GoT never worked for me but this does.

[Luzifer's right hand]

Is anyone else who did not enjoy GoT much enjoying this?

I can't really explain why GoT did not really work for me despite its obvious merits. Just felt off to me from the beginning. I only watched the first season and had lost interest before finishing it and watched The Lion and the Rose episode from season 4 at a convention. Weirdly enough I have actually been to the GoT studio tour twice and enjoyed that.

[Annara Snow]

42 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

Is anyone else who did not enjoy GoT much enjoying this?

I can't really explain why GoT did not really work for me despite its obvious merits. Just felt off to me from the beginning. I only watched the first season and had lost interest before finishing it and watched The Lion and the Rose episode from season 4 at a convention. Weirdly enough I have actually been to the GoT studio tour twice and enjoyed that.

I do too, and I think it's easy to explain by one simple fact:

Ryan Condal really loves A Song of Ice and Fire, has made all the writers read both Fire and Blood and the main 5 books if they haven't already, tries to write GRRM-like dialogue and make the show have the same spirit as the books.

D&D, on the other hand, are known to have discouraged the actors from reading the books, even mocked an actor who wrote them a letter about his book storyline, and seemed almost embarrased that they are adapting a fantasy series,  saying that they were trying to make it something that football players and soccer moms would like (?) (Let's not even get into the fact that they had an executive producer in charge of the 'pervert side of the audience' making sure there were random shots of naked women in scenes where there was no purpose to it...)

[Luzifer's right hand]

7 hours ago, Annara Snow said:

I do too, and I think it's easy to explain by one simple fact:

Ryan Condal really loves A Song of Ice and Fire, has made all the writers read both Fire and Blood and the main 5 books if they haven't already, tries to write GRRM-like dialogue and make the show have the same spirit as the books.

D&D, on the other hand, are known to have discouraged the actors from reading the books, even mocked an actor who wrote them a letter about his book storyline, and seemed almost embarrased that they are adapting a fantasy series,  saying that they were trying to make it something that football players and soccer moms would like (?) (Let's not even get into the fact that they had an executive producer in charge of the 'pervert side of the audience' making sure there were random shots of naked women in scenes where there was no purpose to it...)

Good to hear that I'm not alone.

I did enjoy some parts of the first season of GoT I just felt no urge at all to see more.

[Cashless Society]

I enjoy the show a bit more than GoT. It mostly has to do with the fact that HotD does the sensible thing by trying to use as many cinematic tools in the toolbox, other than just dialogue, to help tell the story.

22 hours ago, Annara Snow said:

D&D seemed almost embarrased that they are adapting a fantasy series,  saying that they were trying to make it something that football players and soccer moms would like (?)

My biggest fear for HotD is that in addressing some of the criticisms of the first season, changez made in future seasons would cater to this crowd.

[Annara Snow]

5 hours ago, Cashless Society said:

I enjoy the show a bit more than GoT. It mostly has to do with the fact that HotD does the sensible thing by trying to use as many cinematic tools in the toolbox, other than just dialogue, to help tell the story.

My biggest fear for HotD is that in addressing some of the criticisms of the first season, changez made in future seasons would cater to this crowd.

Which criticisms?

Most of the criticism was about the time skips, which aren't going to be a thing in the following seasons. Also some mistakes with cinematography (the night filter).

Overall , the show is a massive success and I don't think they will feel the need to change anything big, like dumb things down. 

And next seasons will also by their very nature have even more things general audiences like, from even more dragons, to more action, to the Starks.

[Cashless Society]

7 hours ago, Annara Snow said:

Which criticisms?

Most of the criticism was about the time skips, which aren't going to be a thing in the following seasons. Also some mistakes with cinematography (the night filter).

Overall , the show is a massive success and I don't think they will feel the need to change anything big, like dumb things down. 

And next seasons will also by their very nature have even more things general audiences like, from even more dragons, to more action, to the Starks.

There have been numerous complaints about the show taking itself too seriously and lacking a sense of humour and that the show sorely needs a Tyrion like character to lighten the mood.

Then there's those who've complained about all the characters being grey having no relatble characters, leaving them with no one to root for. Not even love to hate them type characters like the Lannisters.

Towards the end of the season, major plot points came as a result of accidents instead of character agency, as if characters can only be blamed if they played a direct role in an action.

[Luzifer's right hand]

19 hours ago, Annara Snow said:

Which criticisms?

Most of the criticism was about the time skips, which aren't going to be a thing in the following seasons. Also some mistakes with cinematography (the night filter).

Overall , the show is a massive success and I don't think they will feel the need to change anything big, like dumb things down. 

