HBO House of the Dragon - Prequel of one of the most recent cultural trainwrecks

[LORD IMPERATOR]

I agree with you man. Did you see the video where it was predicated that george would winds in 2032.

I don't think he can live that long, but even if he does, I've got a sneaking suspicion that it wasn't his original vision, and that it would've had extensive rewrites or even a ghostwriter involved.

 

[TheHarbinger]

George probably cant even finish the book by himself if he had 10 years. I wish george woudl swallow his pride and hire ghost writers to help him write faster.

He doesn't want to finish them. The guy is churning out side projects and prequels and video games. He is working like crazy just not on finishing his main series. He just hates that everyone mocked his terrible endings to ASOIAF when they got revealed in Game of Thrones. If Game of Thrones had a spectacular ending we already would have had three or four more main series ASOIAF books finished and published.

He's not creative enough to give an ending other than King Bran so he's just given up at this point out of spite. His last subverting expectations but this time to both the audience and his publishers.

 

[Absolutego]

I dislike george rr martins religion or culture related world building he can create entertaining charecters for modern audiences but the religion or cultures he creates are generally pretty weak. The dornish are generic tan skin sexually liberated people. The dothraki are generic violent nomads. Every medieval charecter is some kind of atheist who doesnt respect religion

It's honestly hilarious that a dude who is great at character writing and pedestrian, at best, at worldbuilding spends all of his time doing the latter to the detriment of the former.

 

[Irish Turtle]

It's honestly hilarious that a dude who is great at character writing and pedestrian, at best, at worldbuilding spends all of his time doing the latter to the detriment of the former.

I wish george would hire idea guys for world building so he would focus on actually writing books.

 

[Chuckwagon]

Exactly. I mean, nobody doubts the power of the Daedric Princes in Elder Scrolls, the Chaos Gods in Warhammer, or the Holy Light in Warcraft. That shit actually works. People can see it. They have empirical evidence that God, or whatever kind of God these people worship, is real. Atheism should be deader than dead. Especially with the Lord of Light religion, the Many-Faced God, and the Old Gods.

There's also the fact that Faith of the Seven are the strongest faith in southern Westeros, but they don't have actual superpowers. Which makes no goddamn sense when one religion has magical assassins, and another has priests who can literally RAISE PEOPLE FROM THE DEAD like it's Jesus Christ raising Lazarus from the grave. But I suppose GRRM's explanation for the Faith of the Seven having any real power is ''hurr durr superstitious medieval people manipulated by religion'' even though half the Westerosi morons you run into are atheists.

I can see an argument for the Faith's 'superpower' being the ability to build & maintain a functioning civilization without slavery, blood sacrifices or all the other weird shit the Old Gods & R'hllorism have. A combination of an 'all that is gold does not glitter' deal + a testament to 'conservative' or Christian values like honor, love for family & others and chastity actually being good building blocks for a lasting civilization. Not to mention those values are also apparently a force capable of motivating multitudes of dirt eating peasants to wage a decades-long insurgency against and even kill dragons, as Maegor & the Dance-era Targs would find out much to their dismay. (As for Maegor, the Faith Militant Rebellion was pretty much a testament to the 'F-15s/nukes can't patrol streets or stand on a corner to enforce tyrannical edicts' argument made by people opposing the notion that the feds can trivially obliterate any insurgency on American soil, applied to a faux-medieval context. I absolutely would side with the Warrior's Sons & Poor Fellows who had the balls to stand against the Mao of Westeros, his pet H-Bomb and all the diehard Targ fans who think he could somehow have won and 'broken' the Faith.)

Now of course there's no way Martin, a hippie & euphoric atheist, would have intended such concepts for the religion he intended as a vaguely Catholic-themed punching bag. But that's what makes this idea hilarious.

 

[Krokodil Overdose]

There's also the fact that Faith of the Seven are the strongest faith in southern Westeros, but they don't have actual superpowers. Which makes no goddamn sense when one religion has magical assassins, and another has priests who can literally RAISE PEOPLE FROM THE DEAD like it's Jesus Christ raising Lazarus from the grave. But I suppose GRRM's explanation for the Faith of the Seven having any real power is ''hurr durr superstitious medieval people manipulated by religion'' even though half the Westerosi morons you run into are atheists.

The only way this makes sense is if the Faith of the Seven had started out as a way to subordinate religion to the state by jamming all the gods into one pantheon with a sufficiently milquetoast practice
The gods, not amused at being commodified, withheld their blessings as a result.

I wish george would hire idea guys for world building so he would focus on actually writing books.

