Black of Hair and Heart

1 hour ago, C.T. Phipps said:

I wonder how many people complaining about the Targaryen having possibly black ancestry in their veins know mixed race families because there's plenty of them that can have white passing or more black looking members than their parents. Hell, there's a decent chance that Rhaenyra's children are in fact Laenor's children. After all, they have a white mother and a white grandmother.

Which is to say I wouldn't actually think it would be a bad idea to add more mixed race black and white haired folk to the Targaryens. We could use more diversity in that respect, especially with a family that is explicitly of a different bloodline than the majority of the populace.

Totally agree. Actress Rebecca Hall has a Black grandfather and no one who looks at her would ever think she was anything other than white. People are way too literal about the whole issue. 

1 hour ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

Given that Aegon the Conqueror and several other Targaryens are part-Velaryon, shouldn't the entire Targaryen dynasty in the show canon look a bit different? Including Viserys and Dany?

Clearly, that's not the case in the show. No Velaryon blood from Corlys's generation onwards makes it into the bloodline that continues the Targaryen dynasty. And Valaena Velaryon and Alyssa Velaryon don't need to be addressed since they've been dead for decades/centuries by the time HotD starts. 

7 minutes ago, C.T. Phipps said:

George did want them to fix that detail re: Aemon.

Must be really stuck in his craw if he wants them to change a detail that won't even be relevant to the upcoming spinoff. 

That said, there's really no reason you couldn't just make Aerys the fourth son of Aegon V and swap out Shaera for Rhaella. The generations are so compressed at that point, it wouldn't really make a difference. 

3 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Huh, George’s statement about being “out of the loop” with D&D is really blowing up. It’s crazy just how many people there are with a vendetta against these guys.

I'd love to read an article/book/dissertation someday about why this fanbase is so uniquely unhinged, especially with regards to Benioff and Weiss. I find it alternatively fascinating and infuriating. 

We're probably gonna get scolded again for being off topic. 

Re: Hobart Hightower, my guess is they'll just take the Hobart Hightower that exists in F&B and make him the Lord of Oldtown. The Hightower family tree circa the Dance is very complicated/unclear, so combining some characters would make sense. 

Just now, The Bard of Banefort said:

Personally, I think the show fans hate D&D a lot more than book fans do. Book fans complain about and make fun of them. Show fans act like D&D murdered their families and should be arrested for their crimes. 

It's hard for me to say. Virtually everyone I interact with regarding the series, both IRL and online, have read the books, so I don't consider myself well versed in show-only fans or their feelings. But the hatred I see for Benioff and Weiss among book fans (especially on this site) is borderline psychotic and completely unjustified. 

Just now, The Bard of Banefort said:

How do you type so fast?

We’re just going to have to agree to disagree on this.

Ha, I don't know. I type a lot for work? 

Yeah, that seems to be the general sense I'm getting here from everyone. 

Just now, SeanF said:

I think this fandom understands Benioff & Weiss pretty well.  

LOL, we'll have to agree to disagree there. 

Just now, SeanF said:

It wasn’t against her will.  LF had to persuade her to go to Winterfell.  He didn’t force her.  And, Martin himself said it was out of character for LF to have done this, because he’s obsessed with her.

I mean, you generally don't have to persuade someone to do something if they're initially willing to do it. 

It was probably out of character for Book Littlefinger to do it, but Show Littlefinger always struck me as more obsessed with his own advancement than with Sansa/Catelyn, so it didn't feel out of character to me. 

1 minute ago, C.T. Phipps said:

D&D were also clear they wanted to wind down from three sets to one and decrease the number of characters and plots.

Hence their gleeful excision of the majority of Martells, Griff, Victarion, Damphair, and so on.

Considering what a mess season 5 was in terms of pacing, that was probably the smart move. They should have done it earlier and cut Dorne entirely, the show would have been better for it. 

Calling it a "gleeful" excision really speaks to the irrational hatred this fandom has for Benioff and Weiss. Like they're sitting in a hotel room cackling and jerking each other off while crossing out plot lines on a white board with a big red marker and watching this forum melt down in real time. 

1 minute ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

How many times do you have to learn the same lesson before it becomes redundant?

I don't think there's a fixed number. But you'd be surprised how many people have the same lesson shoved in their face again and again and never learn it. Although it's different for Sansa since all of this is happening against her will. 

1 minute ago, SeanF said:

D & D simply wanted to ditch the Vale plot for…reasons.

I'd suspect that the primary reason was "it didn't exist because Martin hadn't written it yet" whereas the Northern plot with the Boltons did. 

1 minute ago, Angel Eyes said:

Why should she trust him? At this point she should know he only cares about her as the image of her mother and has passed his affections to her, Sansa, whom Littlefinger says should have been his child.

