User:The Dragon Demands

 QUIS CUSTODIET IPSOS CUSTODES

 ASK NOT THE SPARROW HOW THE DRAGON SOARS. The Dragon does not ask, it demands.

If you Wake The Dragon, the Dragon Demands.

I am the Dragon. You are privy to a great Becoming, but you recognize nothing. To me, you are a slug in the sun. You are an ant in the afterbirth. It is your nature to do one thing correctly: before me, you rightly tremble. But Fear is not what you owe me. You owe me Awe!

"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations."
 * -- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, Chapter 12

"I have become a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls."
 * -- Job 30:29

In case you people have forgotten, this wiki operates under the same rules as the rest of them. Vandals are not the law. I am the Law.

In running a wiki, there are many moments for compassion and tender action. There are also many moments for ruthless action...What is often called "ruthless". What may, in many circumstances, be only clarity: seeing clearly what there is to be done and doing it: directly, quickly, awake, looking at it.

As for my critics, I am unconcerned. I am beyond their timid, lying morality. And so I am beyond caring.

Heads. Spikes. Walls.
''The heads. You're looking at the heads. I, uh – sometimes he goes too far, you know – - he's the first one to admit it!''


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"Well, you see...things get confused out there: power, ideals, the old morality, practical necessity. But out there with these natives it must be a temptation to be God. Because there's a conflict in every human heart, between the rational and the irrational, between good and evil. And good does not always triumph. Sometimes the dark side overcomes what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature. Every man has got a breaking point. You and I have one. He has reached his. And very obviously, he has gone insane...He's out there operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct. And his methods have become...unsound."

Warning: anyone will instantly earn a permanent ban and join the other heads mounted on the wall if they ever mock my great friend Michael Hunt. I will not have my friend Mike ridiculed by common wiki-editors.

Superior Ability Breeds Superior Ambition
"Superior ability breeds superior ambition" - Star Trek, episode "Space Seed"

"There are still those in the Seven Kingdoms who call me 'usurper'..."
 * Appointed as an Administrator of Game of Thrones Wiki - February 26th, 2013.
 * Ranked up to #1 contributor on Game of Thrones Wiki, January 16th, 2014.
 * First contributor to surpass 25,000 edits - July 21st, 2014.

- King Robert Baratheon to Eddard Stark

"I will be the new Number One!!" -- Mello, Death Note
 * Made one of three Wiki-Bureaucrats ("Triachs") on Game of Thrones Wiki. - October 24th, 2014. In the process I assumed the Mantle of Responsibility.  Some day, in due time, it will be seized from me in turn, by one more capable.  This might happen ten years from now or tomorrow - but not today.
 * First contributor to surpass 30,000 edits - January 31st, 2015.
 * First contributor to surpass 40,000 edits - September 8th, 2015.
 * First contributor to surpass 50,000 edits - November 20th, 2016.

"There are few who deny, at what I do I am The Best. For my talents are renowned far and wide..."

"There is difference between a grub

and a butterfly; yet your butterfly was a grub.

This Martius is grown from man to Dragon:

he has wings; he is more than a creeping thing."
 * -- Coriolanus, Act V, Scene IV

I've been asked if I'm in the Game of Thrones business, or the Wiki business. The answer is neither: I'm in the empire business.

Titles
My self-appointed and self-congratulatory titles include:

Wiki Administrator and Wiki Bureaucrat, Triarch of Game of Thrones Wiki, Mailed Fist of the Wiki, Prince of Cats, Ace of Swords, Magister Artium, Duke of New York, and Self-Described Fool.

Quotes
"I am a trafficker of information, I know everything I can." -- The Merovingian, The Matrix Reloaded

"To whom much has been given, much will be demanded."
 * --Luke 12:48

"Never ask for what ought to be offered."
 * --Winter's Bone

"Daeron at first met resistance from his uncle, his councillors, and many great lords when he first proposed to 'complete the Conquest' by bringing Dorne into the realm at last. His lords reminded him that, unlike the Conqueror and his sisters, he had no more dragons fit for war. To this Daeron famously responded: 'You have a dragon. He stands before you'."
 * --The World of Ice & Fire

"Over the centuries, House Targaryen has produced both great men and monsters. Prince Daemon was both. In his day there was not a man so admired, so beloved, and so reviled in all Westeros. He was made of light and darkness in equal parts. To some he was a hero, to others the blackest of villains. No true understanding of that most tragic bloodletting known as the Dance of the Dragons is possible without a consideration of the crucial role played before and during the conflict by this rogue prince."
 * --Archmaester Gyldayn

"In five years, we'll all either be working for him, or dead by his hand." -- 30 Rock

"Influence is largely a matter of patience, I've found...Step by step, one distasteful task after another, I made my way...Influence grows like a weed. I tended mine patiently."

