Sara Hess and the Fan-Ficification of House of the Dragon 

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Remember when George R. R. Martin briefly touched upon how much civilian lives matter in his setting? Just a little think piece called A FEAST FOR CROWS.

DnD didn't "ran out of book material" they had enough book material after season 4 to make AT LEAST 2 more season, but they decided to shove almost 2 books in the first half of season 5 and then rushed to the end of the story. DnD got bored with the show after season 4, that's why they rejected more and more extra episodes just so they could end as soon as possible

Tom Glynn Carney is 99% of the reason Aegon II comes off so interesting and sympathetic. He absolutely gets it and makes the most of every scene he's in, whether its big or small.

This is legit good faith analysis and I hope it gets the traction it deserves and not just hand waived like all other criticism of season 2.

LocalScriptMan on youtube says that characters are not people, and I feel like that’s what Sarah gets wrong about the portrayal of Aegon. She keeps bringing up real men without acknowledging that story beats within a narrative are placed in strategic ways - that’s why Joffery’s most prominent introductory scene is when Tyrion slaps him and he screams for his mother, and not Joffery’s torture and murder of sex workers from the later seasons.

"Alicent and Rhaenyra 'come' together for the climax" 😳😂😂

You literally posted this right as I’m taking off for an hour and a half drive. What a mad lad 😂

People would not be upset with the scene if it didnt take up precious screen time during the finale and called the "highlight of the series" by one of the writers it felt like salt in the wound after such a disappointing finale

I do find it interesting that Mysaria, a character that was involved in sex trafficking of women and children in the books, is literally turned into the opposite in the show, considering what was done to Aegon.

I think what people miss is that Hess is very good at writing small scale interactions. If you give her a scene between no more than 5 character's she can do something amazing with it. The problem is she doesn't tend to pair these moments with the wider narrative, what she writes doesn't consider all of the context surrounding the moment. Again make her do something on a large scale juggling too many character's and she often falls flat, either by mischaracterising existing characters or under developing and devaluing new ones. She makes choices which benefit the scene she is writing in that moment, rather than what advances the narrative as a whole. This is why she is very good a character driven shows where in many way's each episode is very self contained, but falls flat in what is essentially a movie drawn out into a television show to give the story more space to be told. Game or Thrones and House of the Dragon do not have these self-contained scenes, each scene has an impact on the next and sometimes these scene's profoundly impact the show as a whole, so going with the flow for them when you have specific places you have to reach narratively doesn't work. When GRRM writes like this he at most has a few broad strokes, all he really knows when he sits down to write the dance is that *spoiler* Rhaenrya does not become queen, but she ends up with 2 sons that become king and that all the dragon's essentially die off. This is broad enough that he has a lot of free reign with the character's and is given room to explore numerous plot lines through the many perspectives. Hess has to adapt what is already there, she has to write in the context of multiple battles, character deaths and long term arcs which are by in large set in stone. She like GRRM himself struggles to write what has already been set in stone, she want's to do thing in a scene because it feels right not because it meaningfully enhances the plot or themes. This is easier to do in Season 1 because any mis-steps or character driven scenes have a lot of room to be developed off screen in the time skips. Without the skips we essentially see characters flipping to make the most impact and then ignoring it in a following scene which just makes the story feel disconnected.

Problems with s2 IMO: 1. Moving too far from the gray, no-heroes nature of GRRM 2. Bias against the Greens and the writer's own agendas 3. Girlbossification of Rhaenyra (which def resembles fanfiction) 4. whatever in the Seven God's names that Daemon-alabamaing-his-mom scene was 5. the lack of clear cohesion, direction, and sense between s1 and s2 6. Completely disregarding the characters' core traits and their motivations 7. Even as a bi person myself, the romance between Rhaenyra and Mysaria felt forced. 8. The half-baked attempts at feminism/social justice that fall flat. Some of the S1 changes worked, IMO. I liked that Jace's death was somewhat of an accident that Aemond regretted, because that made Aemond less of a hand-rubbing supervillain and more deep/vulnerable. I liked the dramatic changes they made to Viserys from the drunken fatso he was in the books ... a change even GRRM applauded and said he wished he wrote. I like that the characters were humanized, sympathetic, flawed and more nuanced at times than cartoonish in their villainy. I don't think Sarah Hess is the ONLY reason the show failed. Other writers played a role too, so it does seem like they are looking for a scapegoat to blame for EVERYTHING - as fanbases often do. Attacking her appearance, relatives, and using slurs are STILL unacceptable, even if her writing in these season was bad. "Civilians don't count" sounds like CLASSISM to me as well as pure silliness. Did she not hear herself?!? If you want to make a feminist show, you can't ignore inequality of any kind (like wealth or class) or gloss over the fact that 50% of the people Rhaenys the Girlboss killed ... were women. It is so disappointing this season let us down when the show was so promising.

