spoilers [Spoilers] Episode 101 Discussion

[C.T. Phipps]

39 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

This is one of those things where age does matter. Jaehaerys and Alysanne were only two years apart. Daemon is significantly older than Rhaenyra and started grooming her from a young age. I don’t necessarily think this will get people to stop watching the show, but how we view age gaps is something that has changed dramatically during the last ten years.

I mean, I 100% believe they won't show Daemon grooming her.

[C.T. Phipps]

30 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Much like with the critic reviews, the fan reviews I’ve seen are roughly 2/3 positive, 1/3 negative. Initially, the reaction to Aemma’s death was uniformly positive, but now I’ve seen some more critical reactions. There were two female YouTubers I saw who hated the scene: one was a fan of the books and said it ruined Viserys’ character, the other said it was a way for the show to continue brutalizing women now that they can’t get away with copious amounts of sexual assault anymore.

Do you have links?

[EggBlue]

30 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

As an aside, for all the emphasis marketing has placed on the dragons, pretty much everything I’ve seen said about them has been negative. A lot of people thought the CGI looked bad and was better on GOT.

to be fair, the variety of movements these dragons have alone , makes the CGI better than before which is simply expected after 3 years of advancement in the field. 

[Frey family reunion]

2 hours ago, C.T. Phipps said:

I think there's WAY too much story for that but I think Aegon III is already a king over a ruined kingdom, most of the dragons dead, and most of House Targareyn destroyed.

BTW, at 24:00, KNIGHTS WATCH talks about how the Tournament violence and cheating...may not be cheating at all.

 

No, comparing what Daemon did to what Aerion did in the Hedge Knight doesn't absolve it.  Because what Aerion did was also dirty (even dirtier) as was widely acknowledged by everyone at the tourney.  Aerion just avoided major punishment by being a Targaryen prince.

Edited August 25, 2022 by Frey family reunion

[Sothoryosdragon]

They brought up the threat to the north in the episode and they also brought it up multiple times in the look ahead teaser. I feel like they're going to try and fix the end of game of thrones somehow and maybe redo it. Is anyone else getting the same feeling?

[C.T. Phipps]

1 minute ago, Frey family reunion said:

No, comparing what Daemon did to what Aerion did in the Hedge Knight doesn't absolve it.  Because what Aerion did was also dirty (even dirtier) as was widely acknowledged by everyone at the tourney.  Aerion just avoided major punishment by being a Targaryen prince.

Like...the other Targaryen Prince?

 

[C.T. Phipps]

2 minutes ago, Sothoryosdragon said:

They brought up the threat to the north in the episode and they also brought it up multiple times in the look ahead teaser. I feel like they're going to try and fix the end of game of thrones somehow and maybe redo it. Is anyone else getting the same feeling?

I mean, yes, but not in this show.

 

 

Edited August 25, 2022 by C.T. Phipps

[Frey family reunion]

2 minutes ago, C.T. Phipps said:

Like...the other Targaryen Prince?

 

You said the clip implied that what Daemon did wasn't cheating.  Of course it was cheating. Not being adequately punished for bad behavior doesn't absolve the bad behavior.

ETA: personally I found the way the tourney was depicted as being one of the negatives of the show.  It was really quite ridiculous how out of hand it got.  The other problem was the crowd reaction.  Really people should have been pretty horrified about what was happening.  

Edited August 25, 2022 by Frey family reunion

[Frey family reunion]

 

49 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Much like with the critic reviews, the fan reviews I’ve seen are roughly 2/3 positive, 1/3 negative. Initially, the reaction to Aemma’s death was uniformly positive, but now I’ve seen some more critical reactions. There were two female YouTubers I saw who hated the scene: one was a fan of the books and said it ruined Viserys’ character, the other said it was a way for the show to continue brutalizing women now that they can’t get away with copious amounts of sexual assault anymore. In a way, the showrunners can’t win, but I think that’s HBO’s fault more than the viewers’. It’s been their MO for so long, it’s unreasonable to expect skeptics to put aside all criticism right away. And while no one wants to admit it, there definitely are people who get off on this stuff. If you don’t believe me, go look at how many porn videos there are featuring rape plots.

