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17 minutes ago, Daeron the Daring said:

Corlys being black is just simply the result of 2020, and how Hollywood got influenced by that dark year. 

If someone would post out that he wants to see white people as enslaved africans in America people would call him mad. Or that he wants a white man to play Black Panther, or a chief of an african tribe. It's just about respecting cultural differences to me. I don't want to see only white people in the cinema, and I don't want to see white people playing such roles I mentioned above, as I don't want black people to play characters that are essentially white. 

You don't know that Corlys being black is because of the protests this past summer. It could be because the original show got a lot of flack for being 99% white and portraying POC as slaves, former slaves, or a bunch of savages. Or it could be because HBO clearly wants to build their own MCU (Martin Cinematic Universe) and they see the success Disney has had with its diverse slate, that is even more diverse with upcoming shows, movies etc. Or it could be because GRRM and the writers wanted to shake things up. Either way you don t know.

Wakanda is a fictional country set in a real continent. its not the same as Westeros or Valyria which exist in a fictional world. I wish you would stop making these comparisons because they don't fit. 

As for enslaved whites in America, unfortunately there were in enslaved white people in the 17th century in North America, its just not focused on because they were transitioned into "indentured servants" sometimes for life (which is just like slavery) and the practice was mostly done away with when slave trade started booming. 

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1 hour ago, Daeron the Daring said:

I mean, I've seen some IG posts about the casting and how people did react about Corlys being portrayed as black. These people know next to nothing about the books, but the majority doesn't like it.

Good luck coming up with an explanation of "people that know almost nothing about books hate that a black guy was cast in a major role" that isn't 100% based on racism.

The fact is, casting Corlys as black or mixed doesn't ruin anything. If any or all of Laena & Laenor, Rhaenyra's eldest, Addam & Alyn, Baela & Rhaena are mixed it will not hurt the story whatsoever, and has a chance to improve the production a great deal.

As others have noted, Corlys is one of the few main characters you can plausibly do this with while maintaining in-world consistency, especially if they go with him being half Summer Islander or something along those lines.

In that case, it would have no effect on the looks of past Velaryons or their relationship to House Targeryen, no effect on Daenora looking typically Valyrian, and could add more layers to other branches of House Velaryon disputing Corlys' choice of heir.

I get wanting an exact adaptation, but it's never gonna happen, George says this pretty much every time he discusses adaptations. There are much worse ways to blow an adaptation than to add a little color to the cast, no matter what time or place it is based on. It is fiction, fantasy, and the market for a show with a pure white main cast is getting smaller all the time.

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4 hours ago, Werthead said:

No, said GRRM and one of the writers on House of the Dragon when I spent some time with them during TitanCon 2019 (which was entertaining, though also slightly frustrating as I knew the show would be about the Dance many months before that was confirmed, so had to sit on that info). GRRM noted that he wouldn't be writing scripts and as intimately involved day-to-day as he was at the start of the GoT process, but he would still be paying close attention to the project and approving things.

Here is what he said about Game of Thrones post his involvement up to Season 4, I daresay differences from the written material adapted in House of Dragon ( likely chapters from  "Heirs of the Dragon: A Question of Succession" to  "Aftermath: The Hour of the Wolf") would be more considerable as material itself has many mysteries or conflicting versions of the same events.

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The Show, the Books
May. 18th, 2015 at 12:55 AM

I am getting a flood of emails and off-topic comments on this blog about tonight's episode of GAME OF THRONES. It's not unanticipated.

The comments... regardless of tone... have been deleted. I have been saying since season one that this is not the place to debate or discuss the TV series. Please respect that.

There are better places for such discussions: Westeros, Tower of the Hand, Watchers on the Wall, Winter Is Coming, the comments sections of the television critics who regularly follow the show: James Hibberd, Alyssa Rosenberg, Mo Ryan, James Poniewozik, and their colleagues. I am sure all those sites will be having a healthy debate.

