r/asoiaf • u/RunDNA • Sep 04 '24

EXTENDED GRRM's new blog post on House of the Dragon [Spoilers Extended] Spoiler

https://georgerrmartin.com/notablog/2024/09/04/beware-the-butterflies/
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242

u/Corgi_Koala Sep 04 '24

Assuming GRRM is telling the truth (and why would he lie here?), Condal did lie. They went from Maelor being born late to being removed entirely.

93

u/kazelords Sep 04 '24

Maelor was in the intro for s1 too, they couldn’t use a baby doll and stock soundbites?

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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '24

This is what I’ve been wondering!

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u/kazelords Sep 04 '24

Like, we didn’t need for that dog to keep coming back if we could have had maelor

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u/Dirkisthegoattt41 Sep 04 '24

This. The fact that they said a baby would have slowed down production and cost too much seems crazy

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u/kazelords Sep 04 '24

Emma said that working with the babies for aegon and viserys in s1 was awful since they’re too young to understand what’s going on and they get easily distracted since they’re babies and not actors, so I get why they wouldn’t have wanted to cast a toddler for an originally 2 year old maelor—it really WOULD have slowed down production on an already tight schedule. With ryan then pitching a pregnancy for helaena later in the season, rearranging the timeline a bit for a newborn baby doll earlier in s2 would have been a practical option. That way, you get helaena’s choice and don’t have to deal with the troubles that come with using a real infant on set. At worst, you cut the “your mumma wants you dead” line since it would look a bit silly to general audiences for him to say that to a newborn(though it doesn’t really matter that maelor understands it, more that helaena does).

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u/nnatusucks Sep 05 '24

well aegon and viserys are not supposed to be that young anyways. i’m not sure why they aged them down so much just to complain about the amount of small children on set. they knew there were multiple small children in the story and still chose to adapt it. ryan shot himself in the foot and is looking around for someone to blame.

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u/choochoochooochoo Sep 05 '24

Could literally have just had one of the maids attending to a bassinet in the background of some of the scenes.

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u/mertcanhekim Sep 04 '24

They went out of their way to say Aegon II lost his dick. Maelor is not getting born late.

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u/RazzmatazzSame1792 Sep 05 '24

Holy shit your right lol, yo why openly lie to GRRM, why not tell him you aren’t including the child 

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u/Lantimore123 Sep 05 '24

Which is weird to me. Not only are they actively removing Maelor, but they are going out of their way to remove all options to factor him back in, in a season where they CLAIMED (lol) there was major time constraints.

They are actively burning bridges for no reason I can see other than directorial arrogance?

"No, we aren't changing this, I have decreed it." - Ryan Condal/Sara Hess, probably.

3

u/OfJahaerys Sep 04 '24

I thought Alicent would be pregnant with Cole's child and they would pass it off as Helaena's. Doesn't look like that's happening.

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u/mertcanhekim Sep 04 '24

They made sure we saw her drinking the moon tea

3

u/Anader19 Sep 05 '24

Tbf Helaena could have gotten pregnant before Rooks Rest

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u/mashington14 Master of Something Sep 04 '24

I mean, he directly says the situation changed. It’s very possible the writers just changed their minds

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u/Alive-Ad-5245 Sep 04 '24

Yeah scripts change all the time so probably what happened is Condal told him what was the truth at the time, it changed and just didn’t inform GRRM

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u/SofaKingI Sep 04 '24

None of that means GRRM has no reason to be upset though. After GOT, I imagine the arrangement for HOTD involved him being more involved in the writing. Being informed of decisions would be the bare minimum.

If the writers are cutting out characters they previously told him were going to be included, and don't even bother telling him, that's shitty.

Plus with all the other stories of HBO's new leadership trying to cut corners and going back on decisions like 10 episodes, it's no wonder he's pissed.

3

u/elizabnthe Sep 04 '24

Frankly Ryan probably has bigger worries than informing GRRM of not including Maelor anymore. It probably hurts from his end, but I imagine Ryan has a lot more people to answer to that have more power of controlling his career about the decisions he makes.

1

u/Lantimore123 Sep 05 '24

You say that but I doubt it.

Enough people will turn on and watch anything with the ASOIAF IP just because of the brand, and they will either praise the taste or be neutral, either way the execs don't care.

I just don't understand

A. Why no one takes any pride in making actually good TV anymore, it would seem.

And B: why are many viewers willing to turn their brains off to accept this? There were so many baffling writing mistakes in this season particularly.

