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1 minute ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

I think it’ll probably depend on how well-received the rest of the show is. If people like it, they’ll overlook stuff like that, but if not, they’ll look for other flaws to needle at.

That's probably fair. 

I'm hopeful it'll stay entertaining and interesting, and that maybe rather than react as D&D did to criticism by dismissing it they'll just recognize places they mis-stepped and try to avoid repetition. From what I've seen from Condal, and have discussed with them, he's pretty thoughtful about these things, he's been in the Hollywood screenwriting and development trenches long enough to be able to take "notes", and as yet doesn't seem to have developed too much ego about it (I assume anyone who suceeds in Hollywood has at least _some_ ego as a necessary requirement of doing business in that town, but ... well, some people let it get to their head.)

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3 hours ago, Annara Snow said:

LOL Same energy as Twitte Daemyra Team Black stans who are outraged that Alicent is not a stereotypical evil stepmother trope with no complexity because that would give her power and agency, I love those arguments 

I think it is better to not dwell on the 'energy' one gets from reading your posts...

3 hours ago, Annara Snow said:

Anyway, we all know that GRRM hates unexpected romances between people from different backgrounds that challenge characters' viewpoints and dedication to duty, Maester Aemon's speech about love and duty was meant to say love sucks, and the best and most unproblematic romances are Targaryen incest marriages for blood purity, especially when it's uncle and niece he used to bounce on his knee as a child. I think this was all made clear in that version of the story where the Blacks were all powerful godlike heroes that totally won the Dance and decisively beat their evil stupid irrelevant enemies and everything was swell. <_<

You really seem to have a limited view on things. The morons thinking with their cocks and cunnies can fuck all the people they want - I don't care, nor the people in this world would care. As long as they are doing their fucking duty to their family and dynasty. The reason why people like Robb and Rhaegar and Aemond and Daemon are failures is that their obsession with the wrong/unworthy spouses/lovers caused them to ruin their families. This is not a world where love marriages are something people are applauded for. Love does have a place in this world - as long as it doesn't mess with marriage and duty. Which is why, for instance, Queen Rhaena can fuck all the girls she wants. It is also the reason why Rhaenyra and Laenor can do what they want because their marriage is, in the end, fertile and they produce heirs. Their behavior would be a problem if it didn't lead to children.

People who end up applauding the likes of Rhaegar and Aemond and Duncan for their irresponsible decisions just show that they don't really understand the mentality of the people in this world.

I also happen to find your beating up Daemon's desire to fuck his gorgeous niece while completely ignoring the fact that both horny Criston and horny Harwin may have pressed their hard members much more often against Rhaenyra's well-shaped behind while Daemon was far away. Yes, yes, he is her uncle and that makes it oh so evil if you don't like dalliances among closely related kin ... but what makes this thing unpleasant is not their degree of kinship but the age gap.

Your own moral outrage or whatever about incest actually has no place in such discussions. It is not relevant for discussing the topic at hand. If there is one thing FaB showed us that the Targaryens didn't marry their sisters because of some kind of superiority complex.

And the fun thing about the big failed incest match - Aegon-Helaena - is that in the show by their Hightower mommy, a woman who for all intents and purposes should actually not approve of Targaryen incest (in the book it is unclear who arranged this marriage). It shows how fucked up Alicent is that she complains about the queer customs of the Targaryens and then forces her own daughter into a sibling incest match with her asshead brother.

2 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

There was another YouTube bro “leak” that is probably fake but it’s nevertheless an interesting concept, which claims that rather than Jace falling in love with Sara Snow, he’ll fall in love with Cregan. I don’t think there’s anything in the text to support this, but it would be an interesting twist on Mushroom’s. It would mean that Jace did fall in love but didn’t break his betrothal, and it would help explain why Cregan was so hellbent on continuing the war to avenge Rhaenyra (but really Jace). Just some food for thought.

Feels like a completely nonsensical idea to me. What they could do is to really show some kind of strong bond between Jace and Cregan. If there was something deeper between them then Cregan sitting on his ass throughout the war just makes no sense. The guy doesn't have to be personally at Winterfell for his peasants to bring in the harvest.

2 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

While I agree that HOTD is much better with its depiction of sex and nudity than GOT was (particularly concerning assault) I also think fans are full of it at times. If GOT had one of their lead male characters bludgeon his wife to death with a rock, or had a female character commit suicide because death by childbirth wasn’t “badass enough,” or turned one of the two main female leads into a child bride who is subjected to marital rape, book fans would have rioted. (IIRC @Mithras made a pretty good argument about this).

As I told you, these people are not characters in the book? Who gives a shit about Laena, really? There are even people here openly arguing she and Rhaenyra cannot have had a sexual or romantic relationship (which would be the single personal thing we actually knew about her since nobody ever said that she was into Daemon).

