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

[Stoneheart]

how can you have such a nice looking setting and make such a boring show?
the pacing is horrible...

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

how can you have such a nice looking setting and make such a boring show?
the pacing is horrible...

Simple. They focus on baby-mama drama instead of the meaty bits the fans love.

Episode 4 hit the notes of what people expected from the show. Which just made the following 4 episodes afterwards look even more pointless.

 

[Lobster Cult High Priest]

Simple. They focus on baby-mama drama instead of the meaty bits the fans love.

Episode 4 hit the notes of what people expected from the show. Which just made the following 4 episodes afterwards look even more pointless.

If they did a buddy cop comedy of Cole and Gwayne out on the campaign through the Crowlands and Riverlands that would be 1000x better than what we got.

The half Dornish guy with the Reachman who is racist against the Dornish.

 

[Blue Gem Kosher Queen]

I don't sympathize with him at all. GRRM picked those two hacks, Dan and Dave, over other, more qualified people, just because they figured out R+L=J.

I remember my first read of the books and just coming to the same conclusion. I don't remember by what point but I remember that it felt like "c'mon the fatass is supposed to be subversive, this is too obvious". I heard friends say it, saw theory videos, "he is going to subvert it, right?". R+L=J feels like a twist out of the 90s in how telegraphed it is from the perspective of our media today. What's next, FAegon is a Blackfyre? The American Tolkien indeed

 

[Outer Space Traveller]

I remember my first read of the books and just coming to the same conclusion. I don't remember by what point but I remember that it felt like "c'mon the fatass is supposed to be subversive, this is too obvious". I heard friends say it, saw theory videos, "he is going to subvert it, right?". R+L=J feels like a twist out of the 90s in how telegraphed it is from the perspective of our media today. What's next, FAegon is a Blackfyre? The American Tolkien indeed

LoL right. It makes sense why people are so desperate for Eddard Stark and Ashara Dayne to be Jon Snow's parents. That would be a better subversion.

Harry Potter and Conan dont need the answers to Life, The Universe, and Everything, because those stories centered on one person who is not, in all likelihood, an encyclopedist. But when you're writing a sprawling story that spans centuries, continents, and concerns the fate of the world, you need an understanding of why things are the way they are. As it is, Westeros is a rats nest of contradictions that you can't explain without invoking the author. What explains the power of the Faith of the Seven given that its the only religion in the setting that appears to be straight-up fake? Nothing in universe (I know that if an immortal pyromancer who can squirt out homing death fetuses told me she was on a mission from God, I would fucking believe her) but we know that Martin's too much of a euphoric hippie to have his Roman Catholicism analog be anything but fake and gay.

My guy, history was literally written by dragon whisperers who used that to crush a continent. If that's not magic, what is?

Yeah, I know what you mean. Some smaller series can be contained in their own niche of things. My personal opinion Plus as being a hobby writer, one that I think I'm bad at it, lol, since I have a book project which I'd love to see become an animated series someday. is that once you make a world from scratch, you benefit having viewers to at least know how some nook and cranny of faith works. If you want to be reasonable and state that "no magic", at least say "OK, this world is ruled by a divine being" (through a show don't tell of course) and giving clues. As for the dragons, that's a good point I didn't consider.

 

[Krokodil Overdose]

Knowing GRRM, the Faith of the Seven's power probably boils down to "hurr durr superstitious peasants being controlled by religious nutjobs." Which is actually kind of funny since every Catholicism-esque religion in fantasy that I've seen has powers. From the Jedi and Sith of Star Wars, to the Paladins of Warcraft, the Protoss from Starcraft, the Sisters of Battle from 40K and even the Istari of LOTR, they all had magic powers related to Faith one way or another, and sometimes their power becomes stronger based on what they believe. (ie. the Jedi and Sisters of Battle) But I suppose GRRM is too much of a Godless hippie to even consider that a religion with no actual power in a world where magic exists won't work.

Faith isn't really a thing in LotR; religion is simply, objectively true, unless you're worshipping Morgoth. Eru and His divine harmony not only doesn't care if you believe in it, but has integrated that fact into its own design.

