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Post by Friendly Person :) on Apr 12, 2019 16:10:02 GMT -5
I don't think there's anyone alive who hasn't pondered when the 'best' time to die is. However, 31 is still tragically too soon barring any health issues. What's particularly tragic is that he died at neither the start nor end of his career. If someone dies early, they might have had all the potential in the world, but the fact remains that they didn't *do* anything. Potential unrealised is just nothing, and that's what you're left with. By contrast, if somebody dies right at the end of their career, leaving work unfinished, it is indeed tragic. As I've argued, endings are the most important part of something, so to leave your work without one is to leave it missing that integral piece. However, even if we ignore the possibility of someone else coming in and finishing it, you at least have a well-rounded body of work for people to enjoy, even if it lacks a proper conclusion.
Wowaka though? The guy debuted with vocaloid, which served as the first arc of his artistic career. Eventually, he felt that all the credit for his songs was going to 'Miku' rather than him. In other words, people didn't see 'him' in the music, just this non-existent entity that thrives on other people's labours. After quitting that he eventually started his own band, begenning a clear second arc. For a time he composed music, still trapped in the shadow of vocaloid. During a later performance it finally dawned that the people where there for *him* because *his* music resonated with them, and it moved him to tears. A few years later we got Unknown Mother Goose, and according to his own words, by reconciling with his past he felt ready to move on to a new stage in his life.
So what we've got, essentially, is a guy who just started the third arc of what would've been a life-long musical career. Far from a novice, but with still several more decades worth of growth. It would have been wonderful to continue listening as his music evolved further. Not only will that never happen, but a unique sound has been lost. I've not heard anyone sound like Wowaka, so it's not as though Hitorie could continue on, even in his absence. He proved himself capable of acting on his talent, but died before that talent was able to become fully realised.
RIP Wowaka: his passion for music and his passion for sharing that music made for an expression so genuine and heartfelt that I can't help but feel his loss on a personal level.
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Post by Friendly Person :) on Apr 12, 2019 17:57:20 GMT -5
Okay so, I'm doing this in a different post because it just seemed wrong to include it in the RIP Wowaka post.
So when everyone in the world agrees that the AI in Civ is pretty stupid, I start feeling pretty stupid for playing at Chieftan. Granted, I come from Civ 1 where the AI is absolute horse-sh*t (not clever, just a bunch of cheating pr*cks), but I decided I'd at least try a game of 5 on Prince. Hey, if I can at least play the game on Normal, then f*ck the haters, right? Also I decided to go for a science victory, sparing the world the wrath of Death Robots for a change.
Right of the bat I messed up by trading off all of my luxury resources, leaving my Civ unhappy. Fortunately I got these under control relatively quickly, but it's definitely necessary to keep a closer eye on happiness (I never had any trouble with it the rest of the game). About the time I got that sorted out the Incas got all butt-mad at me for spreading Glorious Shinto and declared war. Crazy thing is though, Egypt -- who had been denouncing me since round 5 for NO EFFING REASON -- ALSO declared war on me. Now I've got two full armies bearing down on my northern-most city, and I've got an army of approximately... f*cking nothing.
Wondiferous.
On the verge of rage-quitting, I decided to stick it out since I had enough money for knights. Buy a few knights per turn, move them around, and somehow I eventually managed to defeat the two AI armies with the city only taking roughly half health. From there I decided to take Egypt's city first, and after the massive headache of buying/moving/setting-up/NOT GETTING SNIPED enough catapults through the mountain, managed to take their most isolated city. When it finally fell they sued for peace, offering up another city to boot. Yay! (fun fact: Egypt spent the entire rest of the game at the bottom of the scoreboard)
Now to focus on the Incas. By now I had an army and momentum, and took two of their cities with minor headache. They had three left, but now I'm presented with a problem: I'm pissed at them for declaring war, but if I annihilate them the rest of the world will hate me, and this is still the era of freaking knights! So I offered them peace in exchange for one more city, reducing them down to a sh*tty empire of 2. (they also spent the rest of the game low on the score-board)
So cool, after an hour of enormous headache, the war is finally over. It only cost a ton of money, science, production, and now that I have 5 new cities, happiness. In other words, war is expensive and pisses everyone off: thanks for the life lessons Civ.
