Dragons & Rings

You may be unlucky enough to get two posts out of me today.

I told you, you might be sorry if you subscribe here.

When I came home I did so with a head full of steam and the full intention of snarkily musing about my job. You may get that post. I’m mulling it over. As I sat and had my coffee and my cig, after making two dozen new gummy bears, we got into a conversation I happened to find interesting.

So I wanted your opinion, if you’ve got one.

It is no secret that I absolutely adore the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It is no secret that I have only read 1 comic book in my entire life. Keep that in the back of your head.

Hubby and I eagerly anticipated the arrival of two new TV shows this season; House of the Dragon and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. We have faithfully watched each episode so far…lots of them two or three times. That’s another story.

As I was silently fuming over my job, having my coffee in my comfy pants and dragging on my cig, for whatever reason, I turned to hubby and said: “Are you enjoying House of the Dragon?”

To wit he very promptly said: “No.”

Me either! In fact, I think it kind of sucks but I thought I was alone in that.

Then he went on to say that the “incest bothers” him and stuff like that.

I’m a writer, I did incest a long while back like most other writers who write the way I do. It does have an ‘Ick Factor’ at first but I got rid of it pretty quick so that doesn’t bother me.

OK…Fine….my characters who engaged in such activities were Greek Gods and there was shit ton of precedence for it whether you liked it or not. Whatever.

Still, that wasn’t where I was going. I honestly think it sucks. Beginning to end and everything in the middle with just a few shining spots…it frickin’ stinks!

We had a long conversation about that during which he got over his incest thing and it dawned on him that the whole thing actually sucks. We find ourselves not looking forward to see what happens next with great anticipation it but rather watching it to see if there’s a satisfying end to a very dull story line that neither of us finding ourselves giving a crap about.

In other words: No one’s pushed a kid out a window yet and we are bored.

The production value the first year of Game of Thrones was atrocious! BUT the story grabbed you by the throat by the get-go and it didn’t let up. This thing starts with a massive production budget and is plodding along in some really deep mud.

He asked how I was liking Rings of Power.

I said it was good so far. I like it. I can’t say I love it, sorry. I am, however, finding the backstory very interesting as in how it relates to The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring. It’s filling in a lot of missing pieces for me and I like that.

(No matter what IMDB says…I swear that dwarf is Gerard Butler! LOL)

Oh yeah, hubby’s a Tolkien nut, he loves this stuff. Watches…things..on YouTube about it all the time. That and The Godfather, which I love but I don’t need someone’s opinion on ‘What Michael is Thinking in this Scene’. However, he has never read The Rings of Power.

I have never read Tolkien, until the first Lord of the Rings movie came out, my experience was limited to my friends having these strange posters on their walls, some of them in Black Light. Anybody out there even remember Black Light Posters? Let’s not forget that really weird kinda-animated/kinda-live action flick that came out in….well, whatever year it was.

Moving on.

In short, while my friends greatly encouraged me to read these books they loved so much because ‘knowing you, Lisa, you’re gonna really dig ’em’….(yes, we did say ‘dig’ back then)…those posters and that movie scared the crap out of me. Yes, me, the girl who could never get enough of B Grade horror flicks even back then. I thought they were all nuts and I didn’t want anything to do with it.

So my Formal Education in a world I would come to know and love as Dungeons and Dragons (video game style) didn’t come until that first movie was released and a whole world that was right in front of me the whole time suddenly made itself known.

I have never read George RR Martin although I do distinctly remember seeing the hard cover of a book entitled “A Song of Fire and Ice” by George RR Martin in Caldor back in whatever year that was. That cover made an impression on me, I don’t know why. I stared at it for quite a while. I remember that much.

We got around to discussing the fact that we were both, finally, coming at Something Big on TV/Movies from the standpoint of not knowing one single thing that’s ‘supposed to happen’. If there’s one thing I’ve learned so far it’s how damn annoying I must have sounded every single time I turned to someone and said something stupid like; “that’s not how it happened in the book.” Totally blowing their enjoyment of the movie in front of them. I’ll never do it again.

It’s nice to be able to come at these two fairly equal giants from the perspective of not having expectations. After all, that is exactly what allowed me to fall in love with Marvel Cinematic Universe something I never, in my wildest dreams, thought I would even like. We can judge them simply on what we see in front of us on the screen.

We have decided we don’t like House of the Dragon but will see it through to the end of Season 1 ever hoping something happens to grab us by the throat but not particularly expecting it.

We have decided we do like Rings of Power–he more than me but that’s ok, he did sit through some of Dahmer for me recently–we will watch until the end and, well, he’ll definitely be back for Season 2 which means I will also.

The biggest thing we decided during this whole discussion in which South Park was airing in the back round with a Guitar Hero episode was….

Only gets played by Sam and Dean! Or there better be a Sam & Dean montage to go with it.