#the good grrm show

[ohwolfling]

Y'all can be in A Song of Ice and Fire if you want to. Daemon has developed OCD with severe intrusive thoughts in the middle of his vision quest and Aemond is in a school shooter anime.

[wishesofeternity]

The thing about HotD is that it while it absolutely minimizes the agency and ambition of both Rhaenyra and Alicent, this is specifically used to glorify Rhaenyra and frame her as righteous while condemning Alicent and framing her lacking. That's the key difference in both their textual portrayals that has directly led to 90% of the fandom hailing Rhaenyra as the second coming of Christ while spewing the most hateful vitriol at Alicent just for existing. But y'all are not prepared for that conversation.

[lemonhemlock]

I did not get into Game of thrones when it first started airing. In fact, I waited until it was long past it's heyday (around s6 or 7) to check it out because the marketing and the conversation surrounding it misled me into thinking it was nothing more than "grimdark" bullshit. As one famous YouTuber sarcastically called it "hot fantasy that fucks." So, I avoided Martin's work for literal years due to the impression that I got from online reactors and show-only casuals who did as you and a few others have described as his work being fundamentally misinterpreted.

Fortunately, I overcame my hang-ups, purchased the books (even the supplementary material) and fell down an entire rabbit hole of ASOIAF which led me to recognizing that this world he spent decades creating is far more complex than what had been portrayed onscreen. Regardless of the possibility of the books remaining unfinished (which I am fine with, personally), what George has created is a genuine work of art that I imagine took a tremendous amount of time and energy. So, for so many people online to behave like children and throw tantrums because they feel entitled to him (ew) instead of ushering forth more reasonable conversations and legitimate debates about the nature of his situation frankly makes me look at this fandom with a heavy dose of skepticism.

It is truly baffling to hear even professional critics and see articles describing George as being "ungrateful" or "unprofessional" when it has been well-documented just how often authors get locked out of the adaptation process and left to the wayside as consultants. Look at what happened to Rick Riordan and Christopher Paolini! George R.R. Martin is not the only author to have qualms with how a multimillion dollar studio has mishandled his creative work, and to act like he should remain silent just because he's amassed a certain degree of wealth is quite frankly, ridiculous. He shouldn't have to settle down, be grateful, and stay quiet because the greedy corporate executives and their media drones will get offended by actual criticism that could alter the perception of the adaption being revealed as mediocre for having departed from the source material.

TLDR: authors should be allowed to speak up about their art being sacrificed for commercialization.

Thank you so much for this message, anon! This needs to be talked about more, because I don't think a lot of commentators truly understand the vulgar, late-capitalistic sheen that seems to set in and slowly poison any ASOIAF adaptation. It honestly baffles me how quick some members of this fandom are to rush to the defense of, what is essentially (let's not be kidding ourselves here), a cashgrab by a giant corporation to the detriment of the actual artist and the actual creative foundation behind it.

Why else would "MAX" (if that is even their name) make another (or several other) ASOIAF adaptations? Not to stay true to any philosophical aesthetic vision, as it has become more than apparent with Season 2, but to increase shareholder profits by appealing to the lowest common denominator. Even the basic premise has been shifted in order to address popular trends and satisfy the mindless consumer that doesn't want to engage with anything deeper than their favourite tropes, prettily packaged:

from a story about a doomed ouroborous family superimposed on the pitfalls of feudalism, with villainy and heroism to be found on both sides, it has been simplified and reduced to a narrative that exalts white feminism and disqualifies anyone who opposes its girlboss protagonist. This is Sheryl Sandberg's version of Fire and Blood.

Truly, I think Sara Hess did (unintentionally) outline it the best: "civilians don't matter in Game of Thrones". They don't matter in Game of Thrones, but they matter in A Song of Ice and Fire. The entire heart of the series is contained in Septon Maribald's speech. The writers "kind of", must have forgotten, though.

