the point--to manipulate you while simultaneously revealing the sources of manipulation. It is an inherently political theatre. The closest I can think of to a Brecthian episode of television is Dead Freight on Breaking Bad, which was a more or less constructed to expose the audience to its reaction to and enjoyment of a very particular trope. There is also no foreshadowing in Brecht's epic theatre; he believed each moment, scene, etc should stand on its own.

And I'm telling you--I did know better. I never believed Daenarys was a hero, so you can save the lecture. Maybe some of us even liked because she was a gray character? I enjoyed Littlefinger too, and not because I couldn't see what he was. I have three separate degrees in literature (one of them in dramatic literature) and have been performing professionally since middle-school. I understand how to read a scene, thank you. They did not have Danny make enough poor choices FOR ME to believe her turn from grey to straight-up black. She went street from street methodically killing children, that is not grey--as was pointed out by the show ITSELF through its decision to focus on those people. I never believed Dany was a hero, but the SHOW most certainly did. Many people think the showrunners justified the turn; that's cool, but please stop saying that those who didn't don't understand storytelling. This is not a small portion of bitter stans, there are lots of people, including professionals, who found this twist unearned. C'mon. They murdered a child. If you're chiding people for calling Dany a hero... From https://gameofthrones.fandom.com/wiki/Sack_of_Astapor : "Dovaogēdys! Āeksia ossēnātās, menti ossēnātās, qilōni pilos lue vale tolvie ossēnātās, yn riñe dōre ōdrikātās. Urnet luo buzdaro tolvio belma pryjātās! (Unsullied! Slay the masters, slay the soldiers, slay every man who holds a whip, but harm no child. Strike the chains off of every slave you see!)" ―Daenerys Targaryen orders the Unsullied to purge Astapor of slavers. Edit: I love Margery and Olenna, too, but they ain't heroes.

It was telegraphed quite early that Dany would be another in a long line of white saviors. I don't blame anyone for peacing out on her journey or finding her storyline distasteful. But the showrunners can't have their cake and eat it too. They are the ones who wrote and produced the scenes where the Unsullied choose to follow Danny, the Mhysa scene, and Misssandei and Grey Worm being loyal to Dany until the end. If they wanted to be the writers who problematized this far too insidious trope, they needed to show us how the white savior looked from the eyes of the "saved." They gave Missandei and Grey Worm a romance and screen time; in their most intimate moments it would be natural for them to admit to more nuanced feelings towards Dany. This is not what the writers did. Instead, they just filmed the white savior story and are now trying to say I should have known better. Beloveds, I followed your show despite its shitty racial politics not because I was blind to them. They could have written a more nuanced story, but they didn't. I'm not giving them credit now for some kind of deep discourse on the interplay of trauma and power.

This. I don't even mind that some people see Dany's acts as justified by the writing; plenty of people have disliked her quest for power all along. If they read the clues differently than I, hey, that's "all in the game" of interpreting fiction. But if an equally large part of the audience feels the dots weren't connected adequately, I take umbrage at the idea that somehow we're all just naive dolts who fell for the clever ruses of the same brilliant minds that us "bad pussy." That's a failure of writing.

I heard a phrase today that sums up a good deal of my dissatisfaction: "Foreshadowing is not the same thing as character development." It's been pretty clear that Dany's character arc has centered around the question of "will she do what is easy or will she do what is right?" The problem is the show spent 7 seasons showing her chose what is right again and again, often at the expense of her quest for power. If they wanted us to be suspicious of her, they could have simply had her chose easy more often. No, I'm not going to condemn her for acting ruthlessly against her enemies or pursuing loveless marriage pacts for power. Not in this show, I'm not. The closest she came to killing an "innocent" was burning Kraznys. The writers that want me to view this act as "bad" are the same writers that used Arya killing Meryn Trant as a stepping stone in her journey back to Westeros. If we're using the reasoning given for why Dany killing Kraznys was actually "bad," we should view these kills as the same. Trant never did anything to Arya personally. Following sovereign orders, beating women, and raping underage girls are all accepted practices in Westeros (though if you're a rich woman they'll have to marry you to get the right to do the latter two). Will we see the newly "human" Arya dealing with the moral implications of this murder in the finale? More importantly and more indicative of the shoddy plotting that led us here, though, is why D&D thought they needed to come up with a conceit to get us to view Dany as the hero in the first place and why they don't understand surprising your audience and selling them a bill of goods are different things. If their goal was to write a story about someone allowing their worst instincts to take over, why didn't they just write that? Were they afraid viewers wouldn't go for it? The television landscape of the past two decades is littered with tales of anti-heroes and morally gray protagonists--I think the audience has more than proved it's more than capable of enjoying and obsessing over tales that are about terrible people from start to finish. Did they think having the hero become the villain was unique, novel, or clever? If so, they might want to watch Star Wars before they write the next chapters of it. If their goal was to write a realistic rumination on the corrupting evil of power or an exploration of the darker nature of the tropes we enjoy, they should have written the last few seasons a lot more like Breaking Bad/Mad Men in the Middle Ages and a lot less like an action/adventure movie. Even we consider the first four seasons as distinct in terms of tone, everyone's still too pretty, too clean, and too charming by far; some are too old and some are too young depending on what's more appealing tv. And considering not one of the main characters playing the game is advocating for anything other than rule by aristocracy, it seems they should be set for bitter endings as well. Absolute power and all. If the show ends with Dany securing the throne because in this universe, no matter how much we don't want it to be true, might really does make right; if the other mains have to leave Westeros or live under reign of the mad queen due to choices they made along the way? Now that'll actually make me hate this twist a lot less. That would be an actual gritty, realistic ending. I suspect, however, that we'll be seeing heroic Jon, clever Sansa/Tyrion being "good" autocrats, and noble Arya using her powers for good, because "realistic" is not the story GOT has been telling for a while now. Edited to add: I love Jon and Sansa, like Tyrion, and care for Arya, so this is not whinging that their characters are getting better treatment. The only one whose happy ending I wouldn't be able to enjoy at this point is Jon's which is another reason I hate this so much.

