Well we've known for a while now that House of the Dragon is going to be a woke shitshow, the question is how big of one it'll be on launch. Looks like the directors, producers & cast will be going for broke. My favorite quote from the above article:
Framing the series around Rhaenyra and Alicent was an idea that came from Alexis Raben – who, as well as being Sapochnik’s wife, is a development executive at his production company. “One day, she said, ‘This would be much more interesting if it was about the two main female characters, rather than the male characters,’” Sapochnik recalls. “‘If you really focused in on the patriarchy’s perception of women, and the fact that they’d rather destroy themselves than see a woman on the throne.’ That wasn’t a perspective I have ever told before. I think it made this show feel more contemporary too.” While the pair begin the show as friends, disruption in the kingdom finds them on opposite ends of an ideological spectrum when it comes to the patriarchal structure they’re trapped in. “We said, ‘What if Alicent is like “Women for Trump,” and Rhaenyra’s like punk rock?’” Anarchy in Westeros? Count us in.
Emphasis mine.
For anyone who wants a primer on the story and doesn't give a rat's ass about spoilers, allow me to quote myself from the last time I posted something about HOTD here:
=====================Here be spoilers, for anyone who cares=====================
The core conflict pits two factions of extremely unlikable characters - ambitious usurpers, child-killers, rapists, sadistic war criminals, all-around unpleasant jerks, etc. - against each other for the right to sit on the world's pointiest chair.
Of these, we are meant to sympathize with the leader of the 'Black' faction: Rhaenyra Targaryen, the subject of the quote in the title. A casual adulteress and mother of multiple obvious bastard children who her partisans maintain is the rightful heir to the Iron Throne because her dad King Viserys said so, despite this blatantly contravening all the laws & traditions of the Seven Kingdoms. She will go on to sign off on war crimes, including the murder of her infant nephews and bloody purges of her enemies.
Rhaenyra's chief supporters include her uncle-husband Daemon, who resembles an Oblivion character in his portrayal by Matt Smith, and who is a ruthless warlord on top of being an all-around dick. Also the Velaryons, the family of her first husband (who she cheated on, but everyone was cool with it because he was gay), who have been made black in this show despite the paternity of their supposed children being a major complication for Rhaenyra's claim: in the books she had a little plausible deniability, not so on the show thanks to said race swap.
The other faction, the Greens, is spearheaded by Rhaenyra's half-brother Aegon II, a fat lazy slob who is nevertheless legally the heir to the Seven Kingdoms by every actual law & custom in the land. He eventually becomes a bloodthirsty, vindictive psycho after being severely injured in battle and having his sons assassinated by Rhaenyra's partisans. The true brains of the Green clique is Aegon's mom (and Rhaenyra's stepmother) Alicent Hightower, who can be best described as a sane Cersei (or IOW a moderately intelligent and immoderately ambitious scheming bitch, if you haven't read the books or watched GoT).
Aegon's chief supporters include Criston Cole, a knight who leads the Kingsguard (royal bodyguard comprised of seven elite knights) and was Rhaenyra's jilted ex-lover, and his middle brother Aemond, the most violently unstable & assholish Targaryen prince around who's also the rider of the most powerful dragon still alive. He & Aemond also had a third brother in the books named Daeron, who was one of literally three named adult Targaryen royals from this timeframe to act like a decent (even heroic) human being on top of being a badass and reasonable leader. (The others were Aegon's sister-wife Helaena, a body positive princess, and Rhaenys, a cousin of their father the old king who is also the token heroic Black) Naturally, unlike the diverse and good Blacks, the Green lieutenants are all vile white men and Daeron seems to have been written out of the show entirely - notably nobody has been cast in his role, unlike his brothers.
The story ends with the Blacks and Greens obliterating each other entirely. Like her distant descendant Daenaerys does in Season 8, Rhaenyra caps off her reign with a murderous rampage and an assortment of atrocities aimed at innocent people & hostages that turns just about everyone against her - in other words, setting the realm to the torch herself. Aegon takes his chance to kill Rhaenyra, then is himself killed by a cast of bit characters including random lords literally named after Sesame Street Muppets to make way for Rhaenyra's older surviving son with Daemon, Aegon III, to take the throne as a child. Also, the Seven Kingdoms agree to ban women from the royal succession unless all male heirs have died first, which seems like an eminently reasonable thing to do considering what the various powerful women of the setting (again, with like two exceptions) get up to over the course of the books/series.
Thanks. I know GRRM approved the race change but he didn’t have the guts to insist it stay true to the book. I’m not surprised by this. HBO has been this way for a number of years. I used to check out every new HBO show but not anymore. I hope this fails. GRRM screws then by being to lazy to finish his series and they keep rewarding him.
The racebending is almost as insulting as the attempt to portray the Dance of the Dragons as some kind of anti-patriarchal story, IMHO. When the plotline Martin actually wrote boils down to the two women at its core, Alicent Hightower and Rhaenyra Targaryen, being two power-hungry bitches who loathed each other, and it ends (as GoT the show itself did) in a resounding endorsement of The Patriarchy™ because it turns out that if you give women so much as a sniff at real power, they really will burn everything down for little to no reason.
Re: Fire and Blood. I wouldn't know, I've committed to not buying any more of the obese bastard's work after he made it clear that he was never going to finish the main series. What I posted above is what I got out of The World of Ice & Fire, his poor copy of the Silmarillion which I bought back in 2014 when the show was at its peak and there was still hope for an ending to the core series. From what I've heard Fire and Blood basically just explores some of the material first introduced in TWOIAF (chiefly Daemon Targaryen's earlier adventures and the Dance) in greater detail anyway - hardly worth the price tag even if I were still interested.