[ladystoneboobs]

no of fence to jon snow fans who for some reason care about his exact age, but these discussions just annoy me no end. not only bc there's no way any weirwood flashbacks bran has to rhaegar/lyanna will come with time/datestamps, but also bc there's always comments like this:

SEVERAL turns of the moon (ie, months)?! have these people never seen a human baby before or just have no concept of their ages? even if we take into account travel time from the toj to wf, meaning jon was not a newborn too fresh out the oven when catelyn and robb arrived, there's still a difference between a newborn and a 3mo and an even bigger difference between those infants and an older baby 5-7mo. there's very good reasons these lines were cut. whatever birthdates can be worked out internally for jon and robb from when they're first mentioned as 15 and 16 don't matter in the end, bc grrm doesn't care about a consistent timeline and the actual text of catelyn's pov and ned's convo with robert about cheating on her should outweigh any guesstimates about jon's official nameday wrt robb's. catelyn may not have cared for jon, but she would sure as hell have noticed his nameday if it came before robb's and made him ned's firstborn. if jon's birthday canonically came before robb's then either ned's cover story would not involve adultery (not impossible for him to sire a bastard before his wedding), or he'd just give jon a new nameday along with his new name to fit the adultery lie. it makes no sense for him to lie about one and not the other, undermining the big lie with a little public clue of his story not adding up. whatever else she was as a stepmother, cat wasn't stupid and a bastard who was actually the eldest son being raised alongside her trueborn heir could be an even bigger insult than whether he was born of adultery or not.

BUT, the unknowability of jon's true birthday is not the only reason this annoys me, it's bc this is all based on the assumption that jon must be older since rhaegar/lyanna ran off together before ned married cat, as if both boys must have been conceived asap as robb canonically was when his parents consummated their marriage. and that's not how human reproduction works! even if you don't understand how fast babies grow in the first year, you should know that people who get pregnant do so through ovulation cycles and a lucky sperm finding an egg and all that, not just immediately getting knocked up as soon as one has p-in-v sex for the first time. not unless you only know mean girls sex ed where if you have sex you will get pregnant and die. (even tho lyanna did die, there's plenty of canon examples where pregnancy did not lead straight to death. also examples of people who did not get pregnant right away and even some who are/were sexually active and childless without always having moon tea on hand.) we can't know how long lyanna was having sex before that sperm+egg match happened or even how long she was with rhaegar before losing her technical virginity. if they were married, doesn't it make sense to think they didn't consummate their relationship until the wedding night either? that's the only leverage there is to ensure a status as wife rather than just mistress.

and while i just said grrm doesn't care about exact timelines and a lot is still foggy surrounding the rebellion and esp rhaegar, there is one timemarker wrt robert's rebellion he voluntarily threw in, time and time again: that stannis was besieged at storm's end for almost a whole year. that siege, which mind you, did not match the duration of the entire war. it only started after robert won his battles at gulltown and summerhall, returned to storm's end, and then went out and lost the battle of ashford, leaving his homeland open to the reachermen. the same siege which only ended when ned made a detour there after the sack of king's landing, before going to the toj. even if lyanna may not have given birth that exact day ned found her, she could only be waiting in that bloody bed for weeks at the most, not months. so if rhaegar knocked her up the very same night he carried her off and jon was still a newborn when ned found her after the siege of storm's end had ended, wouldn't that mean lyanna was pregnant for well over a year? that's not how human pregnancy works either! so, maybe that's proof that jon and robb, whichever order they were actually born in, were actually very close in age as babies, much closer than if they were both conceived asap.

and really, jon's actual birthdate does not matter imho, when he was raised not just as the bastard to robb's trueborn heir, but with robb also known by catelyn and the world as ned's firstborn (which he was, in any case, as jon was ned's nephew by birth). what difference could a birthdate before robb's make (even were there some means of discovery) after ned, cat, and robb are all dead? if one is looking only at his birth parents then he's only a firstborn child on lyanna's side, but definitely a second son on rhaegar's side. maybe he was always meant to be a second son with a not much older half-brother! even if the aegon fka young griff is not in fact rhaegar's son, he'll still be known as aegon vi targaryen, meaning jon will never be known as any father's elder son. if i may reference mean girls again, it's not going to happen.

[cassofnowhere]

I’m actually shocked by seeing so many creative people getting behind the idea that an author can’t have or voice any negative opinions of their work because they sold the rights and are getting money from them.

