#Notablog

[blackcat419]

Highlights from GRRM’s recent blog post, the man has delivered!

Book Alicent planning to keep her grandkids and Aegon safe

Ryan isn’t planning anything

Helaena just decides she’s done living cause…… no idea why

There’s more to come!!!

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

Is your chosen username anything to do with Ray Bradbury’s story by chance? If so, Mildly ironic given the current stete of fandom

It's not the primary reason for my URL (that would be the Simpsons), but yes, "A Sound of Thunder" and the butterfly effect are among the many reasons I love butterflies. I don't think it's ironic re the current state of fandom though, I've long noticed GRRM citing the butterfly effect to explain how a small adaptational difference can lead to great changes by the end, since 2011, and particularly since GOT S5 and S8. So it's not surprising GRRM cited it again re HOTD, it's one of his standards along with Scarlett O'Hara's kids. Heck, he cited both things in an interview (regarding the question of whether HOTD was "canon") only 2 years ago. By definition the butterfly effect is just a single wingbeat that eventually makes a hurricane, but for GRRM it's a drum he's never stopped beating.

So, regarding the butterfly effect in GOT... let's give some examples. One of the butterflies GRRM used to talk about was that in the show, Khal Drogo killed Mago (in the epsiode airing June 5, 2011) whereas in ADWD (released July 17, 2011), Dany is captured by the khalasar where Mago is a bloodrider, and GRRM has said he'll be a significant character in TWOW. How the show handled it... they basically replaced him with Khal Moro, and tbqh, due to GRRM's own flat characterization of the Dothraki, it's hard to tell if there will be any difference between one brutish thug threatening to rape Dany vs another brutish thug with a slightly different name. Maybe TWOW will surprise us there, but if so, I really will be surprised.

Another butterfly (mentioned in the Mago link above) was that in GOT, Marillion never went to the Eyrie, and instead went to KL and got detongued by Joffrey. Thus, Marillion never became Lysa's favorite, and his plot with Sansa in ASOS/AFFC never happened. So Petyr didn't have anyone to blame for Lysa's murder... and yet in the show, he really didn't need Marillion, he convinced the Lords of the Vale that Lysa committed suicide. However, this was done by Sansa revealing her true identity to them... which cut off the Alayne plotpoint altogether. And that leads to what GRRM might call the greater "toxic butterfly" of Jeyne Poole not being an actual character in the show (she appears for half a second at Winterfell and never again), and thus Sansa took her place in the Ramsay storyline. But to be frank, I don't believe Jeyne's absence had any real "butterfly effect" on the show... even if had she been an actual character and Sansa's companion that Littlefinger made into a prostitute at one of his brothels, D&D never would have brought her out again to play "Arya". David and Dan deleted the Alayne plotpoint and Sansa's AFFC/TWOW storyline, and instead sent Sansa north to be married and raped because that's what they wanted to do with her character, not because they "had to" because Jeyne wasn't there. (And if they ever told GRRM otherwise, they lied.)

And that's the truth about the "butterfly effect" straight up. GRRM seems to believe a story must flow logically to its conclusion and thus removing even a small element changes that conclusion. But the truth is that D&D could have done whatever they wanted, dead/nonexistent characters or otherwise. Aegon and JonCon not existing is not what made Dany a mad queen and burn KL, they chose to make her a mad queen because that's the story they wanted to write. The bizarre nonsense of the show Dorne storyline is not because they removed Arianne, but because they wanted to make Ellaria both vengeful and uncaring about her lover's family. Smalljon Umber surviving the Red Wedding is not why Osha and Rickon died, it's because they wanted to kill off Osha and Rickon and add another heartless Northern villain. Flow does not truly apply, this isn't an atmospheric system and it's not a real history. Nothing forced D&D into doing anything except budget/orders from above/other business issues. It's fiction, it's the story they constructed, they chose to construct it that way, because "Creatively it made sense to us, because we wanted it to happen."