I have a lot of fans asking me for comment.

Let me reiterate what I have said before.

How many children did Scarlett O'Hara have? Three, in the novel. One, in the movie. None, in real life: she was a fictional character, she never existed. The show is the show, the books are the books; two different tellings of the same story.

There have been differences between the novels and the television show since the first episode of season one. And for just as long, I have been talking about the butterfly effect. Small changes lead to larger changes lead to huge changes. HBO is more than forty hours into the impossible and demanding task of adapting my lengthy (extremely) and complex (exceedingly) novels, with their layers of plots and subplots, their twists and contradictions and unreliable narrators, viewpoint shifts and ambiguities, and a cast of characters in the hundreds.

There has seldom been any TV series as faithful to its source material, by and large (if you doubt that, talk to the Harry Dresden fans, or readers of the Sookie Stackhouse novels, or the fans of the original WALKING DEAD comic books)... but the longer the show goes on, the bigger the butterflies become. And now we have reached the point where the beat of butterfly wings is stirring up storms, like the one presently engulfing my email.

Prose and television have different strengths, different weaknesses, different requirements.

David and Dan and Bryan and HBO are trying to make the best television series that they can.

And over here I am trying to write the best novels that I can.

And yes, more and more, they differ. Two roads diverging in the dark of the woods, I suppose... but all of us are still intending that at the end we will arrive at the same place.

In the meantime, we hope that the readers and viewers both enjoy the journey. Or journeys, as the case may be. Sometimes butterflies grow into dragons.

((I am closing comments on this post. Take your discussions to the other sites I have mentioned. And for those who may be curious as to the road the books are taking, I direct you to the WINDS OF WINTER sample chapters on my website)).

 

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1 hour ago, Sotan said:

I was surprised to hear his involvement at all considering what went down with GOT, then I read HOTD was the show GRRM and Condal pitched to HBO. So George is in this. 

And before that it was one of the shows George pitched to HBO with Cogman. It's been through a heck of a lot of development work with George closely involved.

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There has seldom been any TV series as faithful to its source material, by and large (if you doubt that, talk to the Harry Dresden fans, or readers of the Sookie Stackhouse novels, or the fans of the original WALKING DEAD comic books)... but the longer the show goes on, the bigger the butterflies become. And now we have reached the point where the beat of butterfly wings is stirring up storms, like the one presently engulfing my email.

This is a good point, but it merely reiterates what we know: that George was closely involved in GoT up to Season 4 and then stepped away (the post was from 2015, when Season 6 was in production), and that during the period he was involved the show hewed relatively close to the novels and then moved away after he was less involved (and they ran out of book material to adapt, or chose to adapt).

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1 hour ago, Daeron the Daring said:

Corlys being black is just simply the result of 2020, and how Hollywood got influenced by that dark year. 

They might just want to follow in the steps of the The Witcher which did diversity just for diversity sake. I just couldn't with that show (though it's just one of many reasons). I read most of the stories and played the games so I know what these characters are supposed to look like. But even if I didn't, while the story is fantasy it still takes place in a slavic country and is based on slavic folklore and what not. This might not be an issue for non-Europeans but for me I just can't suspend by disbelief. Fringilla for example comes from a royal family (which they will probably introduce at some point in the show), and a black royal family in a slavic country is something I just can't wrap my head around. I'm all for diversity but please do it where it makes sense for crying out loud.

As to most people not knowing anything about the Velaryons, that will change once the show comes out. Plenty of non-asoiaf readers who watched GoT did some looking into the source material even if it was just basics. So once people do that, the looks of Corlys will become a discussion point even for non-readers. It's kind of unavoidable in the social climate we live in.

