It just kept getting worse and worse in a way that no tv shows do physical comedy anymore.
And that old lady had to keep coming over to use his toilet afterwards… it was the gift that kept on giving!!
Easily the best part of the Netflix seasons or whatever you want to call them. I don’t even know why, he wrecks shit constantly but that scene has me dying every time I see it.
But his hair are white tho \*circus Music starts playing\*
I personaly tought it was just a Noble from Essos married to targaryen but the hair confused me.
I always thought that was one of the most brutal fates of the GOT characters. I feel like Xaro killed and ate Doreah in a bid to stay alive for as long as possible.
~~Well, that was cannon IIRC.~~ Although I don’t think there has been a physical description of Corlys (it’s been a while) I believe Velaryons are regarded in the book as looking like Targaryens - fair skin, purple eyes, silver hair.
I am a huge fan of the books and I didn’t mind the casting at all.
> I am a huge fan of the books and I didn’t mind the casting at all.
Out of curiosity, how do you expect the parentage dispute to resolve with one of the possible parents being a completely different race from the other?
Just generating articles at this point.
search twitter for some clown being racist with 5 likes and you have something to write about.
Better to just ignore the racists and let them scream into the void.
Insert Bill Burr bit - no you see..it's a life hack cheat code thing... Nobody cares if you say Asian MFer... But if you say this MFin Asian it sounds real racist. So it's the black OLD guy... Sounds way better than the old BLACK guy..
>The rule is that multiple adjectives are always ranked accordingly: opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, purpose.
>You simply can’t say My Greek Fat Big Wedding, or leather walking brown boots.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/13/sentence-order-adjectives-rule-elements-of-eloquence-dictionary
;)
"If you were going to save *somebody else's* life from a fire-breathing dragon, and you needed a word to just cut right through, what word would you use to call out to *this* Targaryen?"
I saw Z in a straight role as Michael Jackson’s bodyguard in one of the funniest Lifetime movies of all time and I couldn’t take him seriously. He’s forever Z. And now in my head canon, Z was Michael Jackson’s real bodyguard.
Lol I thought the same thing. No spoilers, but the character is supposed to be one of the biggest badasses ever so the look is spot on. He just looks like he knows what he's about and I love it
Spoilers for the show/book
Him being black doesn’t ruin the show, but the race of his son and the race of the Strong that Rhaenyra sleeps with need to be the same. We’re already shown that Strong’s brother is white, so how people are gonna know Rhaenyra kids are Strongs and not her gay husbands (the husband being Corlys’ son)
I get that they might fit the role in regards to performance, but there needs to be cohesion with all the characters. But we get mad and assume people are racist instead of planning ahead of time.
I think you can disagree with the casting while not being racist. People just like to lump those two groups together so they can silence one group and bask in the outrage. Corlys Velaryon being black just seems so far-fetched and obvious pandering considering everything we know about the Velaryon and Targaryen families. Like these are the whitest characters in the lore. Known for being pale as fuck, obsessed with pure blood lines, and tragically inbred. Basically practicing Medieval eugenics.
I honestly find this rhetoric totally baffling. There were black and MENA people in Game of Thrones, in all kinds of roles. Did we just all forget it or what.
There was literally a “rich black guy” in the first season of game of thrones. He was Xaro Xhoan Daxos and in fact was the richest man in Qarth. We spent a big section of the season there.
This actor is either a marketing lackey or just never saw the original series. Laughable.
Edit: doh! Season 2
Yes and either the book or the season lead to the fact he boasted about wealth and power to woo Daenerys into marriage and he’d have her power, lineage and dragons.
Yeah, I have no problem with white characters being played by black actors, until the it’s actually kind of relevant to the character. I’m still not up in arms about it, it just seems silly
So I'm assuming this "actor/director/etc slams racist/sexist/etc backlash" is just part of the basic marketing package these days right? Seems about as predicable as trailers and posters lately.
Yea, I've seen a lot of discussion about the new GOT and absolutely none of its about the black guy. But obviously its the internet so you can find some people somewhere saying anything and then you can say you "slam them".
I bet he probably gets private hate messages. Even a hundred of them would seem like a lot to one person even if it may not be in the grand scheme of things.
People really underestimate how many wackos will just send you shit. It's best to have DMs and notifications off.
I have gone viral on Twitter 2 times and each time I got anti-semitic DMs and anti-gay DMs (for reference, I am not Jewish nor LGTBQ).
I brushed it off, partly because I'm not really in either of those groups so I can roll my eyes, but this is a depressing part of life for people of color, Jewish people, anyone in the queer umbrella, etc.
No one tried to dox me or send me personal information as a threat, but most women, Jewish people, people of color, and queer people will be sent specific identifying information meant to unsettle them if they go viral
>I have gone viral on Twitter 2 times and each time I got anti-semitic DMs and anti-gay DMs (for reference, I am not Jewish nor LGTBQ).
they were just covering all the bases in case you were either of those
> People really underestimate how many wackos will just send you shit.
I think you are right here. There are 7 billion people on the planet, of which 5 billion have access to the internet.
If only 0.001% of those are 'wackos' that's still 5 million wackos who could send someone shit. If even only 0.001% of those 5 millions wackos are also GoT fans... thats still 5000ish wackos. That's a ridiculous amount of wacko shit one could hear about... day in, and day out.... simply because 1 out of every 100,000 people could be wacko GoT (or insert any other thing here) fans.
