#Anti HOtD

[chocobroing]

He’s a stupid bitch.

Ryan Condal telling GRRM that they couldn't include Maelor because he didn't want another toddler on set is pretty ridiculous to me when you think about how they aged down all of the children and made them all toddlers. Jaehaerys and Jaehaera weren't toddlers in the book. Aegon and Viserys weren't toddlers in the book. He included 4 toddlers into the show for no reason and then he excluded the only character who was actually a toddler. Like what was the point of all that Ryan??

[alongtherubyford]

i wish the asoiaf fandom could just exist peacefully.

if you don’t agree with something, don’t engage/interact. i don’t like feeling scared to post something in case i get bullied or someone gets mad and argues with me. i completely understand not liking something, like deadass TRUST ME i understand. but my thing is, i can’t be upset with someone’s characterization of a character because that is their interpretation of the character. that’s the fun part of media. everyone can interpret a character differently. it stops becoming fun when you get hated because of it.

now this next bit is pointed at team green/team black stans. i personally don’t quite understand why there are such distinct sides when it’s already known that fire + blood is narrated by people who were actively dramatizing the whole thing. to me, not everything can be factual because we legit have no idea if it’s factual. this is not me saying you can’t lean towards one side or the other because you def can. i myself lean more to the team green side. i’m just trying to say that any argument will always have holes in it. the entirety of the text of that book could basically support one side or the other. it depends on the person and how they feel.

and like i said in the beginning, if you don’t agree, specifically with me in this new context, don’t interact. just block me and have a great day! i mean it’s not like i’m gonna know 💀

[helaenamyqueen]

"fire and blood isn't supposed to be a completely true story. the showrunners can adapt things how they want, they don't have to follow the source material."

my brother in christ they are not even following season one

[tessarionbestgirl]

I feel sick.

[chocobroing]

This is George’s work, not Condal and Hess’s personal fanfiction. While 2x02 had good moments, Hess and her team’s writing quality is poor compared to other HBO writing teams. This is the same network that made the Sopranos, Succession, and Rome, for God’s sake. It should be noted that writers from the train wreck known as Acolyte wrote a few episodes in season two. That explains so much, doesn’t it? 😑

The episode where Rhaenys busts through the floor and murders countless smallfolk and it having absolutely no narrative consequences on the story or condemnation of Rhaenys' character, and the episode where Aegon murders the ratcatchers causing Otto to crash out have this whole monlogue about Aegon being The Worst being written by the same writer really tells you all you need to know about HOTD. And before you ask, yes, they were both written by Sara Hess lmao.

Yeah, I know there was discourse a while ago, because this dissatisfaction regressed into racist and misogynistic attacks directed at Sara Hess. Obviously, that's vile and people should, first of all, rid themselves of this despicable framework of viewing the world (because, as always, this is absolutely just another opportunity to dunk on a woman - these people don't care about good storytelling) and, secondly, learn how to actually formulate an argument that doesn't sound like the ramblings of a basement-dweller.

That being said, she is categorically not a good writer, there's no other way to put it. She can come up with some good ideas (or, at least, a glimmer of good ideas - for example, the daemyra argument in S02E02 was good - one of the season's highlights, actually) and her line-level writing is... adequate. But, on the whole, her record on House of the Dragon is littered with inaccuracies and logical fallacies. I haven't seen her other shows, but I decidedly have no desire to and will be actively avoiding if I see her name. And I am including Ryan Condal in this mess, too, because he has the ultimate say-so on how the scripts look. These two together truly are the blind leading the deaf.

I think the ratcatcher pity party was, in a way, a reaction to all the backlash she received for the Meleys dragonpit scene. But, instead of fixing her mistake and making it work in the context of what she had already written, she made some absolutely abysmal storytelling choices that defy common sense and contradict her own text. A very easy fix to this would have been to show the population of King's Landing become very anti- Meleys, Rhaenys and, by extension, Rhaenyra. But, of course, the wider narrative set by her genius colleagues was that KL couldn't possible have any negative feelings towards Rhaenyra, so it's completely swept under the rug and the commoners are made to consider Meleys' death a bad omen.

But, naturally, they had to do something about all the criticisms that they are not focusing on the negative effects this war has on the population. However, instead of showing that in a balanced way, they decided to pile all these evils on the greens again. Rhaenyra faces no backlash from the low-born for any of her actions. She does sacrifice them to Vermithor, essentially, by preventing their exit and it's framed as the beginning of her moral compromises and falling into self-aggrandizing behaviour. Yes. But where are the consequences to this? There are no consequences. These dragonseeds don't seem to have any family who are asking questions about them or blaming Rhaenyra for setting them on fire, basically. Not even one noble person hears of this and goes "hmmm that's kind of fucked up actually". Larys, the literal Master of Spies, who might have reasonably be shown to have found out this inside information via his network of spies, might have had some lines informing the green council about this awful thing Rhaenyra has done. Might have even informed the population, in order to turn them against her. But no, of course not, we can't have anyone actually be anti-Rhaenyra.

Meanwhile, we have close-ups of the fucking dog longing for the ratcatcher who literally kicked it in a previous scene. How do you even qualify the framing decision to invite the audience to feel sorry for a child-murderer? To feel more sorry for him than for the actual mother of said murdered child? We have Otto, of all people, lecturing Aegon about how over-the-top he is acting, because he executed a couple of ratcatchers. Otto, who, by the way, is shown in S01E09 to be executing people because they would not bend the knee to Aegon. Otto does not value commoner lives more than noble-borns (last season, he refuses to outlaw child pit fighting and, even in the previous episode, he gets annoyed by Aegon ruling too much in the smallfolk's favour), but he grows a temporary conscience for the purpose of this one scene, because we have to engineer another situation in which Aegon looks cruel or stupid (or both, preferably). Alicent's entire household was purged by Larys for supposedly being Mysaria's spies, the brothel was even set on fire and she gave zero fucks about that, but Aegon's ratcatcher execution is somehow one step too far.