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1 minute ago, Mystical said:

They might just want to follow in the steps of the The Witcher which did diversity just for diversity sake. I just couldn't with that show (though it's just one of many reasons). I read most of the stories and played the games so I know what these characters are supposed to look like. But even if I didn't, while the story is fantasy it still takes place in a slavic country and is based on slavic folklore and what not. This might not be an issue for non-Europeans but for me I just can't suspend by disbelief. Fringilla for example comes from a royal family (which they will probably introduce at some point in the show), and a black royal family in a slavic country is something I just can't wrap my head around. I'm all for diversity but please do it where it makes sense for crying out loud.

And The Witcher was Netflix's most successful show before Bridgerton LMAO. At least Briderton is supposed to be set in the Regency era and the color blind casting didn't make sense, but guess what? People went with it and it is Netflix's biggest show/film EVER. And even though I've conflated these two shows, one is based on a real place and the other based in a fantasy world inspired by specific culture, so not the same thing, but both were huge successes. 

What I'm trying to say is that HOTD will not collapse because they have POC characters in Westeros, it will rise or fall based on the writing and acting, and if the wider culture still cares about GOT after Season 8. 

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2 minutes ago, Sotan said:

And The Witcher was Netflix's most successful show before Bridgerton LMAO. At least Briderton is supposed to be set in the Regency era and the color blind casting didn't make sense, but guess what? People went with it and it is Netflix's biggest show/film EVER. And even though I've conflated these two shows, one is based on a real place and the other based in a fantasy world inspired by specific culture, so not the same thing, but both were huge successes. 

I'm not saying it's not a success despite it's issues. But Europe isn't Nextflix's biggest market (4 European countries were in the top 10 in 2019). And it being fantasy is no excuse, it sure wasn't for GoT either. How many times did people use the 'based on medieval Europe' excuse to explain something that happened in the show?

Point is, the race swapping of characters was an often discussed topic with The Witcher. HotD won't be able to avoid that just because most people are unfamiliar with the source material. It simply can't be avoided due to the social climate we live in.

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1 minute ago, Mystical said:

Point is, the race swapping of characters was an often discussed topic with The Witcher. HotD won't be able to avoid that just because most people are unfamiliar with the source material. It simply can't be avoided due to the social climate we live in.

What I'm trying to say is that fans who were deep into the books, games etc cared, but the vast majority of viewers watched it and either liked it or didn't based on its merits, not the ethnicity of the actors. There's always grumblings online, but if the show (HOTD) is done well and manages to be a success no one will pay any mind to people screaming about white Valyrians. It won't be a thing, success has a way of drowning out noise like that. 

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27 minutes ago, Mystical said:

They might just want to follow in the steps of the The Witcher which did diversity just for diversity sake. I just couldn't with that show (though it's just one of many reasons). I read most of the stories and played the games so I know what these characters are supposed to look like. But even if I didn't, while the story is fantasy it still takes place in a slavic country and is based on slavic folklore and what not. This might not be an issue for non-Europeans but for me I just can't suspend by disbelief. Fringilla for example comes from a royal family (which they will probably introduce at some point in the show), and a black royal family in a slavic country is something I just can't wrap my head around. I'm all for diversity but please do it where it makes sense for crying out loud.

Sapkowski has indicated that The Witcher draws on many different cultural inspirations and ideas, and is no more Slavic than it is European in general (Toussaint is based on a fictional storybook version of France, for example).

The worldbuilding of The Witcher also clearly establishes that about a thousand years before the events of the books, humanity arrived on the planet in a vast exodus from their own world - which is implied to be our own, in the future - and the ethnicity of that encroaching flood of humans is never firmly established to be predominantly black, white or anything else. If it is from our world in the future, than it would be a significant varied mix, putting different kinds of ethnicities all over the place (a similar argument to The Wheel of Time, but with much greater force as the Conjunction of the Spheres took place less than a third as long ago as the Breaking of the World). 

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As to most people not knowing anything about the Velaryons, that will change once the show comes out. Plenty of non-asoiaf readers who watched GoT did some looking into the source material even if it was just basics. So once people do that, the looks of Corlys will become a discussion point even for non-readers. It's kind of unavoidable in the social climate we live in.

