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A day after watching S7E7 I scrawled out a long, overambitious and scatterbrained mountain of half-hatched and stupid reflections. Over the next however long, I'll try to break up my thoughts into relatively bite-sized (or at least snack-sized), saner parts. I've been dicking around on reddit the couple weeks since, arguing here and there about Thrones. I wish reddit wasn't the main conversation hub but there the conversation be, churning on and on in the land of minimal individual identity, low comment shelf life and voting-induced splitting.
The Bittersweet vs Tragic Pseudodebate
Some in the reddit Thronesphere have suggested that because George RR Martin said the series will have a "bittersweet" ending, one of more main beloved characters (Jon, Daenerys) is likely to die. The popular counterargument? REEEEE BITTERSWEET DOESN'T MEAN TRAGIC REEEEEEEE
Except it does. Tragedy is the bitter part of bittersweetness. The sweetness is the meaningful thing you build using the tragedy or in spite of the tragedy. An ending can't be bittersweet unless it's also tragic. TVTropes confirms: "Somewhere between the Happily Ever After and the Downer Ending, the Bittersweet Ending happens when victory came at a harsh price, when, for whatever reason, the heroes cannot fully enjoy the reward of their actions, when some irrevocable loss has happened during the course of the events, and nothing will ever be the same again."
TVTropes' fourth example of a bittersweet ending: "When the victory is only achieved at the sacrifice of people dear to the heroes (if not the heroes themselves)."
It's a non-debate. Death of a beloved character is an element of the bittersweet ending. Calling it 'bittersweet' absolutely does not preclude the death of one or more beloved characters. This should be especially obvious in Thrones.
But this point was largely ignored when I first made it, and when I made it again, so I made a top-level post. There's some branching conversation there that I might blab about later.
My deadpool money's on Dany (and Jaime). The self-inserting shipper tweens in /r/freefolk don't like that very much, as demonstrated by consistent downvoting, yet most mysteriously refrain from explaining why. And this is why voting sucks: if you can't explain your position, it has no value, and so you have no place influencing the conversation in any way. When voting affects comment visibility and makes an implicit appleal to popularity, as is constant on reddit, voting is cheating.
The Bittersweet vs Tragic Pseudodebate
Some in the reddit Thronesphere have suggested that because George RR Martin said the series will have a "bittersweet" ending, one of more main beloved characters (Jon, Daenerys) is likely to die. The popular counterargument? REEEEE BITTERSWEET DOESN'T MEAN TRAGIC REEEEEEEE
Except it does. Tragedy is the bitter part of bittersweetness. The sweetness is the meaningful thing you build using the tragedy or in spite of the tragedy. An ending can't be bittersweet unless it's also tragic. TVTropes confirms: "Somewhere between the Happily Ever After and the Downer Ending, the Bittersweet Ending happens when victory came at a harsh price, when, for whatever reason, the heroes cannot fully enjoy the reward of their actions, when some irrevocable loss has happened during the course of the events, and nothing will ever be the same again."
TVTropes' fourth example of a bittersweet ending: "When the victory is only achieved at the sacrifice of people dear to the heroes (if not the heroes themselves)."
It's a non-debate. Death of a beloved character is an element of the bittersweet ending. Calling it 'bittersweet' absolutely does not preclude the death of one or more beloved characters. This should be especially obvious in Thrones.
But this point was largely ignored when I first made it, and when I made it again, so I made a top-level post. There's some branching conversation there that I might blab about later.
My deadpool money's on Dany (and Jaime). The self-inserting shipper tweens in /r/freefolk don't like that very much, as demonstrated by consistent downvoting, yet most mysteriously refrain from explaining why. And this is why voting sucks: if you can't explain your position, it has no value, and so you have no place influencing the conversation in any way. When voting affects comment visibility and makes an implicit appleal to popularity, as is constant on reddit, voting is cheating.