I have said this before, but just thinking "civilians don't matter" in the ASOIAF universe betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the themes and message. Can you ultimately be anything other than a "bad" writer if you miss the point to such a degree? And you can tell that's her true opinion about all this, because she can't write a storyline in which civilians do matter to save her life. The suffering of the lower classes only matters in her stories just as far as she can instrumentalize it to demonize the greens. She's not interested in any kind of systemic exploration, because that would also involve the blacks and it would interfere with Rhaenyra's hero framing. Like Ryan Condal, she doesn't have the chops to write beyond the hero-villain binary, hence all the flip-flopping and the retconning and the logical fallacies. And, at the end of the day, I can just watch a Marvel movie for that, you know?

[gojuo]

GRRM's newest blog post

[forgetcakes]

If you want your daughter on the throne that much then don't fucking remarry and don't produce other children you dumb cunt

[aryas-faces]

Is this a fucking joke?!

ALICENT has never sacrificed anything?!

Alicent has sacrificed EVERYTHING

She sacrificed her choices and happiness for Otto by marrying the King. She sacrificed her friendship with Rhaenyra. She sacrificed her bodily autonomy to give the king a male heir. She sacrificed her own safety for the safety of her children. She was prepared to die by dragonfire for Aegon, sacrificing her own life for his

But no. She has never sacrificed anything. Everything has been handed to her on a silver platter according to these writers

Meanwhile wtf has Rhaenyra sacrificed? A random knight so she could marry Daemon? A ton of innocent people for more dragons? Those aren’t personal sacrifices the way Alicent’s are. She’s sacrificing other people for herself

Not the same at all

And everything she has, she has been handed on a silver platter. Daddy named her heir, despite her treason in passing off bastards as heirs to Driftmark. She fucked off to Dragonstone and still was heir. She got the Riverlands because of Daemon, not anything she did. She got the dragons through evil means. Alicent offers her everything she wants

It it’s Alicent who has never sacrificed anything?

And now she’s being forced by the writers to sacrifice her son; the person she did all this to protect. Now she’s choosing Rhaenyra because this is redemption to the writers instead of the character assassination that it is

At least Olivia tries to save what she can by making Alicent have a panic attack

[spacerockfloater]

Aemond baby, get behind me.

[rainy-writers]

Rhaenyra reminds me of those white moms who have kids with a different race father and then refuses to acknowledge that they don’t have the same privileges as her. like she’s had so much privilege and power her whole life she can’t even see the corner she’s just backed her child, her heir into. She’s so dense that it hurts. Jace is right. ALICENT was right. Having three fucking kids with a man whose genes had proved to curb stomp yours IS an insult! Not bc bastards are evil or anything, but it’s a fucking insult to Jace, to Luke, to Joffery to drag them in a situation where they’re constantly demonized for YOUR actions and then REFUSE to own up to it even when your child is begging you with literal tears in their eyes to not take the one thing that saves him from the bullying and harassment YOU brought onto them. At this point, I’m extremely grateful the story ends with the targs in disarray bc none of those white haired fuckers deserve the throne (except for Baela and Jace, with brown hair

And to make it even worse, Jace is RIGHT. When the war is over and your brown haired, pug nosed child who looks exactly like someone NOT his legal father is named heir and you’ve taken his ONLY symbol of legitimacy away what will you do then?? Hmm?? I swear…

[franzkafkagf]

[blackcat419]

To everyone saying ‘oh George should of solved this behind closed doors’ or ‘oh he should shut up and write winds’

I need you to listen closely. This is obviously his last resort. HBO and Condal have stopped listening to him. This is how he’s keeping influence over HIS work. This is HIS story. He is more than justified to be mad they’re changing it. This is his last attempt to get influence back over his work. He’s showing HBO he won’t be quiet anymore. They can’t walk over him like they did with GOT.

He’s also allowed to work on two things at once.

[catholicat]

george martin should be kinder with fanfic writers considering the fact that he gives his works to be adapted by people who do a worse job at writing his characters than his own fans

[greenqueenhightower]

Alicole was underwhelming, but B&C takes the cake as the worst adaptation of a single asoiaf/f&b event so far:

It was so rushed and whitewashed and did not focus on Helaena at all. Where is Helaena pleading for her son's life and offering up her own life instead? Where is Maelor whom Helaena was coerced to offer up as a sacrifice and does not bear to look at? Where is Heleana being forced to make a decision that haunts her entire life? She is obviously traumatized by what happened, but having her just say "they killed the boy" does not do her character and her grief justice. I really hope we get to see more of Helaena in episode 2 because it would be really upsetting if the show just brushes her off.

Not to mention Alicent's absence from the events of B&C. Alicent was really there, worried for her daughter's and grandchildren's lives, and was the first person to offer Helaena some comfort and consolation. The more I think about it the more mad I get because we got robbed of what could have been a truly harrowing and distressing scene that would do the events and the characters justice. Book!B&C was about two mothers and their shared agony, pain, and grief. It could have been powerful and shocking from an acting perspective alone if they had followed the events of the book.

[hotdaemondtargaryen]

one of the things that bothers me this season, is that they used jaehaerys' death for the daemon targaryen character arc.

rather than to show aegon's full rage potential, helaena's awakening to the power of her dreams or aemond's reaction.

[gojuo]

Remember what they're taking from you

Fire and Blood, p. 398:

Fire and Blood, p. 387:

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Fire and Blood, p. 561:

Dangerous Women, The Princess and the Queen, p. 783:

Fire and Blood, p. 506:

Fire and Blood, p. 381:

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