Le Cygne

33 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I really don’t understand why they’re craming thousands of years of story into only a few years?

It narrows the scope of what should be an epic story. Cramming it in makes it seem small, like a momentary spat. And they didn't just cram it, they changed the very nature of it, so it doesn't make sense even as a momentary spat.

Something that bugs me about LOTR is that he didn't include the Houses of Healing scene with Faramir and Eowyn in the theatrical version. It's the resolution for two main characters! Scrap a couple minutes of endless orc closeups and there's time.

Do the changes, or added stuff, or omitted stuff take away from the beauty of the story the author told? If so, reconsider. Find room for what matters, and don't stray from the original story when it's well-loved for many years.

On 12/25/2023 at 7:46 AM, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

There is an outline of the events of the second age.  All they had to do was flesh that out like “House of the Dragon” is fleshing out the events of Fire and Blood. Instead they go with fanfiction.  Will Gandalf… who shouldn’t arrive for another thousand years… start whipping out magic the gathering cards to cast spells next?

Yes, it could have been much better. There was the outline as well as many references within LOTR (Gandalf, Galadriel, Aragorn, and others talked about the second age).

Given the choice of listening to the master storyteller or flying by the seat of their pants, they chose the latter.

(Also the same for the Hobbit movies, I kept thinking, you had a perfectly fine story! What is this mess? The simplicity of The Hobbit was its charm. Tolkien knew what he was doing.)

Well, I am excited about a Dunk and Egg series, and I wasn't about other shows. There are different sorts of viewers out there.

D and E is more my kind of show.

It makes you think, while at the same time, there's laughter and a lightening of the spirit that even in difficult times, there's friendship and courage.

I like that GRRM went there with a more classic storytelling feel to these adventures, and think it would translate quite well to the screen.

(Live action for this one!)

On 5/23/2023 at 4:13 AM, SeanF said:

Aragorn was principled, but he really, really, wanted to be King of Gondor.  And, he made it very plain that he viewed himself as the true king of Gondor, throughout LOTR.

Aragorn would not have schemed and murdered to become king, but he expected his due, after achieving success as a war leader.

Turning Jon into someone who shied away from leadership was another disservice the two D’s did to his character.

Agree, I think Aragorn always wanted to be king, when the time was right, and on his own terms. He had quite the example before him to learn from, so he was wise to tread carefully.

I think Jon has demonstrated that he wants to lead, he wants to make a difference in the world, so making him a park ranger after murdering family is pretty damned arbitrary.

On 6/12/2023 at 3:06 PM, SeanF said:

Did he though?

It seems to me that he was riddled with guilt about Ygritte, not so much truly about getting her pregnant, as the knowledge that his actions would lead to her death.

It’s why the argument (from the show) that they’re doing Jon a kindness by sending him into the wilderness rings so hollow.

A man who is struggling with the guilt of killing one lover is returned to a place where he will struggle with the guilt of betraying another.

There's nothing that says perfect fit about Jon's time with the wildlings, nor Dany's time with the Dothraki. Ygritte and Drogo would probably still be alive, if not for Jon and Dany.

There was love in those relationships, they helped them find themselves. There was something about the two wild ones that struck a chord in the two noble ones.

Ygritte herself wanted to see the castles in Jon's world. Drogo wanted to take Dany to her castle, too. There was growth all around in the books, but the show tossed it all out.

Jon's big question was always "who am I?" so how does finding out he's a Targ fit with his Stark identity. He's a dragon, he's a wolf, and the wildlings are his "no man's land" where he explores the different parts of himself.

Also he's got to deal with not really being human anymore on top of all of this. Lots to be explored there, but the show just blew all of that off. I think the books will end very differently because they will account for all of this.

On 5/19/2023 at 7:12 PM, SeanF said:

I’d say her fatal flaw is self doubt, bordering on self-loathing, causing her to second-guess all she does.

I think she has self doubt for a good reason, her good intentions, she starts out wanting something good, like GRRM said ("George told me that Daenerys wants equality for everyone, she wants to be at the same level as her people") but finds the reality of ruling very difficult. So she second guesses herself.