And next seasons will also by their very nature have even more things general audiences like, from even more dragons, to more action, to the Starks.

I actually really enjoyed the dark scenes. I have been opposed to stuff being optimized for low end devices and phones for a while though. I mean consoles did the same to gaming with games being optimized for ancient hardware.

 

12 hours ago, Cashless Society said:

There have been numerous complaints about the show taking itself too seriously and lacking a sense of humour and that the show sorely needs a Tyrion like character to lighten the mood.

Then there's those who've complained about all the characters being grey having no relatble characters, leaving them with no one to root for. Not even love to hate them type characters like the Lannisters.

Towards the end of the season, major plot points came as a result of accidents instead of character agency, as if characters can only be blamed if they played a direct role in an action.

I always think of this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erfurt_latrine_disaster:

Quote

All of the nobles across the Holy Roman Empire were invited to the meeting, and many arrived on 25 July to attend.^[5] Just as the assembly began, the wooden floor of the deanery, in which the nobles were sitting, broke under the stress, and people fell down through the first floor into the latrine in the cellar. About 60 people died,^[6] including Count Gozmar III of Ziegenhain, Count Friedrich I of Abenberg [de], Burgrave Friedrich I of Kirchberg [de], Count Heinrich I of Schwarzburg [de], Count Burgrave Burchard of Wartburg [de], Burgmeister Breuer of Wartschitt and Beringer of Meldingen.^[7] King Henry was said to have survived only because he sat in an alcove with a stone floor.^[5]

when people complain about random shit happening to important people. I mean fantasy tends to have way too few random deaths to diseases and small injuries for their settings anyway.

[Ran]

They did mess up the day-for-night scenes, per this lengthy analysis, tuning the overall darkness way, way below recommended levels.

[Annara Snow]

13 hours ago, Cashless Society said:

There have been numerous complaints about the show taking itself too seriously and lacking a sense of humour and that the show sorely needs a Tyrion like character to lighten the mood.

Then there's those who've complained about all the characters being grey having no relatble characters, leaving them with no one to root for. Not even love to hate them type characters like the Lannisters.

 

Those were complaints in the mixed and bad reviews that the show got early on before the first episode even aired. (I was one of those people who reacted with: "souds like I will really love this show") Seeing what a massive success the show has been,  I don't think they'll be paying attention to those.

(Also there were even YouTube videos made by fans ripping apart and mocking some of these reviews. There was a really terrible one, both as in negative and terribly written, that contained gems like "Poor characterization is a problem. None of these characters are purely good or evil" or "Before GoT got bad, it was good".)

Quote

Towards the end of the season, major plot points came as a result of accidents instead of character agency, as if characters can only be blamed if they played a direct role in an action.

Some people seem to be confusing "agency" with "eagerness to murder people".

[Luzifer's right hand]

3 hours ago, Ran said:

They did mess up the day-for-night scenes, per this lengthy analysis, tuning the overall darkness way, way below recommended levels.

I guess only having access to a non HDR stream prevented me from having major problems. I mean the scenes were dark but certainly not the pitch black that video seems to suggest, definitely closer to the reference monitor than the same type of LG OLED TV he used and I really enjoy such scenes.

Not that I ever noticed it with other content before.

I guess I will rewatch Dune and if I notice it now I will be really annoyed. 

But even if is a thing the not being able to see what's going on has never happened to me.

Edit: However apart from disabling true motion (the function that adds frames often considered "soap opera mode") and power saving modes I have let the functions that change brightness untouched so something else might counteract a bit.

One a sidenote I discovered a way to disable the startup logo by watching that guys content because there is a secret menu you access be spamming the mute button...lol

 

[Gianna Dorenberg]

On 11/8/2022 at 5:12 AM, Cashless Society said:

There have been numerous complaints about the show taking itself too seriously and lacking a sense of humour and that the show sorely needs a Tyrion like character to lighten the mood.

Then there's those who've complained about all the characters being grey having no relatble characters, leaving them with no one to root for. Not even love to hate them type characters like the Lannisters.

Towards the end of the season, major plot points came as a result of accidents instead of character agency, as if characters can only be blamed if they played a direct role in an action.

Isn't Daemon already fullfilling that aspect with humor ? It's in a more sinister way but it's still funny, albeit in very short bursts.