Now, regarding HOTD -- let me first provide a quote from GRRM from the "canon" interview I linked above:

George: And the more you read about history, the more inconsistencies you had. So I thought it would be fun to do that in Fire and Blood. And so when I’m relating what happened here, and I’m thinking about what can happen. Yeah, I… oh, this would be great. This would be really outrageous, it would be… and then, eh, it’s probably too outrageous. Here’s probably what… the more realistic version of it. And wait a minute, this version makes Fred the villain and Bill the hero. And this version makes Bill a villain and Fred the hero. And then at some point it hit me. Why don’t I give all versions? Cause history is uncertain. I’ll give all versions and it’ll be fun for me. I can put in all the really outlandish scurrilous things, the way Mushroom sees it, but I can also put in the things that are probably more…  Aziz: They’re sources, yeah.  George: And that worked fine for those who liked that thing, although some don’t. But if I was writing it as a novel, if I’d been writing this in the form of the books in A Song of Ice and Fire, like Winds of Winter, which I’m writing now. When I get to a chapter in The Winds of Winter and I know something’s gonna happen. How does it happen? What are the things? I think I could do it this way. I could do it that way. I have to make up up my mind. In Fire and Blood, I didn’t have to have to make up my mind, but Ryan and Miguel, when they’re adapting it, they largely had to make up their mind. 

So. In his (deleted) blog post, GRRM talks about the absence of Maelor being a butterfly, so that the Blood & Cheese scene didn't have Helaena choosing between two sons (only between a son and a daughter), and he thinks it's unlikely they'll have the Bitterbridge scene with the Kingsguard Rickard Thorne heroically trying to protect Maelor (who is torn to pieces by the crowd). GRRM said that this will affect Helaena once again, because Maelor's death is why she commits suicide in F&B and he says in the S3 outline Helaena does it for "no reason". Welp. First of all, it's kind of hilarious that the wiki immediately cited GRRM's blog post, because IDK if GRRM recalls that in F&B he gave multiple reasons for Helaena's suicide (several weeks after Maelor's death!) through the book's conceit of multiple historians:

because she learned she was pregnant after being gangraped in a brothel along with her mother per Mushroom's wild story of the "Brothel Queens" (though Gyldayn reasserts no part of Mushroom's story is credible)

because she watched two knights who had tried to rescue Corlys be hanged and this upset her, per Munkun (though Gyldayn thinks it's unlikely because she didn't know them)

because Mysaria told her that night that Maelor had died and how he died, per Septon Eustace (though Gyldayn says it's hard to understand what motive Mysaria would have had for doing so)

because she didn't actually commit suicide, she was pushed, because Rhaenyra ordered her murder (what the smallfolk believed, which per Mushroom was a rumor spread by Larys Strong, and note Gyldayn does not discredit him here)

So whatever reason they're choosing for Helaena's suicide in HOTD (I doubt it will remain "for no reason" between outline and script and broadcast), it may be hard to argue it's not textually based given the multiple choice options in the text. Plus, there's a possible reason in the book that is unmentioned by Gyldayn -- that only a short time before, Daemon had his murder-suicide battle with Aemond above the Gods Eye. Though it seems that the news of that battle didn't reach KL until a day after Helaena's suicide, book!Helaena was not a dreamer the way show!Helaena is. And the show has already drawn a connection between Helaena, Daemon, Aemond, the battle above the Gods Eye, and prophecies. So again, I very much doubt she will kill herself "for no reason" in the show. It may not be the same reason as in F&B, but there should be some reason.

But the fact that GRRM stated outright that the Maelor reason is the real one and therefore he's an important character who should not be butterflied away -- well, that blog post did what his book deliberately failed to do. GRRM wrote a book with so many multiple choice conflicting narratives, deliberately, because he didn't want to make up his mind, so in its adaptation the HOTD writing team chose to write a narrative that picks and chooses among them (and sometimes, yes, makes up new shit), because they did have to make up their mind (and not do a Rashomon framing device). And only now he's like "no that's wrong, there is a real true history there and I'm mad they're not doing it"? I'm sure it's frustrating to GRRM, but if it's a problem, it's been a problem since the very start!