(There's also her repeated longing for a simpler life, living in a house with a red door, that showed us that she envisioned another kind of life for herself, but the show always shirked showing the interior lives of the characters, which are so important, and could have been shown in many ways.)

GRRM said his ending will be very different from the show. I think Bran will perhaps be lord of Winterfell, because he's so tied to the north, but that's just my feeling about the story. None of us really knows how things will end for everyone, it could be any number of ways, as long as it fits what went before.

With Dany, if she does fall, I think it would be a much better story for her good intentions to be her undoing, that's tragedy. Instead they gave us farce.

Most of the audience liked Dany. As badly as they bungled the character, there's something good that shone through. It was a stupid season, insulting to the audience in many ways, but what they did to Dany was a glaring mistake, as shown by the instant audience backlash.

They stated emphatically she's not mad!, then suddenly, on a dime, made her madder than a hatter. Their game of going in different directions regardless of what had gone before ("creatively it made sense to us, because we wanted it to happen") ran into the wall of the show ending.

On 5/19/2023 at 1:25 AM, SeanF said:

It’s much better than what we got, but I mostly dislike Jon’s story arc.

Jon is actually shirking his duty, to step up and rule a shattered nation.  There’s nothing admirable about self-abnegation.  Nor do I think Jon would throw in the towel, after Cersei set off the wildfire.

If there's a trope I've come to detest it is that the greatest leaders are those who reject power.  Truly competent and public-spirited people step up to the mark.

As for King Tyrion?  Simply, no.

Yes, agreed. That's not what Tolkien was doing with Aragorn. He rose to the occasion when the time was right. Everything he learned to that point served him well.

They were such bad writers, if only they had copied something good (well, like the source material). But they figured they could do better, which was their undoing.

Often you could see they were going in one direction, only to go into another, without regard for what came before. When that's multiplied with various characters and plots, it's nonsense.

I am kind of excited about Dunk and Egg, because GRRM is involved. Blackwater was a standout episode, and it could have been better had they not tied his hands with their nonsense.

After that, they tied his hands completely, the butterflies were dragons, and the magic of the original material was long gone. I love that he tried to make something beautiful out of it, even so.

On 5/10/2023 at 8:24 AM, SeanF said:

I would have concluded that Tyrion was a traitor - based upon his actions, rather than what we were told.

The gist of his advice is that Dany should sacrifice her allies and soldiers, in order to spare his siblings.

Tyrion’s execution is something that all factions should have agreed upon at the end.  Grey Worm, the Prince of Dorne, and Yara for betraying Daenerys.  The others for bringing Daenerys and her soldiers to the capital.  The Starks and Edmure, for serving, at the highest level, a regime that brought terror to the Riverlands, and perpetrated the Red Wedding.

Oh good point, one need only look to how Grey Worm, the Prince of Dorne, and Yara (at least Asha was spared being in the show) reacted (or didn't react) to see how forced it all was.

It's like they pinned notes on Tyrion, Dany, and Jon: You good, you bad, you stupid. The rest of you, play into it in somehow, or just stand there and go along with it. Don't ask why. There is no reason.

On 5/10/2023 at 8:24 AM, SeanF said:

I can only conclude that Bran chose him, Bronn, and Sam, because they would be entirely his creatures.

Yes!

Just seeing this... Make it light-hearted, while also telling a good story, and they could do a short season per story. These are really good stories. I'd watch!

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/game-of-thrones-dunk-and-egg-series-1235372243/

47 minutes ago, SeanF said:

It also made Daenerys, Jon, and others, look stupid for continuing to listen to someone whose plans constantly failed.

Tyrion, in real life, would have been dismissed in disgrace, after the destruction of Yara’s and the Dornish fleets.  

They basically punished all the other characters for not honoring Tyrion in the books. Tyrion was their self-insert character. They will not be ignored!

