Tag: game of thrones

Year’s End: Was 2022 a bad year?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

My fantastic mother-in-law signed me up for some virtual races that give medals for Christmas, but among them was a run called F*CK 2022.  The medal of the run is a middle finger which of course I’m cool with, but what got my brain churning was the idea that there being a race with this theme, there has to be some overwhelming sentiment that 2022 was anything but a good year.

Which brings us to the question in the subject of this post, was 2022 a bad year?

Honest question, because I’ve been living in a pretty small bubble since 2022, and my exposure to the news and happenings of the world outside of it are more limited than ever, and I’ve become one of those grownups who lets theFacebook feed me curated news and really only hear of things from that, Apple News and the shit that my friends talk about in a group chat. 

I don’t watch any television beyond the specific things I want to watch, which most certainly does not include any form of television news and I don’t venture out on the internet to all the news websites and Atlanta-centric sites I used to, so I’m going blind to even local things.

In the past, I felt it was important to be well informed and knowledgeable of news and current events, because if anything at all, that could make me better at conversation, but I really just like being in the know of things.  But after the rise of COVID and having kids and having kids in the age of COVID, it’s just not as important, and far behind the priority of making sure my kids are safe and fed every day.

Needless to say, my bubble has shrunken to where I have to ask other people if they think a year was bad or not, because I don’t really think my opinion holds any weight.  Because within my bubble exists pretty much just my kids, mythical wife, sports, wrestling and working for the sake of making money in order to live, and just about everything else exists outside of it.

Throughout the last few years, I’ve created living documents for every year, where I’ve literally narrated a tiny blurb to summarize every single day, of notable things and happenings, because I’m of the mindset that something important happens every single day, be it as small as one of my kids successfully eating something new, or as momentous as Russia invading the Ukraine and daring the rest of the world into another World War.

Some years have been really sad to look back through, because there’s a mass shooting every single month, or the deaths of notable people in the world, but as far as my interests and explorations of the world via the internet go, combined with the happenings of my daily life, I don’t think I’m wrong in thinking that something important does happen, every single day.

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150+ years before the Game of Thrones… Westeros had Asians

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Mythical wife and I went into House of the Dragon with the level of excitement of a DC Comics film and the expectations of, a DC Comics film (extremely low, if I have to explain).  As those kind of book snobs, we’re salty that George R.R. Martin has become the television writer I knew he was going to become, instead of writing any of the fucking books, that the television show blew past where they left off, in like season 4 of GoT.  But as inherent fans of the property we still are, we knew it was inevitable that we were going to watch it anyway.

Anyway, I’ll reserve heavy reviewing of the show until more of it has come out.  I’m still learning all the new faces and houses, and much like its predecessor, I’m sure I’d benefit from re-watching some shit at a later date to really absorb early occurrences.  Except that all the Targaryens are funny looking to me, because they’ve all got bright-ass hair, but unlike Daenerys and Viserys, they’re all kind of tanned-complexioned, which kind deviates from how most Targaryens are described.

Whatever though, the whole point of this post is really the marvelous realization that it only took an entire 8-season series and two episodes for an actual Asian man to get 3 seconds of screen time in a GoT property.  Yes, I know Jessica Henwick was one of the Sand Snakes, which is why I specified man, because when it comes to representation, Asian men obviously get the shaft when it comes time for everyone to become woke.

And not as an ambiguous and heavily make-upped Dothraki, Meereen slave, Flea Bottom beggar or any inconsequential character.  No, this guy is a fucking knight, with armor and presumably some degree of honor and bravery, if he’s representing House Velaryon.

I have no idea who he is, what his actual specific heritage is, but either way, he’s still a fucking hero.  And the fact that he made it into the GoT universe after just a decade is still like, three decades faster than Star Wars really decided to start giving Asian men some screen time.

Progress is progress, but all the same I have to say it: it’s about fucking time.

Why it’s hard to take AEW seriously sometimes

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I was watching some highlights from the latest Dynamite, because I was interested to see who won the match between Bryan Danielson and Daniel Garcia.  But during the match I couldn’t help but notice that the turnbuckle pads had something other than an AEW logo on it, and at one point, I had to scrunch my brow when I realized that it was literally the crest for House Targaryen.

Why was the House Targaryen crest on turnbuckles of an AEW wrestling show?

Well, the answer wasn’t hard to determine, because outside of any shot that wasn’t zoomed in to where you could see the turnbuckles, pretty much everywhere else in the West Virginia arena was like an explosion of Game of Thrones branding.  Since TBS is a Turner Network and Turner bought HBO and HBO owns the rights to Game of Thrones, naturally it was decided that AEW Dynamite would be the perfect venue to cross-promote the impending premiere of HBO’s House of the Dragon prequel series.