No, because there's a good chance a ghost writer could actually finish it, with an ending that people liked, or at least tolerated.

 

[Irish Turtle]

The only way this makes sense is if the Faith of the Seven had started out as a way to subordinate religion to the state by jamming all the gods into one pantheon with a sufficiently milquetoast practice
The gods, not amused at being commodified, withheld their blessings as a result.

No, because there's a good chance a ghost writer could actually finish it, with an ending that people liked, or at least tolerated.

The faith of the seven is just a tool for george to voice his frustrations with christianity. The faith is lame and corrupt and has no actual superpowers. No one takes it seriously expect dullards and peasents. The actual religion is pagan tree worship.

 

[Dwarf Lord]

Yeah, if you want to get analytical GRRM hasn't finished a book since A Storm of Swords, 24 years ago.

AFFC was supposed to include ADWD. He decided he couldn't handle that many POVs happening at the same time so decided to split it into two. So then that would mean when he finished ADWD that would be one book, right? No. He left off the last 20% of ADWD (Battle on the Ice / Battle of Slaver's Bay) because the publisher forced him to release what he had after waiting years for nothing.

Dunk and Egg is supposed to be 12 novellas. He's finished 3.

World of Ice and Fire was supposed to originally include the full reign of Targaryen kings, but during writing decided it was too much so decided to do a standalone compendium for that (Fire & Blood). Weirdly decided to keep the title of the book the same (The Untold History of Westeros and The Game of Thrones) even though it doesn't really have the history of the throne other than a few light references.

Then while writing Fire & Blood he decided it was too much for one book so would split it up into two, but realized book 1 was too short so he decided to pad it with two novellas he'd already released (Princess And the Queen / The Rogue Prince), which were also originally supposed to be included in World of Ice And Fire.

Obviously the second F&B has never been released, but I think it's more to do with the fact it has approached the events of mainline ASOIAF mysteries so he's afraid of revealing his hand. Or it's just laziness. Neither are particularly better than the other.

 

[nikma]

People keep saying that the books won't end like the show

Completely delusional. There is no way D&D would kill feminist icon like Daenerys on their own. We already know King Bran came from him.

I mean Bronn probably won't be on the Small Council at the end, but all major beats would've been the same. Including Others being defeated at Winterfell and then war for the Throne being the endgame war. He talked about the scouring of the shire so many times.

 

[nikma]

If Game of Thrones had a spectacular ending we already would have had three or four more main series ASOIAF books finished and published.

If GOT had a spectacular ending he still wouldn't finish it and people would again blame the show for being too good that it killed his motivation. Isn't that what they say anyway? The show was too popular it killed his motivation, then the ending was too unpopular and that as well killed his motivation.

And they repeat the same thing with HOTD.

So whatever happens it kills his motivation.

 

[FatR]

Ever relevant to bitching about GRRM.

In hindsight, I cannot help but agree.

Take note that Martin ended two thirds of his plotline (taking teaser chapters from Winds that he once had been publishing into account) on a situation where according to the logic of the story and the world so far the PoV character is utterly fucked. Tyrion is an outlier, for having a relatively predictable way out of the situation, because he's one of Martin's two self-inserts. Daenerys is at great risk with no apparent way out. Jon, Arya, Bran, Jaime, Sansa, Cersei, Theon are dead, at the hands of ruthless enemies, or at the hands of people who intend to erase their personality - erase literally in two cases out of three. Everyone else is also dead, or is an irrelevant side character.

What I'm saying is that there is no way out of their predicament for any of these characters without either a huge asspull that would piss off the audience, or a truly brilliant twist that untangles Yes, that covers Jon, despite all the setup for his resurrection. The TV series had a relatively easy time pulling this off, due to the nature of the medium, and still a lot of people were not satisfied with lack of impact. But in the books Jon is a PoV! Martin probably wanted to write Berrik-style mental degradation to him, but simply lacked talent to do so with a character which head serves as our window into the woirld. And reducing the whole event to a cheap DnD-style resurrection would have readers up in arms.

Much the same goes for other characters I mentioned. And Martin could not just refuse to pull their bacon out of the fire and dispense Bad Ends left and right, as he probably wanted to - the cast had to remain alive and to retain their basic motivations for the narrative to go anywhere.

Thus, he choose not to write and make people suspect he has no idea how to deliver a payoff for his setup, rather than to write and confirm it beyond a shadow of doubt.

 

[Dwarf Lord]

Source

Some reddit superfag decided to get Caraxes, Meleys and Drogon tattoos taking up half his back and then argues with the people telling him he's going to regret it.

 

[Outer Space Traveller]

In hindsight, I cannot help but agree.