No one in the general audience will give a toss about this, just like nobody who wasn't an invested book fan beforehand cared that Tyrion was too handsome, that the Eyrie looked completely wrong, that the Red Keep looks like something from an SF show rather than the medieval period, that Jaime wasn't blonde enough or, most notably, that Viserys and Dany were supposed to have purple eyes.

The general audience will notice if they suddenly change the ethnicity of the Lannisters or Starks though.

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39 minutes ago, Werthead said:

No one in the general audience will give a toss about this, just like nobody who wasn't an invested book fan beforehand cared that Tyrion was too handsome, that the Eyrie looked completely wrong, that the Red Keep looks like something from an SF show rather than the medieval period, that Jaime wasn't blonde enough or, most notably, that Viserys and Dany were supposed to have purple eyes.

The general audience will notice if they suddenly change the ethnicity of the Lannisters or Starks thoug

I get book readers being annoyed that a character they imagined a certain way will be completely different in the show. At the same time, you're absolutely right, the general audience will not give a fig about a black Corlys because they have no idea who he or his family are, or even what Valyrians are.  The only play Valyria got in the show besides Dany going on about being the blood of old Valyria, was that scene with Jorah and Tyrion in the ruins of the old city. But the audience's main interaction with anything Valyrian was the language, spoken by Missandei, Greyworm, Melisandre, and the various actors some of them POC in Slavers Bay and Volantis. Now we know that Valyria was basically the Rome of that world and their language was dominant, how many people in the general audience cared to put that together? I know people that thought that Dany's hair was a Targaryen thing and not a Valyrian thing. Seriously. The reason is besides Dany and her brothers, we never saw any other Valyrian descendent characters with "the look". For good or ill the show is going to define what a Valyrian is, and guess what? Its whatever the writers say it is, and for the vast majority of audiences it will be their first serious interaction and for them cannon. 
 

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3 hours ago, Daeron the Daring said:

But that won't be the case in HoTD. I mean, in GoT there were like 2 dialogs about the Doom, about the Conquest and how Daenerys is the last Targaryen (which most people interpreted as being the last Valyrian too).

This time people will learn about entire cities filled with valyrian-looking people, and another significant valyrian house, the Velaryons. Are you trying to tell me that it is the right way to portray the second valyrian house the fans will get to know as black people? I'm sure it's not. And I'm sure the showrunners know how D&D fucked GoT up, and they don't want to get into the same trap.

Corlys being black is just simply the result of 2020, and how Hollywood got influenced by that dark year. 

If someone would post out that he wants to see white people as enslaved africans in America people would call him mad. Or that he wants a white man to play Black Panther, or a chief of an african tribe. It's just about respecting cultural differences to me. I don't want to see only white people in the cinema, and I don't want to see white people playing such roles I mentioned above, as I don't want black people to play characters that are essentially white. 

I think IGN Hungary (simply the hungarian version of IGN) answered this question pretty well, pointing out that it ruins the experience for many people. This surely does it to me. Of course this doesn't ruin it to most people by now, but as I said, once this thing will be widely known, and 7-8 out of 10 people doesn't like the direction HBO is taking with HotD and Corlys' casting, and these people hsven't read the books, but know a little bit about the lore.

And as you pointed out, it'll be about getting to know the valyrians. How will they get to know them, once they're not portrayed as one? And don't get me wrong, it's not the visual traits that make you valyrian, but that's not how someone watching it will interpret the whole thing.

Dude, now you're just acting openly racist.

In-story, Corlys' mother can be Summer Islander or something along those lines without altering the origins or future of House Velaryon and its relations with House Targaryen. It wouldn't affect Daenora, whom the albino line continues through.

House Velaryon apparently wasn't one of the 40 dragonriding families, so their history and connection to House Targaryen and Valyria can be pretty flexible for an adaptation even if you wanted to make House Velaryon historically Black.