I absolutely do not get the complaint about all the characters being grey. So far Rhaenyra and Alicent have been portrayed as white as white can be characters. Both are anything but grey characters SO FAR. That's my issue with S1. Both Rhaenyra and Alicent have been portrayed too perfect as characters to the point they felt out of place to me in HOTD.  We never saw them do bad things (Alicent pulling knife aside which didn't do much to convey that).  Lately it's even worse, Alicent/Rhae are like Disney characters to me only showing their good sides. This was also my issue with GOT, everyone LOVED Dany/Jon Snow because they were such one-note characters of being so honorable/good (until they suddenly made Dany an evil villain lol and we saw the peoples reponse to that). I see the same with Rhaenyra everyone adores her but the general audience usually has poor taste so they like bland characters that are honorable/good and feel less like real characters.  I'm  hoping they show Rhaenyra/Alicent do horrible  things so the viewer understands that these aren't your typical TV trope characters and that no one is just good or bad. So far though they've really failed with those 2 characters in my eyes. 

This is also my worry with S2 and onwards. My fear is that the introduction of the Starks might ruin the show just like it did to GOT.  Unless of course they make the Starks a bit more grey as characters and show their ugly side as well cause if not the audience is going to root for them and it's going to take away from the more complex characters of this show and its story. So far they've really been deviating from the books (they made Daemon look a bit more ruthless towards his own family than in the books, they made Aemond look like it was an accident when in the books he meant to kill, Alicent is like a completely different character in the books etc. etc.). 

[Annara Snow]

@Gianna Dorenberg " they made Aemond look like it was an accident when in the books he meant to kill, "
Which Maester Gyldayn and his sources knew because they were up their in the sky at Storm's End, flying and reporting live on the fight, and also possibly in Aemond's head.

Alicent hates Rhaenyra in the books! As seen in her line when she says she hopes Rhaenyra will die in childbirth!.. Which she said in the super secret Green Council, where who knows what was really said. But Mushroom knows she said it. Even though he wasn't even in KL, he was on Dragonstone.

"It was different in the books" is the funniest argument people use in the HotD fandom. Unless it refers to the few actual changes (Alicent's age, Corlys' age - I'm very glad they changed that, Joffrey not being killed at a tourney but a wedding...) 99% of the time  Fire and Blood doesn't even know what happened and just gives you bare outlines, lots of speculation and different versions.

 

[Cashless Society]

On 11/8/2022 at 6:26 PM, Ran said:

They did mess up the day-for-night scenes, per this lengthy analysis, tuning the overall darkness way, way below recommended levels.

So this is an OLED problem rather than creative problem? I really don't get why tech reviewers privilege the manufacturers instead of the creators.

On 11/8/2022 at 7:32 PM, Annara Snow said:

Those were complaints in the mixed and bad reviews that the show got early on before the first episode even aired. (I was one of those people who reacted with: "souds like I will really love this show") Seeing what a massive success the show has been,  I don't think they'll be paying attention to those.

Some still complained about them in their end of season review. Condal has also said that there will be more humour written into season 2, so I'm a little worried.

On 11/8/2022 at 7:32 PM, Annara Snow said:

Some people seem to be confusing "agency" with "eagerness to murder people".

Agreed. 

On 11/9/2022 at 3:29 PM, Gianna Dorenberg said:

Isn't Daemon already fullfilling that aspect with humor ? It's in a more sinister way but it's still funny, albeit in very short bursts.

Well, humour is subjective. I get the feeling that most of the people making such complaints don't consider it humour unless it is laugh-out-loud funny.

[Ran]

1 hour ago, Cashless Society said:

So this is an OLED problem rather than creative problem? I really don't get why tech reviewers privilege the manufacturers instead of the creators.

The people who create the standards that are supposed to be used by the people grading the footage are not really on the "tech" side. Dolby is very much focused on the interface between creators and tech.

The problem is that they graded these scenes to being 1 nit or less for the most part, well below recommended minimum levels for HDR according to Dolby and the international standards. This led the monitors that have auto-dimming features that try to guess when to dim to see no reason why they didn't because a near-0 nit scene was below anything they're intended for.

Yes, tech companies decided the threshold for dimming, but that was based on an international standard the show ignored.

 

[Takiedevushkikakzvezdy]

On 11/8/2022 at 5:26 PM, Ran said:

They did mess up the day-for-night scenes, per this lengthy analysis, tuning the overall darkness way, way below recommended levels.

And it wasn't just Sapochnik, but other directors as well, no?

[Ran]

1 minute ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

And it wasn't just Sapochnik, but other directors as well, no?

I don't know about that, but I do know that the two episodes that got the most complaint were the GoT "Long Night" episode and this one, both by Sapochnik and Fabian Wagner

[Cashless Society]

57 minutes ago, Ran said:

The people who create the standards that are supposed to be used by the people grading the footage are not really on the "tech" side. Dolby is very much focused on the interface between creators and tech.