But hey, I rebuild. Get my economy back, and once I get the new cities under control start pumping out some science (fun fact: having a ton of cities makes certain wonders impossible, so that sucked hard). We move on into the age of rifles, when China -- with whom I had a declaration of friendship -- decided to... you guessed it: declare war. She moves all her troops in from the east, so I mobilise all my scattered troops that way ASAP. Combined with a few purchased units, I actually push her back pretty easily. The moment the last part of her offense fails, she offers me a city for peace.
Uh... okay?
By now a bunch of other civs are exploring the world, so lots of faces who start getting friendly and asking for friendship pacts. Sign a few of those, and all of a sudden China has flipped from hostile to friendly. Within 20 turns of starting a fuggin war on me, they literally offer me a friendship pact. Well, peace is better than not-peace for science, so friends it is! And thus Japan and China spent the rest of the game as BFFs despite China's f*cking pathetic attempts at invasion, which cost them an entire city.
About this time I’m getting flash-backs to Age of Empires 2, when my friend and I moved from easy to standard difficulty. We lost the first game because we were accustomed to AI that never attack, thus we never built walls. After that we learned to build a solid fortress and never lost again. In other words, it wasn’t really that we couldn’t do whatever we wanted, it’s that we just had to build walls first. Which, I was thinking, applied to Civ: the AI can declare war, but it’s so bad that with even a small army you can easily defend yourself.
Confident that Prince wasn’t actually that challenging, I continued on, getting ready to start building my space-shuttle. Little did I know, the final boss had yet to reveal itself.
Let me tell you a story about Greece, and the pants-sh*tting struggle to barely win the game.
Right from the start I noticed that Greece’s score was notably higher than the others. In Chieftain it only takes a couple dozen rounds to start pulling ahead, but on Prince it took a quite a bit longer – roughly the 2-300 mark. No problems there: having the early game be more even is fine. Thing is, Greece continued to have a score just barely below mine all the way throughout the game. No matter what I did, no matter how many wonders I built or science I mastered, they were right on my heels.
Here’s another thing I knew about Greece from my last game: they really love city states. If you have Greece in your game, expect them to be absolutely fierce at diplomacy. Even on Chieftain they owned the World Congress until the end of the game.
Knowing these two things, you can probably see how this turned out. We entered the information era, so the option to elect a world leader was in the cards. I didn’t think much of it because the AI will never vote for anyone other than themselves, and it takes 47 votes to win. This is a pretty huger number, so there’s nothing to worry about. Except, Greece had 46 delegates and 12 turns left.
That’s something to f*cking worry about.
Thing is, turns out even if you have satellites and can see city states, you can’t actually negotiate with them unless you’ve actually had a unit there. This left me with 3 Greek controlled city states to try and wrestle away. Which, thanks to the power of economy, I did! But then they would stage a coup and get them right back. For 12 turns it was a brutal back-and-forth of just desperately trying to keep them below that 47 line. Considering I was building my spaceship at the same time, it was the most intense 12 turns of Civ I’ve ever had.
In the end I narrowly denied Greece the world leadership, built my spaceship, and won the game. It was a satisfying victory, but I’m not too certain on how I feel about higher difficulties as a whole. Some civs were absolute garbage (Egypt and India), while Greece managed to somehow become a titan. If it weren’t for Greece, I’d say I feel comfortable moving up. As it is, I don’t know – that was some genuine stress.
I did start a game of Civ 6 on Prince (it’s telling of how much 6 is growing on me that I was thinking about it while playing 5), but I’m thinking I might just shelf that run for now. I’ve only played two complete games: one utter failure and one victory, so I miiiiiight not be familiar enough with 6 yet to try anything else...
... then again, what better way to learn, right?
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Post by Youngster Joey on Apr 12, 2019 22:06:21 GMT -5
I steadily went up the chain in Civ 6 and incremented a difficulty level every time I had a successful game or two on that level. I think the gradation was helpful; you don't need any kind of strategy at all on the lower levels, but as you slowly make things more difficult, you begin to learn the game better. Simply put, you won't be smashing it at Deity your first go at the game or even the fifth, no matter how smart you are, because you learn nuances over time that help you. I remember the AI giving me a hard time in lower difficulty levels, but now that I know the game better, I wouldn't give them a second thought.
