A) He really should think of how this show is supposed to end or have a strong choice so he can orient the entire show around said end...this is another indication of how/why the show is as weirdly written and outright badly-written it is. He just doesn't seem to know or take confidence in what he's writing and directing the writing of and partly bec he insists on treating it like a marketing project. He writes towards what people like and what will get them to watch instead of writing a story.

B) I'm not sure why I or the audience has to feel like this ignorance of an end will be like is copacetic thing, esp when it's not supposed to be a long prequel show. And I know very well that it could not end with a marriage or wedding at all; people are speculating precisely bec this guy doesn't know his onw ending AND the show has been a cacophony of bad decisions that have befuddled audiences in whether its inconsistencies of plot and character and whole events were intentionla for later plot twists, "complexity", or just bad writing.

Laena, Laenor, Baela, and Rhaena are all already "mixed" race, though. It's simply that that Baela (both her actors) are dark skinned. Two different things that don't necessarily always have a causal relationship.

HotD!Daenaera has little hope to be 100% Black or darkskinned, since, as you mention a "white mother"--canonically her mother was a Harte. If they want Daenaera to have two Black parents--or especially be darkskinned--they need to make the Harte house another Black house in Westeros OR make them like a dark skinned SouthEast/West however Asian House. If they care more about internal consistency. If not, look below.

She definitely shouldn't be white or have two "white" parents, that's true. And I can see Ryan try to use a fandom argument in a situation where it doesn't fit or doesn't backfire on him, like he tried to excuse the choice of suing Black actors to show how "obvious" Rhaenyra's "infidelity" was and how their boys were "obviously" not trueborn as if that were ever the thing we needed to emphasize as an enthical consideration in the midst of all we knew about Rhaenyra's limitations. He could have just said that these actors were right for the job and left it at that, bc things were a little weird already considering how dark Baela was (having a "white" dad and "white" grandmother) and ask the audience to do as audiences have done for plays for years for the sake of story: suspend disbelief. Better than re-perpetuating racism and sexism.

He might say it's like that and why he wrote Daenaera in, but anyone who read the books would know Daenaera was supposed to be there regardless of how he feels or tries to market.

He'd just be trying to control the impressions of his own competence and honesty by appeasing the green stans of this fandom. Which would fail for the rest bc TG already constantly exposes themselves as absurd in how they read things, but then again, Condal is just hoping to make as best a name for himself in the industry more than be honest.

So if this happens, the very attempt at trying to appease Velaryon and nongreen stan fandom would be him trying to make as if the Velaryon/non greenstan fans are the ones who need the "consolation prize" or the ones who trouble the fandom with stupid shit, and not the greens. Itself misleading and false.

Where did GRRM even say this and how did he say it? Because Jaehaera dies after the Dance and after she marries Aegon, so GRRM likely meant she can't die yet at this point of time in HotD.

GRRM isn't having any sort of tantrum, either, when he's just saying that he wants the storylines he says are critical--and are critical--need to be written into the show. We're taking the show(s) and any HBO visual adaption too seriously and as if they matter more then the real canon.

A response to this post.

I was one of those upset about it for the connections b/t RhaenaBB & Daenerys S., and I guess Ryan just sorta...forgot? And hoped that people wouldn't care.

I wonder if this guy is even having fun with this project? The guy seems less eager these days, but that could be bc of work-fatigue instead? Tough.

Anyway, here is a post/reblog of me explaining how/why Dany's eggs are Dreamfyre's.

I think it depends on whether he'd try to speak to both show-only & book-first audiences or just one over the other. To exclusively book first-people, he'd probably imply they were being unfair to him & repeating that GRRM is an exec or was involved, or eh won't mention GRRM at all. To exclusively show-onlys, def production stuff, the writer's strikes forcing him to compress and cut out "ideas" he had about this season, inclu Maelor. To both, a little of each AND not wanting to hire "extra" children...even thought he technically didn't need to have toddler Aegon III and Viserys II & should have either did them with "mentions" or use them in the final farewell in I think episode 7 and that's it, so he could make much more room for a toddler actor for B&C.

AND, he'd cite, again, how he didn't want to make Jaehaerys's death (as Maelor's presence there was critical) had to be "toned" down was still good and "gory enough", esp writing GRRM's noted about how Phia's performances of grief were stellar...without mentioning how GRRM also said the B&C thing was not as strong as his own. Basically, he'll cherry pick to shield himself.

It's possible that Jaehaera's death will be all the more worse than Maelor's canon to "make up" for his absence.

