[Maark Abbott]

I ended up zoning out bored witless. Nothing made me care about the characters or really feel like I wanted to know more. The wigs also just made me feel like it was a Gerald of Riveting cosplay convention. Hmm.

Eye candy and very pretty, but dropped after that first episode. You can set table and scene without it being a slog to get through.

[QuickTidal]

I'll be interested if they try to make someone the "hero" in this...because every character in this story gets to a point where they are irredeemable pieces of shit...so will they lean into that and force the audience to watch so many unpalatable characters, or will they try to make one more sympathetic?

[worry]

Well they are including the 'toddler' dragon Drogzooky, who hiccups smoke and says "zooky" all the time. Minor character in the book but will be a regular on the show, and I can't say I hate the decision.

[JPK]

QuickTidal, on 23 August 2022 - 12:05 PM, said:

I'll be interested if they try to make someone the "hero" in this...because every character in this story gets to a point where they are irredeemable pieces of shit...so will they lean into that and force the audience to watch so many unpalatable characters, or will they try to make one more sympathetic?

They're already making Daemon worse than he should be at this point so I think it's likely.

[QuickTidal]

JPK, on 23 August 2022 - 04:52 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 23 August 2022 - 12:05 PM, said:

I'll be interested if they try to make someone the "hero" in this...because every character in this story gets to a point where they are irredeemable pieces of shit...so will they lean into that and force the audience to watch so many unpalatable characters, or will they try to make one more sympathetic?

They're already making Daemon worse than he should be at this point so I think it's likely.

Yeah, fair point indeed.

[Malankazooie]

It's one episode. Say that out loud - "it's one episode."

It didn't shit the bed, so yeah, there's something to be said about letting a show develop. Just a thought? I mean, early on with Breaking Bad I wasn't really feeling it, but it gawt güd.. I liked WoT at first, but then there's a pivotal scene that didn't gel with EotW at all and it was a stupid, stupid decision to commit that to the adaptation. I had to nope right the fuck out at that point. And no, it's nothing to do with the bullshit woke nonsense that was emphasized in the dedthread. It was early on, so none of that shit had really developed yet. And besides, I liked how they were incorporating anything that could be construed as "woke" anyways.

I think the mentality/mindset of not allowing shows to develop is a curse of our streaming, binging a show all at once culture now. I rather enjoy the weekly, appointment television of days of yore. You have water cooler topic to dicuss with co-workers and you have a chance to let it marinate before the next episode. So advice? Take a few deep breaths, be patient and give it a try. If it doesn't clique with you by episode 4 or so, then nope the fuck right out.

[amphibian]

Renewed For 2 More Seasons, on 23 August 2022 - 12:46 PM, said:

Well they are including the 'toddler' dragon Drogzooky, who hiccups smoke and says "zooky" all the time. Minor character in the book but will be a regular on the show, and I can't say I hate the decision.

I think this is a genius business decision and should drive creative like the He-Man toys drove the creation of a show and movie.

[worry]

Speaking of, they should make baby Battle Cat squishmallow.

[Maark Abbott]

Malankazooie, on 23 August 2022 - 05:23 PM, said:

It's one episode. Say that out loud - "it's one episode."

It didn't shit the bed, so yeah, there's something to be said about letting a show develop. Just a thought? I mean, early on with Breaking Bad I wasn't really feeling it, but it gawt güd.. I liked WoT at first, but then there's a pivotal scene that didn't gel with EotW at all and it was a stupid, stupid decision to commit that to the adaptation. I had to nope right the fuck out at that point. And no, it's nothing to do with the bullshit woke nonsense that was emphasized in the dedthread. It was early on, so none of that shit had really developed yet. And besides, I liked how they were incorporating anything that could be construed as "woke" anyways.

I think the mentality/mindset of not allowing shows to develop is a curse of our streaming, binging a show all at once culture now. I rather enjoy the weekly, appointment television of days of yore. You have water cooler topic to dicuss with co-workers and you have a chance to let it marinate before the next episode. So advice? Take a few deep breaths, be patient and give it a try. If it doesn't clique with you by episode 4 or so, then nope the fuck right out.