Inb4 the try to make both of those two sympathetic in some way or blame their actions on various male characters like Matt Smith and others despite the meme that follows of denying women agency for their actions.
Gotcha. Yea I decided not to support any of the shows or his books. Now if by some miracle winds of winter is released I’ll buy it. I wanted to get Dunk and Egg but maybe I’ll find it second hand.
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Well we've known for a while now that House of the Dragon is going to be a woke shitshow, the question is how big of one it'll be on launch. Looks like the directors, producers & cast will be going for broke. My favorite quote from the above article:
Emphasis mine.
For anyone who wants a primer on the story and doesn't give a rat's ass about spoilers, allow me to quote myself from the last time I posted something about HOTD here:
=====================Here be spoilers, for anyone who cares=====================
The core conflict pits two factions of extremely unlikable characters - ambitious usurpers, child-killers, rapists, sadistic war criminals, all-around unpleasant jerks, etc. - against each other for the right to sit on the world's pointiest chair.
Of these, we are meant to sympathize with the leader of the 'Black' faction: Rhaenyra Targaryen, the subject of the quote in the title. A casual adulteress and mother of multiple obvious bastard children who her partisans maintain is the rightful heir to the Iron Throne because her dad King Viserys said so, despite this blatantly contravening all the laws & traditions of the Seven Kingdoms. She will go on to sign off on war crimes, including the murder of her infant nephews and bloody purges of her enemies.
Rhaenyra's chief supporters include her uncle-husband Daemon, who resembles an Oblivion character in his portrayal by Matt Smith, and who is a ruthless warlord on top of being an all-around dick. Also the Velaryons, the family of her first husband (who she cheated on, but everyone was cool with it because he was gay), who have been made black in this show despite the paternity of their supposed children being a major complication for Rhaenyra's claim: in the books she had a little plausible deniability, not so on the show thanks to said race swap.
The other faction, the Greens, is spearheaded by Rhaenyra's half-brother Aegon II, a fat lazy slob who is nevertheless legally the heir to the Seven Kingdoms by every actual law & custom in the land. He eventually becomes a bloodthirsty, vindictive psycho after being severely injured in battle and having his sons assassinated by Rhaenyra's partisans. The true brains of the Green clique is Aegon's mom (and Rhaenyra's stepmother) Alicent Hightower, who can be best described as a sane Cersei (or IOW a moderately intelligent and immoderately ambitious scheming bitch, if you haven't read the books or watched GoT).
Aegon's chief supporters include Criston Cole, a knight who leads the Kingsguard (royal bodyguard comprised of seven elite knights) and was Rhaenyra's jilted ex-lover, and his middle brother Aemond, the most violently unstable & assholish Targaryen prince around who's also the rider of the most powerful dragon still alive. He & Aemond also had a third brother in the books named Daeron, who was one of literally three named adult Targaryen royals from this timeframe to act like a decent (even heroic) human being on top of being a badass and reasonable leader. (The others were Aegon's sister-wife Helaena, a body positive princess, and Rhaenys, a cousin of their father the old king who is also the token heroic Black) Naturally, unlike the diverse and good Blacks, the Green lieutenants are all vile white men and Daeron seems to have been written out of the show entirely - notably nobody has been cast in his role, unlike his brothers.
The story ends with the Blacks and Greens obliterating each other entirely. Like her distant descendant Daenaerys does in Season 8, Rhaenyra caps off her reign with a murderous rampage and an assortment of atrocities aimed at innocent people & hostages that turns just about everyone against her - in other words, setting the realm to the torch herself. Aegon takes his chance to kill Rhaenyra, then is himself killed by a cast of bit characters including random lords literally named after Sesame Street Muppets to make way for Rhaenyra's older surviving son with Daemon, Aegon III, to take the throne as a child. Also, the Seven Kingdoms agree to ban women from the royal succession unless all male heirs have died first, which seems like an eminently reasonable thing to do considering what the various powerful women of the setting (again, with like two exceptions) get up to over the course of the books/series.
=====================End spoilers=====================
Thanks. I know GRRM approved the race change but he didn’t have the guts to insist it stay true to the book. I’m not surprised by this. HBO has been this way for a number of years. I used to check out every new HBO show but not anymore. I hope this fails. GRRM screws then by being to lazy to finish his series and they keep rewarding him.
Was Fire and Blood any good?
The racebending is almost as insulting as the attempt to portray the Dance of the Dragons as some kind of anti-patriarchal story, IMHO. When the plotline Martin actually wrote boils down to the two women at its core, Alicent Hightower and Rhaenyra Targaryen, being two power-hungry bitches who loathed each other, and it ends (as GoT the show itself did) in a resounding endorsement of The Patriarchy™ because it turns out that if you give women so much as a sniff at real power, they really will burn everything down for little to no reason.
Re: Fire and Blood. I wouldn't know, I've committed to not buying any more of the obese bastard's work after he made it clear that he was never going to finish the main series. What I posted above is what I got out of The World of Ice & Fire, his poor copy of the Silmarillion which I bought back in 2014 when the show was at its peak and there was still hope for an ending to the core series. From what I've heard Fire and Blood basically just explores some of the material first introduced in TWOIAF (chiefly Daemon Targaryen's earlier adventures and the Dance) in greater detail anyway - hardly worth the price tag even if I were still interested.
Inb4 the try to make both of those two sympathetic in some way or blame their actions on various male characters like Matt Smith and others despite the meme that follows of denying women agency for their actions.
Gotcha. Yea I decided not to support any of the shows or his books. Now if by some miracle winds of winter is released I’ll buy it. I wanted to get Dunk and Egg but maybe I’ll find it second hand.
Given how GRRM reacted to the puppies, his actions here both make perfect sense and are 100% predictable.
And you would think the way the Twitter mob went after him when he was MC of that one awards show that he would open his eyes