Nah, Alicent and Rhaenyra scisoring each other in season 3 will be peak fiction.

I'm baffled that it wasn't one (1) woman's fault that an entire season was lackluster?? No, but for real, it's so weird when people pick one person to blame for everything in these situations. This was made by a huge team and everyone has their ups and downs. Sara did some great things, and some meh things. Everyone on the team did some great things and some meh things. The important director guy apparantly left and made the entire season feel off because he wanted to nepotism his wife into a director job with zero experience, which is probably the most obnoxious GOT-related thing I've ever heard. If we need to blame one person, can we blame him?

My take on Sara Hess is that she is a talented writer who seems unprofessional. The "Internet Boyfriend" comment is a shining example. It's one thing to incorporate certain aspects of your life experiences when creating your own original work. It's another to have it overshadow the task you were hired for. Do your job. She is a commissioned artist for House of the Dragon, not its source material creator. In trying to make Rhaenyra and Alicent more benevolent, she made them into two blithering idiots in season 2. If Hess was trying to prove that women are just as competent or worthy of holding positions of power, she failed if not demonstrated the opposite through Rhaenyra and Alicent.

It funny, I keep forgetting that Aegon and Rhaenera are siblings because of how apart they are in age.

Glidus and Alt Schwift X have really fun commentary about S2 -- when Rhaenyra said "Princess Aeriana Targaryen" in the show they pointed out how it was impossible for Ser Steffon's ancestor to be a princess, how Targaryen women never married out of the family prior to Rhaenys, and just how fanfic OC this all sounded. EDIT: Targaryen women never married outside the family prior to Jaehaerys' line (see: Daella).

I seen this chanel before but only sporadically before, see the thumbnail and expected the worst and I must say never i was more happy to watch the whole video before commenting, absolute positive surprise amazing thoughtful work

I'm glad someone well spoken and with a sense of nuance has talked about this. I generally think that people are good at knowing things are good/bad, but terrible at knowing why. I don't think such an enormous quantity of people are wrong for saying the show is missing the mark, but they attribute it to dumb shit like "woke", when really it's layers of details like this that end up with the final product the way that it is. I feel like the writers see the feedback and write it off as pointless, wrong, and toxic, which it is, but it's also fans who feel hurt by something they love and want it to be better.

Thank you for creating such a comprehensive and in depth look at the behind the scenes reasons why the writing for season 2 faltered. Ngl I was wary at first based on the title because I’ve seen a lot of rage post videos about HOTD S2 (some coherent some just an excuse to attack people who worked on the show) but you did such a fantastic job dissecting both the great and underwhelming aspects of S2’s writing. Kudos to you for doing your research!

got did not get bad when they ran out of source material….. they straight up didn’t adapt feastdance

What makes it worst is that it was only 8 episodes and we have to wait two years for the next season. I don’t mind a few changes from book to show, but Fire and Blood should have been simple to adapt to screen. and much more exciting. The war of five kings was much more complex and they knocked it out of the park.

Taking away the bite of Rhaenyra felt like we weren’t allowing her to just be angry. I was excited by the queer subtext direction that season 1 had taken, and was hoping that there would be an added level of heartbreak and betrayal to the death of Lucerys at the hands of Allison’s son. I love portrayals of very intimate friendships between young women because it’s so close to my own life. It would have been fascinating to watch that kind of relationship be twisted into a hatred purer than Criston’s for Rhaenyra - both women could be driven mad by their level of hatred for each other - it would have been iconic. I don’t think it would fall into “mad woman” tropes either, because making their conflict more about each other - and cutting back on the amount of men condescending to them, because they’re both so terrifying and commanding, or something - I think there might be a very interesting show there.