Jaime was a rapist, but Tyrion was not, the opposite of the books. Brienne lost her story, because Jaime lost his. Sansa rejected Tyrion, so she lost her own story. Sandor lost his story, because Sansa lost hers. And so on. Tyrion must look good!

Now we know Dany does not suffer fools, she's not gonna be undone by Tyrion, not easily, anyway. And if she is, she's gonna put up a good fight. Not go bonkers over a fool who then is fooled into killing her. They even absolved Tyrion of murdering Dany.

35 minutes ago, SeanF said:

The biggest flaw in the entire series, IMHO, was St.  Tyrion.  Changing a central protagonist from villain to saint made (a) Tyrion into someone who was grossly incompetent (b) upended the stories of everyone who came into contact with him.

Good point, he's a main character who drives multiple plots with his barely concealed malevolence. He's narcissistic, misogynistic, power hungry... all these things bump up against other characters in his way, and move things along.

Turn him into a saint, and suddenly it all falls apart. So they had to change everyone else's story to fit this new St. Tyrion utter nonsense. So many characters lost their stories because of this, and they can't tell stories of their own.

So they just plugged in random plots, which are extremely jarring and unsatisfying, the appeal of the books was the characterization, and how that drove the story, and take that away, and it's just jingling keys at the audience.

7 hours ago, SeanF said:

Had we learned that Tyrion had been betraying Dany in favour of his siblings, and was manipulating Jon, out of a desire for revenge, at the end, then his story would have made far more sense.

Indeed. The show just made no sense. It was like someone threw random characters and random plots at the screen, and mixed them up with an eggbeater. They never actually told a story.

Characters are supposed to drive the story. But here, nonsensical plot drives the story. You can't believe any of it would ever really happen, it's a house of cards and not even from the same deck.

Here are good examples of "close reading" - Octavia Cox is a professor at Oxford who does a great job stepping through text in works of literature, staying very close what the author is saying, to find meaning. Very interesting stuff, and she explores Jane Austen and other romances on her channel:

https://www.youtube.com/@DrOctaviaCox

On 5/7/2023 at 7:55 PM, The Bard of Banefort said:

I can understand why people don’t like the ship, but I have a very different reading of this quote: 

Saying “I should have done this before leaving her for that dwarf” is like saying “I would jump off a bridge before going on a second date with that guy.” It’s not a confession; he’s saying that being raped and killed is better than being married to Tyrion, who he despises. It’s kind of like that line from the show, where the Hound says something like “if you die with a clean sword, I’ll rape your corpse.” Obviously he didn’t do that.

Not to mention, GRRM wrote the Blackwater episode, which had the “you won’t hurt me” exchange instead.

Exactly. It's just the way he talks. Sandorspeak, we called it. People rarely say what they mean, especially him. She thinks of him as her protector, as does he.

He talks beastly, but she kinda likes it (just like in Cocteau and Disney). She kissed the Hound and she liked it, a story of a knight and a fair maiden, by Sansa Stark.

Also... when the author has a picture of the two characters as Beauty and the Beast like the movie poster on the wall of his office (as in this case), that's a nice little nod.

1 hour ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

No, no, I meant that Jon killed Dany for love of his sisters, who he thought Dany would kill. I’m guessing that Arya will somehow get on Dany’s bad side in the books, which will be what leads us here.

What I'm saying is I don't think what went down on the show even remotely resembles the book plot, because it's just too stupid.

Tyrion is manipulating him, and Jon should know this. It makes no sense that Dany would kill Jon's family. Dany is Jon's family, too.

These characters have been wanting this family connection all series long, then when they get together they kill or leave them. It's not a satisfying story.

58 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

I think that originally the wildfire was supposed to do most of the damage. That said, Dany still went on blowing up the city for the rest of the episode, so it’s not like she thought to stop when she saw what was happening, even in the original script.

My theory is that Jon will be the “treason for love” in the books, and that this was D&D’s way of incorporating that. A lot of the stuff George told them was just kind of slapped on without any cohesion (i.e. King Bran).

Putting a woman down like a mad dog, and pretending that is love, is stupid and insulting. That they didn't see this is just more proof they were really bad at this. A child could have told them.

