[Spoilers] Episode 108 Discussion

[Lord Varys]

10 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

If they do cut Daeron, I wonder if they’ll also cut Addam of Hull (they could still introduce Alyn later on as Vaemond’s son). In this case, both Aemond and Jace would have meatier roles. Aemond would be leading armies instead of burning peasants for most of the war, and Jace could be the one to confront Ulf and Hugh at Tumbleton. It would still have the thematic resonance of an honorable bastard, given that Jace already knows Harwin is his father.

Cutting Maelor is probably a good idea. He really only exists so that we can have the line “a son for a son” and to die a gruesome death not unlike Joffrey’s. All they have to do is change it to “a child for a child.”

If there is no Daeron, then the entire Green plot will suck in future seasons, because Aemond or Aegon II cannot possibly take over for him and the structure of the various plotlines remain even remotely intact.

With the Blacks it is different.

4 hours ago, Ran said:

No. In the books, though, the idea of Luke inheriting is a new one when Corlys gets ill. It was never especially examined and was I guess just assumed that Jace would succeed, but when Corlys fell ill Rhaenyra urged Luke instead because Jace would sit the Iron Throne and all.

The show made that make more sense. George dropped the ball there pretty hard. It is ludicrous to assume that Corlys wouldn't name a new heir after Laena and Laenor's death in 120 AC, just as it is ludicrous to assume that Rhaenyra would only think of Luke six years later.

The show made that make much more sense by having Corlys choose Luke even before Laenor's death, and the fact that he was away fighting a war for the last six years helps establish why Luke wasn't groomed for the role at his grandfather's side.

The only thing that makes less sense is why the Velaryons would still stick with Rhaenyra's brats as their heirs after they actually suspected that Daemon and Rhaenyra murdered their son. They should have denounced her as a whore and her children as bastards if they truly think that. It makes little sense that they did not.

[RhaenysBee]

35 minutes ago, Happy Ent said:

But, ah!, how much better this series would be if, for instance, we’d care about Vaemond. Or we’d see the Sea Snake getting wounded. Everything in HotD feels cramped.

I watched the after episode thing and based on that they legitimately think that Vaemond had a character story as the hardass who values truth and honesty above all and won’t give up something for a lie. Honestly I don’t have even half a thought in my head about who Vaemond is, other than that extra behind Corlys in the few Velaryon scenes we had. If this was a story you wanted to tell, then time should have been spent on building Vaemond’s character and journey through the plot. Otherwise the whole driftwood throne succession was a plot device to provide Viserys with his final character moments and set up the next generation characters and reaffirm the conflicts that will blow up next episode. There was virtually no room for Vaemond in all this as a character, and it was shocking to me that the after episode would spend several minutes discussing the motives and character and journey he didn’t have. 

Edited October 11, 2022 by RhaenysBee

[Lord Varys]

1 hour ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

Heh...not really. First of all, the relationship between the two of them is clearly sexual- no way Daemon would be barely be with his own family to just "hang out" with a girl he is not sleeping around with, just out of "paternal love".

No, it isn't. The only hint into that direction is the fact that they bathe together ... but that's not all *that* unusual in a medieval contexts, and much less so if we talk close relations.

1 hour ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

Your stuff about Alicent murdering her mother makes even less sense than that. Viserys clearly is not having affairs in the show, not just for lack of interest, but also lack of physical capacity, and nothing indicates Alicent would be capable of just murder someone for pure jealousy- at least at this point of the show.

I said destroyed, not murdered. I meant ruined, causing their child to grow up as the prostitute-criminal she is in the book.

Viserys is allegedly the father of the bastard pretender Trystane Truefyre in the book, so we have to imagine he was at least seen as both willing and capable to cheat on Alicent.

If they were to fly with that the way to introduce it would also be to have it early in the ten years gap, possibly while Alicent was away for a longer period of time and the woman in question was Viserys' replacement nurse.

[Crixus]

13 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

Neither, it seems, is Maelor. But the Blood & Cheese moment can still work with the two kids Helaena has.

I think they've only included characters who've been shown or alluded to, which explains Maelor. Would be odd if Daeron were to suddenly show up though, unless they mention him in the next 2. 