I declare this as the best state of HotD video on youtube! The only thing that was lacking is the deleted blog of GG Martin, who actually make some similar points to yours!

6 minutes in and I really appreciate the approach so far. A lot of people just jump on the hate bandwagon without giving it any real meaningful thought, so to see a RU-vidr address the situation with nuance and actually put the work in to understand the complexities of this stuff is very encouraging

I'm not gonna lie, it took me until 43 mins in but I realized you were saying "Game of Throne" and "House of the Dragons", well played.

Mindboggling how they assigned a deranged activist as show writer.

You know your writing has caused serious trouble when Aegon “the dipsh*t rapi*t” has become one of the breakout characters on the show. Tom had an impossible challenge and still brought 110% to the role. Even with the writing trying to soften up Alicent and Rhaenyra, it just makes him feel like a underdog.

Considering what civilians do during the storming of the dragon pit, civilians not only count, they’re pivotal to the process of the whole war and Targaryen dynasty in the long term.

31:00 What's so bonkers is that she actually does make a really good point in that one quote, and she's correct about how women are commonly portrayed throughout history. What she fails to understand though is that biased history tends to come in caricatures, rather than inventing shit out of whole cloth. No, Rhaenyra probably didn't put on 50 pounds after her pregnancy and spend her time stuffing her face with deserts as Septon Eustace implies. But different women have different bodies, that carry weight differently after pregnancy. Some women don't struggle at all to lose pregnancy weight and others do. It's entirely sensible to assume that Septon Eustace, who was both a partisan of Aegon and a member of a religious order not known for its positive views of women, would represent Rhaenyra in a deliberately unflattering way where he could. But Hess's assertion that he basically jusst made up that she got fat after being pregnant because he's a supporter of the Patriarchy is such a wildly excessive over-correction. It's so frustrating, because she come so close to actually being able to have a serious conversation about gender roles in a patriarchal feudal society, and how women who exercise power in defiance of social convention are represented in historical sources, but she completely torpedoes the possibility to have a good faith conversation about the subject by taking the position she takes.

HOTD takes a massive shit on one of the central themes of ASOIAF, which is that the whole social structure, the lords, kings, knights, small folk, is all completely arbitrary. The good characters are not good because they are highborn, they are good because they choose to be. Some of the lords are just straight up evil, and in the fighting between the lords, the true loser is the small folk. But then we get to HOTD, and I think maybe yeah, the small folk actually do deserve no rights, because they are SO STUPID. Throughout s2, Rhaenyra is stopping imports to KL, kills Aegon’s son, and Osama Bin-Rhaenys is on her side, so everyone in KL should despise her. Then halfway through the season she sends them some food and all the small folk are like “eh yeah you know what, this Rhaenyra person might have a point.” Did NOBODY have an uncle or like a kid or a mom or something at Aegon’s coronation?? Wheres the people in KL wanting to take up arms for Aegon and kill Rhaenys? Then they parade Melys’ head through the street and the small folk are like “oof mate bloody bad omen that one is.” Not ONE person is like “thank the gods that bloody terrorist killed me nan”?? Such a terrible writing decision that obviously spiraled into a giant plot hole. Writers need to stop trying to add stuff to adaptations. The original author already thought of all your ideas for changes during the writing process, but then realized how STUPID it would be if they wrote that.

I find myself thinking "that's kinda dumb" while watching it, while feeling like I like it... Now I suddenly realized it's the great cast I'm so drawn to in this show.

I literally just finished binging every Song of Ice and Fire related video on your channel cause I love your analysis so much and then you post this. What lovely, serendipitous timing!

Bravo Savage, I had some notes I planned to make however you per usual are an informed professional and addressed them. I still am of the opinion that HBO cut the episodes for whatever reason, and this combined with the writer's strike led to a lot of rough scenes of S2 being unfixed.

You did a fantastic job putting into words many things that bothered me I couldn't articulate properly. Absolute great video.

I'm sure when Peter Jackson was adapting Lord of the Rings, he brought on Philipa Boyens for a "fresh set of eyes" not because she was a massive fan of the series they were adapting on top of being a talented writer. Im honestly sick and tired of this bs. When did filmmakers stop making films for fans and start making them for themselves. Its completely ass backwards.