I think the books have to be a lot different. He came right out and said they would be.

6 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Unfortunately, GOT’s misogyny forced them to overcorrect in HOTD where, at least in the first season, the women are all frightened lambs constantly being used and abused by the men. And because of GOT’s reputation, the way women are portrayed in any of its properties are never going to sit well with many fans, no matter what direction they go in. Even I’m guilty of this. One problem with being THE BIGGEST SHOW IN THE WORLD for a decade (even though it wasn’t, it was just the show that the most amount of clickbait journalists decided was worth their time) is that it leaves a mark, for better and for worse.

I disagree with a lot of Lindsay Ellis’ takes, but her comment that GOT was “hot fantasy that fucks” was definitely true. I think the reason why there were/are so many overly defensive bros in the show fandom who were adamant that this was a very serious T&D show was because that meant they didn’t have to be embarrassed for liking a fantasy show. Then when the ending fell flat on its face, a lot of those people indeed felt embarrassed for caring so much.

The funny thing is, despite the female-centered marketing, I’ve read that HOTD is even more male-skewed than GOT was (it makes sense if you look at HBO’s merch website, which has a lot more women’s attire for GOT than HOTD). I’ve also heard that very few “adult women” (as in 30s or older) watch HOTD, and I can totally see that. The only people I remember seeing criticize Aemma’s torturous childbirth scene were women, and most of them have reached the point in their lives where they don’t find a manchild like Daemon all that attractive either.

Tying those two together, it’s actually a little ironic that men consume more fantasy and sci-fi than women, since women aren’t generally embarrassed to be fans of stuff like that the way some men are.

I didn't see HOTD or read about it, but that doesn't sound very good. I didn't see much of redeeming value in Fire and Blood, in terms of the women's stories, so I decided not to watch.

I would be interested in Dunk and Egg, if it's developed properly! I think it needs a light touch, there's a lot of humor in it, as well as a lot of fun sexuality. This isn't rocket science, but they always get it wrong.

Good point about casting, Dunk is supposed to be quite good looking so make sure you get that right. They have to give the women something to look at! They seem to forget this a lot.

There were so many problems with what they did, but essentially they were just bad at telling stories. And since there was plenty of source material (even though the story didn't have an end), they didn't listen to stories well, either.

Like, the basic journeys.

Arya, the first thing that comes to mind is she is a pack animal. That's emphasized many times in the books. Arya is a she-wolf who loses her pack, then finds a new one, then loses them, too! She even says this! She gets mad! And she gets revenge. So... what does the audience want to see? You want to see her belong again, and gain the wisdom to know that revenge is not satisfying, but justice is good. Instead they blew off her main connection, which was with Jon Snow (again, the book is filled with her thinking about him), and she never learns a damn thing, then blows him off (in the end, Jon asks her to please come see him, and she's like, gotta run!)

Sansa, the first thing that comes to mind is she loves romantic stories, but never gets to have one of her own. This is a reasonable thing to want, even in Westeros. She has a Beauty and the Beast story, Sansa and the Hound, that shows her coming of age, as she matures into a woman, and learns lessons, while exploring her sexuality in a positive way. The showrunners stumbled over it in the beginning, but this tale as old as time was way over their heads, and there's this long slog where she's just the showrunners' punching bag. In the end, like Arya, she never learns a damn thing, she's outright nasty much of the time, and she's the ice queen, all alone with her tiara.

We could go on and on.

On 4/30/2023 at 9:08 PM, The Bard of Banefort said:

Now for some overall thoughts on Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon:

• We get a bit of a peek into George's head too. The guy loves seeing his books come to life (and winning Emmys) and is positively ebullient for the first several chapters. You can't help but feel for him when he expresses his disappointment with being unable to finish the books in time. George doesn't comment on the later seasons, but there are two times when he criticizes the show outright--first for turning Dany's wedding night into a rape, and then for Sansa's marriage to Ramsay.

Good for him (the bold).