Warhammer, OTOH, follows rules similar to Terry Pratchett or D&D where sufficient belief will reify the thing believed in. I know there's a religion in Ravenloft which started out as the mad ramblings of a schizophrenic vampire, attracted adherents, and started actually functioning as a religion. I don't know if that would make sense for the cosmology of Planetos, but nobody knows what the overarching metaphysics of Planetos actually are. Though I don't think for a second Martin would be cool with faith in mainstream organized religion actually being rewarded, because then the euphorics would be wrong.

 

[Chunky Salsa]

This thread has just convinced me to reread Conan lol. Watched the films last night. Good stuff, with a weirdly pretty deep sort of message behind them. The confrontation at the end with Thulsa is less action packed, but far more meaningful than pretty much any HOTD fight. Even if you can barely understand what the fuck arnie says half the time. Even little character details like Thulsa not reacting to conan saying "You killed my father, my mother, my people"; but then reacting when Conan mentions the sword that Thulsa took, speaks so much more about his character than anything this season.

 

[isalaide]

I genuinely dislike how fucking ugly the cast are. This is a fantasy adaptation. Everyone is very brave and beautiful. It's the basic fucking trope of fantasy on top of which you add in elves, dragons, wizards, vampires, demons, dwarves, flying horses to your personal taste. No fantasy novel is based on the premise "everyone was sort of a cunt and in addition, everyone was bastard ugly too".

The Realm's Delight looks like she fell out the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down. The old-but-handsome Paddy Considine and the averagely-pretty Olivia Cooke are supposed to have spawned one of the ugliest broods you will ever see. (Also, how has a fine looking lassie like Sian Brooke spawned Emma d'Arcy?) Matt Smith is a bent-faced cunt. The lad who plays Criston Cole is alright but in return he is fucking anyone he wants in the realm because the rest are either literal kids or chew-your-own-arm-off-to-escape ugly.

The actual Velaryons are black. Like, practically anyone else could have been black, and it would have made no difference. But no, the canonically white blonde people are also black, which also makes it extremely fucking obvious that Rhaenyra is a ho and therefore automatically puts the audience on the greens' side. Of course Jace and Luke are bastards! They are the wrong fucking colour!

The entire book is full of how beautiful the Targs and their various offshoots are. The entire cast is awash with biffers. No one appears to have noticed that fucking Larys Strong is by some distance not the ugliest fucking guy in Kings Landing, which is a slight fucking problem on par with casting a 6 foot 4 dude as Tyrion Lannister. They have had to slap a massive pubic beard and fright wig on Rhys Ifans to prevent Alicent noticing her dad is still considerably better looking than most guys she has ever seen.

Everyone is also an unlikeable cunt, except Helaena who is completely fucking mental, which is a further problem as there are no actual quality villains to enjoy, and there are no good guys either, so I am completely indifferent to the eventual outcome. In fact if the book was adapted into "and then the dragons thought fuck it and burned every single fucking one of them" I would not consider this the worst outcome.

We have to like some cunt if we are going to sit through years and hours of programming. I mean, really, anyone at this point would do.

Failing that please dump the majority of actual dialogue and acting in favour of just more CGI dragons. In fact, someone do us a solid and give us a Just Dragons supercut of the entire series. I'm fucking down. Just give me five minutes of poor Helaena getting to actually ride Dreamfyre.

 

[Your Girlfriend's Dad]

No one appears to have noticed that fucking Larys Strong is by some distance not the ugliest fucking guy in Kings Landing, which is a slight fucking problem on par with casting a 6 foot 4 dude as Tyrion Lannister

You're telling me this fucking stud isn't the hottest shit since Rhaegar?

 

[isalaide]

View attachment 6318849
You're telling me this fucking stud isn't the hottest shit since Rhaegar?

You can't even hold it against Matthew Needham, he's been genuinely really good in the role, BUT if you're not going to cast any bona fide babes in the lead, probably you need to ugly up the bad guys accordingly.

