#what exposing me to Arab HOTD fans does smh

[fandom-blahs]

Can’t believe I’m about to defend Condal but while I do understand where the “show runners don’t want me cheering from Aegon/TB so guess what I’m cheering for him even more” come from, especially during S1 because of his divisive and obvious “THIS IS THE BAD GUY” introduction in a story that’s not meant to be like that and they took the worst possible interpretation for the character while humanising the rest, it did stick out like a sore thumb.

But at the end of S2 it’s really weird seeing that same sentiment continue of “ohh Condom wants us to hate Aegon no fuck you!” , at least for S2 it’s not true?

Whether he’s pathetic or not the point, the end goal was to illicit sympathy. Personally I would prefer if he wasn’t that pathetic as it makes the fight between TG and TB more interesting and Rhaenyra’s struggle more tragic.

Condal did say that the end of S2 will have you changing sides and … that’s exactly what happened. In all fairness when that quote was making the rounds we didn’t think they would fragment TG but way way more people are sympathetic to Aegon now compared to S1. Post S2 you’re not really a contrarian for cheering on Aegon even if his story is doomed from the start.

For whatever reason Condal and Co do want a more fragmented TG why? Idk it’s hard to say what they want as an adaptation because you also have them going off about how HOTD is the story of 2 women who are just 14 year old girls made to fight by the patriarchy and stuff.

At the end of S1 there was a sense of injustice done to the characters portrayals and feeling that the writers have a weird petty vendetta against certain characters . Especially coming from fans who are familiar with the source material. I’ve seen so many discussions about how the narrative is actually praising TB actions while never letting you forget whatever small bad deeds TG does (eg THE RAT CATCHERS THE RAT CATCHERS THE RAT CATCHERS).

The actor interviews don’t help with this sense of injustice either. I don’t want to read too much into their interviews and normally I don’t like it when actors think they know better; think of The Rock and how they sanitised Black Adam for his sake. Back to the point, what comes to the top of my head is Tom and Phia’s interviews don’t really help when they’re basically validating the frustration of a lot of fans and more recently Baela’s actress begging the show runners to not deviate from her book counterpart (heh).

Honestly this is such an interesting fandom, the stuff surrounding the show is more interesting than the show itself at times but yeah it’s really funny when people are exactly where Condal wants them to be but they think they’re different

I’m a bit worried about Rhaenyra’s reception because usually fans aren’t very kind to female characters. Getting people to sympathize with male characters isn’t difficult but when it comes to female characters all of a sudden it’s discourse over discourse about representation and feminism and ideologies.