On 4/30/2023 at 9:08 PM, The Bard of Banefort said:

• This brings me to a larger point: will GOT ever escape it's reputation for misogyny? There's no telling the future, but my gut tells me no. The fact that a few of the actresses, such as Carice and Emilia, even tentatively criticize the show's reliance on female nudity does not bode well for its legacy. Hibberd tries very hard to make the showrunners sound like artists instead of bros, but in a way it almost feels like the book is lying to us. Sometimes the writing is sympathetic to its subjects, but other times it's just spin.

I agree, nope. It seems like such a simple thing, to just show women are people, but some showrunners/directors can't be bothered to imagine what it's like to be one (even in this case, when the source material DID bother to imagine that).

Just saw The Doors movie (it's bad, don't bother) and there were naked women everywhere but only one butt shot of Jim Morrison. The story was about how women wanted him, and yet... the director never bothered to show what they wanted to see.

Just seeing this, from August, GRRM talking about differences:

Ah so this is where the Tolkien fans are hanging out. Did anyone get turned on to Tolkien thanks to Led Zeppelin?

Seriously, I don't know if they led me to it or just enhanced the experience. I remember the friends who were reading it were convinced pipe weed was another kind of weed.

When did I first read it, I think maybe 13. I still enjoy The Hobbit, I never thought of it as a kid's story, just as something written more like a fairy tale. Ramble On!

On 8/13/2022 at 12:22 AM, EggBlue said:

if he'll be done with Tyrion and Dany's POVs then he'll probably have an easier tome finishing the rest... then again , the POVs he talks about could as well be Jon and Jon's ... two dead men.

Two dead men! Dead men chapters are easy! I am still laughing.

3 hours ago, SeanF said:

The thing I find bothersome, though, is Daenerys being made so miserable that she resolves to take her own life, before she has her dragon dream.

Well, it's the genre, and GRRM is following it pretty well (and there are lots of hints in the text that he borrows from these classic gothic romances, I put Jane Eyre borrows after the Sansa/Sandor piece).

In Rebecca, the heroine is haunted by the ghost of her husband's first wife. In Jane Eyre, ditto (only she's alive!) The challenges are often psychological, it's a pretty special kind of hero's journey.

If you look at the top of this page, there are all of these story elements, too:

• The Rival (without rivals, there is no possibility for crisis)
• Moral Weight (if the lovers cannot elevate themselves morally, they will not be able to find authentic love; that is, they must have a worldview shift that raises their moral fiber)
• Helpers, Hinderers (those who help the two come together, those who work to destroy the match)
• Gender Divide (distinct differences in the ways the two lovers view love must be in play)
• External Need (external pressures to find a mate)
• Forces At Play Beyond the Couple's Control (social convention)
• Forces At Play in the Couple's Control (one or both lovers has to get out of their own way to change their behavior and worldview)
• Rituals (the lovers develop little things they only do with one another)
• Secrets
  • Secrets society keeps from the couple
  • Secrets the couple keeps from society
  • Secrets the couple keeps from one another
  • Secrets one of the couple keeps from himself/herself

So let's look at Dany. He shows her meeting the challenges of what is at first a hostile world, that over time, she makes her own. It's through Drogo's gift of the silver that she comes into her own.

I think he did a really nice job with riding as the means for self-discovery:

Drogo giving her the silver, bonding with him via the silver (as he points out in the quote above), the meshing of the dragon dreams with the silver showing her the way, riding Drogo, and ultimately, riding her dragon, Drogon.

And all the romantic elements are there: the rival (Jorah), the gender divide (Dany showing Drogo how she likes it - "this night I would look at your face"), the helpers (Irri, Jhiqui, Doreah), the hinderers (Viserys), forces at play both beyond and in the couple's control (the Dothraki lifestyle where there are things that are positive and things that are negative, and together, they find a way forward together), and so on.

I think he's woven all of this together nicely. Like Tina Turner sang, he doesn't like stories that are nice and easy, he likes stories that are nice and rough. So it's easy to see why this sort of story appeals to him.

Along the same lines of the gothic romance discussion above...