I mean, I am deeply sympathetic to him being disappointed by an adaptation once again, especially if he thought being an executive producer would give him more power than GOT's co-executive producer status but again that was just an empty title with no power at all. And especially if he has been telling the HOTD writers truths the book didn't, only to be dismissed with something like "well you didn't say that in the book so we're doing it differently". And especially if he thought a particular scene was very fine writing and characterization, and is disappointed that the show is unlikely to broadcast it to a greater audience. Y'klnow... damn the NDAs, but someone really ought to get GRRM's opinion regarding Septon Meribald's broken men speech, frequently considered one of his best, and how they did something rather different in GOT... and lbr, the Rickard Thorne Bitterbridge scene was a nice bit of a knight actually keeping his vows for once, but it doesn't compare.

(Seriously, let's be real. We all know GRRM's real issue is with what GOT did to his legacy. HOTD is just the one he thinks he might be able to nip in the bud before they make so many changes... and if he can't, that's just the wound of GOT all over again.)

And I do agree that Helaena's suicide is important, however it happens. The KL riots being sparked by her suicide are also important. (Though I very much doubt they won't exist at all in any form -- again see that vision from S2E8 and the fact that it included a scene evidently from the Storming of the Dragonpit.) And Maelor is important as well for something GRRM didn't mention (perhaps he thought he couldn't get away with it, though evidently he couldn't get away with saying anything) -- the fact that his death is what causes Daeron's heel turn from a sweet kid to a war criminal, and thus the Sack of Bitterbridge and Lady Caswell's own suicide (imo far more emotionally moving than Thorne's stand against the crowd). But... those butterflies don't necessarily have to be "killed", as GRRM fears. Daeron (who at least we know exists in the show) can have a heel turn for a different reason. Bitterbridge can be sacked for a different reason.

If that's what they choose to do, because yes, Daeron doesn't have to have a heel turn at all, Bitterbridge doesn't need to be sacked at all, the entire southern campaign can be a different story, they can write anything they want, as faithful to F&B as they want or otherwise. But GRRM's greatest worry seems to be that a less-than-faithful adaptation won't be a "logical and convincing" story where all the points lead to a conclusion, and... I'm truly sorry to say, that does not necessarily follow. Whatever conclusion HOTD reaches will be the sum of whatever came before. If some parts aren't built up as well as they should be, lbr F&B's Dance has had the same critiques for years. And again, the multiple-historian conceit, as well as it being a history and not a POV narrative, has never helped this issue, because it lead to one of F&B's greatest faults -- that it is not consistent with itself. (Unrelated to the Dance: see Alysanne's attitude towards Baelon inheriting at the end of the Long Reign chapter, vs pages later in the Heirs of the Dragon chapter. "You will be a great king" vs "a cock is not essential"... these chapters were written years apart, and not edited together nearly as well as they should have been.) If GRRM has a different story in his head that is more consistent than was put on the page, again this may be too little too late for all the work already put into the show.

However... I have a very strong feeling that it's not "Maelor the missing" or even whatever's happening with Helaena and the riot, or Daeron and Bitterbridge, that's GRRM's real worry about "toxic butterflies". I think the subject he really wanted to talk about, and knew he absolutely could not (and yet perhaps hoped that post could pressure HBO about), is the absence of Nettles. Her absence would greatly change the relationship of Daemon and Rhaenyra, who we've seen HOTD has chosen to portray as an OTP, a toxic one perhaps, "always meant to burn together". But it was already portrayed as odd in F&B for Daemon to lose his head chasing after a teen girl (if IMO entirely consistent with his personality), but with HOTD's apparent Daemon/Rhaenyra plot... Well, see S2's process starting with him leaving her in ep2, to their reunion in ep8 convinced she's the queen chosen by the gods... is Nettles going to come in and blow that up? Make Daemon abandon Rhaenyra again? It could be told in a "logical and convincing" way, I still think it should be, but at this point it's hard to see how it would be. (And looking at GOT in comparison, Nettles does not have either the textual value nor the fanbase that Brienne has, and just look how they ended their toxic OTP of Jaime/Cersei, despite the books.)