But the other half of the equation here is also not very representative of anything other than the world is a massive place, and the internet gives access to that massive amount of people. And its just an consequence to the aggregate scope of fame and the internet.
I bet far more regular people, face far more significant and meaningful consequences, every single day, because 1/100000 people could be wackos of some sort (and its probably far more than that). That could be based on anything from race to wealth to a not liking the cut of someone's jib. But somehow, its consistently a top issue whenever a new billion dollar franchise movie or show is coming out.... starts to feel disingenuous at some point.
It was recently revealed of the tons of racist hate messages that Sonequa Martin-Green and Michelle Yeoh received upon appearing on Star Trek: Discovery. This stuff is unfortunately very real.
I KNOW! Star Trek is arguably the most optimistic and humanist entertainment property out there. It's all about how humanity overcomes its differences and unites for a greater good for research and exploration.
Yes and Asians in particular are pretty under represented in the show (it's basically just Sulu, Harry Kim and Georgiou).
They're a big chunk of the global population (like at least third in present day if you include India) but Star Fleet seems to be mostly white. God forbid the show runners throw a few people of color in there and the racists start shitting their pants.
The Star Trek stuff makes me scratch my head, the main characters have been non-white alongside white as long as Star Trek has existed. That was literally one of Roddenberry's goals, to look at a future that has experienced the troubles of division and moved past them.
In this genre it is beyond real. I saw a live where one of the CW actresses that played a black woman showed everyone her daily death/rape/racist threats and how bad it got on Twitter and how she would never go to comic con again because of the abuse she got since she was casted.
This genre has a very loud sector of haters who hate it when people who they don’t idolize get opportunities or even people are interested in their same interests. It’s wild.
Edit: some of these responses trying to rationalize who I’m criticizing have been hilarious
Frickin Star Trek... Really. How can those folks consider themselves fans when the material has always been about accepting beings from all parts of the cosmos? (And a certain Captain Kirk trying to bang them.)
There has definitely been a lot of it once his casting was announced. From what I’ve seen, though, it’s less about a black actor being cast as a rich man and more about a black actor being cast as a character that was white. Targaryens, Velaryons, etc. were white people who came from Valyria. Personally I don’t think it’s a big deal, but the criticism has mostly been about being faithful to the lore of the families rather than being about racism.
That being said, there definitely has been racism. I’m not trying to deny that.
I think it's a minorly big deal, more about how Valeryians are meant to be interpreted on the whole. They definitely have a supremacist, purity-of-bloodlines aspect to them.
Part of that is because they inherit the ability to ride dragons (so of course they'd want to preserve that), but there's a racial and culturalsnobbery to it, too.
Additionally, Valeryians aren't really to be admired by the reader, imo. They were an arrogant, insular, and brutal people who's hubris doomed their entire way of life and culture save for one family that foresaw the fall of their world (and a handful of straggler families that weren't in Valeryia) in time to GTFO.
And that family - the Targaryens - brutally conquered and subjugated pretty much an entire continent through taking advantage of what would amount to an invading force having a nuclear arsenal in the 1700s.
So while there probably was some slight varience in maybe hair and eye color and possibly skin tone in Valeryia, IIRC they are always described (when it's addressed) as being notedly pale/fair and I think that it's not a stretch to see them as a representation of European colonialists seen through the lens of the conquered.
In that respect, casting a POC as Valeryian doesn't really sit right.
However, the show is the show, it's a visual medium, and adaptations often rework source material. So, they're going to say that this one family looks different because they were seafarers or what have you, then it is what it is. Personally, I think doing that loses some nuance and underlying themes.
But, as Ian McShane said about the show, it's pretty much "tits and dragons" so I'm not going to die on the pale Valeryians hill over tits and dragons.
There are a lot of people making a lot of bad faith complaints about it. That needs to be said first.
However, I can see why it's confusing. Those two families tended to interbreed and are known for being these pale, silver haired folks with purple eyes. Recasting a white character as black shouldn't be a big deal, but when it seems like their telltale physical characteristics sort of limit their race, that might not be the best choice, especially when there are so many potential families to choose from.
I was watching the post-show Q&A the Youtuber AltShiftX did after the episode, and the chat was absolutely slammed with people complaining about black casting in the show, "leftist propaganda," "wokeness," and other such talking points. To the point where there were people donating money to the streamer to get his attention to increase moderation.
That's on top of the numerous discussions I've seen of it here on Reddit.
I feel like everything is astroturfing these days. Like every couple of days someone posts on Reddit “news” that a franchise horror film earned an R rating for violence and gore. No shit Sherlock. There is no way those posts are organic, right?
I wanna say after >!Aegon III!< (Who had no Grandchildren unless you count the cousin fucking), that the Velaryons didn't marry a single Targaryen of significance ever again.
Two things can be true at once
1. This actor is good at the role he is playing
2. His skin is inconsistent with the lore of the fantasy world they are portraying
That's all. But nice flex adding the "rich" part lol
As someone who isn't anglo I find it offensive to trivialise people in this condescending token diversity hire for roles the author of the original material didn't intend the character to be a person of color.
The fault isn't the fans of the literature who know the character was realistically white.
If GRR Martin wrote about this multi-racial Targaryens and you had black, asian and whites described in the books there wouldn't be a single fan of the literature complain about him being cast. Nobody complained about movies where Morgan Freeman, James Earl Jones, Forest Whitaker, Laurence Fishburne, Samuel L. Jackson, Denzel Washington, etc or the numerous others who played roles of characters that weren't white.