If Sara Hess continues not caring about the civilians, it’s gonna ruin a major plot development that’s pivotal to climax of the story.

More long essays like this please! I'm going to be rewatching this one 🌈 as a trans man I love the way you dove into Lohar's character and placement in the finale, because as a trans man I was also very confused while watching the finale.

Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU, for delving into the Criston/Rhaenyra fiasco. I've seen no other creator address how there's functionally no difference between Rhaenyra and Aegon when it comes to consent and abusing their powerful position in order to get sex, and fandom has been doing outright r*ape apologia about it for YEARS.

I was wanting someone to make a super long video on the major major issues this show has and I wish this was longer but this will suffice. Great work man

Savage books? Nah. More like Savage in the gym. Bruh. Are you swoll, or are your arms just happy to see me?

The Rogue Prince is gonna get ruined so hard next season i can feel it.

"Luthor is a twink." ......Yeah, yep- that's it- that's what's gonna make my week. Excuse me while I find a throw pillow to stitch this on.

I legit feel like Harry Potter is the only successful translation from a book to a movie, considering how many movies, how long the series was. It was faithful. I can't think of a second example.

I don't think the problem of a lack of consequences is limited to the expectations of the Game of Thrones fanbase... I'd argue it's just bad writing in general. GoT didn't invent consequences. I'd expect any show which is meant to be taken seriously to have cause and effect, setup and payoff, action and reaction.

seasons 1-4 of GOT were anything but a "beat for beat" adaptation of the books. it's D&D severely misunderstanding that this is a fantasy story, not just politics, and cutting off all magical elements and characters that ruined the show in the long run. it's a little tiring hearing that they "ran out of source material", when there was plenty of source material they chose to ignore, like the pretty much the entirety of book 5. with that said they were great at adapting the politics of the story, but ASOIAF is so much more than that.

I often compare GoT/HotD to turkish drama series Magnificent Century, evolving around Sultan Suleyman's harem and his wife, Hurrem - extremly ambitious, smart and proud woman who worked within extremly patriarhical society - used it, and worked beyond it to secure power for herself and her sons, achieving what not many women of those times couldn't. Of course, it has elements of telenovela at times, and many misinterpreted facts used to prolong and entertain audience as any show does, but as autor of this video emphasized as important - it did work with the available historic material - it did follow main events, and believe me, many of them were as tragic and horrendeous as in GoT, if not worse, especially having in mind the series is based on real-life events.

OMG I've been talking about that S1 scene since it aired, like she is literally his boss, holding his life in her hands, he legitimately could not refuse her. Rhaenyra genuinely r*ped Cole but people were saying it's "hot" and "a perfect female gaze sex scene". Then now he's lambasted as "hating rhaenyra because she rejected him" when she literally FORCED him to break his vows, something that obviously deeply affected him. They really did him the dirtiest imo its sad how people can only see victim-blaming when it goes one way

"She had kids and got fat." How is that sexist that happens to a lot of women who don't live in Hollywood sounds fatphobic.

This season ruined the whole show. I knew it wasn't going to live up to the hype after they bungled the Blood and cheese plot the way they did. Disgusting.

I felt soo uncomfortable when Rhaenyra started undressing Cole and he was frozen. I felt like he didn't "defend" himself because he didn't really realize what was happening and then he told her to stop D: he didn't consent and she put him into biiig trouble. And we shalll ... no, I cannot see anything positive about Rhaenyra in that situation

It’s about time.

Dont think we are just gonna ignore the Tokyo Ghoul theme in the background.

This video was so measured and thorough, great work man

Brilliant analysis and insight, the behind the scenes interviews definitely opened my eyes to what the rationale was behind those decisions

Let's Fucking Go Savage

Film/TV is always gonna be different from the books, they're gonna have different perspectives and focuses, it's inevitable. Two versions of the same story for the most part. One of the perks of TV/film is that we can adapt books to more modern sentimentalities, such as a more diverse cast which is more important in TV/film than in books, cos books are written by one person (or a small group of authors) for countless readers who can include their own diversity when they read the book, what the author wants to to understand is more subjective. But TV/film is written and produced by teams of people, ideally diverse teams of people, and need to cater to diverse audiences. So it's natural they'll be some differences tween books and TV/film, so long as the core values/morals/story is maintained then TV/film can play around with the story/characters.