I don't really understand your point here.  It didn't appear that the scene was shown for a gratuitous thrill of violence against women.  In fact the exact opposite was true.  I think we were supposed to be horrified about how women's worth were only tied into their ability to deliver an heir to their husband.

But if you really must criticize, don't criticize HBO or the show writers.  Criticize GRRM.  This scene was lifted from an earlier chapter in F&B when Rogar Baratheon made the exact same decision to authorize a fatal cesarean to try and save his child.

[zajaz]

16 minutes ago, Frey family reunion said:

You said the clip implied that what Daemon did wasn't cheating.  Of course it was cheating. Not being adequately punished for bad behavior doesn't absolve the bad behavior.

ETA: personally I found the way the tourney was depicted as being one of the negatives of the show.  It was really quite ridiculous how out of hand it got.  The other problem was the crowd reaction.  Really people should have been pretty horrified about what was happening.  

I seem to recall some of the presents were even cheering. I also remember Rhaenys saying that the knights were green boys. When I head that, I was like: 'If these are green boys, may the old gods and the new save us from experienced men. These guys are as bloodthirsty as the Mountain!'.

Edited August 25, 2022 by zajaz

[The Bard of Banefort]

5 minutes ago, Frey family reunion said:

 

I don't really understand your point here.  It didn't appear that the scene was shown for a gratuitous thrill of violence against women.  In fact the exact opposite was true.  I think we were supposed to be horrified about how women's worth were only tied into their ability to deliver an heir to their husband.

But if you really must criticize, don't criticize HBO or the show writers.  Criticize GRRM.  This scene was lifted from an earlier chapter in F&B when Rogar Baratheon made the exact same decision to authorize a fatal cesarean to try and save his child.

I wasn’t saying so much that I found it gratuitous, only that I can understand why other people would.

But there definitely was criticism around how GRRM wrote Alyssa Velaryon: https://goodqueenaly.tumblr.com/post/181036878343/in-defense-of-alyssa-velaryon/amp

For me, Alyssa’s death worked because it gave us one of the best scenes in the books—Rhaena confronting Rogar. But we never got to see Rhaenyra confront Viserys.

[The Bard of Banefort]

29 minutes ago, C.T. Phipps said:

Do you have links?

One was Rawrist’s review (and she’s very pro-HOTD, so it definitely wasn’t nitpicky), the other was this one: https://youtu.be/bievGwKeQcc

 

 

[Frey family reunion]

1 minute ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

I wasn’t saying so much that I found it gratuitous, only that I can understand why other people would.

But there definitely was criticism around how GRRM wrote Alyssa Velaryon: https://goodqueenaly.tumblr.com/post/181036878343/in-defense-of-alyssa-velaryon/amp

For me, Alyssa’s death worked because it gave us one of the best scenes in the books—Rhaena confronting Rogar. But we never got to see Rhaenyra confront Viserys.

Yea, I see where you're coming from now.  I guess the problem would be creating a schism between Rhaenyra and Viserys right before he appoints her his heir.  Perhaps they could have had Rhaenys take up that role.  But as of now Rhaenys just comes across as kind of aloof almost resigned to her lot.

[Sothoryosdragon]

25 minutes ago, C.T. Phipps said:

I mean, yes, but not in this show.

 

 

I think they'll do some setup in the house of the dragon and then fix everything by doing a redo of the end of game of thrones or doing the redo in the snow show.

[C.T. Phipps]

8 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

I wasn’t saying so much that I found it gratuitous, only that I can understand why other people would.

But there definitely was criticism around how GRRM wrote Alyssa Velaryon: https://goodqueenaly.tumblr.com/post/181036878343/in-defense-of-alyssa-velaryon/amp

For me, Alyssa’s death worked because it gave us one of the best scenes in the books—Rhaena confronting Rogar. But we never got to see Rhaenyra confront Viserys.

I really liked Daemon in HOTD where he manages to very subtly head off the problem of Rhaenyra and Viserys, which his brother will never know about. Proving that Viserys' claim that Daemon WASNT there for either of them was bullshit.

Mind you, that is the exact opposite of Rhaena as she chooses to kick a grieving husband and blame him for Alyssa's death as if she didn't have any choice (and making her, as the article says, nothing more than a passive participant).