OR, if Condal chooses to depict Jaehera's death Maelor's way as it was in the book with just suggestive visuals and/or suggestive sounds, some of the audience who don't know what happens to Jaehaera will hate the writers for preserving Jaehaerys from a terrible, too-gory scene while Jaehaerys' was "comparatively" less gory. If/when he says this has always been the death for Maelor in canon and he's just switching it for Jaehaera, then it could go south for GRRM for "creating horrible deaths for poor children". Some sort of revenge for Condal for that post GRRM wrote.

He could also, maybe simultaneously maybe not, argue that it emboldened Aegon/Alicent to fight more against Rhaenyra--whether Aegon is shown to have genuinely feel the same "level" of grief he felt for his Jaehaerys or not--and be "one of the many unforgiveable things that suck the entire family more and more into vengeful slurry so there's possible way of reconciliation" or "another death against the blacks"...which could mean that he won't make Daeron willfully sack Bitterbridge...He'd also probably use it to further make more Alicent-self-pity points and or make her regret allowing Rhaenyra take over KL, therefore suffer for his ridiculous rewrite of her.

Perhaps somewhere down the line the guy will finally just stick to the ole "We have told people from the beginning that this is an adaptation of an unreliable series" and imply but never explicitly say that he's making his own thing...or making things up as he goes along.

Can't be bothered to even include Maelor; he claims and wants people to make excuses for his stuff as Ursula K. LeGuin notes in her foreword for her 2001 Tales from Earthsea:

and bc they are not thinking abt the differences b/t the canon and the show enough, many show fans of either team or neutral argue that Maelor is not there because it's to either have Aegon declare Jaehaera as his heir (ignoring/forgetting that he never did or would have bc it defeats his own claim as males-first and always AND he himself canonically decided to remarry to get an heir, which is not what Viserys did or intended when he remarried to Alicent) OR something like Helaena would birth him later so it can be that much more "affective" and narratively more effective for an even younger baby to be torn apart by a mob...the same people who castigated people for wanting the canon death for Jaehaerys and said that they were crazy and gross for wanting what they claimed was a terrible death for a child.

Not only that, but:

People seem very willing to sacrifice any "higher" degree of pattern recognition or memory if it serves their headcanon and fanons.

Jaime didn't rape Cersei in that scene canonically, but yes Daemon is that sort of man/character, this suave, charismatic, action-oriented, extremely loyal, highly martially skilled bulwark of his claimed group. This character doesn't really have to a be a down on his luck sort of "bad boy" (Oberon has had the best of luck really, he has very little to no family drama other than Elia's murder and Obara's mother, and it's really the first that is a tragedy against him form an external agent rather than Viserys befuddling Daemon or Tywin making his "love" for Jaime so obviously conditional).

Once again, Daemon and certainly none of the men we listed are good men nor feminists, and they all displayed misogyny or traumatize relatives that makes one want to grip their necks until they choke out. But we certainly didn't need to make up lies abt Daemon to make Rhaenyra seem better; why do women seem "better" only after they are abused & unable or don't choose to try to "punish" the man while they have the political chance to after all the examples of Targ women before her not having similar conditions but still always trying (sometimes succeeding) to push back or avenge themselves on a man (Rhaena-Rogar)?!

And again, this is a thing not to victim blame but to point out that it is a trend established in HotD for women to get even MORE and not-canon abuse form their male partners BEFORE we even get to Daemon choking Rhaenyra out, so we can safely assume this is how the writers are characterizing their female characters.

I think the point, therefore, is to sell through whitewashing, or really declawing feminism & reversing it through making/banking on the idea of "women-are-natural peacemakers/men are natural chaos makers and women need to keep men in check". Which still makes the value of women male-centered under the guise of infantilizing men, which makes men less accountable for their own actions. Daemon is one of the more brashly violent men and is a prime male character in this event AND he's a Targ, so there's also the element of Targ-antis being very popular in the fandom who Condal wishes to write the story toward (Targs are violent colonizers, yada, yada)...again for $ and a misunderstanding of feminism or a desire to show off how much he "gets it" and we are the ones who don't really.

Repackaged benevolent sexism to sell to the masses who don't really understand these concepts. Honestly, this show is insufferable marketing of a story with strong performances more than a story/"adaptation" of the original. And part of why he's maybe so insistent on making his "own" story from the story he still claims he is "faithfully" adapting is that apparently today's media industry has execs push for more sequels, prequels, etc. of things and writers who want to write original stuff can't and thus try to make adaptions "theirs" from that deprivation. Maybe Condal falls under this category, or maybe he simply is trying to capitalize on this consumerist nonsense. It it what it is.

