House of the Dragon

I'm starting to think HBO didn't quite understand what made GOT so special. Dragons and medieval politics are cool, but GOT was so much more than that. I really liked the mysticism of the story. The White Walkers, the fire magic and the Lord of Light. The Starks and their mystical bond to Winterfell. The wizards of Ashai. I feel like the reason the last few seasons were such a failure is because they neglected those things. It's like they rushed the ending of the White Walker threat in order to get to the story of Bran sitting on the throne at the end. THE WHITE WALKERS WERE THE STORY!! Idiots! To be fair, the story was about both aspects. One without the other is just... a soap opera. HOTD doesn't get it.

Of all the stories they could have adapted from GRRM's world, there had to be better premises than this. I predict "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" will be a flop.

You know what... maybe my lukewarm response to HOTD is because it's a prequel. I paid close attention to GOT so I already know what happens at the end of this story. If you go back to S3 Ep 4 of GOT, it's explained rather concisely. Daemon's vision in the S2 finale of HOTD is of no consequence. This and the fact that the show takes too long to produce. 10 weeks of a story about setting chess pieces around a board followed by 2 years of waiting in between seasons just to come back and move those chess pieces again and another 2 years off? They have to do better than this. I don't imagine I'll remember what's what in 2026 when HOTD comes back.

Plus. They don’t have Aria Stark. Probably the only reason I watched GOT.

Really? John Snow wasn’t the reason or Daenerys?

That's a big part of it... The Faceless men. The Green-Seers. Wargs! There was so much more to GOT than politics.

I agree the show is definitely missing the supernatural elements. I really liked the red witch and her interaction with Robert Baratheon in GoT. The two year wait is going to kill the show.

Apparently Helena is a green seer. As for this being a prequel, from what I’ve heard, the book is based off of unreliable narrators. I don’t remember the episode of GoT where this story was told, but I think it’s also based off of unreliable narrators.

The faceless men was interesting, but Aria killing the Night King , come on.

I understand those two were supposed to be the “sex sells” kind of character, but no, I couldn’t really relate to either. And I wasn’t attracted to either character.

Aria spoke to me in way not normally exhibited in Hollywood movies or in novels. She embraced her girl side, but also accepted that she wasn’t a “normal girl”.

What do you mean by this? Did you think it unrealistic in some way?

Not intrinsically, no. The whole show portrayed Arya becoming a bad ass fighter after everyone counted her out. The show also spent a lot of time building on prophecy and build up that went back 300 years… and it really seemed like the writers did a last minute herky-jerk twist at the end just for the sake of it. This, Dany going insane and the idea of Bran as the king is why most fans prefer to forget the last couple of seasons.

I would say that the reason why the last few seasons of GOT were a letdown were not because they were less mystical than the first six, but because so much was anticlimactic and nonsensical, and people acted so stupidly. From "Dani kind of forgot about the Iron Fleet" to Jamie journeying all the way back to King's Landing to be with Cersei to Dani's heel-turn to Jon Snow (and by extension all the Prince Who Was Promised prophecy) largely becoming irrelevant to Tyrion and Varys taking stupid pills throughout...it was bad.

HOD is enjoyable to me, but at the heart of it, there is a lot of the same sort of stupidity. Rhaenyra never seemed to contemplate, let alone plan for, the fact that Westeros was sexist AF to the point that they wouldn't accept an actual ruling queen. Even with the example of Rhaenys being ousted and Rhaenys explicitly telling her that there were lords who would rather see the realm put to the torch than have a woman run it.

There's a lot of stuff that is questionable, such as stretching logic to have Alicent and Rhaenyra have face to face chats or to have a blockade be effective when it seems like dragons should be able to burninate ships relatively easily.

What does a Targariarian and a Jack o Lantern have In common? They both pump kin.