[Caligula_K3]

Yes, Corlys and Vaemond in this episode sum up all the problems of this show with me. Vaemond has been a glorified extra the entire season, and now he's the centrepiece of the episode and we're expected to care about him... and now he's dead. Corlys only gets one kind of scene, usually, and one character trait to play; and now, when something interesting happens to him, it's off screen. Really, really weird choices.

I'm in a strange position with this show and the book - I hadn't read Fire and Blood before the series started, but knew the general details of the Dance. Last week I started reading the book and am now just ahead of the show. I don't think many readers appreciate just how disorienting this show is if you don't already know the story. There seems to be little rhyme or reason to what the showrunners present, or which characters we're actually meant to get invested in vs. which ones are just plot devices. But now I see what the reasons are: it's in the book, so it's in the show. But the writers have generally not done a good job of drawing connections between the brief historical blurbs of Fire and Blood. Think back to the Crabfeeder plotline of episodes 2-3. There was absolutely no reason to include this, except to give Daemon a badass moment ( @Happy Ent, I agree with a lot of your post, but I completely disagree that they're not trying to give Daemon or white male characters badass or cool moments- you may be the one blinded by ideology here). It doesn't connect to future plot. It doesn't set up future character relationships. It barely counts as worldbuilding.

And now that I've read into Fire and Blood, Corlys seems like even more of a wasted opportunity. I know his seafaring days are in the past when the show starts, but damn - he should be the coolest character in the show. He should be swashbuckling. He shouldn't be resigned to repeating the same exposition over and over and then getting injured off screen so his brother can enter the plot for a second before dying.

Edited October 11, 2022 by Caligula_K3

[Macklunkey]

Liked this episode a lot and Paddy Considine was amazing. 

It was a lovely moment between the two brothers when he was climbing to sit on the throne. 

Also nice to see Otto smile a couple of times instead of just slinking about being sinister.

[frenin]

13 hours ago, Caligula_K3 said:

I also really, really disliked the choice to make Aegon a rapist. Why would you take the only fun character on the show and turn him into a completely unsympathetic villain? I get that he's going to be a villain sooner or later, but come on; let there be just one fun character in this show, writers.

I don't believe he's unsympathetic, after that he comes clean to his mom and almost breaks stating that his mom is putting him in a position of extreme discomfort and he's coping with the pressure. He has made it plain that he cares not for the throne and he'd be happy sexually assaulting women.

Wasn't he undressing serving girls in the last episode? This cannot take anyone by surprise, Aegon was already a sexual abuser in the making, the show simply highlighted what was going in private.

 

@Happy Ent

Quote

But, ah!, how much better this series would be if, for instance, we’d care about Vaemond.

Are we supposed to care for him?

Btw, have you really put Daemon and the showrunners refusing to give "white male characters cool stuff to do"? Come on now.

Edited October 11, 2022 by frenin

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

27 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

 The only thing that makes less sense is why the Velaryons would still stick with Rhaenyra's brats as their heirs after they actually suspected that Daemon and Rhaenyra murdered their son. They should have denounced her as a whore and her children as bastards if they truly think that. It makes little sense that they did not.

Both Corlys and Rhaenys are on team black in F&B, though. Initially, at least.

[Caligula_K3]

20 minutes ago, frenin said:

I don't believe he's unsympathetic, after that he comes clean to his mom and almost breaks stating that his mom is putting him in a position of extreme discomfort and he's coping with the pressure. He has made it plain that he cares not for the throne and he'd be happy sexually assaulting women.

 

 

Aegon not caring for the throne so that he can sexually assault women doesn't exactly make him sympathetic. Whereas if he didn't care for the throne because he can't withstand the pressure and so turns to partying - there's at least something there to work with.

Re: Vaemond, it's not that we're supposed to care "for" him. It's that we should care one way or another what happens to him, in the same way you care when Janos Slynt is sent to the wall or executed, even though he is a very minor character in the grand scheme of things. This show has had real trouble fleshing out characters who aren't the central three, and tends to use all other characters as plot/spectacle devices for an episode before writing them off.