But plot and relationships aside, Nettles is a character whose meaning reaches well beyond F&B, to affect ASOIAF itself. Her legacy regarding Targaryen exceptionalism, to the subject of who can really ride a dragon, her legacy regarding the Vale's Burned Men... all these are elements that may be extremely important in TWOW and ADOS. So if GRRM has been trying to convince Ryan that Nettles is the most important character that should not be eliminated, and yet has been shut down... well, no wonder he's been depressed about his own legacy.

And again, I'm sure it's the deeper wound of GOT's ending that's been truly paining GRRM regarding his legacy, that their ending that may be the only thing anyone ever sees. Perhaps he was hoping that HOTD could help correct the issue. That its foreshadowing would help readers understand the truth, what happens in TWOW and ADOS, the real ending. But... again I'm deeply sympathetic, and I'm sorry HOTD couldn't be that for him, but the truth is no other television show can be GRRM's legacy in that way. The only thing that can correct GOT is his own words. The only thing that truly matters is him finishing TWOW and ADOS... and it's been 13 years since ADWD, 5 years since GOT S8. I want to tell him, so much, fuck the butterflies-- as you've said so many times yourself, the show is not the books. Leave them be in their other universe and focus on your own, please. Please.

Because, again, let's be real. If GRRM does finish his grand epic and completes his legacy, his last word on the subject... if this makes HBDiscFlix want to do a GOT remake once they have an actual story to adapt "correctly" (which they still won't)... you know that when the final season of Game of Thrones Brotherhood comes out in 2050 and Tyrion rides a dragon despite having no Targaryen ancestry... all the clickbait sites and YouTok will have vidposts like "The Missing Character from House of the Dragon - What You Don't Know About This GOTB Development!" It won't matter what HBO did or didn't do with HOTD. It's just GRRM's own words in the end... if he has them.

[twinge-of-cosmicangst]

[bestofgrrm]

Updates on The Winds Of Winter, Notablog, December 6 2023

[jackoshadows]

A blue flower grew from a chink in a wall of ice, and filled the air with sweetness...- Daenerys Targaryen

"Do you ever find anyone in your dream?" Sam asked. Jon shook his head. "No one. The castle is always empty." He had never told anyone of the dream, and he did not understand why he was telling Sam now, yet somehow it felt good to talk of it. "Even the ravens are gone from the rookery, and the stables are full of bones. That always scares me. I start to run then, throwing open doors, climbing the tower three steps at a time, screaming for someone, for anyone. And then I find myself in front of the door to the crypts. It's black inside, and I can see the steps spiraling down. Somehow I know I have to go down there, but I don't want to. I'm afraid of what might be waiting for me. The old Kings of Winter are down there, sitting on their thrones with stone wolves at their feet and iron swords across their laps, but it's not them I'm afraid of. I scream that I'm not a Stark, that this isn't my place, but it's no good, I have to go anyway, so I start down, feeling the walls as I descend, with no torch to light the way. It gets darker and darker, until I want to scream." He stopped, frowning, embarrassed. "That's when I always wake." - Jon Snow

[readorsigh]

So that GRRM blog post about HotD season 2 dropped and........it's literally just talking about the changes to Blood and Cheese and the cutting of Maelor and what the implications of cutting him from the story are.

*SPOILER WARNING FOR LATER SEASONS OF HOUSE OF THE DRAGON*

There's nothing about the writer's being hacks or obliterating his intricately written masterpiece Fire and Blood.

No talk about anything to do with the main cast or the writing of Rhaenyra or Aegon or Alicent or Daemon.