Take note that Martin ended two thirds of his plotline (taking teaser chapters from Winds that he once had been publishing into account) on a situation where according to the logic of the story and the world so far the PoV character is utterly fucked. Tyrion is an outlier, for having a relatively predictable way out of the situation, because he's one of Martin's two self-inserts. Daenerys is at great risk with no apparent way out. Jon, Arya, Bran, Jaime, Sansa, Cersei, Theon are dead, at the hands of ruthless enemies, or at the hands of people who intend to erase their personality - erase literally in two cases out of three. Everyone else is also dead, or is an irrelevant side character.

What I'm saying is that there is no way out of their predicament for any of these characters without either a huge asspull that would piss off the audience, or a truly brilliant twist that untangles Yes, that covers Jon, despite all the setup for his resurrection. The TV series had a relatively easy time pulling this off, due to the nature of the medium, and still a lot of people were not satisfied with lack of impact. But in the books Jon is a PoV! Martin probably wanted to write Berrik-style mental degradation to him, but simply lacked talent to do so with a character which head serves as our window into the woirld. And reducing the whole event to a cheap DnD-style resurrection would have readers up in arms.

Much the same goes for other characters I mentioned. And Martin could not just refuse to pull their bacon out of the fire and dispense Bad Ends left and right, as he probably wanted to - the cast had to remain alive and to retain their basic motivations for the narrative to go anywhere.

Thus, he choose not to write and make people suspect he has no idea how to deliver a payoff for his setup, rather than to write and confirm it beyond a shadow of doubt.

Wow, I completely agree. Once you take the strategic and great marketing from HBO and the red-blood tinted glasses of "GRITTY REALISM OF ME-DIE-EVIL SOECIETY" that we all know it wasn't like that (as other users have pointed out in this thread), you see that there are three fronts which eventually comes the disappointment:

1. Martin subverted a few things but not all - perhaps this making it good at first;
2. Making characters believable and focusing more on the lives of men and not on "mythical creatures" per se, with exception of dragons (plus the use of archaic swearing, but people just remember HBO's use of "fuck, shit, cunt, piss, etc"). This isn't properly a problem, but Martin having established he does subvert stuff, he will pull shit out of ass to use magic or will he make a "supersubversion" (as you said);
3. The actors helped carry the series, but this isn't bad - at first you had a very consice plot and well established "Where will the characters go, and where will I take them". A good fucking example: Tywin Lannister. You look at him with fear, for he wants to leave a legacy and respect; but he's a complete failure of a father - the opposite of Eddard Stark. Yet you can't help but to respect him, somewhat. Olenna Tyrell comes close second, with Stannis Baratheon tied with Randyll Tarly in third place with people you should reckon as forces of wit and might. But now that most are dead or not the focus, it seems almost like the plot can't sustain a good usage of them. Where will they be used? Will the plot be good?

This is a good nitty gritty of where things are heading. Jon Snow isn't dead, that's clear. But will he come back as "muh queen i dun want it"? Probably not, but maybe as a proto zombie murmurring stuff like Berric Dondarrion as each ressurection made him more like a zombie and less like a person? People will miss the warrior Jon Snow for sure if that happens. It doesn't matter if that's a """BRILLIANT""" subversion, people like heroes and stories of heroes. Martin has to accept that.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

He doesn't want to finish them. The guy is churning out side projects and prequels and video games. He is working like crazy just not on finishing his main series. He just hates that everyone mocked his terrible endings to ASOIAF when they got revealed in Game of Thrones. If Game of Thrones had a spectacular ending we already would have had three or four more main series ASOIAF books finished and published.

He's not creative enough to give an ending other than King Bran so he's just given up at this point out of spite. His last subverting expectations but this time to both the audience and his publishers.

Which again, mystifies me as to why he still has defenders. At this point, the emperor has no clothes. If the fucker wanted to finish his main series, it'd be done by now. The fact that he has the energy for other shit but not the last two books goes to show that he's avoiding them for a reason. And the fact that people hated his outline for the ending is one likely reason for it.

It's honestly hilarious that a dude who is great at character writing and pedestrian, at best, at worldbuilding spends all of his time doing the latter to the detriment of the former.

Mostly because he thinks his worldbuilding is profound, when it's barely even up to the level of the average fantasy writer, and it's the cloak-and-dagger stuff and the character stuff that people loved about ASOIAF.

I wish george would hire idea guys for world building so he would focus on actually writing books.

If he could be humble enough to do that, he'd have done it by now. Especially with all the millions he's getting from the HBO spinoffs and the publicity.

