Thread by @cvaldary

Ok here’s why #GameofThrones is so brilliant and why I’m happy the writers finally got their act together. Spoilers ahead:

1. People were angry at the writers for getting through the fight with the night king so quickly, but thematically, that makes perfect sense. This episode made that clear. The fight with the night king is actually the least interesting fight in the series;

2. Fighting death is *far less interesting* than the conflicts that affect the living. Death has no emotion, no loyalties, no aspects of humanness, no anxieties, no frustrations, no vulnerabilities. While it makes for good screentime, it actually is comparatively boring.

3. Now we know Arya must kill Daenerys — which is precisely what none of us were expecting in the prophecy about “blue eyes.” We have also seen the transformation of Arya’s character from one obsessed with death to one who knows she must sometimes kill in order to preserve life.

4. This is a total transformation of Arya’s character. She must see one more face of death — one that is not romantic but brutal, vengeful, evil — from the hand not of her enemy but of her (more or less) friend. This paradox is transformational as all paradoxes must be.

5. The set up for GOT is also important not for fiction but for us as an audience; it speaks to @jordanbpeterson ‘s point argued tirelessly that evil is not some amorphous thing that exists in the world just waiting to be dismantled. It exists in the heart of every human being.

6. It exists in you; it exists in me. It existed in Cersei & it exists now in Daenerys. While we can sit in retrospect after seeing what Dany has done and say “that was horrible,” hind sight is 20/20. We have no idea what we would do in her situation. You think you do. You don’t.

7. Picture your best friend murdered. Your significant other not loving you. Fear all around you. Angels have become tyrants in far less high-stakes situation. Think you’re an angel? Think you believe in “social justice?” In the name of liberation, you too can become a tyrant.

8. This is the dance of the human condition. @GameofThrones should not be just a cool tv show to sit around to watch with your friends. It should be a source material you use to think deeply and contemplate your own lives and how you navigate your world.

9. This quote from Nietzsche is apt:

Whoever fights monsters should see...that in the process he does not become a monster. If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

This from @kendricklamar:

“I got power, poison, pain, & joy inside my dna.”

10. If you are claiming it is “unrealistic” for Daenerys to descend into madness, then you do not know her just as you do not know yourself.

11. This is the outplay of fear vs love and what it does to the hearts of men. The greatest writers from Shakespeare to Baldwin wrote about it. We knew in the scene where Daenerys said it herself what would happen immediately after. Take that choice to heart.

12.This was also a study in power and in what is required to be a king/queen. If you are a slave to your passions, it doesn’t matter how much material firepower you have. You are in a prison of your own making. This is something many in our current justice movements must learn.

13. I look forward to next week’s final chapter. I think Arya will have a much greater role to play then we suspect. Her transformation is one I’m rooting for because to me, it has been the most redemptive and the most satisfying.

14. As a final aside, I do this for a living. I started a company that takes source material from pop culture and uses it to teach sectors of society insights on the human condition and how to get along with each other. Follow @enchanttheory to learn more.

/fin

*correction: green eyes