Alicent is no child bride in the show, and her marital rape merely shows the blunt and honest truth of how (all) women are treated in arranged marriages in a patriarchal society. They do have to suffer intercourse when they are told, i.e. at times not of their choosing, and with men they might never feel attracted to. Alicent actually caring for her husband the way she does without actually ever being romantically attracted to him changes her from a silly gold digger/scheming bitch to a three-dimensional character.

Alicent as a character is, of course, a lot better in the show than the evil stepmother cliché George created. FaB's Alicent has no depth at all, is either the willing instrument of the ambitions of her father or the architect of her own ambitions. If following 'George's vision' there Alicent should always behave the way she does in episode 6. And behind closed doors she should behave and talk like a real bitch about her step-relations.

2 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

I would have preferred that Alicent was more like her book counterpart, but seeing as this is the version we got, I do find all the hot takes that she is some kind of femme fatale who seduced Viserys by reading him a book to be pretty insufferable. Based on what I’ve seen, it’s mostly younger fans who say shit like this, which is pretty ironic, since this is a demographic that was raised to denounce rape culture. I guess it’s only bad if someone else is doing it. 

What do you mean by book counterpart there? Do you actually think the book includes a proper Alicent character? And if so, would you say she is no vile scheming evil bitch like Cersei?

And what we see of Alicent later during the Dance - her attempts to make peace, her taking the lead in the absence of her incompetent sons - are things show Alicent can and likely will do, too. Just as she could, in the end, also descend into madness realizing that what she and her father and her children did was completely wrong and ruined everything for everybody.

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1 hour ago, Lord Varys said:

I think it is better to not dwell on the 'energy' one gets from reading your posts...

You really seem to have a limited view on things. The morons thinking with their cocks and cunnies can fuck all the people they want - I don't care, nor the people in this world would care. As long as they are doing their fucking duty to their family and dynasty. The reason why people like Robb and Rhaegar and Aemond and Daemon are failures is that their obsession with the wrong/unworthy spouses/lovers caused them to ruin their families. This is not a world where love marriages are something people are applauded for. Love does have a place in this world - as long as it doesn't mess with marriage and duty. Which is why, for instance, Queen Rhaena can fuck all the girls she wants. It is also the reason why Rhaenyra and Laenor can do what they want because their marriage is, in the end, fertile and they produce heirs. Their behavior would be a problem if it didn't lead to children.

People who end up applauding the likes of Rhaegar and Aemond and Duncan for their irresponsible decisions just show that they don't really understand the mentality of the people in this world.

I also happen to find your beating up Daemon's desire to fuck his gorgeous niece while completely ignoring the fact that both horny Criston and horny Harwin may have pressed their hard members much more often against Rhaenyra's well-shaped behind while Daemon was far away. Yes, yes, he is her uncle and that makes it oh so evil if you don't like dalliances among closely related kin ... but what makes this thing unpleasant is not their degree of kinship but the age gap.

Your own moral outrage or whatever about incest actually has no place in such discussions. It is not relevant for discussing the topic at hand. If there is one thing FaB showed us that the Targaryens didn't marry their sisters because of some kind of superiority complex.

And the fun thing about the big failed incest match - Aegon-Helaena - is that in the show by their Hightower mommy, a woman who for all intents and purposes should actually not approve of Targaryen incest (in the book it is unclear who arranged this marriage). It shows how fucked up Alicent is that she complains about the queer customs of the Targaryens and then forces her own daughter into a sibling incest match with her asshead brother.

Feels like a completely nonsensical idea to me. What they could do is to really show some kind of strong bond between Jace and Cregan. If there was something deeper between them then Cregan sitting on his ass throughout the war just makes no sense. The guy doesn't have to be personally at Winterfell for his peasants to bring in the harvest.

As I told you, these people are not characters in the book? Who gives a shit about Laena, really? There are even people here openly arguing she and Rhaenyra cannot have had a sexual or romantic relationship (which would be the single personal thing we actually knew about her since nobody ever said that she was into Daemon).

Alicent is no child bride in the show, and her marital rape merely shows the blunt and honest truth of how (all) women are treated in arranged marriages in a patriarchal society. They do have to suffer intercourse when they are told, i.e. at times not of their choosing, and with men they might never feel attracted to. Alicent actually caring for her husband the way she does without actually ever being romantically attracted to him changes her from a silly gold digger/scheming bitch to a three-dimensional character.

Alicent as a character is, of course, a lot better in the show than the evil stepmother cliché George created. FaB's Alicent has no depth at all, is either the willing instrument of the ambitions of her father or the architect of her own ambitions. If following 'George's vision' there Alicent should always behave the way she does in episode 6. And behind closed doors she should behave and talk like a real bitch about her step-relations.

What do you mean by book counterpart there? Do you actually think the book includes a proper Alicent character? And if so, would you say she is no vile scheming evil bitch like Cersei?

And what we see of Alicent later during the Dance - her attempts to make peace, her taking the lead in the absence of her incompetent sons - are things show Alicent can and likely will do, too. Just as she could, in the end, also descend into madness realizing that what she and her father and her children did was completely wrong and ruined everything for everybody.