So instead of continually pushing awareness for AEW, or their shop’s website, or perhaps promoting any upcoming pay-per-views, all through the entire night was Game of Thrones shit, all over the place.

If I didn’t know what AEW was, and I was flipping channels and landed on Dynamite, I probably would’ve thought that some mega nerds* had created a wrestling promotion based on Game of Thrones, and I was watching some LARP of some Dothraki slave pit fighting instead of professional wrestling.

*I realize this is kind of an oxymoronic descriptor to describe Tony Khan, Kenny Omega and the Young Bucks

But this is a good example of why it’s hard for me to take AEW seriously sometimes.  No matter how genuinely good their wrestling product is capable of being, they just do so much shit on the business side or over social media or their performers, that just pumps the brakes on the progress they are totally capable of making, if they just didn’t get in their own way so much.

AEW’s entire show was completely hijacked by Game of Thrones this week.  A few weeks ago when I went, the entire show was completely hijacked by Discovery/Animal Planet plugging the ever-living fuck out of Shark Week, to where they had a match where Jericho’s cronies were suspended in a diver’s cage.  And a little while back, just about every AEW show was paintbombed by Draft Kings logos all over the place.

I’m not sure if it’s Tony Khan’s choice, or if he’s being strong-armed by Turner Ben Afflecks, but AEW is basically this cheap vehicle to promote other things, completely sacrificing their own brand identity and integrity whenever they do.  They’re like a Tesla Model S, with a vinyl wrap for Juan’s Paint and Windows, and they’re required to drive it around in prominent communities and log a substantial amount of miles to justify the ad space. 

If it’s TK’s choice to allow his pet promotion to be pimped out to plug shit that isn’t his, then shame on him.  If it’s Turner being Turner and fifteen old white guys with VP titles are all jabbing their fingers into the AEW pie to try and make their mark, then that’s really nothing out of the ordinary for Turner’s modus operandi, and we can continuously count the days before AEW copies WCW in another manner; being managed to death by Turner.

But the bottom line is that it’s really hard for me to take AEW seriously when they participate in shit like this, and it’s got to be hard for even them to continuously try to declare themselves the alternative to the WWE, when they’re constantly being handcuffed by shit that makes it hard for people to take them seriously.  As much as the WWE is so often seen as this corporate soulless entity, they take their brand seriously, and they almost never cross-promote with anyone or anything, not without at least some substantial benefit to them. 

There’s absolutely zero benefit for AEW when they help plug Shark Week, House of the Dragon or Draft Kings, and until the company can grow a backbone and push back on bullshit orders to cross-promote, they’ll never be taken as serious as they should be capable of commanding respect.

Why Sting failed in the WWE

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Firstly, I like Sting.  But when I saw him show up on AEW, my first thought was, “wtf?  He’s . . . [checking my phone for Sting’s Wikipedia page] . . . 61 years old!  Whyyyy??”

And then my thoughts swirled around the fact that the show built the entire episode’s identity around his arrival, by constantly lifting Winter is Coming from Game of Thrones, conveniently compounded by the fact that they were wrestling outdoors in 40-50 degree weather, and most wrestling attire isn’t necessarily made for warmth.

But the appearance or the gimmick was no one-off cameo; in subsequent episodes of Dynamite, every time Sting showed up, it was the same song and dance, where the lights go out, fake snow is blown into Daily’s Place, and Sting is standing there, he points a bat, Team Taz runs away from the ring, and then he and Darby Allin stare at each other until JR blathers on about going to commercial, but not of the “restaurant-quality (whatever the fuck that means) picture-in-picture” variety.

Here’s the thing though – he hasn’t done a single spot in the ring, but already I think it can be safely said that he’s had a more successful run in AEW than he ever had in WWE back in 2014.  Frankly in my opinion, Sting in the WWE was never going to work, because Sting was the true one pillar of anti-WWE, seeing as how his entire career he never jumped ship at any point, despite guys like Flair, Arn, Luger, Steamboat, Rude, Goldberg, DDP, and all sorts of legends, having done so at least once in their careers.  Sting was the true bastion of integrity that held his ground and never did go, at least not until so much time had passed, and it seemed like he went solely because of legacy purposes, but honestly, even as a jaded fan, it just seemed like his heart was never in it at all.

Sure, it’s probably because he was immediately buried by Triple H and had his first match be at Wrestlemania, where he lost to Trips, and then nearly had his career permanently ended by a botched powerbomb while working with Seth Rollins, but the fact of the matter is that it’s pretty safe to say that Sting’s run in the WWE was a pretty embarrassing flop.

