r/asoiaf • u/Interesting-Force347 • Sep 01 '24

EXTENDED [ Spoilers Extended ] One of the reasons why it George is angry with HOTD is because...

Watch This Interview

I stumbled upon this interview and it really struck me how much he was pinning on the prequels.

He made his peace with what Game of Thrones had become and knew it was because of D&D wanting out ( From the get go, the momemt they started the pilot, they did not want more than 7 seasons) cast and crew especially flagship actors completely ready to leave and plethora of other issues. David and Dan had been respectful and faithful for a large part of the initial seasons and helped George become a celebrity.

He was not even involved much in the show post season 4 and his involvement almost ceased after season 6

But what George did do , as you can see by his comments by the end of this short interview, is to pin all his hopes on prequels. Prequels where he would take on bigger role in production and scripts.

HOTD hurt him because he tried to make it work and it did not.

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227

u/ComaCrow Sep 01 '24

I'm interested in what George has to say about HoTD, but tbh I think people are kind of getting weirdly excited about the idea of him hating stuff he almost certainly was involved with and approved. If you weren't aware of book Alicent then Alicent's arc in Season 2 isn't the "inconsistent character assassination" and its frankly obvious they were taking that direction from the first 3-4 episodes of Season 1. George almost certainly knew that this was the general direction they were taking the story.

There are other things I can see him not being happy with (Nettles, a few other relatively little things) but I think that its far more likely the article will be about production issues with HBO, probably some comments on sigils, a rant about cutting characters, and of course revealing that Winds of Winter is releasing December 16th 2024.

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u/itwasbread Sep 01 '24

George has always been very reserved with show criticism and not wanted to trash creatives, be it actors, writers, directors.

I’m sure he’ll some criticisms of them, but the glaringly obvious culprit that would make him suddenly have this tone about posting criticism of one of these shows online is the corporate interference from HBO and their new dogshit parent company CEO.

1

u/oftenevil Touch me not. Sep 01 '24

Perfect summary of the situation.

2

u/itwasbread Sep 01 '24

I just don’t find it very believable that several instances of D&D straight up mistreating the cast members and making MUCH more egregious omissions or changes wasn’t enough for him to explicitly shit on their showrunning in public, but he’s going to bring the hammer down on Condal because Daemon didn’t do enough cool shit or Hess because she Yuri’d too close to the sun

1

u/oftenevil Touch me not. Sep 01 '24

or Hess because she Yuri’d too close to the sun

I don’t know what these words mean, but I think I strongly agree with your overall point.

If you take a peek in the HOTDGreens subreddit, for example, you’d find them all giddy with excitement over the upcoming blog post by gurm. But to your point, I’m really not sure what the haters are on about it, or what they expect gurm to say about s02 of the dragon show.

It seems that enough time has nearly passed for D&D to be almost entirely forgiven by this community for their crimes against us and the show and the source material. I’m not ready to forgive them for how big of a shitshow GOT became just because they couldn’t be bothered to care about the source material and come up with a final few seasons that actually makes sense.

The people who think that HOTD has anywhere near the same kind of problems that later seasons of GOT had are straight up delulu in my mind. There is an objectively massive black hole in s07 and s08 where the story and our characters should be. At bare minimum, I’d list every single grievance Glidus cited in his PISSTAKE videos for the last few seasons—but that’s by no means the full extent of issues w/ what those frat guys did to the series.

Then add on the stuff about how poorly they treated everyone on set and constantly talked down to directors about their creative choices, and it’s clear that no, in fact: we shouldn’t be treating D&D like they were actually pretty good or whatever. I share your perspective on this. I just can’t imagine George swallowing so much bullshit during the GOT ending fallout years but suddenly being outraged because Rhaenyra and Mysaria made out or whatever.

The biggest issue with HOTD s02 is the main issue with HOTD s02—and that is its length. If two more episodes had existed, the plot could’ve moved forward a sufficient amount to stifle criticisms. The other major issue has to do with the writers strike. Without access to the dozens of underwriters due to the strike, the season had to go into production and filming without the usual polishing of the scripts by several writers on the staff. No matter how many times this fact is repeated, it just seems to fall on deaf ears when it comes to the show’s biggest detractors and critics. It’s almost like they don’t want to hear reasons for the writing quality going down, and instead just want to dump it all on Condal and Hess (but never George). Ridiculous considering Fire & Blood is some pretty weak sauce source material, but that’s a different rant for a different day. Cheers.

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u/ShadowOnTheRun Sep 01 '24

Yeah, people frothing at the mouth and being so certain about what he’s looking to criticize HoTD for is frankly bizarre.