It’s not just about the specific characters, it’s about the greater context of these writing decisions. Men sacrifice themselves for children in fiction all the time and are viewed as heroes for it, but Laena doing so would apparently make her an agent of the patriarchy. Daemon can murder his wife—something that is still disturbingly prevalent in our world—and still be viewed as an anti-hero who is going to go down in a blaze of glory. It doesn’t matter that Laena and Rhea are tertiary characters; what matters is what their plots say about the writers and the world they’re creating. Arya saying “most girls are stupid” wasn’t annoying because it wasn’t from the books, it was annoying because by giving this line to the super-awesome-spunky-tomboy character, and having the shrewd and cunning Tywin not disagree, the show was tacitly endorsing this sentiment. And lo and behold, we saw that sentiment reinforced over and over again throughout the course of GOT.

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15 minutes ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

It’s not just about the specific characters, it’s about the greater context of these writing decisions. Men sacrifice themselves for children in fiction all the time and are viewed as heroes for it, but Laena doing so would apparently make her an agent of the patriarchy. Daemon can murder his wife—something that is still disturbingly prevalent in our world—and still be viewed as an anti-hero who is going to go down in a blaze of glory. It doesn’t matter that Laena and Rhea are tertiary characters; what matters is what their plots say about the writers and the world they’re creating. Arya saying “most girls are stupid” wasn’t annoying because it wasn’t from the books, it was annoying because by giving this line to the super-awesome-spunky-tomboy character, and having the shrewd and cunning Tywin not disagree, the show was tacitly endorsing this sentiment. And lo and behold, we saw that sentiment reinforced over and over again throughout the course of GOT.

I actually think the way they portrayed Laena in her last episode gives her character much more agency than it had in the book or would have otherwise had. To George she was nothing but a broodmare and a placeholder dragonrider with no agency and decidedly no political mind of her own (she apparently had neither an opinion on her marriage to Viserys nor on her marriage to the Sealord's son or her marriage to Daemon). By way of her desire to do more with her life, to actually be the dragonlord she as the rider of Vhagar actually is ... she is the one who pushes Daemon and their daughters back in the political game. Without her they would have lived out their lives as obscure country lords with dragons.

And that desire for greatness, for a self-determined life is also expressed in the manner of her death - to George it was just another desire to fly, he also added to Alyssa when she was dying. I imagine part of the reason why the writers messed around with that is that they, like most of the readership, got annoyed at how many women died in childbirth in FaB.

The murder of Rhea I definitely don't like - but I think due to the unimportance of the character and the effective non-existence of that marriage this is less of a crime than the murder of Laenor would have been. However, I wouldn't view Daemon as an anti-hero nor as a character who goes down in a blaze of glory. The guy basically kills himself with the help of his silly nephew. There is nothing grand about that at all. In a sense, the end of Daemon shows fucked up a person he was. He threw away everything for no reason at all. At best the guy was mentally ill - a severe depression could explain his actions. But if he was actually still able to think straight then his death is a huge 'Fuck you!' to his wife and niece, to his son, his daughters, and, of course, Nettles.

Daemon (and Aemond) effectively are like Robert E. Lee or Ulysses S. Grant deciding that fucking some nobody (or being sad about them no longer being able to fuck some nobody) is more important to them than their duty to their country, President, men, family, etc. There is really nothing praiseworthy about such an attitude ... and I'm actually at a loss how the writers are going to make sense of both Daemon's and Aemond's later actions during the war. I guess they should be able to create sympathies for whatever feelings they have for Alys and Nettles ... but to actually explain and make sense of their subsequent actions should be a lot harder.

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On 3/12/2023 at 7:45 PM, The Bard of Banefort said:

. This site is remarkably consistent in how a lot of us had mixed feeling going in and coming out. But my point was that the awards show apparatus is the one area where GOT/HOTD doesn’t seem to have been able to bounce back from the fallout of S8, unlike with viewers, who were won back for the most part.

While I agree that HOTD is much better with its depiction of sex and nudity than GOT was (particularly concerning assault) I also think fans are full of it at times. If GOT had one of their lead male characters bludgeon his wife to death with a rock, or had a female character commit suicide because death by childbirth wasn’t “badass enough,” or turned one of the two main female leads into a child bride who is subjected to marital rape, book fans would have rioted. (IIRC @Mithras made a pretty good argument about this).

I would have preferred that Alicent was more like her book counterpart, but seeing as this is the version we got, I do find all the hot takes that she is some kind of femme fatale who seduced Viserys by reading him a book to be pretty insufferable. Based on what I’ve seen, it’s mostly younger fans who say shit like this, which is pretty ironic, since this is a demographic that was raised to denounce rape culture. I guess it’s only bad if someone else is doing it. 