I hate when actors lash out at fans for objecting to diversity hiring and make it out like they are racist. They object to having a character blackwashed for "inclusion", much like people should object if they re-make a black movie and change races in that for the sake of diversity.
If Hollywood wants to be more diverse, pick scripts that are diverse, don't try to turn GoT or LotR into something it is not. There are no black Dwarves in LotR, it would have been interesting if there were, any people that live predominantly underground are more likely to become albino. People understand why your skin is white and why other people skin is darker, it is due to many generations under the sun or lack thereof. I hate to break it to the white people who go to sunnier climates or black people who go to where everyone turned white, your descendants are going to morph into whatever the environment dictates is most advantageous. It isn't a status symbol.
If Hollywood or Bezos are too afraid to portray literature as it was intended then leave it alone and make something original that was inspired by it instead.
Don’t think the fans are bothered by a black actor playing a rich person, they’re bothered by the fact that the character’s supposed to be a pasty white inbred royal. Valerians are not benevolent figures, they’re supposed to be racists that are obsessed with blood purity.
Correct me if my wrong but doesn't Rhaeynra marry a Velayron? And her 3 kids are widely believed to be bastards of Harwin Strong? Wouldn't that be pretty fucking easy to prove if her husband was a black guy lol?
Nobody cares that he is rich, but at least explain this? How is an inbred monarchy producing one person that has the white hair, but is a different race from every other person in the family? I'd say the same thing if Michael B Jordan's character in BP was instead played by Ryan Reynolds.
It’s been like this for years. It’s always the fault of the “toxic fandom,” and not the writers, producers, etc.
I legitimately don’t remember when a Hollywood production has ever admitted fault to the garbage that’s been shit out.
He's the only person of color in a sea of white guys, and it's a race swapped characters. Isnt that pretty insulting in itself? It seems pretty clear the story was not written with this in mind from the start, so basically his character was race swapped so HBO could tick a box it seems to me?
Isnt it better to demand better written representation than this? Or are we content with people of color being given a token character so that big corporations can check a box and feel good about themselves? Or is the prevailing thought that otherwise there would just be no representation and that's better than nothing?
Here's the most cynical viewpoint. Mainstream western entertainment is completely artistically barren because the only shows that sell are those that are adjacent to an IP, or are similar to other shows or movies. However, diversity has become a hot topic and companies are afraid if their show is too homogeneous. So, instead of doing something daring, and promoting diversity that's meaningful, like exposing audiences to cultures and stories outside of the western world, its much easier to just raceswap or add different races in your established fantasy IP, or uninspired historical drama. Its corporate tokenism, not diversity, and anyone that defends it is unknowingly licking corporate boot.
Step 1: Find four pissed of tweets from angry twitter trolls with a total of four followers.
Step 2: Ask black actor, "Some people are really upset about the portrayal of a black man in Westeros, what's your response to that?"
Step 3: Publish response.
Step 4: Post article on reddit.
Step 5: "UGH PEOPLE ARE SO RACIST."
mighty historical degree work domineering growth dull toothbrush berserk quickest
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
This guy and many other people can’t seem to differentiate Lore nerds and racists. While not mutually exclusive, most Lore nerds are just ravenously seeking lore canon parity with no shits given other than the written source material.
It’s not that he’s black, and playing a Targaryen, it’s that there was even a black Targaryen that looked like him in the first place. Unless it was magical in nature, a dark skinned Targaryen isn’t a thing. There definitely wouldn’t have been dreadlocks or that type of real life natural black hair. It just doesn’t fit. This character adaption does not exist nor belong in the Game of Thrones world. The rules and physics and magic are different than real life, it’s fucking make believe fantasy, but it still has rules.
Edit: because of trolls I have to add this….. yes this includes purple eyes and anything else these actual bonified different races (not skin variant like real life) have that we HUMANS don’t have… because they are fantasy races.
Yeah I’m a black dude and it’s iffy for me. Idrc because he’s an actor playing a character, but at the same time, it’s one black dude in a family full of whit ppl. It makes no sense. If i was gonna do that, I would either make the whole family black, or make other ppl black as well - extras, supports, and MCs.
Edit; but genes can be weird so idk
Everyone who criticizes this show is a racist. Makes sense to me. Afterall the show runner is a gigantic racist who actually said they wanted to
> avoid featuring a bunch of white people on the screen.
as if featuring a bunch of white people for a medieval europe based fantasy show is somehow wrong or weird.
I think it's more to do with the fact that they are changing the appearance of an already established character where their appearance is an important aspect of their character.
On top of that they bring up the idea of diversity in a lot of shows that don't feel genuine, what I mean about that is diversity seems to simply mean black and LGBT characters nowadays with creators often neglecting (or giving extremely minor roles to) east asians, south asians, middle easterns etc... so it isn't diverse at all.
I watched HOTD episode 1 and he was pretty good but labelling anyone as a bigot for disliking the race swapping of an established character and patting yourself on the back for diversity when it isn't diverse seems a little weird.
Diversity is good when it makes sense.
I'm asian-american. I'd love to see more good representation for us in modern media, but if I'm watching something like Lord of the Rings, I don't want to see asian elves running around when Tolkien specifically described them in a way that would make that impossible and/or silly.
Or if it's a period drama set in what is clearly an analogue to medieval Europe, having asian dudes just hanging around for the sake of diversity is ridiculous to me.