What an amazing and well structured analysis. Great argumentation, presented in an interesting and engaging way

Every change is a butterfly effect. And they just keep going in the mess. Like got when cersie had a child with Robert or how they justify rhegar leaving his wife by adding divorce which didn't happen or exist

Thumbnail does not do the good faith criticism justice

Every statement I hear from her makes me scratch my chin and go “what do you mean by that?”

I’m around 30 mins into the video n - I still can’t wrap my head around the choice of words - what’s ‘pro feminist views’ what’s inserting her queerness n followed by her agendas means - are you saying the show is bad cuz it doesn’t platform anti feminist views, are you saying that her queerness or is something that someone makes a choice to ‘insert’ and that it has no place in got - and only straight people interpretation matters- the closested gay man story is better rather than some other thing as it appeals to the straight- Emma being non binary is a good cuz we get to mark off a checklist ‘ it’s inclusive’ but don’t actually show gender queerness we have appeal to the straight. What ever valid criticism you have can still be told without having to resort to bigoted talking points or word’s which operate as dog whistles and how can one tell otherwise.

I was nervous coming into this video. A lot of these comments reek of culture war conflict, and people can often hate or uplift something for the wrong reasons. I don't think I fully agree with your points about adaptations (in particular, _Fire and Blood_ seems an almost-perfect book to adapt loosely since it's written unreliably) but your analysis was even-handed and even empathetic. In particular, I think the situation with Abigail Thorne/Lohar was laid out very well, and I was surprised by your take that it was too much and too little: too much because it's taking up a lot of screen-time, and too little because it's supposed to have this big impact that isn't there. I think the appropriation of fanfiction terms for professional writing is also causing a lot of issues for watchers of the series. It's being used as a shorthand to dismiss the writing as juvenile in a way that denigrates the actually really good fanfiction that's out there, similarly to how "Mary Sue" was used a few years ago to describe competent female leads. It's distracting from the actual issues of the show and it's myopic about where quality writing can be found.

The Lohar thing as Ryan described it is so similar to a character from Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive. The character is female, but she works in a traditionally male role. People under her refer to her as a male because they can’t wrap their minds around a woman being in that role. She thinks it’s weird but she doesn’t correct them 😂

This was a truly fascinating and fair critique and praise!

The best way I could describe House of the Dragon: flawed, but fascinating.

SB Evangelion video when??

This was a really eloquent expression of a lot of my own conflicted thoughts on the season. It was a good faith examination that covered so many different aspects of the season as a whole. I only have one thing I think perhaps you perhaps misunderstood -- I think the character of Lohar was an adaptation of Racallio Ryndoon, who is a man who plays with a lot of gender aspects (like dressing in womens' clothing and using she/her pronouns sometimes), has multiple wives, and is constantly funny/terrifying in a way that I actually found quite accurate to how Thorne portrayed Lohar. Racallio wasn't involved much in the Dance -- he was much more important a few years AFTER the end of the civil war to a totally different character. But I do think Racallio was the inspiration for Lohar's increased role in the tv show. And I think that is what the writers were trying to articulate when they talked about the character of Lohar. I think Lohar is supposed to be a transwoman who is called a man by her crew and people, bc they can't conceive of her being a woman -- just a weird dude. And as long as her traditional masculine traits are present as much she sort of unabashedly presents as a woman, she is able to lead effectively. I could be wrong, but I do think this is the root of the confusion with this character and why it seemed so needlessly complex. I still think it was a TERRIBLE idea to introduce lohar in the middle of the season finale, but I think they are trying to build her up to be a more important player in the leadup to the Gullet, which they seem to want to expand on.

The value of the show would actually go up if she’s actually responsible for all of these bad things in season 2. Based on what this video has shown, she has to go. The show would BENEFIT GREATLY from her leaving especially for season 3 to come. I didn’t read the book but hearing what we lost for the season 2 ending fills me with such despair that we didn’t get that at all due to arguably her actions. That’s so unfortunate.

Unravel in the background fucken gold

Very nuance view, and well research.

HotD is speed running the same path GoT took. Only it took GoT 6 season to turn to trash, and HotD will do it in a remarkable 3.

Ok but, when will Savage books do Evangelion?