I'm not able to go back down to lower difficulty levels now (I've been playing Immortal as of late). It's kinda dull, like playing on Mario Kart on 100cc when you normally play on 200cc? The mechanics are the same, but you feel like you're on an uncomfortably slow cruise control when you're easily capable of more.
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Post by Friendly Person :) on Apr 13, 2019 1:10:21 GMT -5
Well, after settling 5 cities in a stupidly short amount of time, the Aztecs declared war on me. It's turn 89, which sounds like a lot, but to me it feels like the game barely started.
So again, wondeferous...
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Post by Youngster Joey on Apr 13, 2019 10:54:08 GMT -5
Did you fall into the trap of rapid expansion while neglecting your army? Because I've done that. Never ends well. Civs pick on you if your standing army sucks.
It's so tempting to leap frog ahead in the beginning with a lot of cities, but going all out screws you over. Get so busy expanding, you end up with a bunch of cities and no way to protect them (and settling people everywhere guarantees you're going to piss at least somebody off). Also, although it's tempting, I've found it's generally a poor idea to make the capital the spawner of settlers, since usually the capital is your powerhouse (at least early game) and you cripple your ability to advance your civilization as a whole to move forward if you're 1) not building things in the capital to advance science/culture/whatever, and 2) you're actively not growing your capital's population, hurting its output even more. Defer that job to other cities if you can.
Gotta say though, when you spawn next to Scotland, spawn thecrapout of settlers. He whines and moans about you doing things, but he won't actually ever attack you. I settled with complete impunity all over the place last time he showed up, and he didn't say boo. The glorious net effect, of course, with all of my cities everywhere was that they exerted pressure on his civ, and slowly they defected one by one over to me. Then I attacked him when he had basically nothing left and kicked him out of the game. Sucker.
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Post by Friendly Person :) on Apr 13, 2019 12:11:02 GMT -5
Considering I only have 3 cities with 4 military units, I think the Aztecs are just assh*les.
-edit- After defeating their army of 4 units, I took one city and sued for peace. Admittedly I could've done more with the grievance I had against them, but they had special units that were more powerful than anything I could make, so I decided to let it drop early. Funny thing is, thanks to boosts, my science and culture actually took a massive leap forward due to making units I never would have, as well as getting into more combat than I ever would have. Also, without happiness there's no penalty to taking this new city.
Civ 6: war is profitable.
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Post by Friendly Person :) on Apr 13, 2019 14:39:51 GMT -5
Okay Derman, I'm gonna get super, duper, omega effing pretentious here. I finally convinced someone else to watch Burning. Honestly, I really enjoyed the film a lot more the second time. Like: a LOT more. To quote my friend, "that was a ton to take in at once". Here's the thing though: it got me thinking back to Murakami and 'what are the barns?'. Honestly, I'm coming to the conclusion that it's a bit like Schrodinger's Cat-esque quantum physics the Copenhagen interpretation. In other words, a system exists until observed, but once observed it collapses into a single result. Murakami's stories contain many elements which construct a system of multiple possibility, but of which no individual possibility is ever the 'correct' one. What I mean is, using Barn Burning, there are so many elements to the story which could hold meaning: the pantomimes, simultaniety, memory, morality, etc. However, it's clear that when you start trying to form a singular, cohesive answer, certain elements begin contradicting each other. If the barns are really women, how did he only find one 'a few days ago'? If the barns are morality, how come he burned it 'a few days later'? If the barns are barns, how come the MC didn't find it? What is meant by the line, 'so close you don't notice it'? I think you could turn Barn Burning over for a hundred years and not make sense of every last element.
Then again, I don't necessarily think that's the point. The purpose is not necessarily any individual story, but rather the system as a whole. It's a puzzle that can never be solved because there was never any singular solution to begin with. It's not so-much a matter of 'journey over destination', because the conclusions are important, but it's as if they're just another part of the system. Nor is it as simple as 'art is subjective' -- or to be more quaint, 'that's just your interpretation' -- because it's taking that subjectivity and weaving it into the narrative itself.