I mean, she probably shouldn't have trusted him by that point, but he was her benefactor and her only line to actual power at that time. It's not a great decision, but hey, sometimes fictional characters make bad choices!

1 minute ago, Angel Eyes said:

So why did she go through with the plan?

Because she trusted Littlefinger and was in no position to refuse? Like, what was she going to do otherwise?

4 minutes ago, Angel Eyes said:

Well in the case of Sansa's rape Benioff and Weiss kept to Martin's train of thought with the POVs not being raped, since the focus was on Theon in that scene, particularly on his crying face.

I love that moment. Alfie Allen crushes it and it's the emotional bedrock of the later scenes between Theon and Sansa. 

4 minutes ago, SeanF said:

The whole idea that Sansa would ever willingly marry the man whose father massacred her family is stupid beyond belief.  The idea that LF would ever press for such a marriage is stupid beyond belief.  And it’s not even Sansa’s story.  It’s Jeyne Poole’s and Alys Karstark’s stories, cut and pasted into Sansa’s.  Finally, having her saying she’d have remained a little bird but for Ramsay’s rape and torture is gross.

I don't know what show you were watching where you think Sansa willingly marries Ramsay. She went through with it yes, but it was clearly under duress. 

The Jeyne Poole/Alys Karstark point isn't really relevant, they're both nonexistent in the show. I mean, they both appear in the show, but they're functionally different characters. 

2 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

I think what EggBlue is saying is that Sansa marrying Ramsay was really, really dumb. On a narrative level, you don’t marry your enemies for revenge, especially when your claim is better than theirs. And if you have to take your army back down south again, you leave a few guards behind to watch over the most high-ranking lady in the north. On a thematic level, S4 ended with Sansa taking charge and playing the game after four seasons of being an abused pawn, complete with a Darth Sansa makeover, only to then go back to being an abused pawn and spending the rest of the season locked in a rape tower. It was all so utterly stupid and boring.

Littlefinger married Sansa to Ramsay because she has a claim to the North and the Boltons are the ones currently controlling the North. I feel like it was pretty clear that Littlefinger intended to use her to ingratiate himself with the Boltons and then betray them because that's how Littlefinger works. 

The fact that Sansa "earned" her "Dark Sansa" skin at the end of season 4 only to discover that it doesn't shield you from the machinations of men like Littlefinger and Ramsay is a tough pill to swallow. Almost like she was learning a lesson of some kind. Huh. 

I won't defend the pacing of season 5. At that point, they had really hit a wall of too many plot lines and not enough time to go around.

2 hours ago, EggBlue said:

I'm not sure if they even knew they were depicting sexual assault in some cases until they received backlash . ( ie, Cersei/Jaimie I think) which is disturbing as hell coming from two men living in  21st century . and I don't agree that they were all done empathetically especially that they were done in ignorance . as an example I remember an interview in which they talked about they just wanted a rough start for Drogo and Dany's relationship . well , rape(especially as clear as the show version) is not just a rough start .  book version , although has a consensual start , is actually a rough start considering they don't have any means of communication at the beginning . 

The confusion around that scene is, well, confusing but frankly the lines between consent and non-consent can be blurry, especially between two people with as fucked up a relationship as Jaime and Cersei. I thought the scene communicated that very well. Benioff and Weiss being "two men" isn't irrelevant but I think that's a reductive statement considering the dozens of people that worked on that episode and scene, including a woman (Lena Heady). 

The Drogo/Dany thing is tough to navigate anyway you slice it, but I think the show improved on the book. In the book, 13 year old Dany immediately gets into it once Drogo is nice to her. It's certainly possible to write/depict a sex scene between a 13 year old girl and an adult man that honestly presents consent on both sides/is empathetic to both characters, but the Dany/Drogo sex scene in the first book feels like a copout. It's really, really hard to believe that a naive 13 year old girl who's just been sold into slavery to a barbarian is going to have a good first sexual experience with him because he's not "raping" her in the conventional sense. Honestly, I don't think Martin has the stomach to depict any of his POV characters getting raped. Which is a totally valid decision on his part, but it does make scenes like that one ring false. The development of Dany and Drogo's relationship in the show is much more believable thanks to the fact that it starts in a really dark place and grows from there in a way that feels true to both characters. It also doesn't hurt that Jason Momoa brings a lot to Drogo, who's really a pretty one-dimensional character in the books. 

2 hours ago, EggBlue said:

but including a rape scene for the sake of including it deserves backlash . 

with that story line ,Dark Sansa moment of previous season was completely destroyed .and despite seeing Sansa declaring that she does not run away because she is Stark of Winterfell as if she had a plan , she got raped which was a visual depiction of killing her character in my opinion and we saw her as a desperate prisoner who needs Reek to run away . honestly, I still thought they have included that godawful wedding in that season to show Sansa becoming more manipulative (like she showed hints of with Joff)  and give her a little more agency ,for example by turning Ramsay and Roose against each other or something . I mean that marriage would have still been rape for Sansa but at least her arc wouldn't have gone in such ridiculous way. and the cherry on top : she declared that Ramsay was necessary for her improvement! that one was infuriating  . honestly, they only used Sansa that season to be a catalyst in Theon and Jon's arcs and Brienne's reason to get to Stannis and her revenge. 