But the main thing I felt was the reason why Sting failed in the WWE where he seems to succeed and get over everywhere else, is the fact that he had no pop-culture sources that he could steal from.  I mean just look at his general history:

  • WCW, changed his entire gimmick to basically be The Crow; got over, won titles, succeeded
  • TNA, eventually transformed into The Joker from Dark Knight Returns; got over, won titles, succeeded
  • WWE, tried to be just Sting; fail
  • AEW, has adopted the gimmick of basically being a White Walker from Game of Thrones; got over and is currently succeeding; titles yet to be determined

Obviously, the WWE itself is mostly likely the reason why Sting couldn’t lift anything in the first place, as they tread more corporately carefully than everyone else, but the point of this is that as good of a worker as Sting historically is, he hasn’t really been able to get over solely on his own, since like the days of fluorescent tights, the blonde flat-top and colorful face paint.  Frankly, he probably would’ve been better off showing up to the WWE in 2014 with his old surfer Sting persona, it’s not like the WWE had any shortage of dark, brooding, silent icons.

Ultimately, I have a ton of respect for Sting, as he is the aforementioned legendary worker, has accomplished the world over in the industry, and is widely admired and revered as a genuinely good human being, which is more important than everything else mentioned.  But the reality is that his ability to get over throughout the years has leaned heavily on the popular culture being consumed in the world around him, rather than his own personality.  And when he was put into a situation where he had to work without a crutch, it seemed to expose such, especially when compared to when he returned to a setting where he could lift from pop-culture again, and is breaking merchandise sales records.

The reflection post, circa 2019

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment
photo courtesy Matt Altmix

If I had to make an observation about what it’s like getting older, I think I would have to say something along the lines of increasingly feeling like there isn’t enough time, like ever, for like, anything and everything.  Maybe it’s exclusive to me, or perhaps it affects millions of others, but I feel that I spent an inordinate amount of time feeling anxious about how I don’t feel like there’s time for anything, or at least, there isn’t an adequate amount of time that I’d like in order to do particular things, and therefore I simply don’t do them.

Like video games, or starting a new television series; typically, I prefer to have like a nice, 2-3 hour block of time in which I can dive in and be properly acquainted with something new, learn the controls, characters, look for critical information that might re-emerge later when stories unfold.  I’m not the type of person who’s ever satisfied with a short introductory period or just a singular pilot episode; subsequently, if I don’t get such conditions, there’s a higher chance that I simply don’t even begin, because there’s always something else I could be doing instead that’s probably actually more productive, or at least essential to my general pace of living, and then suddenly it’s the next day, and I’ve got to go to work, where there’s seldom adequate time for my team to get their tasks done because we’re constantly behind schedule, and are reliant on the partnership of other teams in order to get our jobs done, but they’re lazy and constantly coasting their ways to the next weekend, and then the weekend comes and then it’s almost over, and it’s back to work on Monday where we have yet another planning meeting on how we’re going to catch up, but then the people we rely on are already beginning their downhill coasting towards the weekend on Tuesday afternoon, and this cycle of constantly feeling like there’s no time continues to cycle and repeat.

All this being said, if I had to look back at 2019 as a whole, I would have to say that I think it went by pretty quickly.  Often times, I’ve given thought to how fast things have flown by, and amazed at the idea that when I was a kid, I’d often thought that time couldn’t move slow enough, and how I had all the time in the world to beat and master every single Nintendo game that came across my path.  About how when I was a teenager, I was able to balance time between numerous friend groups, family and responsibilities; like this one time back in 2001 where I somehow remember balancing my newspaper job, going to Baltimore to meet up with some friends who were arriving from out of town for Otakon, driving back to Virginia to meet up with some other friends that night so we could grill out, going to work the next morning, stopping on Columbia on my way back up to Baltimore to visit a cousin, then going to Baltimore for Otakon, taking 200 pictures, coming back home, whipping up a photo gallery and recap of the con for my website, while going back to work. 

Like, I couldn’t even fathom doing that many activities in the span of a week at the age of 37 now.

However, in spite of the perpetual feeling that the clock is spinning faster, this doesn’t mean that my quality of life is necessarily worsening.  In fact, I can say with tremendous clarity that 2019 was a pretty incredible year.  Without question, some of the most grandiose and life-changing events occurred within 2019 and have laid down the foundation for the rest of said life.  Most notably highlighted by the event of having gotten married to my beautiful wife, and having an incredible wedding celebration surrounded by friends and family who all poured into Georgia to celebrate with us.  But then the honeymoon didn’t last that long, or maybe I could say the magic of a Disney cruise was a little too OP in our case, because shortly afterwards did we discover that mythical wife was pregnant, putting us on the fast track to parenthood, and the jarring realization that I was going to become a dad.