That comparison doesn't make sense, because ASOAIF is an actual series of novels with fully fleshed out characters, events and dialogue and even POVs, while Fire & Blood is written as an unreliable pseudo-hstorical account that mostly recounts plot points from biased sources and presents a mere sketch of characterizations. Being a "book purist" for a book like that is absurd.

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I would have preferred that Alicent was more like her book counterpart,

And what is her book counterpart like?

I see people talking about that a lot, as if she is a fully developed character, rather than a sketch for people to project into.

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The people who loved S7-8 were the ones who were most excited for HOTD, and were therefore the most disappointed by it

I'm very glad they were disappointed because HotD is not like the late seasons of GoT. 

I was only mildly optimistic at first, only giving it a chance before D&D were in no way involved, but every sign that it was going to be different was encouraging. It was still a big pleasant surprise.

On 3/12/2023 at 7:53 PM, The Bard of Banefort said:

There was another YouTube bro “leak” that is probably fake but it’s nevertheless an interesting concept, which claims that rather than Jace falling in love with Sara Snow, he’ll fall in love with Cregan. I don’t think there’s anything in the text to support this, but it would be an interesting twist on Mushroom’s. It would mean that Jace did fall in love but didn’t break his betrothal, and it would help explain why Cregan was so hellbent on continuing the war to avenge Rhaenyra (but really Jace). Just some food for thought.

I don't know where the idea of Cregan being hellbent to avenge Jace comes from. Cregan agreed to join the Blacks after getting a royal marriage pact, and then dealt with preparations for winter while the only armies he sent were old men who would be a burden on the North's resoruces, and waited an eternity to march South, wellt after Jace was dead. He finally matched with his army at the end of the war, when all of the dragons were dead and got there when pretty much everything was over and Aegon III was installed, then prosecuted Aegon II's murderers.

If Cregan ever had some great friendship - or even romance - with Jace,it doesn't seem to have affected him much. I don't know where the idea of him as a huge Rhaenyra loyalist let alone someone eager to avenge Jace came from. He seemed just as eager to march into the war as Jeyne Arryn or Borros Baratheon (who also wanted a royal marriage and waited for dragons to die before he finally joined the fighting).

Cregan seemed to mostly look for the interests of the North (as he should) and then acted in accordance with his own views of justice when he came to KL.

Edited by Annara Snow
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On 3/13/2023 at 12:35 AM, The Bard of Banefort said:

It’s not just about the specific characters, it’s about the greater context of these writing decisions. Men sacrifice themselves for children in fiction all the time and are viewed as heroes for it, but Laena doing so would apparently make her an agent of the patriarchy. Daemon can murder his wife—something that is still disturbingly prevalent in our world—and still be viewed as an anti-hero who is going to go down in a blaze of glory. It doesn’t matter that Laena and Rhea are tertiary characters; what matters is what their plots say about the writers and the world they’re creating. Arya saying “most girls are stupid” wasn’t annoying because it wasn’t from the books, it was annoying because by giving this line to the super-awesome-spunky-tomboy character, and having the shrewd and cunning Tywin not disagree, the show was tacitly endorsing this sentiment. And lo and behold, we saw that sentiment reinforced over and over again throughout the course of GOT.

What does the fact that GRRM wrote Daemon as someone who enjoyed taking virginities of extremely young girls who barely justperiod (so maybe 13, maybe 12, 11...) but could still be an anti-hero who goes down in a blaze of glory, say about Fire and Blood? Pedophile child abusers are also sadly prevalant in this world and people tend to despise them most of all. but apparently they can still be "equal parts light and dark" (?).

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I've understood a long while Aegon II is a Tyrion parallel, but the show revealed it goes deeper than I'd thought. Aegon's relationship/resentment towards his parents is Tyrion's with Tywin, and it's apparent the writers know this. How Aegon noted that Viserys had 18 (or whatever it is) years to name him heir but chose not to is directly paralleling Tywin's refusal to name Tyrion heir to Casterly Rock and Tyrion's feelings about it. When Alicent says "you're not my son" they're directly ripping Tywin. Both Tyrion's and Aegon's drinking, whoring, joking and general debauchery stem from their not good enough for daddy (mummy) issues. Note Tyrion's desire to be loved, his disease as Cersei words it, and Aegon II's reaction to being crowned and cheered by the KL crowd.

Tyrion will ride Viserion and become king (and will take a gold dragon for his standard, just like...), accept that and I expect the foreshadowing for Tyrion through Aegon II is going to come at you thick and fast in HOTD, because the writers are leaning into it and don't think anyone has noticed.

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14 minutes ago, chrisdaw said:

I've understood a long while Aegon II is a Tyrion parallel, but the show revealed it goes deeper than I'd thought. Aegon's relationship/resentment towards his parents is Tyrion's with Tywin, and it's apparent the writers know this. How Aegon noted that Viserys had 18 (or whatever it is) years to name him heir but chose not to is directly paralleling Tywin's refusal to name Tyrion heir to Casterly Rock and Tyrion's feelings about it. When Alicent says "you're not my son" they're directly ripping Tywin. Both Tyrion's and Aegon's drinking, whoring, joking and general debauchery stem from their not good enough for daddy (mummy) issues. Note Tyrion's desire to be loved, his disease as Cersei words it, and Aegon II's reaction to being crowned and cheered by the KL crowd.