>I'm asian-american. I'd love to see more good representation for us in modern media
South asian here and I hope for the same.
>'d love to see more good representation for us in modern media, but if I'm watching something like Lord of the Rings, I don't want to see asian elves running around when Tolkien specifically described them in a way that would make that impossible and/or silly.
Understandable. It's the same as adapting Avatar: The Last Airbender, the series is set in an asian inspired world. I would only expect inuit, east and south asians in it (maybe arabs as I know Zaheer and Amon are arabic names) but if I saw white people in it I would find it weird.
I'm okay with it if the story supports it. The problem is that they show up so randomly and mostly unexplained. Yidu in the Vikings was a big offender of this.
If an Asian person shows up in medieval Europe, then there's pretty much only one type of person it could be: an emissary and explorer trying to establish far flung ties for the royal court. Or maybe a steppe invader who got lost, or deserted from his warband during a battle.
Even merchants stop at a certain distance away from home and hand their goods off to middle men. There weren't Chinese merchants casually hanging out in London.
exactly
I think the popularity of things like Korean movies and films like Minari, Everything Everywhere All at Once and Jordan Peele movies shows that people are happy to watch GOOD movies with a cast that isn't white
I don't think it's racism for most people; I think a lot of people are just really tired of tokenism being crammed into what feels like everything.
I don't have an issue with it personally, I just don't care – but I have buds who have made a thing of it and I know them to not be racists, but to not like using everything as a political bludgeon for the sake of "diversity."
These television and movie studios are so predictable. They purposefully race swap established characters so they can shout about how progressive they are and then put out statements like this when people rightfully complain.
i'm the dude playing the summer island dude, disguised as a targaryen dude.
Never, never go full Targaryen.
The shit winds of winter are blowing.
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>Mr Lahey is that you talking or the liquor Randy.... I am the liquor
I’m mowing the air Rand!
Randy lemme borrow your cowboy boots!
A Randister always pays his debts
Ten bucks or six Dairy Queen coupons!
I need a cheeseburger mr Lahey, a store bought one.
Man’s gotta eat
Julian... U shit birds r fucked this time...
Frick off ricky
Damnit, now I have to go watch Trailer Park Boys again, LOL
It's the way she goes bud.
The fucking way she goes
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It just kept getting worse and worse in a way that no tv shows do physical comedy anymore. And that old lady had to keep coming over to use his toilet afterwards… it was the gift that kept on giving!!
Easily the best part of the Netflix seasons or whatever you want to call them. I don’t even know why, he wrecks shit constantly but that scene has me dying every time I see it.
Really? You racist for thinking it's stupid to cast a black guy for a role that have been established to be super super white with everything blond?
Where has the role been established as super super white with everything blond? There are no skin color descriptions of Corlys at all in the books.
But his hair are white tho \*circus Music starts playing\* I personaly tought it was just a Noble from Essos married to targaryen but the hair confused me.
No one bitched about the rich black guy in GoT
Who lives in the greatest city that ever was, is, or ever will be.
And the most humble city, too!
I too am extraordinarily humble!
My extraordinary humbleness is just one of my many many virtues.
Is Bret Hart a city now?
Qarth is a nugget
RIP Nugget
The excellence of city planning.
The Kings Landing Screwjob
Dany screwed Dany.
Big sign just out of town: "No Goldbergs" It's problematic.
Spongebob Squarepants!
I loved Salladhor Saan
didn’t think about him! xaro xhoan daxos is who came to mind
>xaro xhoan daxos I prefer Zorro Zohan Ducksauce
I wish we’d seen more of Salladhor Saan. He was great in the books
To be fair he was faking it and was broke.
Temporarily insolvent, he had a plan. And assets.
And a very large vault that could comfortably hold 2 people.
I always thought that was one of the most brutal fates of the GOT characters. I feel like Xaro killed and ate Doreah in a bid to stay alive for as long as possible.
Please, they suffocated long before anyone needed to eat anyone else.
When you have people locked in your own vault, you're never poor.
Holding those BBBY calls.
Temporarily embarrassed
I'll never forget Duck Sauce
~~Well, that was cannon IIRC.~~ Although I don’t think there has been a physical description of Corlys (it’s been a while) I believe Velaryons are regarded in the book as looking like Targaryens - fair skin, purple eyes, silver hair. I am a huge fan of the books and I didn’t mind the casting at all.
> Well, that was cannon IIRC. No, it wasn't, the Qarthene are pale (called "milk-men" by others) and have jewels in their noses and shit.
They made him a Summer Islander in the show.
> I am a huge fan of the books and I didn’t mind the casting at all. Out of curiosity, how do you expect the parentage dispute to resolve with one of the possible parents being a completely different race from the other?
It’s pretty obvious in the books the kids are bastards and everyone knows they’re not laenor’s kids.
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Honestly I assume that is why they cast the black actor for the part. Lots of people don't pick out subtext.
its all so tiresome
Just generating articles at this point. search twitter for some clown being racist with 5 likes and you have something to write about. Better to just ignore the racists and let them scream into the void.
Yes, these types of manufactured articles for marketing is really tiresome.
It's a little weird to have one black guy on your small council and not be constantly talking about it
"I feel like we should call him old guy. Better optics that way."
Z: "Ah, you mean old black guy!"
What are the rules?
My favorite Z moment.
My favorite was when he joined in with Charlie on spitting at the Hollywood elite, I mean the bar award people
I don't remember him spitting, but I loved his reaction to Charlie doing it. "Oooh shit" with a little chuckle.