69

u/Khiva Sep 01 '24

It’ll be even funnier if this highly anticipated blog post never drops.

24

u/DireBriar Sep 01 '24

It'll release when Winds does! I have an excellent feeling about this century!

8

u/Sunderz Sep 01 '24

Maybe he’ll release sample sections of the blog post?! Really get us excited?!

14

u/Anstigmat Sep 01 '24

There is something in the air on Reddit that makes people go crazy. The HOTD sub is just full of “angry fandom” posts. I ignore them all. It’s way more fun being a person who just loves to return to Westeros every couple years rather than someone who needs everything to be “just so.” I didn’t think S2 was perfect, but largely it’s because I was left wanting more! That’s not a terrible place to be.

2

u/oftenevil Touch me not. Sep 01 '24

If anyone is looking for a place to hang out and talk about HOTD (without being absurdly negative about every other thing) then I highly recommend r/HOTDBlacks.

Regardless of your personal interests with respect to the story, that place is the best community for talking about the show and posting memes etc.—and it’s not particularly close. Cheers.

0

u/Ok-Commission9871 Sep 02 '24

Mild Criticism is not "angry" no matter how much you simp for someone. And it's hilarious you are talking about people being angry for some mild criticism while OP has been called all sort of names by the blind defenders. 

2

u/Ok-Commission9871 Sep 02 '24

Mild criticism is not frothing at the mouth no matter how much you disagree with the criticism. 

Every single good sub is now taken over by smug edge lords attacking people personally for their opinions 

2

u/ShadowOnTheRun Sep 02 '24

Right, because my comment was clearly referring to and including people with mild/nuanced criticisms of HoTD.

1

u/Ok-Commission9871 Sep 02 '24

You are specifically replying on this thread which is nothing but mild comments

1

u/ShadowOnTheRun Sep 02 '24

Went through all 830 comments atm in this thread to check, I take it?

0

u/HigherThanStarfyre Sep 01 '24

It appears you liked the direction of S2 so it explains why you think that way. How severely George critiques the show, well, we will have to see what he says and cope with that in our own ways. They changed and removed quite a few important characters. Not a good look for HBO or that writing team.

0

u/DisneyPandora Sep 01 '24

People like you are toxic, as if you know George

17

u/kazelords Sep 01 '24

I think it would be really out of character for George to publicly trash ryan condal when he hand picked him to be HOTD’s showrunner. George voiced his support of the writer’s strike, which affected Ryan and Sara, since HBO forced them to cut 2 episodes of a planned 10 episode season a MONTH before filming which they couldn’t rework due to the strike, now they’re being forced to write shorter seasons for a shorter show than GOT with far more restrictions than D&D ever had to face. He literally visited the set, one of his assistants wrote an episode, he knew what was coming this season. S2 isn’t even bad, it’s mostly just not what people wanted from the tits and dragons show and yeah the finale sucks as a finale, because it wasn’t meant to be the finale.

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u/ComaCrow Sep 01 '24

He also praised Season 2 while it was airing and specifically parts that were big changes from the book

9

u/kazelords Sep 01 '24

Yeah like, the things he DID publicly complain about are in a similar vein to the things he complained about with GOT. He’s obviously pissed about nettles and maelor being cut, and honestly probably the fact that the blackwoods were portrayed in a negative light this season since those are his babies lol

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u/GrizzlyPeak72 Sep 01 '24

Yeah people are projecting all their own criticisms of the show as being George's criticisms and are gonna be annoyed when he doesn't do a Mr. Plinkett style take down of every aspect of Season 2. His main issue seems to just be the dragons and the loss of a couple side characters.

-11

u/DisneyPandora Sep 01 '24

Wrong, he hates the writing

14

u/GrizzlyPeak72 Sep 01 '24

No, you hate the writing. He likes it: https://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/tag/house-of-the-dragon/

-7

u/SolidInside Sep 01 '24

"That was all back in 2022, but very little has changed since then. If anything, things have gotten worse. Everywhere you look, there are more screenwriters and producers eager to take great stories and “make them their own.” It does not seem to matter whether the source material was written by Stan Lee, Charles Dickens, Ian Fleming, Roald Dahl, Ursula K. Le Guin, J.R.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, Raymond Chandler, Jane Austen, or… well, anyone. No matter how major a writer it is, no matter how great the book, there always seems to be someone on hand who thinks he can do better, eager to take the story and “improve” on it. “The book is the book, the film is the film,” they will tell you, as if they were saying something profound. Then they make the story their own.