I can see an argument for the Faith's 'superpower' being the ability to build & maintain a functioning civilization without slavery, blood sacrifices or all the other weird shit the Old Gods & R'hllorism have. A combination of an 'all that is gold does not glitter' deal + a testament to 'conservative' or Christian values like honor, love for family & others and chastity actually being good building blocks for a lasting civilization. Not to mention those values are also apparently a force capable of motivating multitudes of dirt eating peasants to wage a decades-long insurgency against and even kill dragons, as Maegor & the Dance-era Targs would find out much to their dismay.

That's actually a good way to look at it. Kind of like how a lot of people realized that the Hightowers were in the right all the way through in S1 of HOTD, even offering Rhaenyra control over their dragon nukes like she's the Targ equivalent of Oppenheimer or something. The Faith builds a functioning society through border lines that multiple nations adhered to, creating a common bond of chivalry, civilization, and honor that transcend the boundaries of kingdoms. And they were able to stand up to the likes of Maegor and Cersei, showing the political power of the faith.

(As for Maegor, the Faith Militant Rebellion was pretty much a testament to the 'F-15s/nukes can't patrol streets or stand on a corner to enforce tyrannical edicts' argument made by people opposing the notion that the feds can trivially obliterate any insurgency on American soil, applied to a faux-medieval context. I absolutely would side with the Warrior's Sons & Poor Fellows who had the balls to stand against the Mao of Westeros, his pet H-Bomb and all the diehard Targ fans who think he could somehow have won and 'broken' the Faith.)

I've actually seen some fans simp for Maegor just to demonize the Faith, which is funny, considering the guy was basically one of the worst Targs to ever sit on the throne, slaughtering noble families left and right, to the point where the throne supposedly killed him for being unworthy.

Now of course there's no way Martin, a hippie & euphoric atheist, would have intended such concepts for the religion he intended as a vaguely Catholic-themed punching bag. But that's what makes this idea hilarious.

Indeed. Like I said, viewing ASOIAF in a way that goes against GRRM's point of view actually makes more sense and gives weight to the Medieval society that he often demonizes.

The only way this makes sense is if the Faith of the Seven had started out as a way to subordinate religion to the state by jamming all the gods into one pantheon with a sufficiently milquetoast practice
The gods, not amused at being commodified, withheld their blessings as a result.

If it were up to me, the Faith of the Seven would've been a Targ invention. Each of the seven kingdoms wage religious war against each other with their own version of God leading the way. Aegon, wanting to unite the realm both physically and spiritually, placed all seven gods into a single pantheon and said that God uses all seven of them as His persons. And like you said, the gods, not amused at being commodified, withdrew their blessings in response, which explains why every other religion has powers but the Faith of the Seven do not.

No, because there's a good chance a ghost writer could actually finish it, with an ending that people liked, or at least tolerated.

That's if GRRM is humble enough to hire a ghostwriter to finish what he won't do.

The faith of the seven is just a tool for george to voice his frustrations with christianity. The faith is lame and corrupt and has no actual superpowers. No one takes it seriously expect dullards and peasents. The actual religion is pagan tree worship.

That and burning people alive for the fire god. GRRM is your average hippie who considers every religion save for Christianity valid, so his expy for Christianity is shit compared to every other religion. At least, that's how he sees it.

Completely delusional. There is no way D&D would kill feminist icon like Daenerys on their own. We already know King Bran came from him.

I mean Bronn probably won't be on the Small Council at the end, but all major beats would've been the same. Including Others being defeated at Winterfell and then war for the Throne being the endgame war. He talked about the scouring of the shire so many times.

Exactly. If Dan and Dave had it their way, Jon and Dany would sit on the Iron Throne and fuck over Cersei's corpse, the way Jaime and Cersei had sex right next to Joffrey's corpse.

That ending had GRRM's fingerprints all over it. Subverting religious prophecies, monarchs being bad, the progress from dynastic monarchy to elective monarchy, the lords treating the commonfolk like shit, it all adds up.

If GOT had a spectacular ending he still wouldn't finish it and people would again blame the show for being too good that it killed his motivation. Isn't that what they say anyway? The show was too popular it killed his motivation, then the ending was too unpopular and that as well killed his motivation.

And they repeat the same thing with HOTD.

So whatever happens it kills his motivation.

Exactly. He's gotten lazy as fuck. When a kids' fantasy writer like JK Rowling can beat him in this game, get her Harry Potter books in on time, and get faithful adaptations for them on the screen, it goes to show that GRRM could've done the same, but just didn't have the balls to insist on them.