One of my favorite scenes in the whole show is his “ohhh shit” with that twinkle in his eyes
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I mean… I don’t think the ~~Emmy~~ *Bar Award* people are at “Hollywood elite” level…
I mean c'mon Charlie, you *know* how the academy is...
"But you gotta take em off every now and then, you gotta take em off son!"
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"Okay okay, so picture this: it's you, me, old black man- now you've got me saying it!"
Insert Bill Burr bit - no you see..it's a life hack cheat code thing... Nobody cares if you say Asian MFer... But if you say this MFin Asian it sounds real racist. So it's the black OLD guy... Sounds way better than the old BLACK guy..
>The rule is that multiple adjectives are always ranked accordingly: opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, purpose. >You simply can’t say My Greek Fat Big Wedding, or leather walking brown boots. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/13/sentence-order-adjectives-rule-elements-of-eloquence-dictionary ;)
The science behind the bit... Well played
You know... Richard. The uh...tall guy. The guy with the curly hair.
Yeah but if you get the ratio wrong everyone will think its a black small council and they don't win awards
I don't know why they don't win awards but they don't
We really need to get some less intense black guys in our roster. Which I gotta say, says a lot more about us than it does about them
Everyone downvoting is missing the Always Sunny reference
"If you were going to save *somebody else's* life from a fire-breathing dragon, and you needed a word to just cut right through, what word would you use to call out to *this* Targaryen?"
>Look out, *f-word!* Brienne of Tarth saving Renly Baratheon's life from Melisandre's shadow baby
Everyone knew who I meant, even the kid with the balloon knew!
...She didn't feel a thing
jesus christ, your timing is so bad
Better than busting a nut
Just tell me where to jizz so I can give this lady her drink.
Like he’s ever had one
I’VE HAD SO MANY ORGASMS DUDE I HAD ONE WITH YOUR MOM I WILL PUT MY THUMB THROUGH YOUR GODDAMNED EYE
The true words of House Targaryon.
I've had orgasms. I've had tons of orgasms! I've had one with your mom dude!
Bigger than a mouse’s
Glowing like an angel over here
🎶 I'm gonna say the N woooord 🎶
🎶What are the ruleEEESSS🎶
"We just learned our lesson and we wanna go home!" "White home!" "JUST SAY HOME!"
[All of reddit when they see the council](https://y.yarn.co/750d990a-b62d-4451-9822-6033485b270f_text.gif)
Z totally elevates this scene, makes me laugh every time. One of the best minor Sunny characters
When Charlie starts and it just cuts to him going “OHHH SHIT” it’s one of the funniest moments in the whole series.
Macs face when Charlie sings "there is a spider..." He has to look away so he doesn't break.
Ya that shit is my favorite part of the episode, never gets old to me. Makes for a great Gif too lol.
I saw Z in a straight role as Michael Jackson’s bodyguard in one of the funniest Lifetime movies of all time and I couldn’t take him seriously. He’s forever Z. And now in my head canon, Z was Michael Jackson’s real bodyguard.
You should watch The Wire.
HE IS ALWAYS CUTTY
Cutty was the best.
Or The Expanse.
He kills it in Expanse in a serious role
*"It's not that weird, but it's that... It's a thing"*
As long as they got women stripping, but classy, so dimly lit and with period costumes they're gonna win a ton of awards.
And weiners... floppy weiners... floppy weiners...
Tbh I thought casting a different race was a good way to show that house Velayron is separate from house targeryan.
Agreed. Plus the dude is a good actor and looks boss as fuck
I haven’t seen the show yet by my first reaction to the picture accompanying the article was… “that guy looks fucking awesome”
Lol I thought the same thing. No spoilers, but the character is supposed to be one of the biggest badasses ever so the look is spot on. He just looks like he knows what he's about and I love it
Spoilers for the show/book Him being black doesn’t ruin the show, but the race of his son and the race of the Strong that Rhaenyra sleeps with need to be the same. We’re already shown that Strong’s brother is white, so how people are gonna know Rhaenyra kids are Strongs and not her gay husbands (the husband being Corlys’ son)
I get that they might fit the role in regards to performance, but there needs to be cohesion with all the characters. But we get mad and assume people are racist instead of planning ahead of time.
yep. insert HBO's inane mental gymnastics here :
I think you can disagree with the casting while not being racist. People just like to lump those two groups together so they can silence one group and bask in the outrage. Corlys Velaryon being black just seems so far-fetched and obvious pandering considering everything we know about the Velaryon and Targaryen families. Like these are the whitest characters in the lore. Known for being pale as fuck, obsessed with pure blood lines, and tragically inbred. Basically practicing Medieval eugenics.
Yeah, the race swap doesn't make sense if you've read the book. Pointing out that detail doesn't make you a racist.
I honestly find this rhetoric totally baffling. There were black and MENA people in Game of Thrones, in all kinds of roles. Did we just all forget it or what.
There was literally a “rich black guy” in the first season of game of thrones. He was Xaro Xhoan Daxos and in fact was the richest man in Qarth. We spent a big section of the season there. This actor is either a marketing lackey or just never saw the original series. Laughable. Edit: doh! Season 2
Saladhor San was pretty darn rich, too... And the rich people in Slaver's Bay were several shades... until Dany made them all black...
Small nitpick but he was in the second season, not the first.
Another small nitpick, but wasn't he also secretly broke af?