After watching Burning, my friend felt that the [barns] were referring to women and that he was her killer. I offered the counter-point that there existed no proof. 'But the cat responded to its name', he argued. 'A cat that he never saw once in two weeks despite being in a room the size of a closet,' I countered. 'The cat ate and pooped, so it clearly existed'. 'So why didn't he see it?'.
"So there may or may not be a cat, there may or may not be a well... Jesus what a movie".
This comment in particular stands out to me, because I realise that I don't really think that 'the rich guy killed her' is the wrong way to look at it. My argument has almost always been, 'that's too easy for a Murakami story', and so I've pressed further for deeper meaning. In rejecting that interpretation, I'm not rejecting the possibility of it being true, rather, I'm rejecting the idea that it's the only truth. Looking at it now, it feels like the magic of the story is in the numerous potentials it holds. That is to say:
--- Rich Guy Killed Her
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--- The Cat is Real | | | --- Rich Guy is Innocent
| The Well is Real | | --- Rich Guy Killed Her
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--- The Cat is Fake | --- Rich Guy is Innocent
--- Rich Guy Killed Her
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--- The Cat is Real | |
| --- Rich Guy is Innocent
| The Well is Fake
| | --- Rich Guy Killed Her | | --- The Cat is Fake | --- Rich Guy is Innocent
are all accurate interpretations. They all hold the potential to exist, and one only does exist by giving definition to certain elements of the story, which in turn collapses the system into a singular interpretation. Again, this is technically true of all fiction because art is subjective, hence you gradually accept and reject elements to form meaning. However, I think what separates Murakmi's stories is, as I said, the way it embraces all of these subjective interpretations as a part of the narrative. There's enough definition to argue the merit of certain interpretations, but never so much definition that any individual argument stands supreme.
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Post by Youngster Joey on Apr 14, 2019 1:04:02 GMT -5
So, premiere airs at 9 pm tomorrow, and I've done f**k all on the website, really. Doubtful I will figure out how to complete it by tomorrow. I've found a thousand other ways to procrastinate.
I think... I just really hate building the godd*mn thing. I mean, I like the idea of building a website. But building in Ruby on Rails has truly sucked out any enjoyment of it for me. I keep thinking about how I wish I had built it in Go after all, like I originally planned, and I'm seriously contemplating just chucking the entire thing out once I publish it and rewriting it from scratch. I've gotten grudgingly used to Rails' magical ways, but it inspires no love. I can't remember the last time I was so bored by programming. I guess because it doesn't really feel like I am, as much as I'm checking off some boxes on Rails' checklist.
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Post by Friendly Person :) on Apr 14, 2019 1:24:11 GMT -5
Here I was under the impression that you HAD already done that.
If it's a passion project, why not? I've axed massive amounts of things in writing because I felt like they were a dead end, and usually once you get over the sting, you realise it was the right call.
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Post by Youngster Joey on Apr 14, 2019 9:26:21 GMT -5
Yeah, well, I promised I'd have it live for the Game of Thrones premiere. By the time I realized I hated it, there wasn't enough time to pivot.
But yeah. Probably will. I wanted something to post publicly on GitHub--all of my side projects have been work-related to date, so obviously I can't share them externally--and I feel like presenting a Rails project is like presenting a colored in coloring book and yelling about what I "drew." Wouldn't feel the same way with something else, and I'd have more fun doing it.
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Post by Friendly Person :) on Apr 14, 2019 11:15:21 GMT -5
Meh, deadlines are like any other rule: f*ck 'em.
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Derman
Oracle Knight
I still don't have a knife tag on my golden birth knife
Posts: 194
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Post by Derman on Apr 14, 2019 11:54:06 GMT -5
Who is this pretentious snob who randomly started posting in this thread?
What I like about the short story the most is it feels like a puzzle. It's funny you mention how the entire meaning is subjective, because the first 'theme' I could think of while reading it was subjectivity in general. I knew it wanted to say *something* about subjectivity. I didn't think the whole point of the story would be to make it open to interpretation where none of the theories seem to fit perfectly, but it makes sense.