Like, are we really subscribing to the idea that money can and should buy your right to have a honest opinion on the way your life’s work is being handled?!?! Are we really saying that? Guess money can our souls or something along those lines.

It’s insane that an author is supposed to just wash their hands, shrug and not feel anything about their life’s work being mishandled by other people.

Who even does that?!?!

[rozecrest]

it's so interesting how almost everyone who rbed the media association post mentioned house of the dragon. the prolific illnesses it has given me... no need to apologize to those who did i carry no shame i DO think its a good show. sometimes its not. but at least it tends to be interesting even when it makes me mad. and the bad stuff is familiar i've been a fantasy bitch for too long lmao... honored to be the asoiaf mutual even though i would call myself medium commitment

[daincrediblegg]

grim reminders today how fucking obnoxious most of the got/hotd fandom is even on a fringe interest level with the single exception of alt shift x and glidus, who continue to fill me with joy with several hour episode commentary filled with excitement and joy and lore speculation

[idontreallyknow26]

Vhagar & Sunfyre were just really hungry and I think it's unfair to them to blame them for that.

[daecaerys]

not all the spin off being targaryen based shows. we love daenerys' karma *sips wine like cersei*

[ladyhawke]

THEY REALLY DID CUT NETTLES??????

[ohwolfling]

me trying to explain colonialism, dragons as threats and essentially WMD, the thematic implications of all these weird incests, what the word conqueror means, & the difference between fighting to claim all kingdoms vs fighting for sovereignty to a show watcher who thinks their team or canonically war-crimed yet still war criminal dead person is going to "win"

[heydrangeas]

did grrm ever post anything like that during GoT or did he realize he was partly to blame for not finishing the series

[lemonhemlock]

i sure hope there are hbo MAX people "taking the cultural temperature" of online fan spaces right now in the wake of grrm's post because i would like to wholeheartedly join the chorus of YOUR SHOW SUCKS AND YOU'RE INCOMPETENT

[whateverthedragonswant]

Being a fan of Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon on here is a real challenge at times. Simply because an alarming number of people don't understand what the word adaptation means.

[swiftsnowmane]

Even though I've been a fan of ASoIaF since the early 2000s, like many other fans these days I've pretty much completely given up on waiting for the series to ever be finished. I don't even mean that as shade towards GRRM, I've simply resigned myself to reality and accepted that he has likely lost the heart, motivation, and willpower to finish in a timely fashion, if at all.

Besides, these days I'm primarily a SanSan fan (been shipping them non-stop for nearly 20 years now), so the only thing I really care about is Sansa Stark and Sandor Clegane (with a heavy side dose of Jaime x Brienne). And since I highly doubt any of my fave characters or ships will have a pleasant ending, I have actually come to DREAD finishing the ASoIaF series in any official capacity, and now prefer to just make up fanfic versions in my own mind.

As for the tv shows, the GoT series left a bad taste in many people's mouths, my own included, but luckily I only watched two seasons of it before I gave up on it entirely. It was a terrible adaptation that should never have been made, imo. Or at least, it should not have been made until after the main series was completed. I have almost zero interest in HotD, since I'm not really a Targ fan and find the eras where they have dragons to be, quite frankly, boring. The only show that I would consider giving a chance is the upcoming Dunk and Egg series, but ONLY if it is executed properly and respects the source material, which seems highly unlikely given HBO's track record.

[thesilverlady]

I'm not enough of a book purist to not being able to enjoy headcanons, crackships etc (as a matter of fact I do love them). But seeing newbies unironically and completely serious considering aemond to "trying to be the perfect son", or "heleana is the people's princess" or "rhaenyra is calm, collected and strategic", "Daemon is the family's clown, the agent of chaos" legit gives me a headache because they are nothing like that.

And I'm not talking about ppl writing fanfics with this type of characterization, but ppl legit having takes based on the terrible portrayal of the show. And even when they go to read f&b they still have the image the show gave them because they don't seem capable of letting go.

it just feels like Jon Snow/Daenerys Targaryen character assassination all of again.

There are so many people who consider Jon to be basically ned 2.0 and Dany a mad queen-girlboss-slay

I just wish we could seperate books from adaptations. That's all