You could even say the Velaryons *were* descended from one of the 40 dragonriding families, but that their dragons died out/were killed, and that since Valyrians jealously guarded their own ancestry's connection to their house's dragons through incest, even the Targs had been reluctantly to marry with them.

If they wanted to make House Velaryon historically Black and keep Targaryens albino they could just say there was more Targaryen incest in the past, and no marriages with Velaryons before Corlys, but that the Targs accepted an oath to protect the Velaryons after they lost their own dragons. No big deal. Most people assume there was a lot more Targ incest than there was.

Ultimately, Corlys is one of the few main nobleborn characters from Westeros that can plausibly be Black or mixed. As far as I recall we have no idea who his mother was or what house she came from. His earlier voyage to the Summer Isles could then have more significance as well. 

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18 minutes ago, Bael's Bastard said:

House Velaryon apparently wasn't one of the 40 dragonriding families, so their history and connection to House Targaryen and Valyria can be pretty flexible for an adaptation.

The joke is for many show watchers a multicultural Valyria is somewhat set up already; you have white, black, brown and even the Asian priestess in Volantis all Valyrian speakers. People don't know enough about Valyria to care let alone get angry. Average show watcher if they remember anything will connect it to the language Dany, Greyworm and Missandei spoke, a black dude being from that culture won't be this controversy some book readers think it will be. 

Maybe I'm totally off base, but I see the success of The Witcher (despite it not being very good) and Bridgerton and I think the general audience won't care. 

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6 minutes ago, Sotan said:

The joke is for many show watchers a multicultural Valyria is somewhat set up already; you have white, black, brown and even the Asian priestess in Volantis all Valyrian speakers. People don't know enough about Valyria to care let alone get angry. Average show watcher if they remember anything will connect it to the language Dany, Greyworm and Missandei spoke, a black dude being from that culture won't be this controversy some book readers think it will be. 

I saw you make that point before and it is a great one. The Essos and especially Volantis and Slaver's Bay fans saw in GOT was inherently diverse. Far less drastic recon than what Star Wars underwent between 4-6, and it can be done in a way that makes it less about Valyrians trying to maintain one certain look than about forty families (and whatever that entails) each trying to keep their independent links to their house's lines of dragons. I do think you could incorporate purple and blue eyes and silver and gold hair if you wanted to give them all something noticeable in common. But otherwise, for the sake of adaptation, I think it only strengthens the potential of a Doom or Valyria story to use a plausible dragon-based reason for Valyrian incest to diversify Valyria's skin hues.

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To be fair here, the red priests of Volantis are not Old Blood of Valyria -- indeed, the religion is revealed to be in tension with the Old Blood who rule Volantis, because of its revealing itself as opposed to the slavery that keeps them in power.

The show also never established that Volantis has any particular Valyrian ancestry, nor indeed that any of the Free Cities do, outside of the Blu-ray extras I think. OTOH, they are explicit in the press release that the Velaryons are a Valyrian family as old as the Targaryens.

I assume at present that they're going to go the route that his mother was a Summer Islanders princess or noblewoman that his father married.

 

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2 minutes ago, Ran said:

To be fair here, the red priests of Volantis are not Old Blood of Valyria -- indeed, the religion is revealed to be in tension with the Old Blood who rule Volantis, because of its revealing itself as opposed to the slavery that keeps them in power.

The show also never established that Volantis has any particular Valyrian ancestry, nor indeed that any of the Free Cities do. OTOH, they are explicit in the press release that the Velaryons are a Valyrian family as old as the Targaryens. I assume at present that they're going to go the route that his mother was a Summer Islanders princess or noblewoman that his father married.

I would love to see a completely faithful adaptation in every way, but I am completely happy with them diversifying the cast. I do hope they have a good backstory and don't start out halfassing it. I understand the tendency of not giving HBO the benefit of the doubt, but I am going to go ahead and let it play out. I think the easiest route is for Corlys' mother to be Summer Islander. Literally everything else can be the same without really affecting anything past or future about House Velaryon or House Targaryen. But I do think if they were creative enough they could make a more diverse dragonriding society in Valyria without sacrificing the important elements.