Edited August 25, 2022 by C.T. Phipps

[Sothoryosdragon]

On a side note I find discussion on here so much better than on reddit. I wish forums like this were more active like they were 10 years ago instead of most discussion being on reddit. Is this forum still fairly active?

[C.T. Phipps]

3 minutes ago, Sothoryosdragon said:

On a side note I find discussion on here so much better than on reddit. I wish forums like this were more active like they were 10 years ago instead of most discussion being on reddit. Is this forum still fairly active?

I've found it to be so.

Albeit a lot more so with HOTD awake and running.

[The Bard of Banefort]

39 minutes ago, C.T. Phipps said:

I really liked Daemon in HOTD where he manages to very subtly head off the problem of Rhaenyra and Viserys, which his brother will never know about. Proving that Viserys' claim that Daemon WASNT there for either of them was bullshit.

Mind you, that is the exact opposite of Rhaena as she chooses to kick a grieving husband and blame him for Alyssa's death as if she didn't have any choice (and making her, as the article says, nothing more than a passive participant).

It’s different in Rogar’s case because Alyssa had already given birth to a male heir, and Alyssa was much older than Aemma and therefore at a greater risk. Plus Rogar, unlike Viserys on the show, abandoned his wife during the childbirth. 

[The Bard of Banefort]

8 hours ago, Sothoryosdragon said:

On a side note I find discussion on here so much better than on reddit. I wish forums like this were more active like they were 10 years ago instead of most discussion being on reddit. Is this forum still fairly active?

The Reddit discussions are very shallow and they exemplify the worst of the GOT fandom, where people will try to crush you for saying the wigs look bad.

Edited August 25, 2022 by The Bard of Banefort

[Lord Varys]

1 hour ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

This is one of those things where age does matter. Jaehaerys and Alysanne were only two years apart. Daemon is significantly older than Rhaenyra and started grooming her from a young age. I don’t necessarily think this will get people to stop watching the show, but how we view age gaps is something that has changed dramatically during the last ten years. 

Really? If that's the case, then this must be mostly an American thing. Yes, of course, old men hooking up with teenagers is and should be seen as weird to a point ... but even in the most salacious rumors versions of Daemon from FaB he isn't actually grooming a preteen Rhaenyra for a relationship.

He is attentive of her when he is at court in 103-105 AC and spoils her, but there is no sign that this is Daemon Targaryen preparing to seduce the girl at that point. He has no need doing that, since he is still the presumptive heir and Rhaenyra no rival for the throne. Once she is named heir he goes away and returns only six years later when she is fourteen. By the rules of her society she is a maiden then, trying to seduce her/win her hand is then not out of place in this society. And the version we would likely go by in the book is one where they actually wanted to marry each other ... although how sincere Daemon's love for Rhaenyra there was is something we cannot answer. But then - she was forced to marry a man she didn't love at all (in the books), so she may have been much better off with Daemon if they had married in 111-12 AC.

In the show, Rhaenyra will already be a woman grown by the time Daemon returns from the Stepstones even by our standards, so there shouldn't be anything off there. Also, while we don't get Daemon's age in the first episode, aging up Rhaenyra about seven years means she would be closer in age to show Daemon, anyway.

In the book Rhaenyra is seven years old in 105 AC when she is named heir. In the show she seems to be 14 years old in the first episode. In the book Daemon is born in 81 AC and Rhaenyra in 97 AC. The books have 16 years age gap between them, the show, perhaps, a nine years age gap (if we go with Daemon's age not being changed for the show). Still pretty big when she is 14 and he 23 (as might be the case in the first episode) but less so when she is 18-19 or however old she is when Daemon returns.

1 hour ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

One of the problems with Alicent is that by aging her down, they’re trying to make her sympathetic by having her be the pawn of older men her whole life and, unlike Rhaenyra, never even getting the chance to experience young romance. In the books, she’s much more conniving and ambitious. They’ve actually gotten rid of some of her agency, ironically.

We actually don't know any of that. Alicent is older in the books, but is she a pawn when hooking up with Viserys or is she acting on her own volition? We have no idea ... although I think the fact that she seems to be revealing in the end that she didn't love the fat guy (at all) indicates that she was pushed into this relationship by her father ... like she is in the show.

And I actually do think they moved the agency from the book (Alicent the reader of the Old King) into the show, but switched the ailing Jaehaerys for Viserys.