The problem is that they graded these scenes to being 1 nit or less for the most part, well below recommended minimum levels for HDR according to Dolby and the international standards. This led the monitors that have auto-dimming features that try to guess when to dim to see no reason why they didn't because a near-0 nit scene was below anything they're intended for.

Yes, tech companies decided the threshold for dimming, but that was based on an international standard the show ignored.

Thanks, now I'll just investigate how these bodies came to the conclusion of these standards. 

31 minutes ago, Ran said:

I don't know about that, but I do know that the two episodes that got the most complaint were the GoT "Long Night" episode and this one, both by Sapochnik and Fabian Wagner

Wasn't The Long Night due to D&D overriding the complaints of Sapochnik, Wagner and the VFX artists?

[Neria Snow]

On 11/6/2022 at 7:43 AM, Luzifer's right hand said:

Is anyone else who did not enjoy GoT much enjoying this?

I can't really explain why GoT did not really work for me despite its obvious merits. Just felt off to me from the beginning. I only watched the first season and had lost interest before finishing it and watched The Lion and the Rose episode from season 4 at a convention. Weirdly enough I have actually been to the GoT studio tour twice and enjoyed that.

ME!!!
I gave GOT multiple chances, and to this day I still am not a fan.. but HOTD yess!!!

[Raksha 2014]

On 11/6/2022 at 11:28 AM, Annara Snow said:

I do too, and I think it's easy to explain by one simple fact:

Ryan Condal really loves A Song of Ice and Fire, has made all the writers read both Fire and Blood and the main 5 books if they haven't already, tries to write GRRM-like dialogue and make the show have the same spirit as the books.

D&D, on the other hand, are known to have discouraged the actors from reading the books, even mocked an actor who wrote them a letter about his book storyline, and seemed almost embarrased that they are adapting a fantasy series,  saying that they were trying to make it something that football players and soccer moms would like (?) (Let's not even get into the fact that they had an executive producer in charge of the 'pervert side of the audience' making sure there were random shots of naked women in scenes where there was no purpose to it...)

 

I didn't know that D&D discouraged actors from embracing the books and seemed to be embarrassed about adapting a fantasy series, or that they had an executive producer saddled with the particular chore of catering to the "pervert side of the audience".  One of the things that really bored me in GOT were the scenes of grown men acting like frat boys, constant 'cock' jokes and brothel scenes to show how apparently macho certain characters were (as I recall, in the books, Oberyn and Ellaria never set foot in any King's Landing brothel to pick out entertainment for their bed; they probably would have thought the local talent beneath them and brought their own bed-warmers or whatnot).  And of course, the famous 'sexposition' scene, where Littlefinger, supposedly one of the smartest power brokers on two continents, reveals his past vulnerabilities and deep motivations to the hired help while said hired help is auditioning for positions in his brothel - literally.  

Thankfully, the brothel scenes seen in HOD have had more relevance to the actual plot, mainly because they're tied to Daemon Targaryen's role in King's Landing and the way he uses his power.   Daemon's 'date' with his young niece, taking her into the brothel, which is as audacious as it is utterly creepy, is totally in character and underscores Daemon's being as at home in the seedy underbelly of King's Landing as he is in the Red Keep or flying his dragon.  And at least his sex scene with Mysaria was a subversion of expectations; Daemon was not showing off how macho he is by having sex with his girlfriend in the brothel; he's failing to complete the act because he's troubled - if ever any male in HOD is macho, it's Daemon, but he can't perform in the place where everyone else does (and this happens again when he brings Rhaenyra there on their date, though for a different reason, I think).  They do have no trouble later, when Rhaenyra is older and rather than being in a brothel, they're on the beach the night after the funeral of Daemon's wife who is Rhaenyra's sister-in-law, which is typical of this family (and Daemon and Rhaenyra) - one wants to roll one's eyes and say, aw, those crazy kids while also grimacing in disgust at the colossal selfishness of these two people.  But it all works much better than the shoehorning of brothel scenes into GOT.  

I also find myself rewatching the first season of HOD much more than I rewatched any season of GOT.   I think the cast is stronger (there were many outstanding performances in GOT, but I don't think that Kit Harington and Richard Madden and Sophie Turner, to name three, were as believable as the rest in their roles though they had some very good moments (and in some cases the writing let them down); everyone in HOD is knocking it out of the park with the possible exception of whasisname as Ser Criston Cole and he's good enough for what the show requires and definitely the actress playing Mysaria.