GRRM follows the gothic tradition in his romances, too. An easy one to see is the story of Sansa and the Hound, which closely follows Beauty and the Beast. Other romances are told in similar ways.

For Sansa, the setting is a traditional castle. For Dany, the setting is the wild grassland of the Dothraki. In both cases, the women must learn to find their way in strange and often hostile new places.

They are helped by dangerous men (as one character put it, "scars make a man look dangerous, and danger is exciting"). Their interactions with these men tap into the fear and excitement of sexual awakening.

Sansa enjoys a "song" she wrote for herself, about a kiss she shared with Sandor. Dany rides Drogo like she rides her silver, and later, her dragon. The women draw on these experiences as they face new obstacles.

Here, GRRM spells out the connection between fear and excitement:

Dany remembers her first night with Drogo:

She remembered the night of her first wedding, when Khal Drogo had claimed her maidenhead beneath the stranger stars. She remembered how frightened she had been, and how excited.

GRRM describes the scene the same way:

There are a couple of stories. As a wedding gift, Khal Drogo gives Daenerys a silver horse and she rides away. For a moment you think she’s fleeing. Then she turns the horse around and leaps the horse over a big campfire. Drogo is very impressed, and it starts the relationship on a good note... So they had to scrap that sequence, which was unfortunate, as it was a bonding moment between Dany and Khal Drogo.

Then came the filming of the wedding night. In the Emilia Clarke version, it’s rape. It’s not rape in my book, and it’s not rape in the scene as we filmed it with Tamzin Merchant. It’s a seduction. Dany and Drogo don’t have the same language. Dany is a little scared but also a little excited, and Drogo is being more considerate. The only words he knows are “yes” or “no.” Originally it was a fairly faithful version.

While we are waiting for the rest of the story, here are more romance genre techniques authors like GRRM use (his fondness for "dangerous" love interests is standard gothic romance).

There's a great discussion in the Blu-ray extras for the excellent Hitchcock adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca, with feminist film critics Molly Haskell and Patricia White:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7163616/

Some highlights:

Molly: I think Rebecca has held up remarkably well...

Patricia: It resonates with concerns that anyone would have about "What's my role?"...

Molly: It's also the foundational text of chick lit, which is Jane Eyre... and even before that, Pride and Prejudice...

Patricia: It has that romance, but it also has the gothic, the woman in the haunted house...

Molly: The embittered man... and he needs to be softened and humanized... and he falls in love... The fantasy that somebody will see in her what nobody else sees in her.

Patricia: Which is classic romance lit... She's such a little girl, and he's so far away, distant, unreadable...

Molly: Maybe she will emerge from this whole sort of Victorian penumbra and become a modern woman...

Patricia: It's also true that when he declares himself, all the magic is gone... It stays in the past, never comes back to the present.

Molly: Romance, love, passion has to have a mystery, a danger. Once it becomes domestic, it's gone....

It is a gothic romance which is about gothic romance...

Patricia: We don't go inside Maxim at all.

Molly: He is the brooding hero...

Patricia: The young woman is having to be trained to disavow the power she has as a child... So she is threatening in a way.

Molly. Because she can't be controlled.... He already fears that she will stop loving him. So you feel the male vulnerability, too...

Patricia: Laurence Olivier is the Rochester who is actually sexy, too.

Molly: He's so unpredictable... She never knows what to expect from him.

Patricia: The kiss or kill... Then Cary Grant is in that role in Suspicion, which is even more sinister.

Molly: The kiss can turn into the kill at any moment... The wanting to lose the self, the not wanting to lose the self...

Patricia: The Harlequin is does he love me, what is going to happen, and then it turns out his disinterest was he loved you all along, whatever.

In the gothic... the house is your prison, so it's very specific to isolation... And of course it's romanticized, too. Because if you had to be trapped in a house, Manderley would not be bad.

Molly: It's having your cake and eating it, too...

Patricia: The 40's are filled with movies that we might think of as male films, like film noir or like Citizen Kane, but are really touched by this gothic sensibility...