House of the Dragon spoiler thread

[Mercurius]

It's the exact opposite of shocking. If anything, it's enervating and incredibly predictable. GRRM is 74 years old and still writes like a teenage edgelord.

The basic premise of this series is tragic enough -- it's King Lear if Lear was trying to make everyone happy, rather than being a raging narcissist. We don't need to keep killing women in childbirth to make it dark or a tragedy.

I mean, maayybeee....seems like an uncharitable reading. I think we can accuse Martin with being rather interested/obsessed with torturous things happening to his characters, and he certainly likes to be edgy, but that's just part of the tone of this style of fantasy.

And to be clear, I'm generally not overly attached to "grimdark" (or "grrmdark"), but I think Martin does what he does quite well. And it seems to me that your issue is with grimdark as a whole. It isn't everyone's cuppa.

As for women dying in childbirth, it happened a fair amount during the Middle Ages. Not sure about the actual stats. I personally wouldn't have depicted it twice - seems excessive - but that might be more the decision of the showrunners than GRRM himself. But the ratio isn't unrealistic if you compare it to the number of children born and depicted in the series.

 

[pukunui]

So he had his own family killed

Yep. Larys and his killer bees. He's a pretty evil fellow.

In the scene where Lyonel is offering to resign as Hand, when Viserys stands up, you can see that his left arm looks like just black bone.

I think that's just his sleeve. I expect his arm is completely gone.


Laena's suicide by dragon was sad. I was relieved to see Daemon looking horrified, though. It seems he really did care about her.


It seems like instead of the gratuitous sex scenes we got in GoT, we're now getting gratuitous childbirth scenes and ... teenage boys jerking off in open windows. I was half expecting him to fall out the window when his mother walked in on him!

We certainly got more time with the dragons during this episode, which was nice.

 

[Zardnaar]

I mean, maayybeee....seems like an uncharitable reading. I think we can accuse Martin with being rather interested/obsessed with torturous things happening to his characters, and he certainly likes to be edgy, but that's just part of the tone of this style of fantasy.

And to be clear, I'm generally not overly attached to "grimdark" (or "grrmdark"), but I think Martin does what he does quite well. And it seems to me that your issue is with grimdark as a whole. It isn't everyone's cuppa.

As for women dying in childbirth, it happened a fair amount during the Middle Ages. Not sure about the actual stats. I personally wouldn't have depicted it twice - seems excessive - but that might be more the decision of the showrunners than GRRM himself. But the ratio isn't unrealistic if you compare it to the number of children born and depicted in the series.

10% iirc. One reason royal lines got traced through father's. Mother's died a lot.

Death toll even worse for young kids. Something like one in three.

Numbers are similar apparently across cultures in pre industrial societies.

Compared to what happened irl shows not brutal enough.

Classics lecturer did a run down on life expectancy.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Yeah its sucked for the stark women, but its been no damn picnic for some of their men either.

I don't think the what is the only way to look at it. The how is important, too.

When the Mountain killed the Viper in a duel, it was shocking and violent, but it was also extremely brief. Unless viewers rewound and did a freeze frame, we have more of an impression of what went down than details. (Although when Joffrey is killed, we get a nice clear close-up of what his face looked like caved in, reinforcing how bad it is to be LGBT in a GRRM world.)

When Aemma is going through difficult childbirth and then the deadly c-section, we linger on it. There are close-ups. We hear her agony. We watch everyone's face during. I suspect the entire scene was many times longer than the Mountain/Viper duel.

Yes, a lot of guys die in these stories. But with the exception of Theon, it's typically shocking and short. With women, the violence is typically on camera and dominates a scene, like the rape of Sansa.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I mean, maayybeee....seems like an uncharitable reading. I think we can accuse Martin with being rather interested/obsessed with torturous things happening to his characters, and he certainly likes to be edgy, but that's just part of the tone of this style of fantasy.

Nothing about what an author chooses to include or not to include is beyond his control, especially if you're one of the authors who defined this particular style of fantasy.

And Sansa being raped in a story doesn't mean that the show has to then turn it into a protracted on-screen violation. It could be brief and shocking, as the violence mostly is with men, or the audience could just hear it happening through a closed door or we could hear servants talking about it. (Shakespeare's plays were violent, but the worst of it was typically relayed through exposition.)

The shows' tone isn't inevitable, it's a clear choice. They want you to know what happens to these women.

 

[payn]

I hope Martin is in therapy, given that being a woman in his novels so consistently means exposing them to violence and death.

And no, it's not "realistic." His books have zombies, dragons and magic abortion tea. It's an authorial choice.

Two things, first how much of HotD is actually Martin's writing? Honest question, I dont know. I do know that much of the last few seasons he had very little to do with. Second, I think the whole exposing woman to violence and death is terrible is a bit overblown. I am thinking of the joker just now. "When men are exposed to violence and death its according to plan and everyone is fine. When Women are exposed to violence and death; everybody loses their minds!"

 

[billd91]

I'm not sure why this is shocking, considering the "dark Medieval" aesthetic that Martin was going for.

It's not merely "dark Medieval". GRRM was specifically inspired by the War of the Roses period when he thought up the Song of Ice and Fire saga. Add to that the brutality of wars of succession as we've got in House of the Dragon and you've got a recipe for some pretty spectacular violence, double-dealing, backstabbing, and on and on. And the wild part is that the levels of violence aren't all that unrealistic. There are a number of historical sources that suggest the homicide rate in the inspirational time periods may have been as much as 2 magnitudes higher than modern society.

 

[Marc Radle]

Although when Joffrey is killed, we get a nice clear close-up of what his face looked like caved in, reinforcing how bad it is to be LGBT in a GRRM world.)

Wait … what??

 

[payn]

Wait … what??

Yeap, I was thrown for a loop for a second too. Joffery is the name of Laenor's paramour that Ser Cristen punched to death. Including this point right after a GoT reference got away from me for a second.

 

[Mercurius]

Nothing about what an author chooses to include or not to include is beyond his control, especially if you're one of the authors who defined this particular style of fantasy.

We can hold GRRM 100% accountable for his books, and at least partially accountable for the Game of Thrones series. But House of Dragons? I'm not sure how much editorial control he has.

And Sansa being raped in a story doesn't mean that the show has to then turn it into a protracted on-screen violation. It could be brief and shocking, as the violence mostly is with men, or the audience could just hear it happening through a closed door or we could hear servants talking about it. (Shakespeare's plays were violent, but the worst of it was typically relayed through exposition.)

The shows' tone isn't inevitable, it's a clear choice. They want you to know what happens to these women.

Look, I get it: it is a dark world and you don't like it. But you also seem rather insistent on making it yet another example of misogyny and/or fetishizing violence against women. I just don't agree. Martin might have a fetish for violence/torture etc in general, but I don't see him--at least as expressed through his writing--as being particularly misogynistic, especially when you keep in mind how well his female characters are written - that they are every bit as complex as his male characters are.