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16 minutes ago, Ran said:

To be fair here, the red priests of Volantis are not Old Blood of Valyria -- indeed, the religion is revealed to be in tension with the Old Blood who rule Volantis, because of its revealing itself as opposed to the slavery that keeps them in power.

The show also never established that Volantis has any particular Valyrian ancestry, nor indeed that any of the Free Cities do, outside of the Blu-ray extras I think. OTOH, they are explicit in the press release that the Velaryons are a Valyrian family as old as the Targaryens.

I assume at present that they're going to go the route that his mother was a Summer Islanders princess or noblewoman that his father married.

 

We know that, but these nuances would've gone over most of the general audiences heads unless they did some reading or maybe watched the lore videos online. The show is its own parallel universe separate from the books, and for most fans the show is all they will ever know. 

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22 minutes ago, Bael's Bastard said:

But I do think if they were creative enough they could make a more diverse dragonriding society in Valyria without sacrificing the important elements.

I have a feeling this is where they are going. They could also keep their options open at least in the first season and give Corlys a Summer Islander mother, and then decide to expand the world. Unless I'm mistaken Corlys and Mysaria will be the first non-Targaryen Valyrians on screen. That in of itself could be a clue. 

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3 hours ago, Bael's Bastard said:

Dude, now you're just acting openly racist.

How did I earn that? Please, explain to me, I'm just too dumb to see it.

3 hours ago, Bael's Bastard said:

In-story, Corlys' mother can be Summer Islander or something along those lines without altering the origins or future of House Velaryon and its relations with House Targaryen

The main issue with this is that Corlys was the first big adventurer Velaryon, altough his ancestors always been men at sea. It would make more sense for him to get married to a Summer Islander than being the child of one.

3 hours ago, Bael's Bastard said:

It wouldn't affect Daenora, whom the albino line continues through.

You're just hilarious, man. I've just said a couple times before that I'm not having problem with all this because House Velaryon loses their Valyrian traits. Thanks for paying attention, I guess. I originally pointed out that Corlys will not fit into the picture because Westerosi society is based on medieval Europe, and I pointed out Corlys originally having valyrian traits as another layer on this matter. 

6 hours ago, Sotan said:

Wakanda is a fictional country set in a real continent. its not the same as Westeros or Valyria which exist in a fictional world. I wish you would stop making these comparisons because they don't fit. 

It pretty much fits. There are examples for black people portraying originally white characters in films related to IRL history, so yea.

Anyway, I feel like I'm gonna stop arguing because I achieve nothing with all this, but getting called racist. So, avoiding conflict, I will be.

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5 hours ago, Mystical said:

They might just want to follow in the steps of the The Witcher which did diversity just for diversity sake. I just couldn't with that show (though it's just one of many reasons). I read most of the stories and played the games so I know what these characters are supposed to look like. But even if I didn't, while the story is fantasy it still takes place in a slavic country and is based on slavic folklore and what not. This might not be an issue for non-Europeans but for me I just can't suspend by disbelief. Fringilla for example comes from a royal family (which they will probably introduce at some point in the show), and a black royal family in a slavic country is something I just can't wrap my head around. I'm all for diversity but please do it where it makes sense for crying out loud.

As to most people not knowing anything about the Velaryons, that will change once the show comes out. Plenty of non-asoiaf readers who watched GoT did some looking into the source material even if it was just basics. So once people do that, the looks of Corlys will become a discussion point even for non-readers. It's kind of unavoidable in the social climate we live in.

I agree with you, tho, it has to be pointed out that The Witcher pretty much had colorblind casting, while HotD's casting isn't that. They cast people from different races on purpose. Or at least, that's what we think at this point.

I would have much less problems (I'd be totally fine) with an entire colorblind casting than making certain characters parts of other races.

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