I think what started to make me really love HOD was the scene with Viserys and the very young Laena Velaryon in episode 2, The Rogue Prince:  it exposed everything that was wrong with the Targaryen dynasty and the current cultural-political situation - a middle-aged king with a healthy teenaged daughter is being pushed by political expediency to take another bride to father sons after his beloved wife has died, and his powerful cousin-by-marriage is pushing his 12-year-old daughter on him as a bride, with the approval of just about everybody.  This scene might have been overdone if it had been written for Game of Thrones, or, if the bridegroom was Tyrion and the bride was a mature-looking 14-year-old Sansa, played as if she was lucky to get such a wonderful catch (and I do recognize that the circumstances were different).

I loved how this scene was written and performed:  Viserys, who is still mourning his beloved wife, doesn't want to remarry at all, and is even more dismayed at the prospect of marrying the physically tiny 12-year-old little Laena Velaryon, daughter of his cousin Rhaenys.  He's trying not to show how the prospect horrifies him, because this kid, who's all dolled up like a little Marie Antoinette, skipping along to keep up with her royal and much older cousin, and chirping questions about Balerion the Black Dread, is just so much a child, a bright child, but still a child, mentally and physically.  Then the kid pauses, stops her chirping and gives a serious speech about what an honor it will be for her to help preserve the purity of their shared Valyrian blood and give him many sons; the audience and Viserys can tell that Laena's father had her memorize it and the audience can also tell that Viserys would be running away fast if not for the fact that it's really not Laena's fault and he doesn't want to hurt her feelings.  Laena's addendum that her mother told her she wouldn't have to bed the king until she was 14 is the clincher that will push Viserys into possibly the worst decision of his life.  This is a horrible potential marriage in Viserys' eyes, an indecency in view of Laena's extreme youth and innocence.  I believe that Viserys thought that if he was going to be pressured to marry, better to marry Alicent, who was physically more mature than Laena, and with whom he was already emotionally and verbally comfortable, than the little Velaryon girl.  It might have been better for the Targaryen dynasty, and for Westeros, if Viserys had married Laena and kept her in a separate household until she was 15 when they would consummate the marriage.  But this scene showed vividly, thanks to excellent writing in relatively few words, and outstanding performances by the actors playing Viserys and young Laena, all the nuances of the situation and why Viserys was so horrified (without playing it for comedy or presenting Laena as a silly or stupid child, which she most definitely was not).  

[Annara Snow]

4 hours ago, Raksha 2014 said:

 

I didn't know that D&D discouraged actors from embracing the books and seemed to be embarrassed about adapting a fantasy series, or that they had an executive producer saddled with the particular chore of catering to the "pervert side of the audience".

It's all true and comes from reliable sources.

Iain Glen said in an interview that he had read the first book but then realized that D&D didn't want the actors to read the books, and whenever someone would mention the books, "their eyes would glaze over". And that's consistent with the other things we know, for instance that Ian McElhinney, who had read the books, wrote them a letter about why Barristan shouldn't be killed off as early and about the importance of his storyline in Meereen, and that 'made us want to kill him even more' (Benioff himself told that story, you can see it on video), or that Stephen Dilane said he wished he had read the books, because he could never understand what they were going for with Stannis based on the scripts.

Neil Marshall gave an interview several years ago about where he talked about directing 'Blackwater' and that there was an executive producer who described himself as in charge of the "pervert side of the audience' and insisted that he had to feature a naked woman sitting on Bronn's lap during the Bronn/Sandor argument, even when Marshall explained that this would only be distracting and wouldn't fit with the scene.

D&D themselves said that they wanted to make a show "that football players and soccer moms would enjoy" or however they put it, rather than what most people would expect of a fantasy show.

I was always annoyed by the same things you mention in GoT. There were so many times in HotD when I thought "oh thank god that Benioff and Weiss are not in charge of this show" and cringed at the thought of what they would've done. The brothel scenes, where they had opportunity to focus on the naked bodies of random women, as GoT did, but they did not do it. The makeout and sex scenes in 1x05, which were really well done, both the Rhaenyra scenes and the 'marital duty' Alicent and Viserys scene and their juxtaposition, and how they focused on the women's perspective. Everything with Laenor - D&D would've made him a stereotype and his sexuality a source of comedy, as they did with Loras. The scene where Aemond talks about his first sexual experience that Aegon made him have at the brothel aged barely 13 and being confronted by the brothel madame - instead of making it clear that it was an unpleasant and upsetting experience for him, D&D would've made it 'funny'. Evem the infamous feet scene - that would have been so much worse in GoT because they would have made that comedic too and sexualize Alicent and show it from Larys' POV.