I'm not really sure what "including a rape scene for the sake of including it" means. Things are included or they're not included and we take from that what we will. Rape scenes don't need to check a list of boxes to merit inclusion in a work of art. Some works will be smarter or more thoughtful about it than others, but including them or not including them is a neutral factor. 

I don't think Sansa's arc was ridiculous and I don't think her rape was "the visual depiction of killing her character". Honestly, that's kind of a fucked up thing to say about rape survivors. Those scenes influence everything Sansa does going forward and I think the show has real empathy for her and continues to present her as a complicated, consistent character who has to find a way to integrate a nightmarish experience into the reality of who she is as a person, in the same way that all rape and abuse survivors must. 

1 hour ago, SeanF said:

he sexualised torture of Theon (with the Violet/Myranda faux seduction scene) and the death of Ros, were very much put in to titillate or shock. 

Theon's torture scenes inform everything about his character going forward and the sexualization of the scenes feels to me like a pointed reversal of Theon's former persona as a ladies man. Also does a great job of upping the ante with Ramsey, in presenting him as a worse version of the monster we've already seen in Joffrey.

Ros's death scene is horrifying, all the more so because it's sexualized. The discomfort you're feeling due to it being "titilating or shocking" is intentional. 

21 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Eh I think it’s more of a hangover from GOT, which definitely used SA to shock and titillate. They didn’t have to change Dany’s consummation scene with Drogo, or Cersei’s scene in the sept with Jaime, but they did. They didn’t have to have Meera and Gilly nearly get raped before being saved by someone else, but they did. And they didn’t need to create a nonsensical plot invented just so Sansa could be repeatedly assaulted by Ramsay, but they did. So I think it’s fair if people have some reservations here.

At the same time, it is kind of weird that most of the buzz around this show is about SA and not about, y’know, the story itself. HBO also seems to really want us to be talking about these dragons more. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure the dragons are a big draw for the show, but I don’t think people care about them quite as much as HBO thinks they should.

I can't really think of any incident of sexual violence on GoT that wasn't done empathetically. And I don't personally have any problem with any of the scenes you listed. Dany's wedding night was an improvement on the books to be honest, and the only reason people really have a problem with the Sansa stuff is because they don't want to see Sansa get raped, which is kind of the entire point. 

But yeah, the sexual assault comments from the producers strike me as them just trying to get out ahead of all the bad faith criticism the original series got. I think they could have a bit more of a backbone about it, but they've got a bottom line to protect. 

3 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

 

Looking at some of the discourse online, there are now people complaining that there won’t be more sexual assault depicted on GOT  

While I'm sure there are people who want to see more sexual assault on the show for purely erotic purposes, I think the crux of the good faith complaints being made is the way in which the media narrative around the subject automatically equates "depiction of sexual violence" with "endorsement/exploitation of sexual violence". And the unspoken conclusion one would extrapolate from that, specifically "sexual violence as a a concept is forbidden and cannot be explored. Which is bad. 

2 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Who said they were obligated? I said they were lame, that’s all. I can’t think of any other book-to-screen adaptation where most of the cast didn’t read the books except for GOT.

I guess we just disagree on the responsibility that an adaptation has toward its source material. If the people making an adaptation want to be super faithful, that's a valid artistic choice. If they don't, that's equally valid. Faithfulness to source material is a neutral artistic choice, the same as whether a film is going to be in black and white or color, or is going to be 90 minutes or 150 minutes.

19 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Man, it’s going to be so lame if the cast doesn’t read the source material this time. They only need to read a few chapters.

Actors aren't obligated to read source material. That's what scripts are for. 

On 5/6/2022 at 5:09 PM, IFR said:

While I do appreciate dadaism in some shows

I don't think that's what Dadaism is. 

38 minutes ago, IFR said:

I hope it is explained. While I do appreciate dadaism in some shows, in others it is tonally out of place. A certain appearance for Valyrians was established in Game of Thrones. By introducing a deviation, an explanation really ought to accompany it, in my opinion.

If the Targaryens started slaughtering their enemies by shooting laser beams out of their eyes, I think that would require an explanation too. Although your miles may vary.

I'm sure they'll explain it. But pissing off the blood purity enthusiasts and all the hardliners who don't understand the concept of 'adaptation' is both hilarious and rewarding. 

4 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

I wonder how many non-book fans were confused by the trailer. Most people probably don’t realize that Molly and Emma are playing the same character. 

Not really something people need to glean from a trailer. The show will obviously clarify it.