(no subject)

I don't know how to feel about House of the Dragon, the Game of Thrones prequel series that's supposed to come out at some point in 2022 if we all make it that far.

So, first, the obvious: The later seasons of Game of Thrones were bad, the last one was insultingly terrible, I am not exactly tempted to say "yes, more of this, exactly what we needed".

To which the counter is: apparently HBO got rid of Benioff and Weiss and House of the Dragon will have different showrunners? Which is quite likely the only thing HBO could have done to get me to even consider watching this. So here I am, considering.

There's a line you find in lots of promotional material about it saying it's set 300 years before Game of Thrones, which you'd think means it's about Aegon's Conquest but actually based on the characters they're talking about (Viserys I has apparently been cast) it's almost certainly gonna be about the Dance of the Dragons, which is a hundred years after that. I do not love the Dance, as historical events in ASoIaF goes, it's.. idk. less appealing than it could be. Honestly I'd be worried an adaptation would try to make one of the two sides the sympathetic one we're expected to root for (probably the Blacks).

(and now having said that I am vividly imagining what would happen if you had, say, a Rhaenyra who was sympathetic in earlier seasons and turned into a villain later on. Which is imo a reasonable reading of the Dance and also jesus christ HBO do not go anywhere near that, you have thoroughly poisoned that well)

so yeah, I guess where I am is

pros: I like ASoIaF, sue me

cons: terrible precedent, not my favourite bit of the source material, no confidence anyone can pull off a good adaptation of the Dance for TV

strict absence of a con: at the very least it's not D&D again.

not like i need to come to a decision on this any time soon, though