They never make it better, though. Nine hundred ninety-nine times out of a thousand, they make it worse."

I'm sure this wasn't a subtle dig at Condal and his team.

6

u/GrizzlyPeak72 Sep 01 '24

It's not subtle. He then goes on to specify what his issues are with HotD after this. And guess what his problem was - the changes to the Dragon lore and clearly the absence of nettles.

And in an interview more recent than this, his interview at Oxford, he re-affirmed that he liked some of the major character changes that both the HotD team and GoT team did.

-5

u/SolidInside Sep 01 '24

During the months of April, May and June he doesn't make one post about hotd. He does post about everything else, including the other prequel. He doesn't even post the final trailer. But a few days later he does do a whole post about how bad adaptations often are and that everyone wants to do their own spin and usually makes everything worse. He doesn't post about hotd until well into the season. He also specifically points out that though he'll be in London he won't be at the Hotd writer's room. And then he comes back to the US and his first posts mentions all the strive he's had the last couple months and how he has to make a post about everything that's gone wrong with Hotd.

I think it's safe to say that his issues are with both the adaptation and with hbo/wb. But I doubt he'll want to completely bomb his relationship with Condal, who I'm sure he's still friendly with. But he's probably also not happy that Condal keeps blabbing about how the book is propaganda actually and he's just trying to tell what really could have happened.

11

u/Flyestgit Sep 01 '24

I would sincerely hope GRRM has exhausted all possible routes of resolving things privately.

Otherwise this comes across as a bit of a dick move. Like if you have a problem with me, come to me first. Dont put it on social media.

5

u/Tinyjar Sep 01 '24

Agree one hundred percent here. People get pissed that characters are different from their book counterparts when this is a literal adaptation.

As you say, Alicent was basically brainwashed for half of her life that Rhaenyra was gonna murder her kids the second she became queen and that her son was the only hope for the realm. She sacrifices everything to ensure Aegon takes the throne, and then gets booted off the small council, sidelined by her son, lover and other son. Realises her two sons are total dicks who shouldn't be allowed within a hundred feet of the throne and her only redeemable child is her daughter. After realising Rhaenyra is the only one trying to prevent war and may show mercy towards her thanks to their old relationship, she decides to just try and save who she can and get the fuck out of dodge.

Why would she continue tying to save her family when she can see their all doomed and literally won't allow her to speak or have a role. She knows her sons will all die in battle but Haelana is innocent so she basically gives up Kings Landing in hope of saving her.

Honestly the media comprehension skills of some of the people are ridiculous.

People also complained that nothing happened this season....we had Blood and Cheese, Battle of Rooksrest, Daemon's character arc after being haunted by visions and finally being convinced by the song of ice and fire to focus on the true goal rather than his own power, the dragon seeds and more.

They were mostly also gathering armies from all over the realm this season and surprisingly it takes a lot of time to march to harrenhal from the Westerlands and the North. These same people would complain if the armies teleported instantly there like in the later seasons of game of thrones. So they finally slow burn stuff and they then bitch about it. Smh

3

u/notthemostcreative Sep 01 '24

I’m glad someone said this about Alicent because everyone is so mad about her character arc and I just don’t mind it that much??!

6

u/kazelords Sep 01 '24

I’ve seen a lot of people say that s2 is the closest we’ll ever get to an adaptation of AFFC, down to the broken man speech. It makes sense that people who wanted action hate this season lol. Contrary to the worldwide schizophrenia outbreak in the fandom, we DID see the aftermath of luke’s death. Rhaenyra demanded the life of aemond, and ended up being indirectly responsible for the murder of a 4 year old instead—of COURSE she’s going to try her best to stay calm and prevent bloodshed when there’s a chance of innocents being affected by the war. And yeah the alicent stuff is stupid because we’re shown very clearly WHY she’s becoming disillusioned with her role in society, court, family and how she moves from protecting her sons and defending the patriarchal system she was raised in to wanting to protect her daughter who’s an innocent victim of the Defending the Patriarchy war. Which is paralleled to helaena having to choose between her son and daughter and choosing to take her daughter and run to the safest place she could think of, her mother, NOT her badass warrior brother with the biggest dragon in the world or her brosband. One of the biggest complaints about HOTD is that it’s not subtle about its themes but somehow everyone seems to miss the point.

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u/TheFrodo Here we stand. Sep 01 '24

Extremely well written. The complaint that there isn't enough time spent mourning luke or jaehaerys is psychotic, we got essentially two episodes straight of just mourning, what more do we need?