Tyrion will ride Viserion and become king (and will take a gold dragon for his standard, just like...), accept that and I expect the foreshadowing for Tyrion through Aegon II is going to come at you thick and fast in HOTD, because the writers are leaning into it and don't think anyone has noticed.

That never occured to me, but it's a good point. I feel like almost every character in HotD (and similarly in F&B) has parallels to multiple ASOAIF characters - which are often more like compare and contrast.

For instance, even though his name sounds like "Littlefinger + Varys", Larys could also be an eviler, sneakier version of Tyrion (they are both also always defined by their disability, Larys the Clubfoot and Tyrion the Imp), and the actors playing Larys and Lyonel Strong have both talked about his backstory (I'm not sure if that's show bible and something the writers told them about - I'd think it was actor headcanon but it turned out both of them believe the same), which is very Tyrion-like: that his mother died in childbirth and that his father resented him. Obviously, being disabled from birth and seen as "less' of man would also affect him deeply and affect the way his father and family and people in general saw him and treated him. 

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11 minutes ago, Annara Snow said:

That never occured to me, but it's a good point. I feel like almost every character in HotD (and similarly in F&B) has parallels to multiple ASOAIF characters - which are often more like compare and contrast.

The main characters of the series will go through character arcs, and they will generally learn and become wiser and better people, and they will at the end make pivotal wise/selfless decisions for the greater good that will avert armageddon and save the world. I believe the basic premise of the Dance of Dragons is that this is the disaster that happens if those characters didn't have their character arcs and make the unwise/selfish decision relating to the theme of their arcs. It's not 1 for 1, but for the straight-forward ones generally Rhaenyra is Arya if Arya never learns to put duty and service over her own freedom and love. Alicent is Sansa if Sansa never moderates her lust for power and would rather the realm burn than accept defeat and someone else rule. Cole is Jaime if Jaime continues to play the game based on personal vendettas and desires rather than detaching himself and being in it for the realm.

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On 3/12/2023 at 7:45 PM, The Bard of Banefort said:

The people who loved S7-8 were the ones who were most excited for HOTD, and were therefore the most disappointed by it.

Yes, that audience of casual show-only watchers was obviously the most disappointed with HOTD, but I can't say that these were the ones most looking forward to the show.

A large part of the group is obviously not active in the online fandom through subreddits and such, but they are, for example, on Facebook and on online newspaper sites with the ability to post comments. I notice much more hype there for the Jon Snow sequel show than there ever was for House of the Dragon.

The people who were most looking forward were those who were confident in House of the Dragon because the Dance of the Dragons book material is complete and has an ending, unlike ASOIAF. These kinds of people think that the fact George didn't finish the books all was the main reason why season 8 failed. I disagree with that. It was far from the only reason.

Those people also didn't realize that Fire & Blood is pretty much a vague outline where a lot of holes need to be filled in: Ryan Condal had to come up with almost all the dialogue and many characters from pretty much from scratch. The book has a completely different form than ASOIAF.

On 3/12/2023 at 7:45 PM, The Bard of Banefort said:

While I agree that HOTD is much better with its depiction of sex and nudity than GOT was (particularly concerning assault) I also think fans are full of it at times. If GOT had one of their lead male characters bludgeon his wife to death with a rock, or had a female character commit suicide because death by childbirth wasn’t “badass enough,” or turned one of the two main female leads into a child bride who is subjected to marital rape, book fans would have rioted.

For House of the Dragon, it is made clear that they condemn this kind of behavior.... That's a big difference from Game of Thrones, which has a very bad track record with depiction and endorsement. That bad track record is not only with sex, but also with violence, slavery, etc. Anyway, that's maybe for another time.

In the case of marital rape, we have two comparable situations in Game of Thrones season 5. 
- We have the rape of Sansa by Ramsay, which was previously condemned by the showrunners, but later in season 8 Sansa makes the comment that she is grateful that she was raped because otherwise she was always going to be a "little bird".... I could see the latter as an endorsement, especially if you also look at how D&D writes female characters.
- We have a underage Tommen being raped by an adult Margaery. This scene was portrayed as funny and innocent, but we know that Margaery has a history of manipulating through sex in the show. The next scene, Margaery begins to joke and brag about how good young Tommen is at having sex, even to the face of Cersei herself. But neither the show nor the showrunners condemn this or Margaery as a person.

There is no doubt that Ryan Condal and the rest of the writers are paying attention to how such sensitive issues are portrayed. D&D did not take this into account; on the contrary, controversy was sometimes used as a selling point for the show.