We cannot have this dreadful situation where we look at Aemond Mad As A Weasel Targaryen and think, hmmm, he's not the worst, very well endowed in the dragon department. He's fucking insane and has a mad sparkly rock eye and he's still not the least pleasing to the eye.

We shit from a great height on Rings of Power but at least they went to the effort to get a hot Sauron. Think about that. The fucking Dark Lord is better looking than the "beautiful" dragon lords.

Give me my hot people and excessive dragons. I already read the shitty dialogue in the book, I already know how the entire story plays out. I want entertainment for my eyes whilst we get there.

Thank god they didn't need to cast a Rhaegar. They would probably think Barry Keoghan was the vibe they were going for. Or Elliot Page.

 

[Outer Space Traveller]

Thank god they didn't need to cast a Rhaegar. They would probably think Barry Keoghan was the vibe they were going for. Or Elliot Page.

LoL Barry Keoghan could be cast as one of Genghis Khan's sons and no one would bat an eye. I kid, but I guess that is because of the epicopantic eyefold which almost makes him look oriental.

I think Phia Saban is the prettiest one of them all, with Olivia Cooke coming second. If they had cast Millie Brady for one of the roles, it would have been great.

 

[Your Girlfriend's Dad]

You can't even hold it against Matthew Needham, he's been genuinely really good in the role, BUT if you're not going to cast any bona fide babes in the lead, probably you need to ugly up the bad guys accordingly.

We cannot have this dreadful situation where we look at Aemond Mad As A Weasel Targaryen and think, hmmm, he's not the worst, very well endowed in the dragon department. He's fucking insane and has a mad sparkly rock eye and he's still not the least pleasing to the eye.

We shit from a great height on Rings of Power but at least they went to the effort to get a hot Sauron. Think about that. The fucking Dark Lord is better looking than the "beautiful" dragon lords.

Give me my hot people and excessive dragons. I already read the shitty dialogue in the book, I already know how the entire story plays out. I want entertainment for my eyes whilst we get there.

Thank god they didn't need to cast a Rhaegar. They would probably think Barry Keoghan was the vibe they were going for. Or Elliot Page.

They did cast Rhaegar, for a flashback. He wasn't impressive. Not terrible, but this guy was described as heroically beautiful. Not knock-off Heath Ledger.


Edit: Jesus I forgot how bad the costumes in GoT were. At least HotD got that right.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

You can't even hold it against Matthew Needham, he's been genuinely really good in the role, BUT if you're not going to cast any bona fide babes in the lead, probably you need to ugly up the bad guys accordingly.

At this point, Rhaenyra being the "realm's delight" comes off more as people offering false praise rather than an actual compliment.

We cannot have this dreadful situation where we look at Aemond Mad As A Weasel Targaryen and think, hmmm, he's not the worst, very well endowed in the dragon department. He's fucking insane and has a mad sparkly rock eye and he's still not the least pleasing to the eye.

They had to make him a total asswipe just to vilify him. I mean, that whole "let them starve within our walls" thing makes no goddamn sense. At least Cersei did the sensible thing and expelled people from the city to cut down on mouths to feed when the capital was blockaded in GOT S2, having more angry, hungry people INSIDE your city is a recipe for disaster, and no reasonable monarch would want that. Hell, Aemond married one of the Baratheon gals, so his response to Rhaenyra blockading the city should've been to write to his new father-in-law to bring in some food from the Stormlands. That, and tell the wealthy Jason Lannister to go buy food from the Tyrells and send that shit to the capital post-haste. Unlike Cersei, who had to deal with Stannis occupying the Narrow Sea and Renly blockading the food supply by land to KL, Aemond had more allies and options, since he had the Lannisters and Baratheons in his side, with a Lannister man in his council and a Baratheon bride to warm his bed. He should be working to impregnate the latter instead of going back to his first hooker now that he got married.

We shit from a great height on Rings of Power but at least they went to the effort to get a hot Sauron. Think about that. The fucking Dark Lord is better looking than the "beautiful" dragon lords.

