The fact that Rheanyra's line  ' As for my half-brothers and my sweet sister, Helaena,” she announced, “they have been led astray by the counsel of evil men. Let them come to Dragonstone, bend the knee, and ask my forgiveness, and I shall gladly spare their lives and take them back into my heart, for they are of my own blood, and no man or woman is as accursed as the kinslayer. " and Aegon's line "what sort of brother steals his sister's birth right" never got adapted tells me all i need to know about the show runner. These lines highlight the tragedy of the dance both these characters who begin the war adverse to kin slaying are by the end broken and Aegon subsequently feeds Rhaenyra to his dragon.

as a retired alicent priestess, i genuinely cannot get behind the idea that THIS is somehow the better story. i cannot understand how a version of alicent who is perpetually victimized, stripped of any meaningful agency, and apparently incapable of having any influence over the events happening around her is supposed to be her best version. this show is gender essentialism dressed up in “feminist” language

we are talking about aristocrats, selfish assholes comes with the class, trying to make then "good" when we are talking about the bloodiest civil war in targaryon history is just insane. Cersei was a bitch, and a amazing layered charater that spoke a lot more about westeros mysoginy  than any of these bozos in House of the dragon.

George once talked about screenwriters thinking they were smarter than the original creator and making the story better by changing things and what made the story fundamentally the story. And he's right every single f*cking time. That's how you get shit like the ugly Sonic. On the flip side, when a screenwriter/director actually gives a sh*t about the source material, you get an adaptation that expands on what already exists, like the 2005 Narnia

“show rhaenyra is a retired brat”, lmao😂
agree with everything, great vid

the way the female characters are written in the show makes me root for Aegon

I was Alicent's strongest soldier for season one, because I expected her to evolve into SOMETHING resembling the real Alicent Hightower. A pious dutiful girl manipulated by her father was fine. Wanting her son to become king to because she thought he would not be safe unless he ruled was also fine. I expected that she would eventually get TIRED of her lack of agency and decide "you know what? I actually like having the power that I have! I actually WANT my son to rule!  I will make it so because that's MY choice!" When Aemond lost his eye and Alicent grabbed the dagger to go maim a child because Viserys expected a fucking "Sorry my bad" to be sufficient, I was thinking "YES. FINALLY." Realizing Viserys will ALWAYS pick Rhaenyra and Rhaenyra's children over hers SHOULD have been the moment. That's when I thought she'd lock the fuck in.

What an absolute waste of set up.

2:07 I mean… that’s her besties father and was definitely a secondary father figure to her for a good portion of her life. Being her fathers hand and all.

the books barely mentioned the fact that Rheanyra and Allison were friends before they became enemies. In the show there relationship is the emotional core of the story. Allison’s motivation revolves around believing that Rheanyra would kill her children if she takes the throne they ware never meant to be besties.

2:00 As if female characters' mad scenes aren't among the most famous in Western performing arts! Giselle, Lucia di Lammermoor, Medea, Lady Macbeth -- and they famously exist in the female-dominated art forms of ballet and opera specifically because female stars wanted to perform them and requested them from composers! They're fun and different, and there are plenty of other female characters in Fire & Blood that can be used to show general diversity of female characters.

The issue with George isn't that he isn't a feminist or doesn't write women well, it's that he (much like Tolkien) sort of forgets that women are >50% of the population all of the time, not just when a character needs to be a women for plot reasons, LOL. And so there is absolutely room for improvement in getting some Medieval social historians involved to add in missing elements like the role of a queen at court.

It's also really irksome that the showrunners just wholeheartedly accepted the most salacious parts of Fire & Blood, when the whole point of the framing is that you're supposed to question those parts.

I haven't touched HOTD discourse since forever but I would be been completely fine with the scene otto fully manipulating Alicent at like 17 or 18 similar to in the actual show rather than being ambitious from the start, if only it had meant Alicent has an even stronger motive later on since she has sacrificed so much for her duty... like in the books.

0:40 hello not one of them but I’d rather one season of faithfully adapted tv then a handful of bad seasons even if that show never gets a season teo

female gays ?! thats lesbian my favorite genre as a straight man!

It’s not that the female characters don’t make mistakes. They make plenty, Alicent is a walking mistake, but the shows writers don’t understand they are mistakes and bend over backwards to justify some of the most idiotic choices in the world.

😂😂Saying Otto orchestrated all this is simply untrue. It was clearly Viserys.

Fully agreed.

Ryan was so afraid to seem misogynistic that he actually wrote a misogynistic story. I wasn’t upset with the changes in the first season because it still kept the core story intact. But season 2 took it and spat on it, Luke’s death should have been her final straw but it wasn’t. Then season 3.. the worst season of hotd so far. The first 2-3 episodes were pretty good in comparison to most of s2, It had its flaws but good anyway. S3 could have fixed hotd because it wasn’t too late yet for the adaptation.. then all those hopes went away with the battle of the gullet. Aegon flying away on storm cloud to warn his family being excluded, then Viserys and because they weren’t there it made Jaces death feel more hollow. Then Rhaena claiming sheepstealer possibly the worst change in all of Asoiaf adaptations. Anyways I’d rather not write a 30 page essay criticizing the writing.

Alicent is not an important character. Period. That’s the problem.