I think a lot of it had to do with them not being able to do rewrites do to the writers strike. So they all got their first drafts before Sarah could get hers reviewed and edited.

That is the photo of aegon the unworthy not viserys.

I think a lot of it had to do with them not being able to do rewrites do to the writers strike. So they all got their first drafts before Sarah could get hers reviewed and edited. They really should not have gone as grand as they did with House of the Dragon. They should have gone with Dunc and Egg first because a show like that would be far easier to make. That way you can create a strong core of writers. They needed to develop a strong longstanding writing culture. Kind of like how Warhammer handles their property. They have some really good writers and they have ground rules that they (usually) follow.

Did you add Mr. Blue Sky over that Bran the Broken scene or is that something I haven't seen before? I diiiiiied laughing

Harwin he's just a good guy? But no though. What paragon of virtue would sire bastards secretly with the Princess? He isn't evil but it is a stretch to say "just a GOOD guy"

There is a difference between portraying a closeted gay man (form the book material) and allowing an improvised immersive breaking lesbian kiss that came out of nowhere. There’s a difference between understanding a particular nuance and shoving your entire ideology and background in places it shouldn’t be. It actually doesn’t matter that 3 actors are queer you know why? Because their characters aren’t. Even Laenors homosexuality is a plot device more than a character trait because he actually has goals and hobbies and loves his step kids. It only exists for people to realize that Rhaenyra’s kids are bastards (in the book the Velaryons are not black). I have no problem with queer people writing tv. I do when they inject their ideology in places where it doenst make sense. Even people in the LGBTQ community hated Mysaria and Rhaenyra’s kiss because it had no build up, made no sense, and was after one of the characters revealed their traumatic backstory. What the hell? Be a good writer and adapt a story that’s been written.

Lenin quote about nothing ever happening (In season 2).

1:16:18 Hercules was great

This is incredible.

Great video!

I didn't bail on a work event to watch this, but I now feel highly vindicated for skipping.

very precise points bro

She could have been removed from the writers room and nothing of value would have been lost

I might watch this video as I also felt a bit weird when watching S2. I still had a great time though, and felt like the second half of S1 was a bit lackluster too anyway.

Good ass video. Subbing rn Edit: I’m already subbed lmai

Excellent video

Those armsssss!!!

Sara Hess is the new Kathleen Kennedy GOT season 4 is the last good season HOTD season 2 is the new season 8 3eyed raven is the main character controlling everyone since the Targs left for dragonstone WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE ME DO = I DON'T WANT IT SHE MUH QUEEN Hotdoodoo Season 2 is pure "fan" fiction filler slop with character agency stripped away as everyone is stuck in a loop.

Had a really hard time paying attention after the 30:00 mark because one piece dramatic music started playing in the background, had go back like 3 times to pay attention to what you were saying 😅

Why do I feel like you read that one quote like 4 times. 😅

At 42:28, I mean, you ARE wrong about that as there are plenty of characters that are intentionally written to be incredibly disliked and they ARE disliked but they’re still great characters like Cersei, Ramsay Bolton, and ESPECIALLY Joffrey who are villainous characters who are intentionally written to be disliked but they ARE nuanced in character writing. Same thing with other characters in fiction like Benny from The Mummy or Dolares Umbridge who are VERY disliked as characters but still great characters in their roles in the story. So intentional dislike isn’t a factor that a character can’t be nuanced because there’s plenty of characters that have proven that to not be true. But the way how Sara Hess goes about everything is just fundamentally wrong because she has absolutely no idea on what she’s doing NOR is she rightfully respecting the source material she’s supposed to be adapting. I understand the book Fire & Blood is supposed to be unreliable narrators telling the story so it’s not easy to know what’s true or not but you HAVE to have something concrete for the show as it’s VISUALLY presenting the story so what we see is supposed be what ACTUALLY happened, but her interpretation of the text is so fundamentally wrong that she really shouldn’t anywhere NEAR this show and story as it’s clear that she’s making everything worse just by how you describe her here.

Is the back ground music attack on titan ost❤

30:03 one Piece Music?!?

