I've been catching up with season 2 and honestly it's not half bad. It has cut out the worst shitty (often gross and misogynistic in nature) excesses of the original show while still retaining most if not all of the great character writing and great dialogue that the first four seasons of GoT had.
There's all this great early GoT style political intrigue retained to it as well. All of these lords and ladies and queens and kings are just terrible, awful people for most of the runtime while we've been getting increasing focus on how badly the very concept of monarchy forces the dirty laundry of one inbred family with pet nukes to take shape and brutalize not only the slowly starving smallfolk of King's Landing, but also the smallfolk throughout most of the surrounding empire.
The Lords of the Seven Kingdoms all exist in this web of familial ties that ensures their ultimate class solidarity, eventually dragging most of the continent into dragon war the aftermath of which resembles that of atomic bombs. Now we find two desperate peasants given dragons because Queen in Exile Rhaenyra needs to find someone capable of vibing with Vermithor and Silverwing, the second and third largest war dragons in existence. She ends up burning to death dozens of claimed Targaryen bastards to do this by locking them all in the Dragonmont and letting the dragons sort the rest. She watches this happen with bored disinterest, in contrast to the horror on her face when her highborn Queensguard Steffon Darklyn dies in a previous attempt to claim the dragon Seasmoke.
[Brief Spoilers for book events in this paragraph]
spoiler
In the book, after Hugh Hammer and Ulf White risk their lives to be her attack dog dragon riders, they never receive the kind of social elevation you'd expect for the people with the largest dragons on the continent. Rhaenyra does not want to deal with the political fallout of there being legitimized Targaryen bastards with bigger dragons than those of her sons, whom are also legitimized Targaryen bastards. Thus Hugh and Ulf plausibly retain some amount of class solidarity to the average smallfolk's plight and betray Rhaenyra to declare themselves Kings. I'm hoping the show has them join some Riverlander anti-Targaryen guerilla movements once they see the kind of atrocities they are expected to commit.
first season was a wonderful surprise that genuinely elevated the source material, with Paddy Considine putting an amazing performance as King Viserys. Second season ....eh, it made some weird choices, but it's nowhere near as bad as Game of Thrones got.
It feels like early GoT without the violence and gratuitous titty scenes. So far I'm really enjoying it.
Also Emma D'Arcy is an amazing actor, a beautiful human, and enby goals, love that they're doing such a great job as Rhaenyra
EDIT: the cast is really rocking it. Paddy Considine was amazing, but also Rhys Ifans, tons of people
Also Emma D'Arcy is an amazing actor, a beautiful human, and enby goals, love that they're doing such a great job as Rhaenyra
Definitely, their Rhaenyra is an excellent take on the character because they portray her without the flaws attributed to her by this deeply misogynistic and patriarchal society in a history book written centuries after the fact. Instead, they portray Rhaenyra as this regal women who clearly takes her position as Queen seriously and genuinely seeks to avoid starting a full scale war until a series of unfortunate escalations makes it inevitable whether she renounces her claim or not. Instead Emma D'Arcy's Rhaenyra has the shortcomings you'd actually expect of a crown princess. Rhaenyra clearly does not care much for the smallfolk, a massive and continuously relevant blind spot that Emma portrays perfectly.
Rhaenyra clearly does not care much for the smallfolk
spoiler
Yeah, that's why i'm curious to see where they go with the whole Mysaria plot line. I feel it's not that Rhaenyra doesn't have any compassion for people who are not royal, she just doesn't think about them, but she seeks to avoid loss of life anyway, and Mysaria is very much the representative for all the downtrodden people of the 7 kingdoms, reminding her that they're important, and also powerful.
If the story is anything like the books (which I think it will pretty much cover the main beats), the smallfolk (starting with Ulf and Hugh) will turn on Rhaenyra as soon as she gets King's Landing, but the devil is in the way this is portrayed:
- In the book, it's clearly told as a tale of the fickle masses and dishonorable bastards turning on their betters, killing the last of the magic of Old Valyria (which can be excused by the book being written by a noble in-universe, but it's also explained by GRRM's monarchist apologism);
- But, they can turn the same plot points on their head, and turn it into a story about the righteous anger of the smallfolk, who feel used and abandoned by their rulers, forced into a conflict that had nothing to do with them, and forced to kill and die for the golden dragon or the black one. I think they have planted the seeds for this with the whole 'Hugh's daughter died because of Rhaenyra's blockade and Aegon's empty promises', besides that putting out a 'working class people are treacherous and their anger is unjustified' in the current political climate sounds like a bad time.
I quite enjoy HOTD, the part about Rhaenyra looking horrified at Steffon Darklyn being killed over the other dragon seeds is probably in part to classism but also I think after
spoiler
Addam of Hull claims seasmoke
she is far more fanatical in her belief that it can work.
Looking forward to further fanatic turn next season hopefully
Its fun, not like high art or anything
But its wierd to have like pretty good writing occasionally punctuated with some random baffling choices they make like blood and cheese
I really like Aemond and Aegon, they are such little shits. Could do with less Matt Smith in an unconvincing wig tripping balls in a castle.
I like the overall tone better than Got's, there are fewer scenes of two really clever guys monologuing at each other.
I know I'm weird for this, but I wish it was like 15 % more about economic reasons behind the war, like trade routes and tariffs. Basically just make it into a Real Robot anime, it's already most of the way there.
I am so sick of the dream sequence scenes. They just aren't intriguing at all and waste so much of the runtime.
I love it as a die hard book reader, and my partner who has never watched anything sci-fi or fantasy is enjoying it as well.
All my qualms with it have to do with the actual issues of production and pacing that the producers have thrust upon the show. I think the showrunners are doing their best.
I have also enjoyed the Reddit hate on the show because their complaints are so ridiculous and clear that none of them have ever worked on a collaborative project
I only watched part of season one but I seem to remember that Martin was supposedly adamant that the show had those weird time skips.
I won’t watch it because they wasted my time with GOT. Started off interesting but then it kept following lame ass characters I don’t care about, then they botched the latter seasons and I just stopped watching.
If it were that level I wouldn’t have gotten past the first episode lmao
I thoroughly enjoy it so far.
I've started rewatching game of thrones with my gf and holy shit I forgot how misogynistic it was. The amount of gratuitous titty is genuinely embarrassing and it's amazing that the show's early success basically pivoted on that.
I'm having a good time. Unless HoTD's ending is as bad as GoT, I'd say I probably prefer HoTD by a bit. GoT's highs are pretty high, but the lows are really low. HoTD feels just much more evenly balanced by comparison.
Already hype for the 3rd season of HoTD.
I watched the first like 4 or 5 episodes of season 1 and gave up after the 3rd time jump in as many episodes.
If it helps, that’s the last one lmao. It’s definitely inelegant and lost a solid portion of the audience
Yeah it made me rapidly stop giving a shit and I had no compulsion to keep watching after that point.
I think they missed a big opportunity by calling the capital kings landing instead of eggbatana.