Was the unsolvable puzzle made on purpose? Or is there an actual intended meaning by Murakami that we just aren't getting? After your post I'm leaning towards the former, I want to give Murakami the credit. Either way, it is one of my favorite short stories. It just works so well as a short story.
The film sounds interesting.Reading the plot summary it sounds like it's very different from the short story, so it'd be nice to see what they have added and what they kept from the source material.
Sometimes with programming throwing away your work is really hard. Even if there isn't that many lines, when you've spent a lot of time getting there throwing it all away feels like you've just wasted time. For me, it means that I'll have a hard time writing something unless I have a clear vision about how I'm going to do it. If doing something means I'll have to write spaghetti to glue it together, I'll probably not write it because I just feel really bad about replacing it later. I think I've gotten better at it, after writingcrappy code for myself and realizing that sometimes you got to nuke everything, and rewriting it is always faster.
If you want to nuke everything so you can start again with another language, that's going to sting a lot more. Especially if most of your time this far has been spent learning Ruby on Rails, and if the knowledge doesn't transfer to Go very well.
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Post by Youngster Joey on Apr 14, 2019 21:25:28 GMT -5
Jesus Christ, was the first episode of Game of Thrones stupid.
They took the worst plot point from season 7--arguably the worst in the show, period--and made the dumbest f**king scene with it. What?
The worst part is that plot point is going to continue.
Why why why why why why.
There is NO reason for this plot point to exist. NONE. It's so f**king dumb. Ughh. They doubled down on the stupid in the worst possible way.
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Post by Friendly Person :) on Apr 14, 2019 22:13:50 GMT -5
Uh, I dunno about Derman, but idgaf about spoilers, so if you wanna be specific, fire away.
I'm on the cusp of winning that Prince game of Civ 6. I'm doing a space victory again because I kinda panicked, but all in all I have learned *so* much about how the game works. At first it was a massive headache, and at several points I almost (read: did) rage quit. Now, at the end, I have a confession...
...I think Civ 6 is winning me over. Between the Prince game of 5 and the Prince game of 6, there's so much more *to* 6. Be it loyalty, ages, boosts, districts, improvements, diplomacy, resource management, power, and so on. I still think they're very different games, and it's a matter of preference. 5 is a solid af strategy game, but once you add in the expansions 6 has so many dynamic elements that seem to make each game feel much more unique. I'm no guru of strategy games nor Civ 5/6, but it just seems like 6 has more depth and variation even if tall strats aren't as viable.
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Post by Youngster Joey on Apr 14, 2019 22:51:27 GMT -5
I'm glad to hear it ;] I've got nothing against 5--I enjoy it just fine--but I really do enjoy 6. Most other games I tire of after a while, and if they have any longevity to them, I'll cycle through periods of being totally obsessed vs. unable to fathom why on earth I ever liked the game at all. I always enjoy the time I spent with Civ and have never burnt out. I don't play it constantly, but it's more a function of recognizing I could play it constantly easily and should therefore be diligent about when I choose to play. It's a legitimate sleep schedule destroyer. Anyway, this is half-baked thoughts, but here's some initial thoughts. Was originally written from the perspective you've actually watched it, but tried to patch it over somewhat (I didn't try very hard to bridge the gaps, though): This episode was really dumb.
So, the end of the seventh season ends with an absurd bomb. Jon Snow is really a Targaryen! He must be told! says Bran. Uh… cool, who cares? There’s a giant evil undead army marching towards the Wall. What exactly would telling Jon do? Stop what he’s doing, turn right around to King’s Landing and take the throne from Cersei? Who cares?? This would have been a major plot point a couple of seasons ago, but things are way past the point of right to the throne mattering.
So, that was stupid. Arguably the worst plot twist the show has had, period. Unfortunately, the show doubled down on the dumb with an incredibly contrived scene.