If this twat was in school and the books were essays, JK Rowling would be the star pupil that got her shit done on time, while GRRM would be the brilliant but lazy pupil who procrastinates until the last second.

In hindsight, I cannot help but agree.

Take note that Martin ended two thirds of his plotline (taking teaser chapters from Winds that he once had been publishing into account) on a situation where according to the logic of the story and the world so far the PoV character is utterly fucked. Tyrion is an outlier, for having a relatively predictable way out of the situation, because he's one of Martin's two self-inserts. Daenerys is at great risk with no apparent way out. Jon, Arya, Bran, Jaime, Sansa, Cersei, Theon are dead, at the hands of ruthless enemies, or at the hands of people who intend to erase their personality - erase literally in two cases out of three. Everyone else is also dead, or is an irrelevant side character.

What I'm saying is that there is no way out of their predicament for any of these characters without either a huge asspull that would piss off the audience, or a truly brilliant twist that untangles Yes, that covers Jon, despite all the setup for his resurrection. The TV series had a relatively easy time pulling this off, due to the nature of the medium, and still a lot of people were not satisfied with lack of impact. But in the books Jon is a PoV! Martin probably wanted to write Berrik-style mental degradation to him, but simply lacked talent to do so with a character which head serves as our window into the woirld. And reducing the whole event to a cheap DnD-style resurrection would have readers up in arms.

Much the same goes for other characters I mentioned. And Martin could not just refuse to pull their bacon out of the fire and dispense Bad Ends left and right, as he probably wanted to - the cast had to remain alive and to retain their basic motivations for the narrative to go anywhere.

Thus, he choose not to write and make people suspect he has no idea how to deliver a payoff for his setup, rather than to write and confirm it beyond a shadow of doubt.

This crap just looks like a dystopia porn novella. Everyone gets fucked and gets depressed or dies. There's no point to it. Which makes it even stupider when some fans insist that GRRM's stories could've made ten seasons of Game of Thrones. If Dan and Dave adapted that shit faithfully, you'd have endless depression porn for the show and the audience would just grow numb and stop caring. And to think that Martin passes this off as realistic to the real Middle Ages, it says more about him than it does about that era.

Adapting HOTD faithfully would probably anger the same YAS QUEEN SLAY demographic that fell in love with the show in Season 1, especially how it just ends with everyone getting fucked royally and some startled kids taking the throne because nobody was left.

Yeah, if you want to get analytical GRRM hasn't finished a book since A Storm of Swords, 24 years ago.

AFFC was supposed to include ADWD. He decided he couldn't handle that many POVs happening at the same time so decided to split it into two. So then that would mean when he finished ADWD that would be one book, right? No. He left off the last 20% of ADWD (Battle on the Ice / Battle of Slaver's Bay) because the publisher forced him to release what he had after waiting years for nothing.

Dunk and Egg is supposed to be 12 novellas. He's finished 3.

World of Ice and Fire was supposed to originally include the full reign of Targaryen kings, but during writing decided it was too much so decided to do a standalone compendium for that (Fire & Blood). Weirdly decided to keep the title of the book the same (The Untold History of Westeros and The Game of Thrones) even though it doesn't really have the history of the throne other than a few light references.

Then while writing Fire & Blood he decided it was too much for one book so would split it up into two, but realized book 1 was too short so he decided to pad it with two novellas he'd already released (Princess And the Queen / The Rogue Prince), which were also originally supposed to be included in World of Ice And Fire.

Obviously the second F&B has never been released, but I think it's more to do with the fact it has approached the events of mainline ASOIAF mysteries so he's afraid of revealing his hand. Or it's just laziness. Neither are particularly better than the other.

The problem is, GRRM sees himself as a gardener and likes to see his stories grow, but he's unable to be an architect and direct their growth, so it just winds up being senseless complexity and depression porn, since he doesn't believe in things like chivalry and honor-seeing that shit as being for morons-and he's just fumbling around through more details. Whatever ghostwriter he hires to finish TWOW and ADOS will have to do a lot of pruning and a lot of smoothing out to make a story that's even barely average enough to pass as legible, and I fully believe that what one poster said here was accurate-the fact that GRRM did hand in a complete TWOW manuscript and it was rejected because it was utter trash.

If GRRM actually directed his energies at finishing his novels, he'd have done so by now. But he can't because of the narrative shits that he's run into, because he's unable to follow a structure and he's unable to do anything but subvert classical tropes.

View attachment 6334964
Source

Some reddit superfag decided to get Caraxes, Meleys and Drogon tattoos taking up half his back and then argues with the people telling him he's going to regret it.

