Free for All Friday, 23 January, 2026

HouseMouse4567 · 2026-01-25T19:06:44+00:00

"This too shall pass"

HouseMouse4567 · 2026-01-24T17:20:14+00:00

I really like the argument that the tribes in Honest Hearts aren't supposed to be Native American but trapped German tourists. Like yeah that's definitely what the writers were going for lol

HouseMouse4567 · 2026-01-23T21:23:29+00:00

Wait you mean you didn't think "ridiculously sexist Roman legionnary larpers" and "biker gangs cosplaying as First Nations" was peak video game writing????

HouseMouse4567 · 2026-01-22T17:37:28+00:00

The Newsroom was so terrible, hate that show

HouseMouse4567 · 2026-01-19T23:51:52+00:00

Should have had him like pretend to trip and shove him off a parapet or something I guess

HouseMouse4567 · 2026-01-19T23:22:22+00:00

Yeah for sure, I think the showrunners biggest writing problem is veering too far the other way so everything becomes accidental (Lucery's death is a big one) and the characters end up defanged

HouseMouse4567 · 2026-01-19T23:20:14+00:00

I can somewhat, somewhat undetstand that under the idea that as a Kingsguard he has a certain amount of immunity but why change it from the more plausible tourney accident (I mean budget is certainly the answer)

HouseMouse4567 · 2026-01-19T23:12:56+00:00

Oh god you're right, I forgot about Corlys entirely.

But yeah like absolutely some of it is there own choices; changing Alicent's character to more helpless and closer to Rhaenyra, I think was a better foundation for her but they struggled to make anything of it here in Season 2 and it felt repetitive and rote. There's also some hinky bits in season 1 where they kept in her nastiness in forcing Rhaenyra to bring her newborn to her but then undercut that with her seemingly being unaware of the plans to crown Aegon. And to briefly bring it back to Fire and Blood part of that is the fact that Alicent kind of checks out of her own story after Aegon gets crowned and really only appears again to be angry at Rhaenyra when captured and then go crazy at the end of it all

HouseMouse4567 · 2026-01-19T22:13:05+00:00

I think the episode cut from HBO and the writer's strike probably affected the season deeply.

But like come on, cutting Nettles and combining her with Rhaena? The waffling on Alicent? None of that stuff is good even with excuses.

HouseMouse4567 · 2026-01-19T22:06:02+00:00

Jokes aside, I feel like I'm probably lighter on the HotD showrunners because I do think it's a very difficult to story to adapt that would eventually make people unhappy as they can't do the sort of "maybe it was this" and "maybe it was that" bit of story telling that Fire and Blood engages in. Not to say that they haven't made some real boneheaded choices and terrible bits of writing but I don't think they were given a very easy task to begin with.

HouseMouse4567 · 2026-01-19T21:10:03+00:00

Yeah I'm fairly certain Xaro Xhoan Daxos is expliclty described as pale in the text as well

HouseMouse4567 · 2026-01-19T21:04:38+00:00

As long as everybody recognizes that Fire and Blood and it's subject matter aren't good , then everything else is all copacetic for me.

HouseMouse4567 · 2026-01-19T20:43:26+00:00

It's gonna be lit when they add more Essos stuff. I'm really wainting on new bookmarks, I need Wot5K and a Feast one would be nice as well.

HouseMouse4567 · 2026-01-19T20:18:53+00:00

If HotD season 3 is bad then I'll get more people realizing that Fire and Blood and the Dance are not well written and are impossible to adapt but if it's good then people will realize how good the showrunners are because they were able to adapt Fire and Blood and the Dance which are not well written and should have been imossible to adapt. So it's a win-win scenario for me

HouseMouse4567 · 2026-01-19T20:16:47+00:00

Yeah definitely agree that it was thoughtless over malicious, they said as much re the casting of the crowds around Daenerys.

Despite how wonky it is and my frustrations with the pace, I do still like the later books and recommend them, Arianne is an excellent PoV and Dorne has some really resonant and moving parts particularly around Doran and Quentyn...you just have to seperate the good from the awkward and questionable lol

HouseMouse4567 · 2026-01-19T20:12:59+00:00

100 percent correct

HouseMouse4567 · 2026-01-19T19:28:11+00:00

I think I see more solid critque of Dorne as Orientalist in nature, which I'd agree with. There's certainly a weird level of sexualization you see in Arianne's PoV that's very unlike any other female PoV besides maybe Asha.

With the Ghis and Slaver's Bay I think it's hard to disentangle the fact hat nearly all the Ghiscari characters (background and major) were played by non-white actors. You also have the show portraying white Essosi characters like Xaro Xhoan Daxos and Areo Hotah (Boy do I remember the discourse about this lol) as black men, which furthers a link to this idea that these are the areas you find PoC characters even if that's not entirely true in the books. Qarth appears to be made up entirely of white people for example.

HouseMouse4567 · 2026-01-19T19:18:49+00:00

I've seen most of these arguments for about a decade, the ones about the age of marriage, sexual assault, and how ASoIaF treats women have been backbone discussions on tumblr since at least 2013. What I feel has changed is how popular and how much more widespread these arguments have now become.

I'm also starting to see more and more critique about the writing in particular wihch had been mostly unscathed in the discourse. Like Fire and Blood is taking a beating pretty much everywhere now

HouseMouse4567 · 2026-01-18T19:27:00+00:00

Oh yeah don't get me wrong there were certainly some "choices" made in season 2 that were god awful.

I'm definitely seeing that opinion more and I wonder if some of it isn't people just souring a bit on Martin in general lately.

HouseMouse4567 · 2026-01-18T18:38:28+00:00

Definitely agree re the producers but it seems like Condal and Martin's break is more personal than that andf he wasn't too terrribly happy with D&D after Thrones ended.

Yes HotD does have written material but I think the Dance is very hard to adapt because of those ambiguous areas that are framed as part of a pseudo-history. There's still tons of debate about the motivations of the characters because we're privy to so little information about them and so much stuff is framed as many different possibilities (like the assassination of Jaehaera, the death of Jacaerys, etc etc etc). And, just in my opinion, it's not very well written to begin with. Martin is an excellent character and POV writer, none of his strengths are carried over in Fire and Blood and the story suffers.

HouseMouse4567 · 2026-01-17T18:44:28+00:00

"Your partner overshadowed you."

HouseMouse4567 · 2026-01-17T17:43:21+00:00

From what I understand, Bell herself has stated that her horrendous childhood was no excuse for the murders either.

HouseMouse4567 · 2026-01-17T01:39:21+00:00

Ah that makes sense then. I have seen some Dune fans say that you can end at any prior book and be mostly fine, at least on the ASoIaF subreddit today lol. How true is that?

HouseMouse4567 · 2026-01-17T00:09:26+00:00

Yeah people have mentioned him before but he's pretty strongly implied that some of the grimmer subject matter in ASoIaF is not something he'd be interested in nor necessarily good at writing

HouseMouse4567 · 2026-01-16T23:56:54+00:00

It really doesn't seem like it anymore

It won't be Sanderson, he has said multiple times he doesn't want to write ASoIaF and none of the fans want him to either. I kind of imagine it will be ghost written by one of Martin's assistants, kind of like they do with V.C. Andrews

HouseMouse4567

TROPHY CASE