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I rewatched House of the Dragon not too long ago with several causal watchers who have never read the books and thus have some insight into their opinions. I posted this here because you guys might be interested in that.

  • They don't understand why HBO chose to do a show without familiar characters from GOT. They would have preferred a direct prequel or sequel. I expect the Jon Snow show and quite possibly the Dunk & Egg show (if they still remember who characters like Maester Aemon and Barristan are, which I doubt) will be more to their liking. Both shows will have recognizable characters from GOT.
  • Casual watchers have not been able to remember any of the characters' names from HOTD. The relationships between characters is also very difficult for them to understand. For example, I still had to explain in episode 7 that Daemon is the brother of Viserys I, something that is made explicitly clear several times in the first episode. It was also not clear to them for a long time that Alicent was Otto's daughter.
  • The casual watchers overlooked a lot. Among other things, they did not see that Aemma's son Baelon was dead in the first episode and thought he and Aegon II were the same person. They also had no idea what the significance of the green dress was (its exposition was not exactly subtle, but it was still not clear to them).
  • They were also constantly looking for references to GOT. Perhaps it was not a bad idea of the showrunners to use the catspaw dagger in HOTD with the Long Night prophecy as a recognition point for casual GOT fans, in an attempt to get their attention and interest. They were also pleased to hear the word "Dracarys." In the book canon, the word was not used by past dragon riders because the word was invented by Daenerys herself.
  • The casual watchers were having a lot of trouble with the timeskip in episode 6. Nothing was clear to them anymore and they couldn't follow it, especially with characters like Harwin and Laena who suddenly turned out to be revelant after previously being unimportant. One person I watched with thought Harwin and Criston Cole were the same person. Don't ask me how.
  • Those people were fans of episode 9, and they especially loved the twist with Rhaenys in the Dragonpit.
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2 hours ago, $erPounce said:

I rewatched House of the Dragon not too long ago with several causal watchers who have never read the books and thus have some insight into their opinions. I posted this here because you guys might be interested in that.

  • They don't understand why HBO chose to do a show without familiar characters from GOT. They would have preferred a direct prequel or sequel. I expect the Jon Snow show and quite possibly the Dunk & Egg show (if they still remember who characters like Maester Aemon and Barristan are, which I doubt) will be more to their liking. Both shows will have recognizable characters from GOT.
  • Casual watchers have not been able to remember any of the characters' names from HOTD. The relationships between characters is also very difficult for them to understand. For example, I still had to explain in episode 7 that Daemon is the brother of Viserys I, something that is made explicitly clear several times in the first episode. It was also not clear to them for a long time that Alicent was Otto's daughter.
  • The casual watchers overlooked a lot. Among other things, they did not see that Aemma's son Baelon was dead in the first episode and thought he and Aegon II were the same person. They also had no idea what the significance of the green dress was (its exposition was not exactly subtle, but it was still not clear to them).
  • They were also constantly looking for references to GOT. Perhaps it was not a bad idea of the showrunners to use the catspaw dagger in HOTD with the Long Night prophecy as a recognition point for casual GOT fans, in an attempt to get their attention and interest. They were also pleased to hear the word "Dracarys." In the book canon, the word was not used by past dragon riders because the word was invented by Daenerys herself.
  • The casual watchers were having a lot of trouble with the timeskip in episode 6. Nothing was clear to them anymore and they couldn't follow it, especially with characters like Harwin and Laena who suddenly turned out to be revelant after previously being unimportant. One person I watched with thought Harwin and Criston Cole were the same person. Don't ask me how.
  • Those people were fans of episode 9, and they especially loved the twist with Rhaenys in the Dragonpit.

Wow, those viewers really take "casual" to the next level! Sounds like they were "casual" as in, watching the show in the background while chatting with friends over drink or being on their phone.

A friend of mine watched and enjoyed season 1 without having seen any of GoT or ever read ASOIAF. I don't remember having to explain much, except a few general things like confirming it's not our world, explaining Westeros and Essos are, and that the the threat from the north is from the main  series and roughly what it i (not much of a spoiler since we learn it in the Prologue of AGOT). He is reading AGOT now and near the end of the book. The only spoiler for ASOIAF he knew from the beginning is that Ned dies, because a friend spoiled it for him years ago saying it's a book where the main character dies. I told him not to read the notes/family trees at the end because of a HotD spoiler (this only gets unavoidable in ADWD, or if starts reading Dunk & Egg) 

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7 hours ago, chrisdaw said:

The main characters of the series will go through character arcs, and they will generally learn and become wiser and better people, and they will at the end make pivotal wise/selfless decisions for the greater good that will avert armageddon and save the world. I believe the basic premise of the Dance of Dragons is that this is the disaster that happens if those characters didn't have their character arcs and make the unwise/selfish decision relating to the theme of their arcs. It's not 1 for 1, but for the straight-forward ones generally Rhaenyra is Arya if Arya never learns to put duty and service over her own freedom and love. Alicent is Sansa if Sansa never moderates her lust for power and would rather the realm burn than accept defeat and someone else rule. Cole is Jaime if Jaime continues to play the game based on personal vendettas and desires rather than detaching himself and being in it for the realm.

