Boobs & Dragons: the stupid is in front of the camera this time!

[Eacaraxe]

Anyone else watching this? I'll be honest, I had low hopes for this after GoT season 7 and 8...but it ain't actually half bad.

I mean, you're still watching a train wreck you can't look away from. At least this time it's a slow burn train wreck that's entirely intentional, because it's about how an idiot monarch sets an entire realm quite literally on fire, causes the extinction of an entire species of mythical beast in the process, and dooms his dynasty to decline and failure, thanks to the power of agnatic primogeniture.

Spoiler alert, I guess, if you somehow watched Game of Thrones without having noticed that after centuries of succession crises leading to a series of civil wars, the Targaryen dynasty declined and was overthrown after dragons went extinct.

Because yes, there are apparently people out there who are getting their shit out sideways over spoilers in a goddamn prequel show. Just like how there are apparently people shocked -- shocked I say! -- there's incest and child marriage in, you know, the medieval dark fantasy show about the degenerate royal dynasty that practices incest, that happens to be a prequel to the medieval dark fantasy show about the degenerate royal dynasty that practices incest.

Also, Matt Smith is surprisingly good as Daemon.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Because yes, there are apparently people out there who are getting their shit out sideways over spoilers in a goddamn prequel show. Just like how there are apparently people shocked -- shocked I say! -- there's incest and child marriage in, you know, the medieval dark fantasy show about the degenerate royal dynasty that practices incest, that happens to be a prequel to the medieval dark fantasy show about the degenerate royal dynasty that practices incest.

Is it that shocking that people might watch this show without watching the previous one or reading the books? I dunno, hardcore Matt Smith fans who only care about it because he's in it.

(Also, any franchise with Matt Smith in it is doomed to turn out awful. Not his fault, but it's like hiring Summer Glau to be in your new series.)

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I don't understand why they couldn't just torch the crab people from the get go. They have a dragon that basically provides unlimited napalm strikes on people who, at their most refined, have bows and arrows; yet they can't even hit a single man running around in plate armor in fronts of hundreds of archers, let alone hurt an actual dragon. So I don't get why this siege should last more then a weekend, yet the show treats it like a grand war of attrition spanning years.

I don't know how smarter or stupider this is against Game of the Thrones but we are not impressed.

 

[Eacaraxe]

I don't understand why they couldn't just torch the crab people from the get go. They have a dragon that basically provides unlimited napalm strikes on people who, at their most refined, have bows and arrows; yet they can't even hit a single man running around in plate armor in fronts of hundreds of archers, let alone hurt an actual dragon. So I don't get why this siege should last more then a weekend, yet the show treats it like a grand war of attrition spanning years.

I don't know how smarter or stupider this is against Game of the Thrones but we are not impressed.

Rather good question. But before we leap to the conclusion it's simply bad writing, we should probably question if being a great warrior necessarily makes Daemon a brilliant tactician, or if Daemon has a personality suited for leading an army...but more importantly, we should definitely question if Corlys is really as competent and experienced as he says he is, or if he just might be a bit of a paper tiger.

That's the kind of thing to put a pin in, it might be important later.

Spoiler

You're spot on comparing dragon's breath to napalm...but a "grand" war of attrition the war for the Stepstones was not. Think more Sea-Vietnam.

What happened, was the Triarchy sent Crabfeeder to clear the Stepstones out from rampant, unorganized, piracy and he did. The whole "crabfeeder" thing was his way of sending a clear message that piracy in the Stepstones would no longer be tolerated, and treated in the harshest-possible terms -- a parallel to the torturous and sadistic public punishments levied upon convicted pirates in the 17th and 18th Centuries as a deterrent against piracy. He also tolled ships passing through the Stepstones in exchange for this public service, and as one would expect of a legitimate representative from an association of mercantilist city-states, levied de facto tariffs on the Triarchy's trade competitors. Of which, Corlys' trade enterprise was one.

Corlys decided he didn't like that, fucked around, found out, and ran crying to the privy council trying to get the Seven Kingdoms to pay for the war he started by feeding them a ginormous load of bullshit about his being victimized by piracy. Telling Corlys to fuck off, and opening diplomatic channels to the Triarchy, was accidentally the smartest thing Viserys could have done in the situation, because he could well have learned Corlys was unambiguously the aggressor in an illegitimate conflict threatening to drag the Seven Kingdoms into an intercontinental war...eventually.

So, Corlys hooked Daemon in on promise of having his own realm, and with their powers combined, they were Captain Moron. They won a bunch of battles initially and killed, you know, the legitimate authority acting on behalf of the Triarchy keeping the Stepstones free of piracy...only for the Triarchy to predictably (and completely justifiably) retaliate, and rampant piracy to resurface. The whole thing to turns into such a clusterfuck, Dorne ends up allying with the Triarchy and invading the Stepstones to protect their own trade interest, and restore order to the Stepstones after years of completely incompetent rule.

It's important to note that at this time, the Dornish are the only people in Westeros to have successfully resisted Targaryen invasion and have no particular fear of dragons, having figured out early on how to fight and kill them. Daemon's and Corlys' forces end up getting their ass beat so hard -- even with dragons -- they eventually run away with their tails between their legs, and the whole fracas ends up costing Corlys far more than he would have paid otherwise.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I'm liking it. I don't know if it's better or worse than game of thrones and I don't care.

 

[Florime]

My wife and I watched the first episode and decided that we had had enough.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

It’s probably going to stretch a few seasons that each represent a generation or so up to roughly the beginning of GoT. But we won’t see more until 2024 at the earliest, which regardless of intention is good marketing on HBO’s part because many people will be renewing Max and watching the first season all over again to recall wtf all happened.