Now, about Vaemond, I'm not sure how sympathetic the audience was supposed to be to him, at all. He's presented and played in this episode as a kind of preening, arrogant villain. But there was something very troubling about seeing white characters essentially try to take over a black family's house through illegitimate children, combined with this being the third episode in a row where a barely developed black character is either killed off or written off the show. I don't think this was intentional on the showrunners' parts, and maybe we were meant to be sympathetic to Vaemond in this episode. But that's not the way it played out to me.

 

[Happy Ent]

1 hour ago, frenin said:

 

@Happy Ent

Are we supposed to care for him?

I’m saying: it would be so much more interesting if we cared. GRRM is good at making every character a hero in their own story. Vaemond could easily be a semi-cool, competent, somewhat arrogant secondary character with a 3-4 episode story arc (see him worry about the history of his house, see him be competent, dispatch a few stepstoners, talk to some shipwrights, settle a dispute among sailors, make him correct some artisan’s depiction of the Seahorse (maybe even have an inside joke about heraldic seahorses versus actual seahorses in the Velaryon arms) – anything!, really, to make him into a believable, internally well-motivated character who honestly cares about House Velaryon, before he commits social suicide in the stupidests of fashions.

This is easy.  It’s character development 101. I write better character arcs for secondary NCPs in role-playing campaigns, for crying out loud!

So, yes, we are supposed to care for him, at least to the extent of understanding him.

> Btw, have you really put Daemon and the showrunners refusing to give "white male characters cool stuff to do"? Come on now.

Of course I do. Without the hint of irony or even an attempt at provocation. I filter their writing through my knowledge of their ideological priors and the power structure under which they operate. Like any literate consumer of fiction or history does. Just like I know that Munkun paints Orwyle in perhaps a too favourable light, and I know why. This seems like the most basic skillset of any consumer of text. We learn this in school. 

Every male white straight character must be debased, must be shown as brutal, incompetent, or morally sick. Anything else (in particular, the mere depiction of knightly virtues such as integrity, character, strength, compassion, virtue)  would be morally corrupt storytelling since the very story would further support the Western male narrative that currently stands in the way of progress. From the perspective of critical theory, the deconstruction of knightly virtues is a moral imperative and is possibly the most important mission for the fantasy genre; I hope we can agree on that. That’s why we need to see male heirs kill each other in insane displays of stupidity and violence, Aegon the Elder masturbate and rape, or Luke Skywalker suck green milk from a cow.

ETA: I am, however, prepared to write it off as mere incompetence. As I said, I understand why they drop the ball on Deamon Targaryen (who should, also, given the casting, be everybody’s favourite character on any TV show ever by now), because he’s white. I also understand why they can’t give Rhaena the book death, which would have been insanely romantic, beautiful, heart-wrenching, an unforgettable highlight of modern TV (and cheap to film!). But we can’t have women die in child-birth too much in our fiction, because of The Message. I get that.

But why drop the ball on Corlys? It’s beyond me. Even my cynicism can’t explain this. The entire process of selecting writers must be broken.

Edited October 11, 2022 by Happy Ent

[frenin]

55 minutes ago, Happy Ent said:

I’m saying: it would be so much more interesting if we cared. GRRM is good at making every character a hero in their own story. Vaemond could easily be a semi-cool, competent, somewhat arrogant secondary character with a 3-4 episode story arc (see him worry about the history of his house, see him be competent, dispatch a few stepstoners, talk to some shipwrights, settle a dispute among sailors, make him correct some artisan’s depiction of the Seahorse (maybe even have an inside joke about heraldic seahorses versus actual seahorses in the Velaryon arms) – anything!, really, to make him into a believable, internally well-motivated character who honestly cares about House Velaryon, before he commits social suicide in the stupidests of fashions.

1 hour ago, Caligula_K3 said:

Aegon not caring for the throne so that he can sexually assault women doesn't exactly make him sympathetic. Whereas if he didn't care for the throne because he can't withstand the pressure and so turns to partying - there's at least something there to work with.

Aegon was always going to sexually assault women, at least in this case they have given the angle of doing so as a way to cope with the pressure his mother puts on him and his feelings of inadequacy. Whether or not people find it forgivable is another thing.