View attachment 6334975

Good Lord, it's like what that commenter said; it's like those dumb girls calling their daughters Khaleesi all over again before Season 8 made her into Dragon Hitler.

Wow, I completely agree. Once you take the strategic and great marketing from HBO and the red-blood tinted glasses of "GRITTY REALISM OF ME-DIE-EVIL SOECIETY" that we all know it wasn't like that (as other users have pointed out in this thread), you see that there are three fronts which eventually comes the disappointment:

1. Martin subverted a few things but not all - perhaps this making it good at first;
2. Making characters believable and focusing more on the lives of men and not on "mythical creatures" per se, with exception of dragons (plus the use of archaic swearing, but people just remember HBO's use of "fuck, shit, cunt, piss, etc"). This isn't properly a problem, but Martin having established he does subvert stuff, he will pull shit out of ass to use magic or will he make a "supersubversion" (as you said);
3. The actors helped carry the series, but this isn't bad - at first you had a very consice plot and well established "Where will the characters go, and where will I take them". A good fucking example: Tywin Lannister. You look at him with fear, for he wants to leave a legacy and respect; but he's a complete failure of a father - the opposite of Eddard Stark. Yet you can't help but to respect him, somewhat. Olenna Tyrell comes close second, with Stannis Baratheon tied with Randyll Tarly in third place with people you should reckon as forces of wit and might. But now that most are dead or not the focus, it seems almost like the plot can't sustain a good usage of them. Where will they be used? Will the plot be good?

This is a good nitty gritty of where things are heading. Jon Snow isn't dead, that's clear. But will he come back as "muh queen i dun want it"? Probably not, but maybe as a proto zombie murmurring stuff like Berric Dondarrion as each ressurection made him more like a zombie and less like a person? People will miss the warrior Jon Snow for sure if that happens. It doesn't matter if that's a """BRILLIANT""" subversion, people like heroes and stories of heroes. Martin has to accept that.

The actors were half the reason GOT even got to where it was. Look at characters like Stannis, Tywin, Jon, and Daenerys. It's the acting, not the writing, that carried those characters. People then got interested at what these actors were up to, and wanted to follow them. The ending they wanted wasn't the subversive ending they were served, but the standard Hollywood slop of a good guy winning heroically. They'd have loved the show more if Stannis won in Winterfell and hanged the Boltons, or if Dany and Jon got married and lived happily ever after in the Red Keep as king and queen. The desire to subvert things wasn't what people tuned in for, it's the desire to see their favorite characters succeed.

Like you said, Tywin is a big example here. Tywin in the books is supposed to be this horrible, petty idiot who alienated his son and who treats people cruelly, he doesn't have scenes with Arya where he bears out his heart to a common cupbearer. But both the actor AND the audience respect him for being the Machiavelli/Bismarck of Westeros, with countless tributes to a guy that GRRM had killed in the shitter. Game of Thrones fans paint him as the ideal player of the game, even though GRRM made him a horrible person in the books who does horrible things and dies an ignoble death.

 

[Irish Turtle]

I like your idea of the regions of westeros all having their own gods before targaryens it makes the world make more sense

This is my idea for each god for westors
North- old gods worship this is pretty much the same as actual canon but with the faith of the 7 accepting the trees as symbols of gods will. However the north still doesnt accept the other gods.
Dorne-Traditional dornish religion for the most part in the current setting but the faith of the seven is growing in influence due to incorporating rhoynar customs.
Vale-Traditional andal religion which is based on celtic mythology and arthurian legend.
Iron islands-same religion as in the lore but aegon did not try to incorporate their religious beliefs
Riverlands-A mix of religions due to various cultural influences
Reach- proto faith of the seven expect with actual powers from gods. They worship black stone towers like how muslims worship the kaaba. Their religion was choosen by aegon due to a suprising similarity between it and the valyrian religion. This is done to hint at the great empire of dawn being real. However the god of this religion stopped blessing people with powers after the people abadoned monotheism.
Westerlands-Same religion as reach but they like protestants in a way since they reject the power of the high septon.
Stormlands-Basically greek mythology with the storm god as being the head of a pantheon of lesser gods.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

I like your idea of the regions of westeros all having their own gods before targaryens it makes the world make more sense

This is my idea for each god for westors
North- old gods worship this is pretty much the same as actual canon but with the faith of the 7 accepting the trees as symbols of gods will. However the north still doesnt accept the other gods.
Dorne-Traditional dornish religion for the most part in the current setting but the faith of the seven is growing in influence due to incorporating rhoynar customs.
Vale-Traditional andal religion which is based on celtic mythology and arthurian legend.
Iron islands-same religion as in the lore but aegon did not try to incorporate their religious beliefs
Riverlands-A mix of religions due to various cultural influences
Reach- proto faith of the seven expect with actual powers from gods. They worship black stone towers like how muslims worship the kaaba. Their religion was choosen by aegon due to a suprising similarity between it and the valyrian religion. This is done to hint at the great empire of dawn being real. However the god of this religion stopped blessing people with powers after the people abadoned monotheism.
Westerlands-Same religion as reach but they like protestants in a way since they reject the power of the high septon.
Stormlands-Basically greek mythology with the storm god as being the head of a pantheon of lesser gods.