I believe that Aegon's introductory actions, him being a rapist, has had and could still have major consequences throughout the show. Firstly, You note that "all the material" of Aegon's sexual affairs were just him having bastards and him being known to "pinch or fondle any serving girl who strayed within his reach". It's worth noting that that's still sexual assault, fondling your employees whenever they come near is assault, and doing that enough times to be known for it constitutes sexual harassment. Also, one account in the book claims that he was found after the death of Viserys raping a child, the line reads "whilst a girl who could not have been more than twelve pleasured his member with her mouth". You claim the show invents the idea of him being a grown man raping a woman, but the book literally has an account of him doing worse. And although this source is not very credible, it is still included and is in line with his apparent well-known sexual misconduct that is also mentioned. More importantly, you state that the subject of Aegon's sexual actions and the consequences thereof are not brought up again in the first and second seasons, but that's also not true. Aegon encounters Dyanna again in her new place of work and does not recognise her at all, reminding us of this gaping character flaw, his lack of empathy and understanding. We see her supporting Rhaenyra and helping to sow suspicious and distrust towards the greens in King's Landing. She has no love of Aegon because he assaulted her. Whenever Aegon enters a room with serving girls present, they all seem to freeze up and exchange glances and appear generally uncomfortable, implying his actions are still ongoing, and adding to the idea that many working in the keep do not like him and may be more willing to betray him, which could have been explored if the season was given ten episodes. We also see Aegon not respecting boundries as he enters a brothel and later harasses Aemond, mocking him sexually, which constitutes sexual harassment. This influences Aemond then burning him alive, which directly leads to Aegon's own manhood being destroyed. He sexually harassed Aemond which contributed to Aemond's decision to assault him which led to Aegon's sex being destroyed. Although there were other things involved in the narrative, it is worth pointing out that one of his victims of sexual harasssment sought revenge and in turn led to his violent castration. Finally, and there will be big spoilers here, but that character trait may still have greater consequences in following seasons. In the books, there is a bastard of his named Gaemon Palehair who becomes a king for a month after the riot in King's Landing, which could be Dyanna's child in the show, if she didn't take the moon tea or it didn't work and if she was pregnant but not yet showing in season two. This would lead to direct conflict between Dyanna, Aegon, and the child born of rape when Aegon returns to King's Landing. While Gaemon becomes a serving boy, it is possible Dyanna might be made a serving girl again, allowing her to contribute to the poisoning of Aegon. Another one of his victims of sexual harassment seeking revenge, this time ending his life. It's also worth mentioning that he was sexually inappropriate towards Baela in episode eight of season one, and later in the story, in the books, she battles him on Dragonstone which directly leads to him breaking his legs. This parallels with his sexual misconduct towards Aemond leading to his castration. Aegon victimises people, mocking or harassing or assaulting them sexually, and eventually they have a chance to do him harm, leading to his castration, disabling, and death. The consequences of his introductory actions could contribute to every step in his downfall. He pays the price for his actions. Justice is delivered to him by his victims. And given he may not be fully aware of his actions and their consequences, as the writer pointed out, that could make him a tragic character, one whose flaws were never heeded and so he did not change for the better (or was incapable of changing for the better) leading to his demise. That, to me, would be pretty great storytelling actually, especially in a show so interested in exploring the stories of women under the patriarchy.

The fact they think half of all pregnancy ends up in losing the child shows they really don't know what they are doing.

My immediate thought on, "is hotd fanfic?" Yes, that's what we signed up for. Grrm wrote an outline, we knew going in that the crew was going to need to make stuff up to fill the gaps. If you dont like it... Idk, skill issue? You dont have to like but expecting something else is silly. Edit while watching: I like the argument that, "because she didn't experience the pain of the drop in quality, she didn't have the context for why the fans would want [x..]" I also think grrm would agree that the history he wrote was intentionally sexist. Though I agree allicent etc should be more complex than, "duped into becoming a treasonous queen" or whatever.

I'm going to say this once. You're a writer you know what fanfiction is. It is when you write based on an IP and DON'T get paid for it. This is just bad writing. Call it that. All you're doing is giving fanfiction writers a bad name. And some of them are quite good, and some of them actually get published and become professional authors. All writers have the capacity to be bad. Why don't you talk about all the nepo babies and yes men that get to stay in the writers room. Or the fact that the writers strike was the main reason so much writing has been bad this year. This will be blocked or deleted, but I don't care.