I work two jobs. My leisure time is extremely limited. So it follows that if 'just one episode' was dreary enough that I completely zoned out, why would I spend more of my limited leisure time on it? That's counterproductive. It's the same argument as 'but Way of Kings was only book one!'.

If it was anime format where you can do three episodes in just over an hour then I'd be more inclined to give it the three episode rule, but couple the lack of interest in what I saw with the lack of investment in the setting that GOT8 brought and I suppose this is just an inevitable conclusion.

[QuickTidal]

Technically the show should be called HOUSE OF THE WYVERNS....because those aint' dragons.

[ContrarianMalazanReader]

QuickTidal, on 24 August 2022 - 12:05 PM, said:

Technically the show should be called HOUSE OF THE WYVERNS....because those aint' dragons.

GRRM himself addressed this issue once.

He stated the reason the dragons in ASoIaF are four-limbed (pair of wings and hind legs) instead of the usual six-limbed dragons (pair of wings and four legs) is because there's never been any six-limbed vertebrates IRL, and since his approach to fantasy is rather grounded, he went for the wyvern look for the dragons, and finally his favourite fictional dragon is the one from the movie Dragonslayer, which influenced his dragons appearance wise.

[worry]

Better a Wyvern than a Knowwhatimeanvern #ErnestGoesToWesteros

[Maark Abbott]

The problem with wyverns is they can get poked out at the tip, because the hurtbox and hitbox are dissonant.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

QuickTidal, on 22 August 2022 - 11:43 AM, said:

nevermind the fact that they decided to show a forced, and unmedicated C-section and juxtapose THAT against the tourney...What in the ever-loving fuck are the writers thinking?

'Sapochnik and Martin certainly think that this world is taking cues from the medieval period, and often use that idea to justify their choices when it comes to things like women getting cut open against their will, so I think it’s possibly fair—and definitely interesting—to ask how true to that history this scene would be.

[...] “The idea that they would do it and do it in this way is a gross imposition of a medievalism—the idea that medieval patriarchy must be the same or worse than ours, therefore since we don’t care about mothers and only love fetuses, so too they,” [...]

“Totally no. They were very keen on protecting mothers from harm.”

[...] what we do know points to the idea that the operation would have been performed on dead women, not the living. It was extremely uncommon for medical texts from the time to recommend the performance of cesareans on living women—before the 20th century, only a few outlying (and often-mocked) doctors even believed that c-section could result in a living mother and child. But the church did require midwives to do [...] c-sections after maternal death, if they thought the fetus was still alive, in order to remove and baptize the baby.

[...] historian [...] who wrote a book on medieval c-sections, finds that church advice in this period did not recommend elevating the fetus over the mother in decision-making during birth. [...] some writers offering guidance on the matter explicitly recommended the opposite.

This is not to say that this kind of situation, in which a husband sacrificed a wife for a child, never, ever happened. No less a prince than Henry VIII supposedly said, as Jane Seymour lay in childbed in 1537: “Save the child by all means, for it is easier to get wives than children.” (Although there was once a rumor that Seymour was delivered by c-section, we don’t know what happened to cause her to die shortly after Edward VI’s birth[...]

[...] people in earlier time periods were actually more accepting of women’s autonomy in reproductive matters than we are today[...] but it’s very hard to get past a popular conception of time’s trajectory in which things used to be terrible, got slowly better, and now are getting worse. As Martin said last month, “I don’t think Westeros is particularly more anti-woman or more misogynistic than real life and what we call history … I get inspiration from history, and then I take elements from history and I turn it up to 11.”'

House of the Dragon on HBO: Episode 1’s birth scene isn’t as historical as it seems

[QuickTidal]

Azath Vitr (D, on 26 August 2022 - 12:35 PM, said:

QuickTidal, on 22 August 2022 - 11:43 AM, said:

nevermind the fact that they decided to show a forced, and unmedicated C-section and juxtapose THAT against the tourney...What in the ever-loving fuck are the writers thinking?

'Sapochnik and Martin certainly think that this world is taking cues from the medieval period, and often use that idea to justify their choices when it comes to things like women getting cut open against their will, so I think it’s possibly fair—and definitely interesting—to ask how true to that history this scene would be.

[...] “The idea that they would do it and do it in this way is a gross imposition of a medievalism—the idea that medieval patriarchy must be the same or worse than ours, therefore since we don’t care about mothers and only love fetuses, so too they,” [...]