Sansa doesn't have a "lust for power" and Jaime isn't really into vendettas, unlike his father and siblings.

Rhaenyra doesn't strike me as being like Arya at all. In fact, they're complete opposites since Arya likes hanging out with smallfolk and resents the role of the lady. HotD Rhaenyra gave some lip service to not liking it but really loves being a princess and has no interest in the lower classes - she just genuinely feared marriage and motherhood because of her mother's fate, before getting over it. If I were to compare her to an ASOIAF character, young Rhaenyra would probably be the closest to Arianne (in the show, she was explicitly scared of being replaced as heir, but overall Rhaenyra is a unique character in ASOIAF. (Arianne identifying with Rhaenyra in AFFC was ironic, however,  since her position was nothing like hers, and in the scenario she feared, Doran making Quentyn heir instead, Arianne would be Aegon II. )

I can see young Alicent on HotD appearing Sansa-like, on the surface, they both have courtesy as a shield, but Alicent is really not like Sansa (who's a romantic who loves songs and chivalric ideals), she's most like Catelyn, driven by her sense of duty and trying to do everything right as expected of her, until she sees it's not working and has to do different things to protect her children. Only she's like if someone with Catelyn like personality was put in the position of book!Margaery or Cersei. Alicent overall is most like book!Margaery, and both F&B Alicent and book!Margaery are enigmas to project interpretations on (Margaery is unique in ASOIAF in that regard, but F&B characters are all sketches to project into). The biggest hint about Margaery's true personality is LF saying she doesn't really want to be queen, but GoT went in a whole different direction and made the teenage girl whose father wants her to be the Queen into an adult ambitious sexual manipulator, ignoring both her book age and the society she lives in. It's funny how many people project similar things into F&B Alicent and seem to think the teenage girl was the primary driver of her family's ambitions rather than her father, Hand of the King, only in a more negative way.

Jaime may have looked up to Criston in some ways as "the best and the worst" of Kingsguard, but the two characters are drastically different. 

Characters in the Dance do have character arcs. But it's usually negative arcs. Most of them get worse as the war goes on, or lose their minds. It's a like a Shakespearean tragedy, according to GRRM. I'm sure this will work much better on the show, because HotD has fleshed out these characters  and made them more human and sympathetic, so watching their downfall will hurt more.

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12 hours ago, Annara Snow said:

Sansa doesn't have a "lust for power" and Jaime isn't really into vendettas, unlike his father and siblings.

Rhaenyra doesn't strike me as being like Arya at all. In fact, they're complete opposites since Arya likes hanging out with smallfolk and resents the role of the lady. HotD Rhaenyra gave some lip service to not liking it but really loves being a princess and has no interest in the lower classes - she just genuinely feared marriage and motherhood because of her mother's fate, before getting over it. If I were to compare her to an ASOIAF character, young Rhaenyra would probably be the closest to Arianne (in the show, she was explicitly scared of being replaced as heir, but overall Rhaenyra is a unique character in ASOIAF. (Arianne identifying with Rhaenyra in AFFC was ironic, however,  since her position was nothing like hers, and in the scenario she feared, Doran making Quentyn heir instead, Arianne would be Aegon II. )

I can see young Alicent on HotD appearing Sansa-like, on the surface, they both have courtesy as a shield, but Alicent is really not like Sansa (who's a romantic who loves songs and chivalric ideals), she's most like Catelyn, driven by her sense of duty and trying to do everything right as expected of her, until she sees it's not working and has to do different things to protect her children. Only she's like if someone with Catelyn like personality was put in the position of book!Margaery or Cersei. Alicent overall is most like book!Margaery, and both F&B Alicent and book!Margaery are enigmas to project interpretations on (Margaery is unique in ASOIAF in that regard, but F&B characters are all sketches to project into). The biggest hint about Margaery's true personality is LF saying she doesn't really want to be queen, but GoT went in a whole different direction and made the teenage girl whose father wants her to be the Queen into an adult ambitious sexual manipulator, ignoring both her book age and the society she lives in. It's funny how many people project similar things into F&B Alicent and seem to think the teenage girl was the primary driver of her family's ambitions rather than her father, Hand of the King, only in a more negative way.

Jaime may have looked up to Criston in some ways as "the best and the worst" of Kingsguard, but the two characters are drastically different. 

Characters in the Dance do have character arcs. But it's usually negative arcs. Most of them get worse as the war goes on, or lose their minds. It's a like a Shakespearean tragedy, according to GRRM. I'm sure this will work much better on the show, because HotD has fleshed out these characters  and made them more human and sympathetic, so watching their downfall will hurt more.