See, even you can come up with a better religious system than Martin did. All he does with the Faith is show how pesky religion is. Even the High Sparrow is more of a proletariat vs. bourgeoisie kind of thing rather than any actual religion with actual powers.

 

[Blue Gem Kosher Queen]

"During an interview with IGN, Sara Hess revealed that she had never watched the original Game of Thrones series. She also insisted that her lack of familiarity with the GoT universe was actually a good thing, and that she didn't "feel loyalty to the story" anyways:

Funny that Chube mentioned he purposely avoided watching HOTD for roughly the same reasons.

Nobody's stopping them from making their own lesbian fantasy series. But I suppose ruining ASOIAF is good because it's the work of a straight white man who writes rape scenes in his books.

That's the thing, they are being stopped.

Think about it, who on their right mind would want to watch Hess' lesbian fanfic? Producers have spent the last 20 years or so burning money so they have to play it safe now, hence why the relay so much on franchises. Now, the thing is that most of the producers/writers working today don't want to work on that, they want to make their own stuff and some of that stuff happens to be crappy lesbian fanfics. So the people with the money came up with this grotesque arrangement that makes everyone unhappy: place unhappy/unfulfilled creatives in charge of franchises they know nothing about or care for in order to prove they can be trusted to headline their own projects and most of those never make it so they force their own ideas on these franchises.

In a happier note I was going to say that I arrived too late for the relative derail about House Gardener, Dornish and Others slander and the like but I keep on wondering, how much of a waste of time it would be to make a Kaiserreich version of GURM's work? Not like writing a book, more so just spit balling. I'm asking because there's something that attracts us to make fun of it but also to open up about what we would do differently. The ASOIF world is like a liminal space if that makes sense, it has all the components to be something and yet feels pretty empty.

 

[Irish Turtle]

Honestly at this point George should just release what he wrote for winds even if its small its at least better than not getting anything.

 

[Chandelier]

Speaking of Rhaenys, Sara Hess literally stated that she wrote the character as a representation of Hillary Clinton (lmao). In an interview with the LA Times, actress Eve Best revealed that Hess approached her and told her about this during her first day on set:

Comparing Rhaenys, who gave her life for a crown she actually deserved, to a woman who wanted to drone strike Julian Assange IN AN EMBASSY is wild. In peace time, btw. Against a guy who was showcasing American war crimes. Fucking hell.

Hess has an overwhelming fixation on the Rhaenyra/Alicent relationship, to the point where it negatively impacts the development and screen time that other characters receive. The Dance of the Dragons was written as a war between Rhaenyra and Aegon II, with Alicent's character diminishing in importance after Viserys dies.

Rhaenicent shippers are a specific degree of stuck up. They were cheering the stupid scene of Rhaenyra going to the sept to talk to Alicent. That was a stupid scene. "I had to make sure that there were absolutely no chances to avoid war." Uhhh bitch Aemond murdered your son, which you spent an ENTIRE EPISODE mourning over, and now you wanna parlay with her? Sara kinda forgot Alicent didn't even let people know viserys was dead FOR FUCKING DAYS. If she loved Rhaenyra she should've had an epiphany and went to Dragonstone then, but nooooooo. Alicent can't decide whether she wants to be the pettiest bitch alive or the "tragic lesbian." You can't have it both ways - or if you do, you actually lean hard into the former. Lana fucking Luthor can do it, and she's a gender swapped Lex Luthor.

Then that makes Alicent even stupider that she didn't groom Aegon II to marry Rhaenyra and groomed the boy to hate her instead. She could've made her bestie her daughter-in-law and secured her crown.

Or just marry her to Daemon. Yes I'm aware of the age gap but Millie Alcock carried that dancing scene and Daemon could've been king consort. Problem solved.

The fact that half the characters in this supposed medieval fantasy are atheist says more about GRRM than it does about Westeros. It shows me that, aside from the fact that his opinions on religion are the basic skeptic stuff, his research on the Medieval world is sorely lacking.