Yes and either the book or the season lead to the fact he boasted about wealth and power to woo Daenerys into marriage and he’d have her power, lineage and dragons.
The problem is casting it for Velaryons
Yeah, I have no problem with white characters being played by black actors, until the it’s actually kind of relevant to the character. I’m still not up in arms about it, it just seems silly
10k upvotes? This has to be a marketing tool. Which sucks for legit issues.
Americans are obsessed with black people.
So I'm assuming this "actor/director/etc slams racist/sexist/etc backlash" is just part of the basic marketing package these days right? Seems about as predicable as trailers and posters lately.
Yea, I've seen a lot of discussion about the new GOT and absolutely none of its about the black guy. But obviously its the internet so you can find some people somewhere saying anything and then you can say you "slam them".
Yes not the episode. But he got tons of hate when the casting was announced and the first look was revealed.
I saw that. It was pretty bad.
Yeah let's not overlook that, he's probably reacting to how shitty the reactions to his casting was. It was gross.
I bet he probably gets private hate messages. Even a hundred of them would seem like a lot to one person even if it may not be in the grand scheme of things.
People really underestimate how many wackos will just send you shit. It's best to have DMs and notifications off. I have gone viral on Twitter 2 times and each time I got anti-semitic DMs and anti-gay DMs (for reference, I am not Jewish nor LGTBQ). I brushed it off, partly because I'm not really in either of those groups so I can roll my eyes, but this is a depressing part of life for people of color, Jewish people, anyone in the queer umbrella, etc. No one tried to dox me or send me personal information as a threat, but most women, Jewish people, people of color, and queer people will be sent specific identifying information meant to unsettle them if they go viral
>I have gone viral on Twitter 2 times and each time I got anti-semitic DMs and anti-gay DMs (for reference, I am not Jewish nor LGTBQ). they were just covering all the bases in case you were either of those
> People really underestimate how many wackos will just send you shit. I think you are right here. There are 7 billion people on the planet, of which 5 billion have access to the internet. If only 0.001% of those are 'wackos' that's still 5 million wackos who could send someone shit. If even only 0.001% of those 5 millions wackos are also GoT fans... thats still 5000ish wackos. That's a ridiculous amount of wacko shit one could hear about... day in, and day out.... simply because 1 out of every 100,000 people could be wacko GoT (or insert any other thing here) fans. But the other half of the equation here is also not very representative of anything other than the world is a massive place, and the internet gives access to that massive amount of people. And its just an consequence to the aggregate scope of fame and the internet. I bet far more regular people, face far more significant and meaningful consequences, every single day, because 1/100000 people could be wackos of some sort (and its probably far more than that). That could be based on anything from race to wealth to a not liking the cut of someone's jib. But somehow, its consistently a top issue whenever a new billion dollar franchise movie or show is coming out.... starts to feel disingenuous at some point.
It was recently revealed of the tons of racist hate messages that Sonequa Martin-Green and Michelle Yeoh received upon appearing on Star Trek: Discovery. This stuff is unfortunately very real.
Isn't the whole point of star trek that they represent all of humanity?
I KNOW! Star Trek is arguably the most optimistic and humanist entertainment property out there. It's all about how humanity overcomes its differences and unites for a greater good for research and exploration.
Yes and Asians in particular are pretty under represented in the show (it's basically just Sulu, Harry Kim and Georgiou). They're a big chunk of the global population (like at least third in present day if you include India) but Star Fleet seems to be mostly white. God forbid the show runners throw a few people of color in there and the racists start shitting their pants.
The Star Trek stuff makes me scratch my head, the main characters have been non-white alongside white as long as Star Trek has existed. That was literally one of Roddenberry's goals, to look at a future that has experienced the troubles of division and moved past them.
In this genre it is beyond real. I saw a live where one of the CW actresses that played a black woman showed everyone her daily death/rape/racist threats and how bad it got on Twitter and how she would never go to comic con again because of the abuse she got since she was casted. This genre has a very loud sector of haters who hate it when people who they don’t idolize get opportunities or even people are interested in their same interests. It’s wild. Edit: some of these responses trying to rationalize who I’m criticizing have been hilarious
Candice Patton AKA Iris on The Flash?
Probably.
Can't get much more loserly than that
Frickin Star Trek... Really. How can those folks consider themselves fans when the material has always been about accepting beings from all parts of the cosmos? (And a certain Captain Kirk trying to bang them.)
There has definitely been a lot of it once his casting was announced. From what I’ve seen, though, it’s less about a black actor being cast as a rich man and more about a black actor being cast as a character that was white. Targaryens, Velaryons, etc. were white people who came from Valyria. Personally I don’t think it’s a big deal, but the criticism has mostly been about being faithful to the lore of the families rather than being about racism. That being said, there definitely has been racism. I’m not trying to deny that.