- Varys

"You don't 'seize' power, you accumulate it, quietly."
 * --Grand Nagus Zek, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

"Four thousand throats may be cut in a single night by one running man."
 * --old Klingon proverb

"I made my fortune by being tougher than the toughies and smarter than the smarties!"
 * -- Scrooge McDuck

"I took the Canal Zone, and let Congress debate; and while the debate goes on, the canal does also."
 * -- Theodore Roosevelt

"Lots of ways to help people. Sometimes heal patients; sometimes execute dangerous people. Either way helps."
 * -- Mordin, Mass Effect 2

"Stand in the ashes of a trillion dead souls, and ask the ghosts if honor matters. The silence is your answer."
 * -- Javik, the last surviving Prothean. Mass Effect 3

"You better wake up. The world you live in is just a sugar-coated topping. There is another world beneath it - the real world. And if you want to survive it, you better LEARN. TO PULL. THE TRIGGER!"
 * -- Blade (1998)

"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right."
 * -- Salvor Hardin, Foundation

"You disapprove? Well, too bad! We're in this for the species, boys and girls. It's simple numbers. They have more. And every day I have to make decisions that send hundreds of people like you to their deaths."
 * -- Starship Troopers

"Fear me, but follow! If you will not serve in combat, then you will serve on the firing line!"
 * -- Unknown Imperial Guard Commissar, 412th Cadian Regiment, as he shot one of his retreating soldiers through the head, to rally his remaining troops into a counter-charge. Minutes later he and his entire platoon were wiped out in a vital rear-guard action, which ultimately ensured victory in the Lorn V campaign.

"Hereby it is manifest, that during the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called War; and such a war as is of every man against every man."
 * -- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

"Every man dies, not every man really lives." -- Leeroy Jenkins

"I have it on good authority that Inspector Clouseau is anything but an imbecile. That he only plays the fool."
 * --Return of the Pink Panther

"Blake understood. Treated it like a joke, but he understood. He saw the cracks in society, saw the little men in masks trying to hold it together...he saw the true face of the twentieth century and chose to become a reflection of it, a walking parody of it. No one else saw the joke. That's why he was lonely."
 * -- Rorschach, Watchmen

This wiki is my private, self-inflicted Hell. Rolling boulders up a hill only to see them fall down the hill again, time after time for eternity. Yet here I may reign secure, and in my choice: better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.

"I want to go with you...I can't. I do belong here. These bad people...are what I'm good at. Out-talking them, out-thinking them... it's what I am. And I like it. I like it more than anything I've ever done."

"I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it, and I was really – I was alive." - Breaking Bad

"I...I never wanted this for you. I work my whole life, I don't apologize, to take care of my family. And I refused to be a fool dancing on the strings held by all of those big shots. I don't apologize, that's my life. But I thought that...when it was your time, that you would be the one to hold the strings...There wasn't enough time...there just wasn't enough time..."

"But who here would ever understand, that the Pumpkin King with the skeleton grin, would tire of his crown? If they only understood: he'd give it all up if he only could..."

'I am a monster...that dreamt'' he was a man...and loved it. But now the dream is over. And the Dragon is awake...'''

On TV Adaptation
"If you read comics, if you read DC comics, there’s Earth 1, there’s Earth 2, and the way I reconcile it, as a fan of the books — as one of the biggest fans of the books — there’s Westeros 1 and Westeros 2, and they’re alternate universes; some things are the same, some things are different."
 * --Bryan Cogman


 * -->"They wanted to finish two whole books in one season! It's...madness!  That's, looking at it now when we've got the whole season - I can only say it's madness, complete and utter madness...The decision to combine those two books into one season, and they're not small books either - they didn't have to make that decision.  If they felt that this size is not optimal for storytelling, they really should have looked at another season.


