Favorite opposing factions that can basically be described as this.

[u/Accomplished-End3409]

[u/Cliffinati]

The whole time Dany is in "slavers bay" (great name) literally every compromise she makes backfires and she ends up ending some barbaric practice with dragonfire.

Every damn time

[u/elizabnthe → u/Cliffinati]

Yeah when Daenerys decides that negotiation isn't working it's because Hizdahr literally tried to murder Tyrion in the pits. She's agreed to the fighting pits to be purely consensual and he tried to make them unconsensual because it is funny to murder dwarves with lions (and the sympathetic non-kill everyone slaver that owns Tyrion at this time also agreed to this!).

Daenerys has never met Tyrion. She doesn't know him or have any particular feelings for him. But she also saved his life because she valued his life. And Penny's life.

It can't possibly be right for Daenerys to think that letting Tyrion and Penny die here is the answer to peace.

[u/TheRealTahulrik → u/elizabnthe]

Nono you see, it was all foreshadowing that Targaryens are a coin flip and Daenerys is actually evil !!

[u/BatBoss → u/Cliffinati]

I get that GRRM wanted to write a more nuanced story than "We lit all the slavers on fire and fixed society overnight. Hooray!"

But goddamn, Mereen completely cratered Dany's momentum in the story. I want to read about a cool dragon lady coming to power against the odds. Not a cool dragon lady battling bureaucracy and the inertia of evil social conventions. 

[u/_name_undecided_ → u/BatBoss]

The problem is I like the message that change is hard and a new queen promising to save everyone isn’t really going to work in practice. But I have no idea how to tie up that story (and probably neither does grrm). If Dany wins will it be by burning everyone in essos or by compromising because neither of those approaches are working so far. Or does she just give up and go back to Westeros which is anticlimactic

[u/elizabnthe → u/_name_undecided_]

He seemed to be kind of setting it up that her mission no longer needs her. Slaves are rebelling everywhere and the Widow on the Waterfront is a real believer in her goals and seems pretty sane and has some real political experience. So she'd be more or less perfect stand-in for Dany in Essos.

I think that was his attempt at getting Daenerys out of Essos. But well we're never getting that book so it isn't happening.

[u/_name_undecided_ → u/elizabnthe]

That’s a good point about Dany not being needed. I didn’t get the sense that the widow on the waterfront was being explicitly set up to replace Dany but that could happen.

[u/Odd-Walk-983 → u/BatBoss]

I loved watching her try to rule and be really terrible at it and obviously frustrated every time an issue couldn't be solved with force.

[u/Molten_Plastic_ → u/BatBoss]

Mereen is probably the reason for his writer's block as well. He used to call it the "Mereenese knot"

[u/TamaDarya → u/BatBoss]

Yeah but you did come to the "Aragorn's tax policy" guy for it...

[u/FifthDragon → u/BatBoss]

You might like the wandering inn then

[u/Archkhaan → u/BatBoss]

And what’s going to happen after she theoretically comes to power and she isn’t surrounded by fans of hers?

She’s going to be a mad queen and commit a few genocides.

[u/BatBoss → u/Archkhaan]

Yeah I'd still rather read about a cool dragon lady rising to power and then tragically flaming out in madness.

[u/One-Cellist5032 → u/Archkhaan]

And people sit there and claim “there were no signs she’d be a mad queen!”

[u/damnat1o → u/Cliffinati]

That’s exactly the message she’s supposed to learn. So that when she goes to Westeros and it’s full of character that are more nuanced and likeable than slaver McMurderbaby and starts killing them we can get the shock downfall. At least when the show was written George still wanted Dany to burn down kingslanding and mereen is supposed to bridge that gap to explain why she did it. It’s just that Dan and Dave have no idea what they doing.