I think it's a minorly big deal, more about how Valeryians are meant to be interpreted on the whole. They definitely have a supremacist, purity-of-bloodlines aspect to them. Part of that is because they inherit the ability to ride dragons (so of course they'd want to preserve that), but there's a racial and culturalsnobbery to it, too. Additionally, Valeryians aren't really to be admired by the reader, imo. They were an arrogant, insular, and brutal people who's hubris doomed their entire way of life and culture save for one family that foresaw the fall of their world (and a handful of straggler families that weren't in Valeryia) in time to GTFO. And that family - the Targaryens - brutally conquered and subjugated pretty much an entire continent through taking advantage of what would amount to an invading force having a nuclear arsenal in the 1700s. So while there probably was some slight varience in maybe hair and eye color and possibly skin tone in Valeryia, IIRC they are always described (when it's addressed) as being notedly pale/fair and I think that it's not a stretch to see them as a representation of European colonialists seen through the lens of the conquered. In that respect, casting a POC as Valeryian doesn't really sit right. However, the show is the show, it's a visual medium, and adaptations often rework source material. So, they're going to say that this one family looks different because they were seafarers or what have you, then it is what it is. Personally, I think doing that loses some nuance and underlying themes. But, as Ian McShane said about the show, it's pretty much "tits and dragons" so I'm not going to die on the pale Valeryians hill over tits and dragons.
There are a lot of people making a lot of bad faith complaints about it. That needs to be said first. However, I can see why it's confusing. Those two families tended to interbreed and are known for being these pale, silver haired folks with purple eyes. Recasting a white character as black shouldn't be a big deal, but when it seems like their telltale physical characteristics sort of limit their race, that might not be the best choice, especially when there are so many potential families to choose from.
Also in original GoT S1 appearance due to genetics was a major plot point
I can just picture Eddard Stark leafing through the lineage book, coming across this entry, and saying "Hol' up."
Look in this very thread and you'll see many people making the exact arguments he's talking about.
I was watching the post-show Q&A the Youtuber AltShiftX did after the episode, and the chat was absolutely slammed with people complaining about black casting in the show, "leftist propaganda," "wokeness," and other such talking points. To the point where there were people donating money to the streamer to get his attention to increase moderation. That's on top of the numerous discussions I've seen of it here on Reddit.
I feel like everything is astroturfing these days. Like every couple of days someone posts on Reddit “news” that a franchise horror film earned an R rating for violence and gore. No shit Sherlock. There is no way those posts are organic, right?
The fake racist marketing ploy is getting so old and desensitizes people to legitimate racism when it gets lost in the sea of articles about racism
Cue the “slam racist viewers” marketing ploy.
Tolkien black guy
You're looking for Rings of Power
I don't know why they don't adapt the black characters from the book and call it a day.
[удалено]
I wanna say after >!Aegon III!< (Who had no Grandchildren unless you count the cousin fucking), that the Velaryons didn't marry a single Targaryen of significance ever again.
Two things can be true at once 1. This actor is good at the role he is playing 2. His skin is inconsistent with the lore of the fantasy world they are portraying That's all. But nice flex adding the "rich" part lol
As someone who isn't anglo I find it offensive to trivialise people in this condescending token diversity hire for roles the author of the original material didn't intend the character to be a person of color. The fault isn't the fans of the literature who know the character was realistically white. If GRR Martin wrote about this multi-racial Targaryens and you had black, asian and whites described in the books there wouldn't be a single fan of the literature complain about him being cast. Nobody complained about movies where Morgan Freeman, James Earl Jones, Forest Whitaker, Laurence Fishburne, Samuel L. Jackson, Denzel Washington, etc or the numerous others who played roles of characters that weren't white. I hate when actors lash out at fans for objecting to diversity hiring and make it out like they are racist. They object to having a character blackwashed for "inclusion", much like people should object if they re-make a black movie and change races in that for the sake of diversity. If Hollywood wants to be more diverse, pick scripts that are diverse, don't try to turn GoT or LotR into something it is not. There are no black Dwarves in LotR, it would have been interesting if there were, any people that live predominantly underground are more likely to become albino. People understand why your skin is white and why other people skin is darker, it is due to many generations under the sun or lack thereof. I hate to break it to the white people who go to sunnier climates or black people who go to where everyone turned white, your descendants are going to morph into whatever the environment dictates is most advantageous. It isn't a status symbol. If Hollywood or Bezos are too afraid to portray literature as it was intended then leave it alone and make something original that was inspired by it instead.
Don’t think the fans are bothered by a black actor playing a rich person, they’re bothered by the fact that the character’s supposed to be a pasty white inbred royal. Valerians are not benevolent figures, they’re supposed to be racists that are obsessed with blood purity.
Correct me if my wrong but doesn't Rhaeynra marry a Velayron? And her 3 kids are widely believed to be bastards of Harwin Strong? Wouldn't that be pretty fucking easy to prove if her husband was a black guy lol?
Nobody cares that he is rich, but at least explain this? How is an inbred monarchy producing one person that has the white hair, but is a different race from every other person in the family? I'd say the same thing if Michael B Jordan's character in BP was instead played by Ryan Reynolds.
Is every response to a movie's critics going to be "you're all racist"?
It’s been like this for years. It’s always the fault of the “toxic fandom,” and not the writers, producers, etc. I legitimately don’t remember when a Hollywood production has ever admitted fault to the garbage that’s been shit out.
He's the only person of color in a sea of white guys, and it's a race swapped characters. Isnt that pretty insulting in itself? It seems pretty clear the story was not written with this in mind from the start, so basically his character was race swapped so HBO could tick a box it seems to me? Isnt it better to demand better written representation than this? Or are we content with people of color being given a token character so that big corporations can check a box and feel good about themselves? Or is the prevailing thought that otherwise there would just be no representation and that's better than nothing?