 * Making the decision to try and get it all into one season...if they didn't realize that this wasn't optimal, if they thought what they ultimately produced in Season 5, that this was a great way to get through the material...well then they really are clueless, and I have no faith in them.


 * So no matter how you look at it, either they decided to sacrifice the story because they were absolutely set on doing this in one season...or, they didn't even understand that they were sacrificing the story. I don't know which is worse."
 * --Elio and Linda, owners of Westeros.org, discussing the decision to combine both the fourth and fifth novel into Season 5.

"I defeated your uncle Victarion and his Iron Fleet off Fair Isle, the first time your father crowned himself. I held Storm's End against the power of the Reach for a year, and took Dragonstone from the Targaryens. I smashed Mance Rayder at the Wall, though he had twenty times my numbers. Tell me, turncloak, what "battles" has the Bastard of Bolton ever won that I should fear him?"

- Stannis Baratheon

"I was completely, completely fooled, just had no idea what was going to happen - and then went back and re-read, and all the clues were there. So what's really impressive about what George did, it wasn't just that he wrote something surprising, because anyone can surprise you:  you can write that the queen's head explodes, and no one's going to see that coming.  But if it's not properly set up, it's just a cheat."
 * --David Benioff, regarding the Red Wedding, "The Rains of Castamere" behind the scenes featurette

"Creatively it made sense to us, because we wanted it to happen."
 * --David Benioff, openly using circular logic to explain creative decisions in Season 5

"We reconceived the role to better show off the actor's talents".
 * --David Benioff, Season 5 Blu-ray commentary, explaining why they totally rewrote Ellaria Sand from scratch, and in fact rewrote the entire Dorne subplot to center around her: they wanted to how off Indira Varma's acting talents.

"I continue to be astonished that showrunners Benioff and Weiss still apparently believe that their tendency to ramp up the sex, violence, and - especially - sexual violence of George R.R. Martin’s source material is a strength rather than the defining weakness of their adaptation."
 * --Christopher Orr, The Atlantic, review of Season 5's "Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken"

"I think Sansa and Theon are both strong players in this story, I think the subplot, you know they both have huge parts in it, I don't consider this her being shoehorned into Theon's redemption story...Of course Sansa has a strong storyarc in Season 5: look at how strong Sophie Turner's acting is in this rape scene."
 * --Actual quote by the TV writers from the Season 5 Blu-ray commentary

"It occurred to me: the soldiers are paid to fight; the rebels aren't. "What does that tell you?" "They can win."
 * --The Godfather, Part II

Why I, as a diehard book-fan, worked to become an Administrator on a wiki focused on the TV adaptation:


 * Lisa: "Dad, for the last time, please don't lower yourself to the level of the mob!"
 * Homer: "Lisa, maybe if I'm part of that mob, I can help steer it in wise directions. Now where's my giant foam cowboy hat and airhorn?"
 * --The Simpsons, Season 4, "Whacking Day"

"No man has ever died from bending his knee. He who will not kneel stays dead, stiff legs and all.  He who kneels may rise again, blade in hand."

On TV-first viewers who genuinely believe that Emilia Clarke plays a character named "Khaleesi", don't recognize the name "Daenerys", only watch for the nudity, can't remember events that happened one season ago, don't know who Rhaegar Targaryen, Tysha, or Kyle Condon are...and yet continue to insist that they are the "equals" of the book-first readers, who treat the TV series as a serious drama and literary adaptation of George R.R. Martin's works:


 * "Now, as I live, I will. My nobler friends,
 * I crave their pardons:
 * For the mutable, rank-scented many, let them
 * regard me, as I do not flatter, and
 * therein behold themselves: I say again,
 * In soothing them, we nourish against our senate
 * the cockle of rebellion, insolence, sedition,
 * which we ourselves have ploughed for, sowed,
 * and scattered,
 * By mingling them with us - the honoured number!
 * Who lack not virtue, no, nor power, but that
 * which we have given to BEGGARS!!"


