About

Daenerys Targaryen Squint, also known as Smiling Daenerys, refers to a still from season eight episode two of Game of Thrones in which Daenerys Targaryen squint smiles at Sansa Stark during a tense conversation.

Origin

On April 21, 2019, season eight episode two entitle "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" aired featuring the scene between Daenerys and Sansa. On April 22, Twitter user @reallyhalalfood^[1] posted the image of Daenerys squinting calling for captions to the image (shown below. The tweet gained over 1,000 retweets and 11,600 likes in two days.

Spread

On April 22nd, 2019, Twitter user @MatthewACherry^[4] responded tweeting, "Per my last email face" (shown below, left) which garnered over 15,000 retweets and 57,100 likes in two days. That same day, Twitter user @_kurlykay^[5] tweeted the image with the caption, "this how white people smile at all minorities" (shown below, right). The tweet accumulated over 80,900 retweets and 331,500 likes in two days.

On April 23rd, @dosslucss^[2] replied to @reallyhalalfood with the caption"'Congratulations for the baby.' – 'I am not pregnant.'" (shown below, left) which gained over 400 likes in a day. That day, Twitter user @Traitorius^[3] also responded with the caption, "No, I fully understand you had to cancel last minute, oh its nothing that I had to rearrange my one free weekend a month for you" (shown below, right). The caption received over 900 likes and 30 retweets in a day. A collection of Daenerys Targaryen Squint memes were collected and published by Meme Base.^[6]

Thor Squint

On November 3rd, 2017, the film Thor: Ragnarok was released in the United States.^[7] In the film, the character Bruce Banner and Thor (portrayed by Mark Ruffalo and Chris Hemsworth) debate the merits of Banner's dual identities, Bruce Banner and the Incredible Hulk (clip below). During their conversations, Banner insists that "Banner is powerful and useful" in a fight, like the Hulk. Thor replies, "Is he though?"

On April 30th, 2018, Tumblr ^[8] user theageof-loki posted a screenshot of the scene as the punchline to a joke about Avengers: Infinity War. The post received more than 15,000 notes in about one year (shown below, left).

The following year, in April 2019, after the emergence of the Daenerys Squint meme, people began combining the two, focusing on their similarities.^[11] Twitter ^[9] user @Jonny_Dodds tweeted juxtaposed the two with a Speak to Your Manager meme. The post received more than 150,000 retweets and 433,000 likes in about two weeks (shown below, center).

On May 10th, Redditor ^[10] FetusLettuce posted a mashup with the caption "5 year old me: Who would ever want to kill themselves! It's not worth it!" The post received more than 22,000 points (95% upvoted) and 130 comments in 24 hours (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References