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It could only have ended poorly

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I was in the third grade, I used to “read” Choose Your Own Adventure books by deliberately making the worst possible decisions possible in order to get to a The End as fast as I could.  And as soon as I got myself killed, about to be killed, or in a position to eventually die, I declared the book “read” and entered it into my Pizza Hut-sponsored Book-It reading list, where every 4-5 finished books meant a certificate for a free Pizza Hut pan pizza, which meant a perfect excuse for my parents to take me to Pizza Hut, which undoubtedly contributed greatly to my childhood obesity.

I abused the hell out of this system, until my teacher caught onto my little system, and eventually prohibited me from reading anymore Choose Your Own Adventure books, at least as far as the Book-It program was concerned.  I eventually began reading them more thoroughly, and enjoyed a vast number of them throughout their publication, but the point is, the whole thing started with me reading like six pages of the book in total, and deliberately making all the worst choices, in order to get to an ending, regardless of if it were good or bad.

So that being said, Game of Thrones.  The series is now, officially over.  For better or worse, considering the putrid manner in which the series ended.  I’m still mentally deliberating on where GoT’s ending falls in comparison to other shitty endings out there, and I think I’m a place where it’s somewhere in between Mass Effect 3, and the series finale to Dexter.  Needless to say, that puts in pretty rarified air of being especially terrible, and a lot of it probably has to do with the fact that all aforementioned series’ churned along swimmingly at various points and collected large numbers of dedicated fans, sucking up emotions and commitment and dedication for several years, before taking all their hopes and dreams for a good ending, stabbing them in the heart, boating them into a hurricane and synthesizing them with machines.

I mean, I can’t say for a second that I didn’t see this coming.  Endings are the hardest thing in the world for any story, and the list of popular, epic and legendary stories that have shitty endings is longer than the equator.  Plus, the dumpster fire that episodes 4 and 5 steered the story going into the finale all but sealed the series’ fate as just another story with a shitty ending incoming, because they simply went past the point of no return in episode 5.  The question really was, how shitty the finale was going to be, because at this point, the vast majority of people I knew who watched the show had all resigned themselves to the obvious notion that it was going to suck.

And boy, did it ever suck.  I found myself predicting just about everything that occurred in the episode like 10 seconds before it happened, like particular characters saying certain things, doing certain actions, or predicting very obvious outcomes.  Getting back to the point of talking about Choose Your Own Adventure books, it legitimately felt like the entire season 8 was one live-action Choose Your Own Adventure story, where there was one linear plot that consumes the majority of the season, but when it comes time to start winding down, there was literally nothing but a whole bunch of shitty and rushed endings, where not a single one of them is capable of making the viewer not seem I’m not mad, just disappointed.

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Let’s talk about Game of Thrones

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Normally, I haven’t really posted much about Game of Thrones.  It’s one of those properties that I really love, and I often times don’t really write about the things that I really love until they’re over, be it being between books, seasons, or a definitive end of some sort.

But with the show winding down, and that we’re getting to the point where the remaining episodes presumably are all going to be epics in their own right if episode 3: The Long Night was any indication, I’m finding it difficult to contain all the things swirling around in my head about GoT, and by the time the next episode rolls around, I’ll probably lose my shit if I don’t take the time to do any writing about it.

Plus, speaking of writing, it’s pretty clear to me that George R.R. Martin isn’t actually ever going to finish the actual book series,* so as far as I’m concerned, the tv show is pretty much shaping the end of the series, definitively.

*Even if Martin finishes, I have little faith that the evolution of the show will mutate all of the thought processes that went into the original five books, to where he’ll deliberately alter and swing the story (and not in good ways) to keep book followers on their toes, and there’s no way he’s not going to be picturing Kit Harrington, Sophie Turner, Peter Dinklage, Lena Headey or any other actor in his head when he’s writing key characters.  The books will DJ Tanner Wrestle tragically as a result, and it’s at this point where I’ll bust out the phrase “Dextering” again, named after the shitty way Jeff Lindsay steered the Dexter book series long after the television show started and ended.

SO, the Long Night – needless to say, this is where I write my disclaimer about how there will be spoilers, but also the fact that I’m still offline, and there’s no definitive timeline to when I’ll ever be back online, because I never have any time, and even if I did, by this point, I’ll have nearly four years’ worth of posts to back fill into the brog, which is a Sisyphus’ boulder in its own right.

SO, the Long Night – fucking incredible.  Kind of everything I had imagined the inevitable, eight-year build up to the battle between man and dead would be.  I can’t really think of anything that I was legitimately disappointed in, and despite the fact that a lot of my GoT death pool predictions did not come true, I still felt a sense of great satisfaction when it was all over.

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