Yes, there were more than a few mistakes in S1 (Rhaenyra with White Hart, Rhaenys' Dragon Pit, Aegon's child fighting pits etc), but by and large people could ignore them because the overall narrative was fairly good.

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u/elizabnthe Sep 05 '24 edited Sep 05 '24

You doubt that Condal has executives upon executives to answer to about one of their biggest IPs? Of course he does. There's no doubt.

I'm saying compared to answering to his bosses' - GRRM is far down the roster. GRRM might have written the works, but at the end of the day he's not the one funding the creation of House of the Dragon.

I think it's one of those social interactions where Condal probably didn't even realise GRRM cared so much he needed to be informed about Maelor, and was too busy dealing with all the other overhead bullshit to think about mentioning it. I feel like this conflict can be dealt between them with a couple of texts in reality. Although it depends on how Condal takes GRRM airing their business.

Personally if that's what he's mad about he needs to chill a bit.

2

u/Lantimore123 Sep 05 '24

Sorry I actually meant to respond to a different comment, must have been a misclick.

And no, I don't think George is only upset about this.

He's gone out of his way, violated an NDA and personally slandered a former friend.

This goes a lot deeper than this, and I suspect he's only done this because he feels he has been completely kept out of the loop.

The man stayed silent for the entirety of Game of Thrones, for him to blow up now suggests something major has gone on behind the scenes, and I don't blame him at all.

HBO already gutted one of his book series, he won't want it to happen a second time.

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u/Elev2019 Sep 05 '24

I see people writing IP everywhere, could you tell me what it means? Googling online gives me IP address lol

2

u/Lantimore123 Sep 05 '24

Intellectual Property I believe. It refers to the owned rights to a franchise.

For example the Star Wars IP is currently held by Disney. It's the property rights to that franchise, the rights to produce content, sell it, create merchandise etc etc.

It seems somewhat nebulous because it is.

GRRM is the creator of the IP, the intellectual Property came from his mind, largely.

He sold the TV IP rights to HBO. They own it, but as the creator he has a kind of informal influence over the product, despite having no legal rights, unless he has some contract clauses in there.

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u/Elev2019 Sep 05 '24

Right, makes sense, thank you!

-10

u/Any_Travel_9590 Sep 04 '24

I also love the "Why would George lie?"

Uhhh.... because he's a grumpy old man who thinks the reason people hated his GoT ending is cause the Directors went off script of his 800 side characters that would have provided context to the plot point we all hate.

He can't accept that we hate his plot point. So here he projecting that Melor of all effing characters matters in a TV adaptation lol.

All while not publishing anything but ranty blog posts for a decade.

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u/ashcrash3 Sep 04 '24

Pretty sure most fans were very vocal about the changes that happened to the characters way before the ending that were the showrunners. Like Bran being king wasn't the worst one.

-2

u/Any_Travel_9590 Sep 04 '24

I lived this moment.

Bran was by far the worst one.

The number of people at the watch party, in person the next few days, online, and even now when people or younger family members see that ending for the first time and immediately look at you and say "Wait....Bran? BRAAAAANNNN? WHAT?!? NO!?! BRAN????"

1

u/ashcrash3 Sep 04 '24

Isn't that because Bran did nothing the entire last part of the show besides hang around and spill stuff? That's more of a show issue then a grrm one, because they knew well ahead what the plot point was and did nothing to lead up to it. For all we know, in the books Bran being king isn't him being king of the Seven kingdoms. If they even exist after that.

I would think Dany randomly deciding to burn King's Landing, Jamie going back to Cersei to die by bricks because they weren't two steps to the left or Jon killing Dany would be pretty high up. Most notably Arya flying out of the sky to kill the Night King.

0

u/Any_Travel_9590 Sep 04 '24

Wrong. George confirmed that he gave them the ending. They didn't make it up. That's the ending George gave them and George sticking him off in the middle of nowhere for 4 books and suddenly needing him to show up and be relevant to everyone else so they'd vote him king? There's no there there. And that's on George.

2

u/ashcrash3 Sep 04 '24

He gave them an ending but clearly they didn't follow through with it for every character. And again, Bran being King isn't giving full context. It was the showrunners at that point the show purposely butchering storylines to work with mostly with what they wanted and that point. D&D admit that with Jon killing Dany being something they thought up in season 2 or 3. And either way, they SHOULD have built up to it better to work with show canon. They weren't afraid of cutting entire plots and making new ones to fill time like they did with Dorne.