I’d try to add to your point by citing paragon-of-virtue Ned Stark executing a deserter in the first episode, but apparently it should have been obvious to me that I was supposed to view Dany’s actions differently because a) he swung the sword himself (never mind that a dragon can’t be swung and that women not being given combat training was previously a season long plot on this very show), and b) beheading is painless (never mind that it’s not or that we’ve been shown onscreen that dragon fire can cause instant death).

Ah...I see one point I can clear up. I don't think Dany, the Dothraki, or the Unsullied are heroes. I don't think any of the main characters on this show is a hero; they're medieval warlords, they're all trash. I was never invested in Dany's white savoir quest, nor was I ever under any delusion she would get a happy ending. It seemed clear that only one of her or Jon was going to make it, and it was always going to be Jon. I was perfectly okay with it--my 2nd fav characters are Jon and Sansa who will likely get endings that lean more towards sweet than bitter, so it's not like I'm crushed cause "my guy" didn't win. My others guys will, and, I never thought she'd win to begin it. My problem is entirely in the execution.

Seeking medieval leadership based on medieval blood rules is supposed to be contemptible on a show selling itself a medieval political thriller? The history the show is drawing from is rife with kings who grew up outside the country they eventually ruled--I'm not buying this as evidence of Dany's being particularly bad. And until the last episode Dany hadn't slaughtered any innocents either, which is my point of contention in the first place. Dany being able to do more damage is beside the point. The question is: would she cause that damage to begin with. You may not think a few more episodes would have made it more believable and that's fine, but the implications flying around that Dany fans aren't capable of forming rational opinions about this show (or apparently literature in general) because they're blinded by their fandom is simply not fair. Just because we didn't come to the same conclusion as others doesn't mean we don't know how to interpret a tv show. Especially when we're talking about writers who can't even be bothered to learn how to pronounce the names of the main characters--they are most assuredly not masters of tight plotting. Dany destroying Kings Landing in actual battle? Not a stretch. Dany mowing down non-combatants street by street? I'm calling it a reach, and not because I'm invested in her quest. She most assuredly deserves to die at this point. I doubt she'll even get to the point of going after someone else, as Jon and the others already have no choice but to stop her.

It's not that Dany fans "missed" moments, it's that we interpreted them differently. And, if we were supposed to interpret the ruthlessness with which Dany treated her enemies as foreshadowing of her treatment of innocents who had done nothing to her, then Sansa (dogs), Arya (pies), and Tyrion (toilet) better get portrayed as monsters next episode, or I'm not buying it.

Interesting. The entire Essos crew (Greyworm, Missandei, Qhono included) is impossibly attractive. I'm shallow, so I can't guarantee that this didn't play a part in my love for them.

Yep, I know; I'm agreeing with you there. My original post was responding to the idea that Dany only fought the white walkers because she HAD to. Based on what we saw--no, she did not have to fight the Army of the Dead. Both the NK and our heroes were using the battle between the armies as distraction from the real battle: that between Bran and the Night King. I still see no reason why Dany's armies in particular needed to be there; the entire episode could have played entirely the same with just the Northern armies if only Arya figured out her purpose earlier. Edit: And if they had thought a little harder, they mightn't have needed any army at all.

I guess my point was less about the faces and more about the assassin skills. They spent a whole night anticipating the NK's attack--ample time for her to use them. Melisandre couldn't have showed up a couple hours earlier and put that flea in Arya's ear before the battle started? I'm not convinced that if she had peaced out after Bran told her Viseryon was undead, they couldn't have found another way to kill the NK. I'm pretty raw so I'm rankling at the idea that Dany not deserving ANY credit for doing the right thing and fighting the White Walkers. I'm not buying that she only ever acted in self-interest.

Arya is a trained assassin with a bag full of faces; they needn't have had a battle at all. See: Arya running unseen past 50 white walkers to attack the NK. Why didn't she just do that the night before?

The NK was a common enemy in the sense that he hated humanity equally, but after The Long Night, I’m not sure it’s certain that had Danny not fought with Jon she would have had to deal with the NK anyway. From what I saw, the NK and his army were invulnerable in battle, dragons or not. Even if he didn’t have a dragon he would have won; he had powers that rendered them ineffective as surveillance, transportation, and fire starters. Dany never stood a chance. Perhaps it’s true that her armies were a necessary distraction, but perhaps not. The elements needed to kill the NK were Arya, Bran, Theon, Melisandre, the Hound, Beric, and maybe Jon. Based on the what the show has told me about the characters’ talents, hearts, and minds, it seems quite possible they would have dispatched of the NK without Dany’s help.

I'm love her, but Danny was written as a white savior. I'm not sure how the Starks are any better, though. The show made a big to do over the Northerners giving Greyworm and Missandei the stink eye and had Greyworm saying there was no place for them in Westeros. And, it turns out the Northerners were right not to trust them! The show developed two characters of color and their purpose turned out to be getting fridged and slaughtering innocents--in service to Danny's plot line nonetheless. As a black woman this feels just as shitty to me as a white savior plot, in some ways worse, because the racial message is now "brown people are savages who can't help but give in to their savage ways."