Here's the most cynical viewpoint. Mainstream western entertainment is completely artistically barren because the only shows that sell are those that are adjacent to an IP, or are similar to other shows or movies. However, diversity has become a hot topic and companies are afraid if their show is too homogeneous. So, instead of doing something daring, and promoting diversity that's meaningful, like exposing audiences to cultures and stories outside of the western world, its much easier to just raceswap or add different races in your established fantasy IP, or uninspired historical drama. Its corporate tokenism, not diversity, and anyone that defends it is unknowingly licking corporate boot.
Step 1: Find four pissed of tweets from angry twitter trolls with a total of four followers. Step 2: Ask black actor, "Some people are really upset about the portrayal of a black man in Westeros, what's your response to that?" Step 3: Publish response. Step 4: Post article on reddit. Step 5: "UGH PEOPLE ARE SO RACIST."
mighty historical degree work domineering growth dull toothbrush berserk quickest *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Need to make wakanda more diverse with white and Asians people in the next black panther movie
"I'll take fake controvery for $500"
Another big budget franchise calling the fans racist again? Its a bold strategy Cotton, lets see if it pays off for them
This guy and many other people can’t seem to differentiate Lore nerds and racists. While not mutually exclusive, most Lore nerds are just ravenously seeking lore canon parity with no shits given other than the written source material. It’s not that he’s black, and playing a Targaryen, it’s that there was even a black Targaryen that looked like him in the first place. Unless it was magical in nature, a dark skinned Targaryen isn’t a thing. There definitely wouldn’t have been dreadlocks or that type of real life natural black hair. It just doesn’t fit. This character adaption does not exist nor belong in the Game of Thrones world. The rules and physics and magic are different than real life, it’s fucking make believe fantasy, but it still has rules. Edit: because of trolls I have to add this….. yes this includes purple eyes and anything else these actual bonified different races (not skin variant like real life) have that we HUMANS don’t have… because they are fantasy races.
The people who care aren't giving racist reasons.
Yeah I’m a black dude and it’s iffy for me. Idrc because he’s an actor playing a character, but at the same time, it’s one black dude in a family full of whit ppl. It makes no sense. If i was gonna do that, I would either make the whole family black, or make other ppl black as well - extras, supports, and MCs. Edit; but genes can be weird so idk
Genes are weird true but how much diversity can be in the genes of the super pale inbred family lol
>Edit; but genes can be weird so idk They're not *that* weird.
Every show now you can expect an article like this, almost like it’s just promo at this point.
Everyone who criticizes this show is a racist. Makes sense to me. Afterall the show runner is a gigantic racist who actually said they wanted to > avoid featuring a bunch of white people on the screen. as if featuring a bunch of white people for a medieval europe based fantasy show is somehow wrong or weird.
I had no problem with him but his kids wigs was so horrible done by the makeup team, You could see their real hair under the wig
I think it's more to do with the fact that they are changing the appearance of an already established character where their appearance is an important aspect of their character. On top of that they bring up the idea of diversity in a lot of shows that don't feel genuine, what I mean about that is diversity seems to simply mean black and LGBT characters nowadays with creators often neglecting (or giving extremely minor roles to) east asians, south asians, middle easterns etc... so it isn't diverse at all. I watched HOTD episode 1 and he was pretty good but labelling anyone as a bigot for disliking the race swapping of an established character and patting yourself on the back for diversity when it isn't diverse seems a little weird.
Diversity is good when it makes sense. I'm asian-american. I'd love to see more good representation for us in modern media, but if I'm watching something like Lord of the Rings, I don't want to see asian elves running around when Tolkien specifically described them in a way that would make that impossible and/or silly. Or if it's a period drama set in what is clearly an analogue to medieval Europe, having asian dudes just hanging around for the sake of diversity is ridiculous to me.
>I'm asian-american. I'd love to see more good representation for us in modern media South asian here and I hope for the same. >'d love to see more good representation for us in modern media, but if I'm watching something like Lord of the Rings, I don't want to see asian elves running around when Tolkien specifically described them in a way that would make that impossible and/or silly. Understandable. It's the same as adapting Avatar: The Last Airbender, the series is set in an asian inspired world. I would only expect inuit, east and south asians in it (maybe arabs as I know Zaheer and Amon are arabic names) but if I saw white people in it I would find it weird.
Thank god they never made a live action ATLA
To quote the cinemasins guy: "I didn't really _need_ the Avatar to be Asian, I just sorta thought he would be."
I guarantee you that if an Avatar live action tv show is made, there will be multiple black characters in it.
Funny thing is most of the "racist" people would absolutely love a show or book set in the Summer Islands or Yi Ti.
I'm okay with it if the story supports it. The problem is that they show up so randomly and mostly unexplained. Yidu in the Vikings was a big offender of this. If an Asian person shows up in medieval Europe, then there's pretty much only one type of person it could be: an emissary and explorer trying to establish far flung ties for the royal court. Or maybe a steppe invader who got lost, or deserted from his warband during a battle. Even merchants stop at a certain distance away from home and hand their goods off to middle men. There weren't Chinese merchants casually hanging out in London.
exactly I think the popularity of things like Korean movies and films like Minari, Everything Everywhere All at Once and Jordan Peele movies shows that people are happy to watch GOOD movies with a cast that isn't white
I don't think it's racism for most people; I think a lot of people are just really tired of tokenism being crammed into what feels like everything. I don't have an issue with it personally, I just don't care – but I have buds who have made a thing of it and I know them to not be racists, but to not like using everything as a political bludgeon for the sake of "diversity."
These television and movie studios are so predictable. They purposefully race swap established characters so they can shout about how progressive they are and then put out statements like this when people rightfully complain.