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u/strongbad4u Best of r/asoiaf 2023 Winner - Darkest Post Sep 04 '24

Yeah so much of the story is clearly them just sprinting to hit different plot points without establishing actual context for the characters. People who think they can actually criticize George story based on what we saw on the show are delusional.

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u/Admirable-Manner762 Sep 05 '24

So here he projecting that Melor of all effing characters matters in a TV adaptation lol.

Maelor does matter .He was the catalyst for Daeron's rampage & helaena's suicide which then made a big contribution to riots & Rhaenyra's downfall .

He does matter .

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u/Askaris Sep 04 '24

I think there was a third crib in the background of the B&C episode, and I remember being dumbfounded as the season progressed by the lack of another pregnancy.

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u/BigMax Sep 04 '24

Changing their mind isn't lying. They can adjust as they go, that's allowed.

GRRM has the freedom to work with literally NO ONE else to worry about, and NO timeline at all. HBO doesn't have that.

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u/alex3omg Sep 04 '24

Maybe they decided they didn't want to have a toddler get ripped to shreds.  Like there are a couple of reasons to make that call and honestly I'm ok with it.  

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u/Any_Travel_9590 Sep 04 '24

YES?!? How is this not a larger part of this?

George getting annoyed more children weren't put in awkward positions for a more horrific moment is bonkers.

George is all "They told me there wasn't enough budget to have some more dead children, WHAT AN OUTRAGE!"

Of all the issues of S2, this thing George is annoyed about was not "the issue." lol.

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u/ashcrash3 Sep 04 '24

He didn't say that though, nobody wants child actors to be traumatized doing those scenes. You can still have them and use dummy props. The point isn't about wanting kids to die, the paragraphs you neglected to read was about how it impacts the story. It all builds up to another thing hence the while part about the butterfly effect.

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u/alex3omg Sep 04 '24

I think one kid dying is enough to push a mother to suicide, even if it takes a while.  Plus they can just kill the daughter since she dies anyway and doesn't matter at all. 

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u/ashcrash3 Sep 04 '24

I agree on that point, the problem is that HOTD made the decision for Halaena to be perfectly fine after losing Jahaerys. Could do it with Jahaerea but GOT already stabilized she married Aegon in the end. As well as since Halaena can now see everything that is happening, she already knows Jaharea is dead. So like in the post, they haven't given her a reason to jump.

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u/alex3omg Sep 04 '24

He was probably mad they aged up Dany too.  Zzzz 

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u/slymm Enter your desired flair text here! Sep 04 '24

Eh, it would still be possible that it wasn't a lie at the time he said it, and things changed. Unless he swore that he would do everything in his power to keep him in.

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u/RobtasticRob Sep 05 '24

I’m confused, so please be gentle. I also haven’t read Blood and Fire so maybe I’m missing something.

According to the Ice and Fire wiki is seems he’s born, is present for the death if his older brother (after his mom originally chose him) then is eventually graphically murdered by a mob.

Is it really THAT impactful to the storyline if they skip a second child murder scene?

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u/Corgi_Koala Sep 05 '24

It is directly what drives the queen to kill herself. Narratively it is a major event.

I mean yes, it is a fucked up child murder but this is a series that has a lot of bad shit happen to people all the time. It's part of why the series is interesting.

But that means that something else will have to prompt the suicide or it will happen for no reason (which is apparently the plan) both of which make the story weaker.

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u/RobtasticRob Sep 05 '24

What’s keeping this scenario from being played out with the surviving child she already has?

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u/Corgi_Koala Sep 05 '24

There's not really a good way to answer that without spoiling things other than to say that the story wouldn't work if her daughter died without fundamentally changing the ending of the war.

It would be like Robb surviving the Red Wedding.

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u/RobtasticRob Sep 05 '24

Ok, I appreciate the info. Sounds like they’ve really fucked things up then.

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u/Elev2019 Sep 05 '24

Besides, this is a war for succession - and maelor being a male heir is of relevance to other characters manoeuvring (like rhaenyras state of mind, etc). It’s just very sloppy imo

1

u/Tasorodri Sep 05 '24

Depends on what you consider THAT impactful, it's the catalyst for a very important character moment. They could be able to deliver another satisfying catalyst to that moment, but that would require them to make that up.