Re: Dany - Villain? Savior? Something else?
Posted: Wed Aug 02, 2017 8:03 pm
She's a savior to some (the slaves) and a villain to others (the masters). Depends on POV.
Truth. But relativism at its worst. Sry :/
Raeslewolhn wrote: ↑Thu Aug 03, 2017 2:05 amTruth. But relativism at its worst. Sry :/
Thanks for your input, I usually bring up relativism myself too!
Utilitarian? I choose tens of millions of shaved slaves on planetos over the hundreds of masters.
Is virtue your concern? Dany has many, and with restraint is more virtuous than the masters, in many virtues but also morals.
Humanist? Def anti slavery.
Protestant? Do your own fucking labor.
Catholic? Slavery is immoral. Esp chattle and permanent.
Jewish? Def kill the masters.
Muslim? The dragons r actually animals, not banned mass murder weapons. Just peace is important. Dany, with restraint, is a good thing.
Vedic in any way? That's their karma. Kill the masters if that's their fate, or at least don't work in any way to keep them in power if you're nonviolent.
Anarchist? Fuck the queen but yay daenaerys.
Stoic? Fuck the abusive masters.
Democratic above all else and in your morals? It's a step up.
Pirate? Get it girl.
Nihilist? Fuck it all.
*Polytheisms tend to have varying subsets of morality and ethics aren't locked into the beliefs themselves.
I'd say, and please pose to me any philosophy or religion unmentioned here, it's widely enough considered, even one could say objectively through rigorous analysis over thousands of years, that slavery is worth fighting against, and at the very least not something to fight to keep. It's worth shedding some blood over to most ppl and the masters aren't worth any blood.
First of all, I think we're miscommunicating and it's my bad!! I'm using villain interchangeably with evil, which I shouldn't have done! Villain-hero dichotomy inherently carries subjectivity. Good-Evil can be subjective or objective(though getting the objective answer is muchhhhh harder!) I'm sorry for messing up this thread that way!!!!!!Meg22 wrote: ↑Thu Aug 03, 2017 9:05 pmRelativism is just relativism. I don't see why pointing out that some would have different POVs is relativism at its worst.
If Dany helps destroy the WWs she will be a villain to them. But to the living, she'll be a savior. But what if the majority of people who benefit dictates the morality of it and the WWs and their zombies outnumber the living? Will Dany be a villian because she saves the minority (the living) at the expense of the majority (the zombies)?
Great post, I love how you framed them both.FierceAsAWolverine wrote: ↑Tue Aug 15, 2017 12:55 pmAt this point, Dany bears some interesting resemblances to Chingis Khan (you all probably know him as Genghis...). He has a terrible reputation in the West, but the Mongols revere him and when you start to look into his policies, he had some pretty enlightened ideas.
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You also covered these points well, thoroughly laid out. I agree, many of the viewpoints about Dany, across the range, are a result of our own culture exposure and dispositions. The ethics of violence in that world are very different, or many reasons. As are the gender dynamics.I don't understand why people insist on labeling Dany as entitled or seeing her as a less satisfying female character than the more traditional female characters. Yes, even Arya and Brienne are more traditional in the sense that girls-with-swords have been done many times in fantasy - but women who are unrepentant conquerors have not. I find Dany interesting for exactly this reason. She's doing what the real world's most successful conqueror did when he established a new world order in Eurasia. She's giving the conquered a choice, and she's taking them at their word about their intentions towards her. And you have to wonder how long it would take any of the other characters in this story to deploy dragons if they had them - can you imagine Tywin with dragons? Cersei? Olenna? Ellaria? Robert? Any of them would use them, maybe some with greater restraint than others, but soldiers and civilians alike would die in dragon flames. Jon is probably the only character who would not use them in battle against other humans; he'd just fly north to roast the White Walkers. So the ire directed at Dany from some quarters seems to hold her to a unique and frankly unrealistic standard. She's doing what conquerors do. Her early life experiences taught her that brutality is inevitable and that if you're going to survive and thrive, you have to be pretty demanding and assertive. She struggles to reconcile that lived reality with her own impulses towards being kinder and striving to create a less brutal world. But she's up against the pragmatic understanding that you can't make new rules without first playing by the rules of the system you want to break. It reads as realistic to me.
I don't love or idolize Dany, but I root for her, maybe as much because of this moral ambiguity as in spite of it.