He does mention being worried about whether cutting Maelor from the show will cause problems with sequences he personally likes and was hoping to see adapted to the screen. Primarily the Bitterbridge sequence where Rickard Thorne has the fight to protect Maelor but is cut down and Maelor killed by the mob, but also how Maelor's death plays a role in driving Halaena to suicide. And how Halaena's suicide then leads to King's Landing rioting against Rhaenyra which leads to the Storming of the Dragonpit and so on and so forth.

Basically the brunt of George's issues have to do with the consequences of cutting Maelor from the plot and whether there will be a loss in emotional resonance for the story moving forward.

I don't believe there will be. There's definitely lots of ways to change things around so that some of these events still play out in a meaningful way. But I can see where he's coming from with the points he's raised.

Suffice to say, he didn't say anything like what the people on hotdtwt were convinced he would, thinking he'd come out and throw Ryan Condal and Sara Hess under the bus and say they've absolutely ruined his work forever.

[grennseyelashes]

Cos the thing is. he said he'd only start writing dream when winds was finished didn't he. #dreams #writing. writing dream. cos winds is finished.

(a) dream has only one owner (him) cos he's still dreaming it, but winds............ ??

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

For this one I'm just going to let GRRM speak:

[lilliyoona]

lmao so GRRM's notablog post criticizing Ryan Condal's writing choices has apparently now been deleted. 💀 the girls are fightinggg

"I have no idea what Ryan has planned, if indeed he has planned anything." 💅

[visenyaism]

For your consideration, GRRM’s notablog on Hotd s2 is now out

rhaenyra being a dyke not even pinging his radar because he decided to dedicate all of his time and energy and political capital as the author to posting about dead baby maelor and richard thorne is genuinely so fucking funny. where would we be without our allies

[blackcat419]

George made his most recent blog post talking about the stress in his life from the death of his longest friend to stress around writing and shows.

I feel so much for him, he’s so sweet and I think he deserves another vacation

[twinge-of-cosmicangst]

There’s been a couple of cover changes in the last few years here in the UK but in the US there hasn’t been any since ADWD was released right? RIGHT?

[bestofgrrm]

Grrm speaking out in support of the writer's strike and giving updates on his current shows, NotaBlog, May 7 2023

[atopvisenyashill]

What are your thoughts on GRRM’s new notablog post on HOTD S2?

omg i'm sorry so i did not get notified that i had a few new asks, i didn't even see this until i logged in on desktop. tumblr eat shit smh.

ANYWAYS.

I actually agree with Xiran Jay Zhao, here, where they said this was a warning shot. It feels like a warning shot. Like a "hey I'm being nitpicky and pedantic now but if you think I won't go scroched earth you got another thing coming." I've seen so much "this is unprofessional" "this is annoying" "why is he complaining" and I think it is not only mind boggling to side with a corporation and the idiots running these shows (and we know I mostly like Condal and Hess, but come on Condal was the mastermind of Sansa Bolton why are we defending him right now!!), I think everyone is blowing his comments wildly out of proportion. He didn't take a dig at anyone but the writer's room and more specifically Ryan Condal, who he has had a working relationship with for well over a decade. He didn't shittalk any casting, he didn't shittalk any specific writers or directors except one of the main showrunners, he compliments the special effects, he has consistently had (and imo is careful) nothing but praise for the actors, even minor roles like Blood & Cheese. This was an incredibly milqtoast "please remember that every change has huge affects on the narrative later" critique and the people handwringing over his behavior are absolute losers, I'm sorry.