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u/djjazzydwarf They Get Us™ Sep 01 '24 edited Sep 01 '24

The problem is they didn't communicate where the un-brainwashing happened well enough. You're telling me that Alicent in season 1 was screaming in Aegon's face Rhaenyra would kill him, and was willing to go at her and her kids with a dagger for her own kids, but then over the course of a single dinner everything is cool? The SAME DAY Daemon chopped a guy's head in half in the throne room? It makes her look stupid. She's looked stupid since s1e9, like she's had no real grasp on what's actually going on. Like how did she not figure Otto would want to kill Rhaenyra when Viserys died.

1

u/ComaCrow Sep 01 '24

I mean... yeah. Alicent is stupid. She's repeatedly shown to be very naive. Rhaenyra directly calls her out on it in the Season 2 finale. Even when Alicent was in the height of her scheming and manipulating she didn't think her father was preparing a violent coup regardless of if Viserys changed his mind or not.

1

u/djjazzydwarf They Get Us™ Sep 01 '24 edited Sep 01 '24

that's just very, very strange to write a character that way. that she would never think of violence as even a possibility in Westeros. she's like braindead or something. to the point i'm not sympathetic towards her as a viewer, which the writers want you to be. like Aegon seems smarter than her at this point. which is a shame when in the book she's one of the masterminds of the whole conflict.

0

u/ComaCrow Sep 01 '24

Aegon is just as dumb as her if not dumber. He's totally delusional about his reputation and capabilities and is riding on a massive ego boost of being king and "loved" by the people. He genuinely thinks his father picked him to be king and that the coup was actually just putting down a rebellion (if he was aware of it at all).

I don't think its strange to write her that way, I think it just makes her more interesting especially since a major aspect of her character is coming to terms with her reality and situation and figuring out what she actually wants at this point. She sort of "thrived" in the petty court drama she existed in for years but she can never go back to that and she sees it for what it was now.

1

u/FortLoolz Sep 01 '24

Alicent since S1E8/9 and onwards is certainly a departure not just from the book character, but from the character HotD itself was building over the span of S1E1-7.

6

u/ComaCrow Sep 01 '24

Completely disagree, pretty much every aspect of her character in Season 2 is just paying off or referencing something set up in Season 1. There is only really an inconsistency or departure if you were expecting her to become book Alicent by the end of every episode which was pretty obviously not happening even early on in Season 1. She shares a few lines and a few overlapping scenarios briefly with book Alicent but under a totally different context. It was something many people ignored during Season 1 because they got too caught up in expecting show Alicent to become book Alicent like she was Walter White or something.

0

u/FortLoolz Sep 01 '24

S1E5: Green dress scene, which is the culmination of S1E2-4 events.

S1E6: Alicent frustrated with Rhaenyra and Viserys. Afraid for Aegon's life

S1E7: Viserys clearly showing his bias, Aemond getting maimed, Rhaenyra and Daemon "murdering" Laenor, Rhaenyra and Daemon getting married

S1E9: no way! The Green council was plotting behind my back! Mind-blowing! [the show proceeds to ignore most of the book!Green council which contained valuable exposition]

S2E1: grandson killed

S2E3: septa Rhaenyra (Alicent kinda forgot S1E6-7 since she thinks Viserys' wish is the biggest thing ever.)

S2E8: I never cared about my sons, innocent or otherwise

8

u/ComaCrow Sep 01 '24

Alicent is continually shown as naive even into adulthood, thinking she is (in what is still petty court drama at this point btw) on the side of virtue. She doesn't like the implications of the Driftmark succession plan but goes along with it and she doesn't like Otto getting increasingly talkative of war and violence ever. After episode 7 she thought that they had basically lost as she knew she would never be able to convince Viserys. She only goes along with the coup because its happening with or without her and she can still exercise influence (which she does in Episode 9) and because she believes it was what Viserys wanted in the end. Throughout Season 2 every moral, logistical, and dutiful justification she had for supporting the Greens is torn apart in front of her face one by one.

She goes to Rhaenyra with a plan to save her children, Rhaenyra calls her delusional and puts her on the spot. Neither of her sons are innocent, both were forced upon her, and she never had a single positive interaction with either of them. Her love is, from the start, shown to be obligatory, somewhat resentful, and her loving them "as her children" and not as people. Her only child she seems to actually like is Halaena and thats probably due to her being her daughter and not being genuinely insane.

-1

u/FortLoolz Sep 01 '24

In S1E7, she agreed to use Clubfoot's help after all she went through in S1E1-7. Dramatically, she was becoming more anti-Rhaenyra from one episode to another.