Wasn't he already pulling a Trump in past episodes? He's a lecherous boy who wants to stick his penis in every hole that winked at him and he was already making the serving girls uneasy past episodes.

I'm sorry but Aegon was always going to be a piece of shit. 

 

 

1 hour ago, Caligula_K3 said:

Re: Vaemond, it's not that we're supposed to care "for" him. It's that we should care one way or another what happens to him, in the same way you care when Janos Slynt is sent to the wall or executed, even though he is a very minor character in the grand scheme of things. This show has had real trouble fleshing out characters who aren't the central three, and tends to use all other characters as plot/spectacle devices for an episode before writing them off.

Eh, I do not care what happens to either of them. He is introduced as a roadblock and as antagonists and acts the part. I would actually love that they gave Rhaenys and Helaena some  more screen rather than a character that appears and dies within three lines in the books.

 

 

1 hour ago, Caligula_K3 said:

But there was something very troubling about seeing white characters essentially try to take over a black family's house through illegitimate children, combined with this being the third episode in a row where a barely developed black character is either killed off or written off the show. I don't think this was intentional on the showrunners' parts, and maybe we were meant to be sympathetic to Vaemond in this episode. But that's not the way it played out to me.

Disagree, Corlys stated that Lucerys was his heir and every trouble that decision may cause was solved the moment Rhaenyras's kids were betrothed to Corlys's granddaughters. At that point it was not some "noble cause" but naked ambition.

This also ignores the fact of agency, Laenor signed off to that and took the children as his, regardless of blood. They are his  and they are entitled to his legacy

 

 

55 minutes ago, Happy Ent said:

I’m saying: it would be so much more interesting if we cared. GRRM is good at making every character a hero in their own story. Vaemond could easily be a semi-cool, competent, somewhat arrogant secondary character with a 3-4 episode story arc (see him worry about the history of his house, see him be competent, dispatch a few stepstoners, talk to some shipwrights, settle a dispute among sailors, make him correct some artisan’s depiction of the Seahorse (maybe even have an inside joke about heraldic seahorses versus actual seahorses in the Velaryon arms) – anything!, really, to make him into a believable, internally well-motivated character who honestly cares about House Velaryon, before he commits social suicide in the stupidests of fashions.

 

Quote

  That same year, across Blackwater Bay, the Sea Snake was stricken by a sudden fever. As he took to his bed, surrounded by maesters, the issue arose as to who should succeed him as Lord of the Tides and Master of Driftmark should the sickness claim him. With both his trueborn children dead, by law his lands and titles should pass to his eldest grandson, Jacaerys…but since Jace would presumably ascend the Iron Throne after his mother, Princess Rhaenyra urged her good-father to name instead her second son, Lucerys. Lord Corlys also had half a dozen nephews, however, and the eldest of them, Ser Vaemond Velaryon, protested that the inheritance by rights should pass to him…on the grounds that Rhaenyra’s sons were bastards sired by Harwin Strong. The princess was not slow in answering this charge. She dispatched Prince Daemon to seize Ser Vaemond, had his head removed, and fed his carcass to her dragon, Syrax.

This is what we get of Vaemond Velaryon in the books. He appears, tries to get ahead of Corlys's grandchildren to get Driftmark, says b word and is promptly killed.

 

Of all the characters desperately needing some more characterization, Aemma, Harwin, the Velaryon siblings, Rhaenys etc.  Why should anyone focus on a character that is so irrelevant? He does well what he's supposed to do which is mainly oppose Daemon and then act out of naked ambition and dying as a result.

 

 

55 minutes ago, Happy Ent said:

Every male white straight character must be debased, must be shown as brutal, incompetent, or morally sick. Anything else (in particular, the mere depiction of knightly virtues such as integrity, character, strength, compassion, virtue)  would be morally corrupt storytelling since the very story would further support the Western male narrative that currently stands in the way of progress. From the perspective of critical theory, the deconstruction of knightly virtues is a moral imperative and is possibly the most important mission for the fantasy genre; I hope we can agree on that. That’s why we need to see male heirs kill each other in insane displays of stupidity and violence, Aegon the Elder masturbate and rape, or Luke Skywalker suck green milk from a cow.