The Faith of the Seven is loosely based on Catholicism, but without the philosophy or public works. The Medieval Church invested much in hospitals and spreading the word of God via books, which increased literacy rates. One thing I noticed the show and books lacked but that games like Assassin's Creed has are town criers. People weren't largely literate so they got their news and propaganda from town criers. It was a thing that carried over from Roman times.

The Citadel, the intellectual side of the Faith, doesn't actually try to increase public literacy the way the Church tried to (made easier by the printing press). When Queen Alysanne asked why women weren't allowed due to meritocracy, they laughed at her.

The Faith doesn't really do much in hindsight but it has immense power. Think modern day American mega churches without the TV.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

Or just marry her to Daemon. Yes I'm aware of the age gap but Millie Alcock carried that dancing scene and Daemon could've been king consort. Problem solved.

The main reason they made Rhaenyra heir in the first place was because Daemon was an unstable nutjob. If he was a dutiful prince who accepted and lived by the rules of honor and chivalry, nobody would have any problems with him being heir to Viserys' throne. You wouldn't have the Dance to begin with. Daemon would just be Viserys' heir and nobody would question it.

The Faith of the Seven is loosely based on Catholicism, but without the philosophy or public works. The Medieval Church invested much in hospitals and spreading the word of God via books, which increased literacy rates.

The Faith of the Seven is what the Church looks like to God-hating maggots. No real power, no real intellectual or moral backbone, just blind worship and some zealots down the line. Even the High Sparrow was a shallow ripoff of Savonarola, but at that point, the Faith is so ambiguous that you can't tell if the HS is a true believer or if he's just using the Faith to gain power.

One thing I noticed the show and books lacked but that games like Assassin's Creed has are town criers. People weren't largely literate so they got their news and propaganda from town criers. It was a thing that carried over from Roman times.

You'd think there'd be town criers talking about things from the POV of the rulers. Like say, a town crier in Dragonstone talks about how the mean, nasty Hightowers killed Rhaenyra's boy, or how a town crier in KL would be praising Ser Criston's victories in the Crownlands.

The Citadel, the intellectual side of the Faith, doesn't actually try to increase public literacy the way the Church tried to (made easier by the printing press). When Queen Alysanne asked why women weren't allowed due to meritocracy, they laughed at her.

What's funny is that nuns have been integral to the intellectual life of the Church since the Medieval days. Some nuns were landlords, a few even advised the Pope. One more way GRRM's Westeros is not fit to be compared to the real Middle Ages. Especially when Brienne in ASOIAF struggles to fit in as a female fighter, whereas the real Middle Ages had female knightly orders.

The Faith doesn't really do much in hindsight but it has immense power. Think modern day American mega churches without the TV.

The thing is, every other religion in Westeros and Essos has superpowers. The Warlocks of Qarth, the Lord of Light, the Many-Faced God, the Old Gods, so it makes no sense that the Faith of the Seven would have any toehold when they don't have any powers.

Ancient Catholicism/Christianity had faith healers and miracle workers, modern Catholicism has exorcists and faith healers. At the very least, there's something there to convince people of the supernatural nature of the Faith, whether you believe it or not.

That's the thing, they are being stopped.

Think about it, who on their right mind would want to watch Hess' lesbian fanfic? Producers have spent the last 20 years or so burning money so they have to play it safe now, hence why the relay so much on franchises. Now, the thing is that most of the producers/writers working today don't want to work on that, they want to make their own stuff and some of that stuff happens to be crappy lesbian fanfics. So the people with the money came up with this grotesque arrangement that makes everyone unhappy: place unhappy/unfulfilled creatives in charge of franchises they know nothing about or care for in order to prove they can be trusted to headline their own projects and most of those never make it so they force their own ideas on these franchises.

The fact that even normies hate the show now gives some hope to that assertion. I just saw the Honest Trailers trash Season 2 as filler.

When even the normies can see that the emperor has no clothes, that's when the jig is up.

In a happier note I was going to say that I arrived too late for the relative derail about House Gardener, Dornish and Others slander and the like but I keep on wondering, how much of a waste of time it would be to make a Kaiserreich version of GURM's work? Not like writing a book, more so just spit balling. I'm asking because there's something that attracts us to make fun of it but also to open up about what we would do differently. The ASOIF world is like a liminal space if that makes sense, it has all the components to be something and yet feels pretty empty.

I remember there's a Crusader Kings 2 mod for ASOIAF. I remember my friend talk about a campaign where Young Aegon and Dany marry, but Euron Greyjoy steals their dragons using the dragonbinder horn and attacks Westeros with them.