 * -- Coriolanus, Act III, Scene I

"TV fans think they know as much as the Book fans because they're 'all caught up now'? Heh.  So adorable.  Tell me about the Andal Invasion, Dance of the Dragons, and all five Blackfyre Rebellions - then we'll talk."
 * --Honest Trailers, for Game of Thrones Seasons 4-5

 QUIS CUSTODIET IPSOS CUSTODES

"To every man upon this earth Death cometh soon or late. And how can man die better Than facing fearful odds, For the ashes of his fathers, And the temples of his Gods.

Benioff and Weiss's writing
As discerned from the Blu-ray commentaries, Benioff and Weiss follow two closely linked and overlapping writing principles:


 * 1 - If the actor is giving a strong emotive performance, the character is a "strong player" in the story...even if the fictional character is being marginalized and tortured. They think in terms of actors and screentime as "giving them something to do", even when it makes no sense for the fictional story.  They literally said that Theon was "a strong player" in Season 5 - verbatim, "both Theon and Sansa are strong players in Season 5."


 * 2 - They're not exactly "awards-baiting" either. It's worse than that:  just as the line between actor and character dissolved for them, so too did the line between actor and writer.  They didn't read the Jeyne Poole rape scene in the novels and decide "if Sophie Turner plays a rape scene as Sansa she's going to win an Emmy!" -- someone cynical but self-aware about what they're doing wouldn't make the oblivious comments they've made about it.  Rather, they genuinely believe that when an actor is giving a strong emotive performance, it makes the scene "strong"...and therefore, it must have had "strong writing"...even in dialogue-less scenes which make no plot sense whatsoever.

Their entire writing pattern in the entire TV series can be summed up as "how do we maneuver the actors into a position in which they can give a heavy non-verbal acting performance?" -- Thus moving Sophie Turner into a position in which her character Sansa gets raped resulted in a "strongly acted scene"...and thus in their minds, Sansa was "strong" in it, and therefore, the overall story and narrative was "strongly written". They actually say all of this in the Season 5 DVD commentary. They are surrounded by Yes Men, have become delusional, and genuinely have such a break with reality that they think Sansa had a "strong season", even in Season 6, if Sophie Turner the acteress had "strong" non-verbal acting scenes, even as Sansa, the fictional character just plain didn't do much at all.

How do this pair of drunks still have jobs?

The Wiki Remembers
The Wiki remembers, Benioff and Weiss.

The Wiki remembers Tysha.

The Wiki remembers how you rewrote the Dorne subplot to, by your own admission, show off Indira Varma's acting talents.

The Wiki remembers that you mentioned multiple Martell children in Season 2.

The Wiki remembers Arianne Martell.

The Wiki remembers contradictory statements you've made about the Timeline.

The Wiki remembers that you invented a firstborn son with Cersei who died...purely so you could show off Lena Headey's acting ability in the second episode - then ignored this after Season 1.

The Wiki remembers how you claimed "we always said seven seasons!" in Season 4...to cover yourselves when contract negotiations were going against you, even though you'd publicly stated there would be eight seasons after you split the third novel into two seasons.

The Wiki remembers when you changed Jeyne Westerling into Talisa, basically because you wanted Richard Madden to give a great love story performance as Robb Stark - then gave Talisa awful dialogue.

The Wiki remembers how you gutted Catelyn Stark of all her political agency and made her cry about Jon Snow of all people.

The Wiki remembers how you accidentally made a consensual sex scene look like rape with Jaime and Cersei, because (as Pedro Pascal confirmed) you were too busy playing iPhone games with naked female extras to spend time reviewing the final edit of the footage. And the Wiki remembers that both actors later publicly contradicted you and said it was never intended as a rape scene.

The Wiki remembers Harrold Hardyng and Dark Sansa's rise to political power in the Vale.

The Wiki remembers Larra Blackmont and Jonelle Cerwyn.

The Wiki remembers that Stannis was written into a black comedy death scene defeated by Ramsay, even though he's the best military commander in Westeros and likely to win the Battle of Ice. We remember "twenty good men"?

The Wiki remembers wasting four minutes on a Tyrion beetle speech.