Sauron and Aemond actually look attractive. Which fits the role of the former as he is known for seducing people to evil, but the latter is far more kingly and majestic than his opposition, Rhaenyra, which makes it even funnier when Rhaenyra was once known as the "realm's delight".

Give me my hot people and excessive dragons. I already read the shitty dialogue in the book, I already know how the entire story plays out. I want entertainment for my eyes whilst we get there.

We just can't have that. Even though it's what we want. Nobody in the modern Hollywood producer sphere will take chances in making a female lead more morally grey and questionable after what happened with Daenerys. Now they'll push Rhaenyra as a saint, even though in the books, she fucking sent Helaena and Alicent to the whorehouse to get pimped because she was ass-mad about the "bastards" quip.

Thank god they didn't need to cast a Rhaegar. They would probably think Barry Keoghan was the vibe they were going for. Or Elliot Page.

Don't jinx it. They might do something similar to that in a future Robert's Rebellion show.

 

[Lobster Cult High Priest]

They did cast Rhaegar, for a flashback. He wasn't impressive. Not terrible, but this guy was described as heroically beautiful. Not knock-off Heath Ledger.
View attachment 6321973

Edit: Jesus I forgot how bad the costumes in GoT were. At least HotD got that right.

The only good thing about this casting is that he looked like the Begger King Viserys.

 

[madethistocomment]

I genuinely dislike how fucking ugly the cast are. This is a fantasy adaptation. Everyone is very brave and beautiful. It's the basic fucking trope of fantasy on top of which you add in elves, dragons, wizards, vampires, demons, dwarves, flying horses to your personal taste. No fantasy novel is based on the premise "everyone was sort of a cunt and in addition, everyone was bastard ugly too".

The Realm's Delight looks like she fell out the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down. The old-but-handsome Paddy Considine and the averagely-pretty Olivia Cooke are supposed to have spawned one of the ugliest broods you will ever see. (Also, how has a fine looking lassie like Sian Brooke spawned Emma d'Arcy?) Matt Smith is a bent-faced cunt. The lad who plays Criston Cole is alright but in return he is fucking anyone he wants in the realm because the rest are either literal kids or chew-your-own-arm-off-to-escape ugly.

Aegon's actor Tom Glynn-Carney- a quite handsome man in real life, imo- actually talked in an interview about how the makeup department purposely uglified him. Apparently they were shooting to make him look as much like Chucky as possible. In a similar vein, Helaena's actress Phia Saban is cute IRL, but Helaena more often than not is styled and shot in a way that makes her look mid at the absolute best. It seems that if the cast isn't naturally ugly, they'll try to make them look as unappealing as possible because God fucking forbid we see hot people onscreen.

Related, but I still can't get over them taking the canonically beautiful Rhaena Targaryen and casting an unfinished muppet to play her.

The muppet can't act for shit, either, and despite being 0/2 in what's needed to actually be an actress they've decided to give my girl Nettles' plot and significantly larger amount of screen time over to her. Fucking joy.

 

[Dwarf Lord]

The acting, particularly the black girls, is a well known problem with young British actors due to them just finishing British acting school which primarily focuses on stage / theater acting instead of screen acting and leads to what's dubbed 'Disney acting'. It takes them time to learn the different nuances and be able to switch over to screen acting but by the time they do they're generally much better actors overall than Americans.

But then sometimes you get an Emilia Clarke who is just fucking awful at both and famously got laughed off of Broadway when she tried to be headline Breakfast At Tiffany's between seasons of GoT.

 

[nikma]

They could have put GOT on hold for a few years while GRRM wrote more books

GRRM will never write more books. That was true 10 years ago when D&D had to decide what to do with the show and it is even more true now.

GRRM is lost cause. Waiting for him would be idiotic move. He probably suffers from some form of dementia now.

 

[Estate]

Is there some uggo lesbian cabal writing this season?
Most of the central male characters are put through some weird humiliation ritual, either by fucking his mom, using a prostitute as a mom replacement implying some weird shit or just describing into great detail how one's penis burst into flame.
Am I the only one noticing this shit?
Is this in the books?