Sam finds out Daenerys murdered his father and brother, right? (More on her later). He’s devastated and runs into Bran outside, who tells him Sam must deliver the news to Jon. (Cue again, who cares, and why does he need to be told right now?). So Sam takes no breather from his grief, goes down and tells Jon, Jon tells him tough cookies, and then Sam reminds him Jon’s acted justly as a king because he’s always been a king. Really? Believable segue. Then Sam flips instantly from being upset about his dad/brother to being adamant that Daenerys isn’t the queen. The transition was honestly extremely awkward, and totally distracted from/ruined the tone of the conversation topics before and after. You don’t just glide over into a separate topic like that after two minutes when you’re devastated your dad died. And again, why. does. it. matter. about. lineage! Don’t you all have more important sh*t to worry about? What does Sam want Jon to do, pick a fistfight with Daenerys right now over who’s royalty? I guess I could kind of see the urgency behind telling someone “hey man stop boning your aunt”, but that particular detail doesn’t seem to bug anyone much.
Even if everyone wasn’t about to get murdered by a giant undead army…. why is it an asset that Jon is a Targaryen anyway? It’s not like being a Targaryen was an asset in any way for basically the entire show. Hell, no one in Westeros now even likes Daenerys because of it. Granted, she grew up outside of Westeros, but—Targaryens aren’t well-liked, and this society’s petty enough about who’s-related-to-who that I could see a lot of people turning on Jon in a hurry if they found out his true heritage. So…. not sure him knowing is an asset? At worst, it’s distracting as they try to prepare to defend against the White Walkers. There is really nothing strategic in this reveal.
Alas, given how poorly Jon took the news, the plot point’s going to be with us for a while. Jon’s dumb.
Now onto Daenerys.
Keeping with the theme of non-strategic decisions, the scene with Sam demonstrated again just how contemptible Daenerys is. She meets him for the first time, introduced by Ser Jorah, who Sam saved. It's an initially nice conversation about how Daenerys is grateful for what he's done, will make sure he's rewarded appropriately when she sits on the Iron Throne, blah dee blah dee blah, is there anything she can do for him? Then Sam admits he needs to be pardoned because he stole books from the Citadel (understandable), and that he stole a sword from his father's house. Don't know why this is pardon-level or something Daenerys would care about. Anyway, Daenerys casually and cooly tells him, oh, btw, you Randall Tarly's son? My dragons roasted him, since he refused to bend the knee. Well, at least my brother's alive, Sam tries to say, beginning to tear up. Nope, burned up your bro too, says Daenerys. Awkward silence. Sam excuses himself, crying.
Da fuq.
It’s probably true it had to come out sooner or later that she roasted Sam’s family alive, but… the news was so coldly delivered. Sam hadn’t done her anything wrong; if anything, he’s done right by her. She knew damn well she had killed his family, and just casually drops it when he mentions his father in the middle of a nice conversation. It was a pure power play, I think—asserting her authority and making it clear to Sam she doesn’t tolerate disrespect. But Sam has been nothing but an asset, so why? While he would have been devastated receiving the news no matter what, the callous, arrogant way she dropped the news cut him far deeper. There was nothing to gain out of that exchange except the flexing of Daenerys’s own ego.
The conversation, ironically, is very Cersei-like. I like Cersei, but here’s the thing—Cersei’s a female dog, and everyone recognizes it. Daenerys, everyone swoons at her feet. They seem like two sides of the same coin to me, except the show really wants me to like Dany. I refuse; she’s genuinely not a nice person. There’s a difference between being authoritative (e.g., Jon), and being authoritarian; she decidedly falls in the latter camp. There are countless instances where she didn’t have to assert her authority as strongly as she did, but she did anyway, just to make a point. But she’s benevolent!
Daenerys’s arrogance came out in full ugly force with her interactions with Sansa. Sansa doesn't trust her, Daenerys obviously takes umbrage, and it's a bunch of stupid petty sniping that feels catty at worst and pointless at best. Maybe she didn’t get the warmest reception—I’d be put out, too—but Daenerys just gets indignant and rants about how she’s their queen and needs to be respected. Take it down a notch, princess.
I’m especially sorry to see the snarking play out because it’s reminiscent of the overly contrived Sansa/Arya snittiness last season. Sansa has grown immensely as a character, and the cattiness seems incongruent with the thoughtful, dignified woman she blossomed into. It feels less like a real regression in character and more simply inappropriately tacked on because the show-writers wanted tension.
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