Viserys, Harwin or Lyonel Strong or Jace Velaryon. They are neither brutal, nor incompetent nor morally sick.

Lyonel Strong in particular is the show's paragon of integrity, character, strenght, compassion and virtue.

Aegon the Elder masturbate and rape because he's a piece of shit who's not been raised properly, not because he's white and male. Rhaenyra's children are white and male and are all fantastic kids.

You're seeing things where there aren't. You're letting your bias filter.

Edited October 11, 2022 by frenin

[Stenkarazine]

1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

If there is no Daeron, then the entire Green plot will suck in future seasons, because Aemond or Aegon II cannot possibly take over for him and the structure of the various plotlines remain even remotely intact.

 

Can't they somehow merge Daeron's actions into Aemond's, and have the latter fly on his dragon (ie. at the speed of the plot) from the Riverlands to the Reach just in time for the battle of Honeywine, do all the slaughter there is to do in the Reach (ie. Bitterbridge)... then leave (for instance because he got wind of Daemon's whereabouts) just before the second battle of Tumbleton, to go back to the Riverlands and die there ?

I mean of course I would be saddened if they leave Daeron out, but it seems more or less doable plot-wise.

 

Edited October 11, 2022 by Stenkarazine

[Happy Ent]

1 minute ago, frenin said:

Of all the characters desperately needing some more characterization, Aemma, Harwin, the Velaryon siblings, Rhaenys etc.  

For the record: I’d like all of these characters fleshed out!

[Corvinus85]

1 hour ago, Caligula_K3 said:

I'm in a strange position with this show and the book - I hadn't read Fire and Blood before the series started, but knew the general details of the Dance. Last week I started reading the book and am now just ahead of the show. I don't think many readers appreciate just how disorienting this show is if you don't already know the story. There seems to be little rhyme or reason to what the showrunners present, or which characters we're actually meant to get invested in vs. which ones are just plot devices. But now I see what the reasons are: it's in the book, so it's in the show. But the writers have generally not done a good job of drawing connections between the brief historical blurbs of Fire and Blood. Think back to the Crabfeeder plotline of episodes 2-3. There was absolutely no reason to include this, except to give Daemon a badass moment ( @Happy Ent, I agree with a lot of your post, but I completely disagree that they're not trying to give Daemon or white male characters badass or cool moments- you may be the one blinded by ideology here). It doesn't connect to future plot. It doesn't set up future character relationships. It barely counts as worldbuilding.

I tend to watch people's reactions online to this show, and almost everyone I watch is not familiar with the material. None of them have had much trouble following the story. The time jumps do force them to re-orient themselves a bit, but that's about it.

 

[Happy Ent]

10 minutes ago, frenin said:

You're seeing things where there aren't. You're letting your bias filter.

Absolutely ! I expect you to read my messages with the same filter as I read the show.

Of course, I am not bound by employment contracts, selection pressures, ideological incentives, or an entire social, cultural, and academic infrastructure that expects me to honour certain perspectives; I am beholden to only by my personal biases, so you know me as – if anything – less biased.

I am, thus, much like Mushroom. As a source as well as a lover.

Edited October 11, 2022 by Happy Ent

[Caligula_K3]

2 minutes ago, frenin said:

 

Of all the characters desperately needing some more characterization, Aemma, Harwin, the Velaryon siblings, Rhaenys etc.  Why should anyone focus on a character that is so irrelevant? He does well what he's supposed to do which is mainly oppose Daemon and then act out of naked ambition and dying as a result.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I absolutely agree that all these characters deserve and need development. But the argument that other characters don't deserve development because they're "irrelevant" is exactly one of the reasons why this season of the show hasn't worked.

The showrunners and many fans know exactly who is relevant and irrelevant to the overall story because they've read Fire and Blood. They know that Vaemond does one thing and then he's dead. They know that Laenor isn't sticking around, so why bother develop him?

Except this is what good TV shows do- they develop characters, even when they're not "relevant." Imagine a Game of Thrones Season 1 that decided that Ned, Viserys, Robert, and Drogo weren't relevant, because they're not, in the grand scheme of the plot. So maybe we meet Drogo twice before the episode he dies in. Ned Stark appears on the outskirts of scenes, like Strong did, before dying. 