The Wiki remembers how you foolishly admitted in the Blu-ray commentaries that you had Ramsay rape Sansa because you wanted to show off the actress's talents along with Alfie Allen.

The Wiki remembers that Littlefinger would never be stupid enough to send off Sansa in a marriage alliance without researching who he was sending her to first.

The Wiki remembers the Cinnamon Wind and Summer Islanders.

The Wiki remembers a time when you actually had female staff writers.

The Wiki remembers Loras Tyrell on Dragonstone.

The Wiki remembers Aimee Richardson.

The Wiki remembers Doran Martell and Alexander Siddig.

The Wiki remembers that you made Yara Greyjoy circumnavigate the entire continent of Westeros to attack the Dreadfort, only to be chased away by dogs.

The Wiki remembers how you turned Ramsay Snow into a Villain Sue because you like the actor's performance.

The Wiki remembers every time you set up that Ramsay's lack of foresight, such as publicly flaying Lord Cerwyn, would eventually lead to his downfall, but this had no payoff. The Wiki remembers that the true moral of the Red Wedding and its years-long aftermath is that the Starks' enemies thought they outsmarted them by cheating and that honorable conduct never prospers...but that their enemies' lack of honor meant that their own subordinates would betray them. The Wiki remembers that you even had Jon Snow point out right before their final battle that Ramsay Bolton's men only serve him out of fear and will flee when he dies or is losing...only to then literally show all of his men fighting to the death when they retake Winterfell.

The Wiki remembers "creatively it made sense to us, because we wanted it to happen".

The Wiki remembers that Daenerys Targaryen is not fireproof in normal conditions, you just wanted to split one epic speech into two separate events.

The Wiki remembers "Orys the First" and "Maegor the Third" do not exist.

The Wiki remembers that it's called "The Dance of the Dragons", not "Dance of Dragons".

The Wiki remembers the Sand Snakes Water Gardens "fight scene".

The Wiki remembers that you didn't give Rickon Stark a single speaking line in Season 6.

The Wiki remembers that you said Ellaria Sand has five daughters in one episode, then four daughters in another.

The Wiki remembers that it is physically impossible for the Westerlands to simply "run out of gold", and even if they did, economics doesn't work like that for limited precious resources.

The Wiki remembers that you could have just used the cannibal ice-river clans themselves instead of merging them with the Thenns, most advanced of the wildlings.

The Wiki remembers that every invented scene with Olly is time that could have been spent showing Loras mourning Renly, as Cogman had intended.

The Wiki remembers that you can't just hedge your bets and claim Brynden Tully died off-screen in case you decide you have time to bring him back later.

The Wiki remembers that Miguel Sapochnik publicly admitted that the fight scenes in your original script for both "Hardhome" and "Battle of the Bastards" were unfilmable - and that any coherent military strategy appearing in the final version was his idea.

The Wiki remembers that you had Brienne of Tarth spend the second half of Season 5 staring at a window waiting for a candle.

The Wiki remembers that Alliser Thorne had no coherent reason to turn against Jon for letting wildlings through the Wall...after Jon had already let all the wildlings through the Wall, and killing him wouldn't stop this anymore, when you could have made it due to Ramsay Bolton as in the books.

The Wiki remembers that Jon Snow and the wildlings left Hardhome by ship, then in the next episode show up on the north side of the Wall, in front of Castle Black in the middle of the continent away from the shore, with no explanation.

The Wiki remembers that you fundamentally didn't have Sansa do anything in the narrative in Seasons 5 or 6 - killing a defeated man already tied to a chair in a prison cell, with permission of her brother, does not count as "narrative agency", much less "a strong feminist storyline".

The Wiki remembers that the title of the monarch sitting the Iron Throne either includes "of the Rhoynar" or it doesn't - but it can't just flip flop between the two versions from one episode to the next.

The Wiki remembers Sexposition, and that Neil Marshall confirmed that one of the two of you said, word for word, "I represent the perv part of the audience" and ordered him to add more random female nudity to his episode.

The Wiki remembers how important the full version of the Septon Meribald speech is.

The Wiki remembers that you're not on speaking terms with George R.R. Martin anymore.

The Wiki remembers that Benioff got so blind drunk at the Season 2 wrap party that he shattered every bone in both of his hands and couldn't work for a full week.