Sansa's arc just hasn't progressed to the stage of her lusting for and achieving great power, it will, young hopeful girl/woman unwarily strolls into the vipers pit of KL and out of necessity becomes the hardened master player, she is Alicent, Alicent is her.

Arya's primary theme is freedom vs duty. Arya will choose to forsake her freedoms and loves for the sake of doing her duty and what the realm requires. Endgame Arya will forsake her love of Gendry, give up her secret love child to him, accept a marriage in the interest of the realm and set about providing them heirs of doubtless parentage. Rhaenyra exists to stand in contrast to the decisions Arya will make at the culmination of her arc. Rhaenyra stepped into the role but didn't make the sacrifices required of the position, conspired to marry the worst possible person for the position because she loved him and gave the realm every reason to question the legitimacy of her heirs, not to mention character.

Jaime in series is coming down on the other side of the arc, but pre arc he wars and fights because he loves it and puts his family ahead of the greater realm wide picture, he's motivated by his selfish pride. Jaime is to set aside his selfish pride and rule and act for what he believes is best for the realm, he will take no revenge on those who personally did him harm or on the side of those who did him harm. Cole is Jaime without the arc, acting only out of self interest and particularly against those who've personally hurt him.

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Rhaenyra is certainly like Arya in the show in the sense that she has, originally, problems with her role as a royal broodmare.

Arya's defining characteristic is not that she hangs out with a lot of smallfolk - that is something she is forced to do eventually (Mycah is a buddy of convenience, somebody she meets during the journey, it could just as well have been a knight's son or squire) - it is her clear rejection of the role of a proper noblewoman and lady. That is something she makes clear even before she gets into her later mess.

By the way:

Rewatching parts of the pilot made me realize that the writers really fail to properly establish Rhaenyra's role before she is named heir. Her mother calls her a royal womb ... but she isn't the heir, so if she marries she will marry outside the family and thus not provide House Targaryen but other families with children. She might be a noble womb but any such marriage would remove her from the immediate royal family (and people would only come back for her or her children if the king didn't have other children or heirs).

The show could have profited there if Viserys had made it clear that Rhaenyra was the chosen wife of whatever male heir Aemma would finally give him. If he role was, at that time, to one day be the queen consort at the future king's side then it would make sense that the hopes of the dynasty rested with her, that she was actually a really important royal woman.

Even more so since later on with the Jason match and the suitor tour it is clear that Rhaenyra and many other people actually do see the prospect of her marrying outside the family as a sign of losing the position of heir/losing her exalted rank.

That could have made it even more interesting that Viserys decided not to betroth or marry her to Aegon.

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2 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Her mother calls her a royal womb ... but she isn't the heir, so if she marries she will marry outside the family and thus not provide House Targaryen but other families with children.

Still, whoever marries her will become a relative of the royal family. Which means a higher status than if you marry a daughter of any noble.

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Also Rhaenyra has zero interest in learning to fight with a sword or in fighting in general.

And her "clear rejection" of her role only existed because of what happened to her mother, and she got over it pretty quickly during the time skip.

Funny how Arya's friendship with Mycah gets dismissed as "of convenience" as if she didn't care about him, or as if anyone else of her station would want to hang out with a butcher's boy. If it was "of necessity", funny how quickly she made friends with Gendry and never had a problem with hanging out with lowborn kids.

Now, something Arya actually did only out of necessity and never liked was dressing as a boy. She never wanted to be a boy- and got upset when someone would call her a boy. But she didn't enjoy being a lady. 

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9 minutes ago, Takiedevushkikakzvezdy said:

Still, whoever marries her will become a relative of the royal family. Which means a higher status than if you marry a daughter of any noble.

But she is going to marry down and she will no longer be a royal womb, unlike her mother claims she will be. Because only queens give births to royal heirs in a scenario where women do not inherit. Princesses like Rhaenyra who don't marry within the family are per defition no royal wombs. They even cease to be royalty once they leave the family.

8 minutes ago, Annara Snow said:

Also Rhaenyra has zero interest in learning to fight with a sword or in fighting in general.

You mean nobody taught her to fight.

8 minutes ago, Annara Snow said:

Funny how Arya's friendship with Mycah gets dismissed as "of convenience" as if she didn't care about him, or as if anyone else of her station would want to hang out with a butcher's boy. If it was "of necessity", funny how quickly she made friends with Gendry and never had a problem with hanging out with lowborn kids.

LOL, Arya befriends Mycah as a nine-year-old, at an age when she doesn't yet fully understand class differences and hierarchies. At court she has no lowborn friends, just as she didn't actually have commoner friends of her own age at Winterfell - she did get along well with the castle folk, but so did Bran who is yet younger than she was.

Afterwards all her friendships are friendships of necessity, not some expression of Arya Stark's love for the common people. And what vexes Arya is the fact that her so-called friends no longer treat her as they used to once they know who she actually is - and especially with Gendry the fact that he tries to treat her as a lady is vexing her. Because she doesn't want to be a lady and most definitely doesn't see herself as one.

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