Except that would be terrible. Yes, in hindsight we know that Ned Stark isn't going to be the protagonist of ASoiAF. In hindsight, we know that Viserys is about as important to ASoiAF as Harwin Strong is in House of the Dragon. But Martin and D&D still treated them as characters with interiority whose storylines feel relevant, not just plot devices to get to the next bit of a story or to the "real" story. And that means that when Viserys dies in Season 1 Episode 6, it feels like a big deal and you feel something: for me, it's a mix of glee, horror, and pity. When Vaemond or Harwin dies this season, I feel absolutely nothing, because I don't know or care at all, because the show has constantly told me not to care about them by barely developing them.

So the real choices are these. If the writers think this Vaemond plotline was important and needed to be included, then they should have developed him as a secondary character so you care about him one way or the other, as @Happy Ent says. But if he really is ultimately irrelevant and his story is unimportant - then there's another solution. Leave him out of the show. Use his absence to develop the characters that you think are actually important, whether it's Corlys or Rhaenys or Helaena. But right now the showrunners are stuck in the middle: they want to include just about every minor character in Fire and Blood for some reason, but they don't want to bother developing most of them beyond the paragraph long blurbs they're given.

[Caligula_K3]

10 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

I tend to watch people's reactions online to this show, and almost everyone I watch is not familiar with the material. None of them have had much trouble following the story. The time jumps do force them to re-orient themselves a bit, but that's about it.

 

I'm not saying the overall story is hard to follow. The basic story is incredibly simple and is hammered in over and over: Rhaenyra wants throne, Alicent wants throne for her kids, Viserys is weak. The disorienting part are the character arcs, which are constantly disrupted and basically don't exist, and keeping track of the many minor characters who may be relevant, or more likely, who will do one thing and then die.

The constant time jumps have also just led to crazy amounts of exposition nearly every episode.

[frenin]

4 minutes ago, Caligula_K3 said:

Except this is what good TV shows do- they develop characters, even when they're not "relevant." Imagine a Game of Thrones Season 1 that decided that Ned, Viserys, Robert, and Drogo weren't relevant, because they're not, in the grand scheme of the plot. So maybe we meet Drogo twice before the episode he dies in. Ned Stark appears on the outskirts of scenes, like Strong did, before dying. 

But Ned, Viserys, Robert and Drogo are relevant, relevancy is not about appearing in more than one book/season.  Except the main POVs, there are few characters as relevant as Ned or Robert and Drogo and Viserys are of huge importance in Dany's arc. 

Vaemond however doesn't have none of those characters's importance in either book or show. He's just there to bind Rhaenyra and Rhaenys. It's a complete false comparative. The weight those characters have in both book and show n the protagonists' journeys is day and night compared to Vaemond. 

 

16 minutes ago, Caligula_K3 said:

So the real choices are these. If the writers think this Vaemond plotline was important and needed to be included, then they should have developed him as a secondary character so you care about him one way or the other

They give him about as much development as he needs. 

A tertiary character with a minute to shine. The character on itself is inmaterial, what's important is what the Hightowers plan on doing with Vaemond. Nothing more, nothing less.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 hours ago, Macklunkey said:

Liked this episode a lot and Paddy Considine was amazing. 

It was a lovely moment between the two brothers when he was climbing to sit on the throne. 

Also nice to see Otto smile a couple of times instead of just slinking about being sinister.

Otto told his daughter she has two options cozy up to Rhaenyra and protect herself that way or win the throne.  He was backing the former option in those moments and he also recognizes he was dismissed as hand for threatening Rhaenyra before.  He’s a smart man.

[TheValonqarThatWasAzorAhai]

On 10/10/2022 at 1:18 AM, Ser Not Appearing said:

For my own part, I despise their use of Allicent misunderstand the prophecy. It's terrible storytelling and thoroughly umsatisfying for that to be a motivation and the deciding factor in her going through with things.

 

She could use that and also tell them what a drunken Viserys said to her in front of the fire when they were celebrating Aegon’s second name day.  I’m at work right now, so I don’t have access to my notes. But it was along the lines of him doubting himself about naming Rhaenyra heir.