 

[Tablet County]

describing into great detail how one's penis burst into flame.

Is this in the books?

I don't know but given I've heard tell of GRRM writing about a woman's oily shits it doesn't sound like it'd be out of place.

 

[Dwarf Lord]

Is there some uggo lesbian cabal writing this season?
Most of the central male characters are put through some weird humiliation ritual, either by fucking his mom, using a prostitute as a mom replacement implying some weird shit or just describing into great detail how one's penis burst into flame.
Am I the only one noticing this shit?
Is this in the books?

Meet Sara Hess (the slant eye). Producer and co-head writer who has written, historically, some of the worst episodes of multiple different shows from House M.D. to Orange Is The New Black to House of the Dragon. Pictured with her wife and future non-binary kid.

She has, from the very beginning of the show, stated that major things from the book which are fact are not, in fact, fact, and were actually misogynistic historians trying to keep women down.



Book Rhaenyra becomes real fat after having her first child. It's indisputable, because it's part of her entire character. She's lazy and entitled. She never does anything for herself, only making others act for her, down to her own children who she sacrifices. She's so fat and lazy that when she sits on the iron throne after winning it the thing actually fucking stabs her, with one character saying it's because she's unworthy of being on the throne and another just saying 'nah it's cuz she's fucking fat'. GRRM makes it so comical that even her fucking dragon becomes fat and lazy and no longer knows how to hunt for itself, needing food brought to it even when not being caged up.

Book Alicent is very much an evil stepmother trope who absolutely hates Rhaenyra, calling her a whore, voicing to groups of people that she hopes the whore dies in childbirth, etc. The show has stripped all of that away in a vain hope to fight ~misogyny in media~. Vain because they actually made Alicent more fucking evil than the book accidentally by having her purposely sacrifice her children's lives so she can chase after Rhaenyra, who they've decided to insert some not-so-subtle lesbian fanfic relationship with.

So to answer your question, yes. Evil, incompetent Asian lesbian cabals are purposely ruining our superior white written media


Some bonus Sara Hess retardation copy/pasted:

"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:

I didn't watch Game of Thrones, and I haven't seen it. I think it was actually a plus... I think I was able to come at it sort of with fresh eyes.

And you know, I mean, I read the books a long time ago so you know, I'm familiar with the world and all that stuff, but I didn't necessarily feel a whole bunch of loyalty to like the story because I haven't seen it.

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:

Sara Hess, who’s one of the executive producers and the lead writers for the show, said to me on the first day, “There’s so much of Hillary Clinton [in Rhaenys].” God knows you couldn’t compare Viserys to the other one [former President Trump], but the similarities are very clear — to see that the person who is absolutely, hands down, best suited for the job is sidelined simply because she’s a woman, and then has to somehow find her way.

Sara Hess has been pushing the Rhaenicent romance narrative since Season 1. On her Twitter account, she's shared and praised articles about how Queen Alicent and Queen Rhaenyra "would rather co-rule Westeros".

Hess has also leapt at the opportunity to characterize the Alicent/Rhaenyra relationship as one of queer lovers:

“There’s an element of queerness to it,” Hess says. “Whether you see it that way or as just the unbelievably passionate friendships that women have with each other at that age. I think understanding that element of it sort of informs the entire rest of their relationship… Even though they’re driven apart by all these societal, systemic elements and pressures and happenings, at the core of it, they knew each other as children, and they loved each other and that doesn’t go away.”

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. At this point in the story, the key players in the war should be the younger generation, such as Aemond, Aegon, and Jacaerys. Despite this, Hess insists that the story should continue to revolve around the Rhaenyra/Alicent relationship instead of the literal civil war going on. She says this during the S2E8 BTS at 10:55:

There's so much in play, there are armies, there are dragons, there's castle strongholds and political maneuvering, but at the end of the day, it comes down to these two women trying to figure it out.

So that's pretty much confirming that Season 3 is going to be centered around Rhaenyra/Alicent fanfic shipping, despite the fact Alicent shouldn't even be part of the story anymore.