The ASOIAF (or book readers) subreddit has some really good discussion on how asinine the Mad Queen plotline is.
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It really was horribly written.
I agree that it was poorly written, but only in later seasons. There was plenty of foreshadowing of it in earlier seasons.
Whoever wrote that on reddit is wrong about some of the details. Particularly burning slavers is a notable one. Why do slavers get burned but not rapists? It all comes down to moral authority. For example, it's a grave moral crime to either kinslay or kingslay, but people aren't necessarily killed for it, let alone burned alive. Dany's story has always been one where she takes full moral authority as a king or queen would. She stopped the raping from the Dothraki, because she deemed it wrong and then later she burned miri miz duur, because she was wronged by her. Burning her alive and using it as a kind of blood magic sacrifice is no small thing. This was when she and Drogo were planning on procreating a "stallion that mounts the world" and for their son to pillage and rape everything.
Her threats to Qarth to burn them all alive is also no small matter, because it shows you where her thoughts go when she is desperate. This is one of the ways that the writing is bad, because there is little reason for Dany to be desperate to burn king's landing. She was created into a straw-man villain rather an iron man villain, one with good motivations where you can kinda see why they chose that way.
The first slavers she burnt, without them she wouldn't even have an army. The only people who were willing to deal with her and trade to give her deployable power. And she burned them alive for it rather than making an honest trait. It is alright because they were insulting her behind her back, I suppose. Again, killing someone under hospitality (she was a guest in the city) is a grave crime in westeros, so much so that it is a plot point in the book (I heard) with people being deeply disgusted by the red wedding; killing while under hospitality rules.
And if you say; well that's westeros! This is essos! Well in most of essos slavery isn't against moral laws, so it begs the question even more why she imposes westerosi moral law on slaver's bay. Again her law. She knows what's good and bad. She has the moral authority.
That's not even the end to it. What about Daario Naaharis? Who is so struck by her, that he decides to murder his fellow leaders of the second sons and present their heads to her. What does she do to someone who murdered his allies for her? Take him into her bed (eventually). Because she deemed it was good. She had the moral authority. Killing her enemies was good.
Ruthless and mad are also not mutually exclusive, you could have a pinch of both. Look at Euron Greyjoy or maybe even the red viper (oberyn).
And they say fans are divided? I haven't heard anyone so far say that it was all done very well.
The last post is also distorting things slightly. She didn't kill the masters who crucified children. She CRUCIFIED masters that crucified children. In gazing too long into the abyss the abyss gazed into her. And once you're willing to crucify those that break your moral law, shouldn't people be happy that all they got was being crushed by a building?
And they can fuck off with it being a disservice to martin. He had about a decade to finish this all. Fuck. A decade ago. Look at all the things you've done last decade. I know writing books ain't easy, but fuck that's a lot of time. If anything, Martin did a disservice to the showrunners and the fans. This isn't a story about the Prince-that-was-promised, but about the books-that-were-promised.