And beyond the fact that he didn't make any huge digs, I think this conversation also wildly ignores the way authors have no control over their own characters once they sign the rights over. They can be completely bamboozled by changes and they have no recourse to go "what the hell are you doing." And yet, signing your book's rights away (even if the production sits in developmental hell for decades) is usually what nets these author's the most money - GRRM surely makes a shitton off his books, but most authors get paid absolutely nothing even when they're wildly popular because of how book deals work now. Take, again, Xiran for example - Iron Widow was a huge runaway hit, a good and fresh take on this new boom of culturally based sff. And yet Xiran has talked about how they immediately set to work writing a middle grade novel because they desperately needed the money because they got paid 16k over two years for their runaway hit that made their publishers significantly more than 16k. I think George is not only mad for authors with less control than he has but also, obviously, for himself - I've said time and again, but I do think Dark Daenerys is where we are headed, and the fact that they completely botched showing it has got to smart. And if the ending for Dany is anything other than Jon killing her, that has got to smart too. So he watched these people fuck up his original series and push him completely out of that writer's room as they made more and more changes, and now he's watching s2 of HOTD and seeing some changes and getting some real bad vibes. It's not doomerism to think s3 is going to go massively off the rails when we have seasons 6-8 of the main show to show us just how off the rails it can go!

So anyways, that part of my rant over (and please believe me when I say I checked myself here because I could rant for hours about how it's genuinely so upsetting to see people call him unprofessional over this when not only did he write the fucking series, but he's lived in this series for three decades!!!!! this is his whole life, this is his legacy, of course he's feeling some type of way about how it's handled jesus christ on a cracker, there's people who have said worse about their mediocre nyt pushed bestsellers getting adapted badly!), when it comes to the actual meat of his post....I'm sorry idk how anyone is annoyed by this post because it was hilarious to me. He spent a whole blog post whinging about how Dead Baby #4 and Kingsguard Man #12 are gonna get cut out of the show. I think he framed it in that goofy way on purpose to hide how annoyed he is but you can see where the real annoyance lies - the changes to Helaena, losing one of his grisly death scenes, and being willfully mislead about potential changes to the plot. I think a lot of people missed those points but EYE am not a goofy ass like those people and I can guarantee you that Condal and HBO got the point too.

Of course, I do think he is also irked about Maelor and Ser Rickard's scenes being cut out. He wrote a long ass, highly meticulous, near unadaptable work, and I think when he handed the IP over he assumed he was giving it to people who would rise to the challenge and only make cuts when absolutely necessary. And that just clearly hasn't happened. Incredibly important characters get cut, main characters get their plots wildly changed for no reason, and people get personality transplants on a near constant basis for no other reason than D&D and Condal thought it would look cooler. I think if there was more dedication to keeping him in the loop and keeping true to the story, he wouldn't have bitched so much. But Hess is on record saying she doesn't feel loyal to the story and at a certain point, you reach your breaking point there and I think he has finally reached his. AND GOOD FOR HIM. LET THAT OLD MAN GO APESHIT THEY'VE COMPLETLEY FUCKED HIS WORLD UP!!!

[readorsigh]

Honestly that blog post reads like a shower argument. He's mad that Ryan won the argument about cutting Maelor out of S2

A little bit, it does have that vibe. I'm curious to listen to the podcast Ryan was on just today to see if he talks about it from his end as well.

There's probably more to it that we're not privy to here but it's funny that he's being so open and direct about things when he was way more evasive about talking about the same issues with Game of Thrones.

[princesssszzzz]

GRRM’s blog just updated and he seems pissed

https://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2024/07/11/here-there-be-dragons-2/

LMFAOOOOO drag them!!! I was under the impression he was in the writers room because I swear that’s what they announced to get people to watch the show? But he clearly doesn’t know what’s going on in the writers rooms for HOTD and apparently doesn’t even have control over some things for his books 🤨

Anywho he’s definitely talking about Nettles and Sheepstealer towards the end. Sheepstealer only went to the Vale because Nettles took him there and got a cave for him to live in. He didn’t go there on his own and just flew around freely (assuming those leaks are true and Sheepstealer is actually in the Vale) but really it applies to any dragon. He’s telling them to stop fucking up his canon but will they listen? But seems like he will just publicly take shots at them until they stop messing with his story. Love that for us 😂😂