The Wiki remembers that you've both shown up openly drunk to every major public appearance since Season 4, including your own San Diego Comic-Con panel for Season 6.

The Wiki remembers, Benioff and Weiss. We remember it all.

--And the mummer's farce is almost done.

The TV series may be broken, but it's not dead - and neither are we. And we will rise again, harder and stronger.

Because Rhaenyra Has An Army
(This section is under construction)

"Is it true about Fight Club in Miami? Is Mr. Durden building an army?"

"Tyler built himself an army. Why was Tyler Durden building an army? To what purpose? For what greater good?".....


 * -- Fight Club

I'm going to enjoy watching you die
See full explanation: User:The Dragon Demands/I'm going to enjoy watching you die

"Joffrey... Cersei... Ilyn Payne... The Hound... Polliver... The Mountain..."

- Arya Stark's "prayer"


 * Joffrey Baratheon
 * Tywin Lannister
 * Cersei Lannister
 * Ilyn Payne
 * Ser Meryn Trant
 * Ser Boros Blount
 * Petyr "Littlefinger" Baelish
 * Janos Slynt
 * Ser Gregor Clegane
 * Several of the Mountain's men:
 * The Tickler
 * Polliver
 * Vargo Hoat/Locke
 * The remaining Brave Companions
 * Roose Bolton
 * Ramsay Snow, the Bastard of Bolton
 * House Frey - particularly Lord Walder, Black Walder, Lothar, Emmon, Hosteen, and Walder Rivers.
 * Various other Freys
 * Rolph and Sybell Spicer
 * Balon Greyjoy
 * Euron Greyjoy

Trivia



 * I started reading the A Song of Ice and Fire series as part of the buzz surrounding the release of A Feast for Crows in 2005, thus making me one of the last wave of pre-TV series, book-only fans. A friend recommended the series and gave me the first novel as a gift.  While I enjoy the TV series it is inherently an adaptation of a book series and does not exist in isolation from it.
 * Before that, I was a big Lord of the Rings fan - read the books right before the announcement of a film adaptation came out (once again, one of the last of the book-fans before a live-action adaptation came out to compare it against). The years the film adaptations were coming out were great times.
 * I was born and live in the New York City area.
 * I am a heterosexual white male, born in the 1980s.
 * I hold a Master's Degree in Medieval History.
 * I know French and Latin (had to for the degree).
 * I am a graduate student - with few medieval jobs, I keep going back for "more training" in the vain hope it will boost my applications.
 * I am a teetotaler: I don't drink alcohol, nor do I smoke tobacco or marijauna (I do think that banning such things causes more crimes than it solves, as Prohibition showed us).  Though I do enjoy the occasional glass of wine, I dislike being intoxicated at all.  I don't go to scifi conventions to enjoy getting fall-over drunk - I come for the panels and intelligent discussion.
 * I am skilled in the deadly and exquisite art of the Vulcan Death Grip.
 * I will always be a proud member of the Colbert Nation.
 * I am Jack's smirking revenge. Under and behind and inside everything these people took for granted, something horrible had been growing.
 * "How I came to Game of Thrones Wiki" is a long and funny story, actually. I had never taken part in any online A Song of Ice and Fire fandom at all.  After Season 1 ended, HBO was going to hold a second round focus group for Season 2 in NYC, so I signed up.  I wanted to voice my views on how they were handling a few things (less Sexposition, more Renly/Loras, more Rhaegar and Lyanna backstory, etc.)  The day before the focus group meeting, however, I got a phone call saying I was removed from the focus group purely because I mentioned that I had read the novels.  I felt voiceless and I didn't like it.  So instead I started tinkering around voicing information via editing a point or two on the startup Game of Thrones Wiki.  Over the next three years, somehow I worked my way up to being one of the three co-head Administrators who oversee a wiki read by hundreds of thousands of Game of Thrones viewers per day, reading the notes and reactions I write which I was blocked from voicing at that Season 2 focus group.  I became the Great Red Dragon.


 * I am a registered Democrat, and have consistently voted Democrat in every presidential election since I was first old enough to vote in 2004. I voted for Hillary Clinton during the Democratic Primary election and in the general election in 2016.