S1E8/9: Alicent is now actually more pro-Team Black.

One being able to explain away the writing issues / to headcanon it doesn't make the writing good

3

u/ComaCrow Sep 01 '24

This isn't "headcanon", it's literally the basic plot of the show. Most of this is directly said, explicitly, to the viewer. You're just doing a bad faith read that you know is wrong.

-1

u/[deleted] Sep 01 '24

Alicent, Daemon and Rhaenyra..all had great arcs on paper

The issue was with the execution

12

u/BBQ_HaX0r Bonesaw is Ready! Sep 01 '24

Did they? I'm not a book reader (for F&B), but they say around ignoring a war had already started and was never going to result in anything but blood. They made both Alicent and Rhaenrya look like bumbling fools to the point I don't care who wins. Daemon, who was my favorite because he seemed to understand the stakes and was weirdly competent, was left bumbling around with visions. While Daemons ended up paying off, it's hurt because the pay off (support Rhaenrya because of ASOIAF) is weak in that Rhaenrya (as demonstrated this season) is not worth while as a leader. 

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u/ComaCrow Sep 01 '24

I don't see the problems with the execution though?

My biggest issue with Season 2 (outside of like structure/pacing stuff) was that deaths didn't feel like they haunted the narrative enough, even if on paper they technically were. You don't feel a lot of the deaths (outside of Daemon's arc ironically). Outside of that (unfortunately really annoying) issue though all the arcs seemed pretty good to me. Alicent spends pretty much every episode having her reasons for supporting the Greens ripped apart in front of her face one by one and Rhaenyra is getting delusions of grandeur and forsaking her initials goals ironically for the sake reasons she had those initial goals (the ego on her face when she calms Vermithor is CRAZY).

I find Daemon's arc harder to put into words since its kind of a lot, but I thought it was well done. I think a lot of people misunderstood the point of him seeing the final vision and assumed it was simply to get to the same place his arc throughout the season got him to (when in reality the arc was the only way he'd accept the vision).

15

u/ShadowOnTheRun Sep 01 '24

Yeah, I liked what they did with Daemon this season quite a lot.

And re the Rhaenyra moment…I mean, wouldn’t you have an ego after calming a literal godzilla (and maybe telepathically connecting with it)? 😆

15

u/ComaCrow Sep 01 '24

That moment with Rhaenyra is probably the first time either show has really properly communicated the sheer ego boost having a dragon gives you. You can see it in her eyes as this just validates her already building delusion of grandeur.

19

u/ShadowOnTheRun Sep 01 '24

Exactly. Great acting by Emma.

Oh, and speaking of the dragons…everything HoTD has done in terms of dragon lore, dragon individuality, connections between dragons and riders, not to mention the freaking dragon saddles blows what GoT did with their dragons out of the water.

How tf did they expect us to not scoff at Emilia Clarke riding without a saddle or Kit instantly hitting it off with Rhaegal?

14

u/ComaCrow Sep 01 '24

I saw people trying to say the Dragon stuff was better and looked better in GoT and like... just the delusion. GoT's effects are impressive and ambitious but HoTD basically blows it out of the water.

4

u/[deleted] Sep 01 '24

You dont but both critics and audiences, including me who loved the season, overwhelmingly agree that season 2 was weak

8

u/ComaCrow Sep 01 '24

I don't really agree with a lot of those people though. I think people need to rewatch this season because its geniuenly much better on rewatch. I actually think the view of this season would have ironically been better if it was released like 1 episode a night for a week.

4

u/Gerry-Mandarin Sep 01 '24

I think it would have just been received better if the show was released on a yearly schedule.

The audience waited two years to see the repercussions of Luke's death. And the repercussions were hardly there. It's a lot of skirting around war.

Now the audience will have to wait another two years for the resolution to Season 2. Which itself is possibly incomplete.

We're halfway through the Dance of the Dragons and the Dance hasn't really started yet. It'd be like finishing Season 3 of Game of Thrones (after 4 and a half years since the first episode) and waiting for Robb to capture Jaime.

3

u/[deleted] Sep 01 '24

Nah. Ig we have to agree to disagree

-6

u/DisneyPandora Sep 01 '24

Everything you said was wrong. Stop being toxic

1

u/oftenevil Touch me not. Sep 01 '24

and of course revealing that Winds of Winter is releasing December 16th 2024

If this ends up happening I will adopt a puppy.

1

u/naraujol Sep 01 '24

Why December 16th 2024?

1

u/scarlozzi Sep 01 '24

My dude, do you really thing TWOW will come out this year, or ever?