“Totally no. They were very keen on protecting mothers from harm.”

I find this is VERY common in Hollywood circles, especially on shit like GOT and this show that their view of "Medieval times" is tailored form the POV that everything was awful and rape and pillage was more common than it was. Most Medievalists have tried to take themtmo task for this shit, but they din't want to hear it. So yeah, it surprises me not at all that Sapochnik thinks this...but the fact that Martin does, when he rails ALL the time about how much he's read about the period (the Wars of the Roses at least) shows you that he fucking very much didn't beyond "Knights and Ladies".


The more years go by I find more and more to dislike about Martin as a person, and his vehemence with which he claims to know about the "real history" while he clearly doesn't, is its adding to that pile for me.

Beyond ANYTHING else....the show runners did NOT need to show the scene so viscerally. They could absolutely have implied what was to happen, and then cut away. Showing it in such a disturbing and gruesome fashion was for "HBO is a premium service, we have to prove our worthiness of the mandate by pushing the envelope of taste"....

Like I feel like if ROME was made by these people in 2022, then you would not have just seen Niobe drop out of the window railing from Vorenus' POV like we did....we'd likely have been forced to have seen her hit the ground and her skull explode in impact...because that's the level of viscerality the HotD producers seem intent on....and it's not needed or required in any way, regardless of what they THINK the time period would warrant.

-------

Sidebar to all this. I watched a video by a woman who said that many people commenting on the violence on HotD have said that before the Pandemic (and even on the old GOT show) they would not have blinked at the violence and gore...but now they do. And the woman who made the video basically said that the whole world went through a collective trauma of the pandemic and coming out of that trauma none of us are really ready to be viscerally thrown back into that level of violence in our entertainment.

I also think this is why I'm enjoying the WOT show this much, because while there IS some viscera in it (Trolloc innards) it's mostly a lighter and brighter fare.

And I further think this MAY be the problem for HBO going forward with this show and there being no real "heroes" in the Dance of the Dragons....people may not be willing to accept this as the show goes on, but we will see.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 26 August 2022 - 02:03 PM

[worry]

I like the gore and thought it was pretty rad so far in this show, and GRRM's taste for grindhousey scenes is definitely a big check in the plus column for me. That said, I agree it's good to have lighter fare like WoT that aims for more PG-13 level fantasy storytelling too. And I hope The Rings of Power is even tamer, as far as that kind of stuff goes.

[ContrarianMalazanReader]

Seriously, why is everyone making such a big deal out of the C-section scene?

I wasn't the least bit shocked by it and didn't find it to be particularly graphic, nor was my mom.

[Malankazooie]

Agree. The jousting gore was more shocking in my opinion.

Also, the prophesy Viserys reveals to Rhaenyra at the end of the episode puts things in context and explains why the child was to be saved instead of the mother.

And the notion of comparing this to historical accuracy is silly. Were there dragons at one time? Even shows that claim to be based on history, Vikings for example, are very off on many things. It's for entertainment, they have to jazz it up, otherwise, snore! (and by some reactions, that's the case anyway).

[QuickTidal]

ContrarianMalazanReader, on 26 August 2022 - 06:22 PM, said:

Seriously, why is everyone making such a big deal out of the C-section scene?

I wasn't the least bit shocked by it and didn't find it to be particularly graphic, nor was my mom.

Same reason you make a big deal out of the colour palette that Denis Villanueve uses…I didn’t effing like it.

[Tsundoku]

I find myself tending to agree with QT on this. Just because you can show something doesn't mean you have to.

I'm just as big a fan of the newd ladies and boobies and stuff as anyone but a sex scene doesn't have to veer into pr0n territory in a drama show. You can show the beginnings to set the tone (consensual, forced etc) and then the aftermath, which would convey what's going on. There's just no need for the whole shebang. So to speak. Plus it leaves more time for the rest of the plot. Same goes with graphic violence and caesarians etc.

Maybe it's done more for "bums on seats" than anything else? Just pure titillation for ratings sake. I dunno. It's a slippery slope when people get used to it though. Reminds me of the South Park episode where they say "Shit" on TV.

This post has been edited by Tsundoku: 27 August 2022 - 12:25 AM