Anon, why doesn't the original plot where Maelor exists already has this "Rhaenyra cannot assume the throne because she is a woman, that Alicent cannot be her son's Regent because she is a woman, the idea of HOTD is that women cannot take the place that always belonged to men"?! That's what the Dance is already, has been already, and no I can't then say it's "lame".

The problem is that Ryan "risks" subtracting other important stuff GRRM wrote about how Rhaenyra faces what she does later on in the story, and more nuanced layers about the nature of sexism itself.

Really, what Ryan risks subtracting is the very important nuance of violence against a woman perceived to dole out illegitimate violence that comes from what Maelor's existence will show. Plus, just the plot point that GRRM describes; Ryan, Sara, etc. might show us a far inferior replacement of that plot point that even may miss the original mark altogether.

Because they wanted to bankroll on Dany, and Rhaenyra is another female Queen vying for the throne in Targ history. Plus, these are where there were the most dragons and the time where the Targs began to lose them in a very dramatic war. Perhaps they wanted to show off how "good" they can be at "adapting" stories they dont even like, could be anything.

Part of it is I guess some people wish to see the Targs in their highest or their most floptina era, as this is both the time that they were at their most luxurious, fertile (aside from Alysanne, we are also including dragons laying eggs, which was at his record high here at the pre-Dance) BUt it is as I said when they lose said dragons in a war between said dragons/symbols and devices of their grandeur.

That and George might have pressed for it.

As for your last question, the fandom now is more trying to invalidate any and all vestige of GRRM sharing CANON descriptions of characters outside of the books or they are turning his current blog post words into something far less nunaced than it is either bc they don't understand free indirect style or they don't care and wish to press forward with this idea to shut others up about the greens being villains or Helaena not being as important as Rhaenyra, the woman some of them hate. In other words, it's a distortion meant to be a distraction from their previous embarrassment from GRRM contradicting other stuff they said while they obsequiously rode HotD, to be vulgar. To get one up on "book purists".

Could be too narrow about this, but eh.

Anon refers to the deleted post GRRM wrote.

Have you read the book, anon?

Jaehaera was never considered Aegon's official heir even in the orig story (he never proclaimed her as such, eh even went as far as to to marry a Baratheon to try to produce another boy), but Aemond was named Prince Regent....not his heir, ever. He was never "chosen" to be heir.

Official Heirs vs possible heirs are different; the first are those officially going to be the next leader, ruler, etc, while the latter are any existing children of the reigning monarch or their closest relatives in the line of succession.

And Jaehaera is important for the post-war shenanigans and events...she even marries Aegon, Rhaenyra's son, and her death by (very likely, assured even) at the hands of a former green, Unwin Peake, is pretty significant...so anon, what you suggest is not going to "fix" HotD, esp then HotD has long been "unfixeable" when they started to veer from canon thru Rhaenicent, Rhaenyra's personality, Daemo's characterization, Alicent's power in court, etc. Because the whole point was that Ryan simply didn't want to adapt the Dance the way it was "reliably" recorded or he didn't care as much as to show off his supposed writer's prowess. HotD broke off from making events "[serve a ] purpose, it all helps to tie the story lines together, so one thing follows another in a logical and convincing manner" in several plot holes and on consistencies or severely underdeveloped plots they had in S1, even apart from just lore-breaking.

Like Maleor's death, Jaehaera's death is necessary for certain events--like the secret siege, Maiden's Ball, Baela-Rhaena power-riding into the Red Keep, Alicent's attempt at assassinating Aegon, etc.--to happen. So no...Jaehaera should not take the place of her brother Maelor as if these two are exchangeable.

I suspect that it's like Katy Perry's "Woman's World" where it is a man thinking of how women could/should conform themselves to a male's idea of feminism in order to survive or flourish within a male-centered and run world.

In other words...male gaze.

That being said, idk if Hugh is "champion" of the smallfolk; it's more that he's given a story people can easily sympathesize with and without the writers investing anymore in him. The punching the guy for food immediately invalidates the "champion of the smallfolk" purpose. and for some it also removed a bit of sympathy, which is ironic bc I though it actually humanized him, with all this talk about how nobles' actions affect stavation, privation, death onto smalfolk where their riots were all totally justified in F&B? What happened to Rhaenyra-is-responsible-for-her-feast/party-&-allocating-funds-foodstuffs-away-from-those-who-need-it? Now people don't like when it's on the green side where we see smallfolk deprivation and desperation?

Anyway, yeah we see him steal food from a man he punches and yes he reduces his own mother, but these are both things some people will and can just brush off as things he "understandably" "had" to do. The food stuff bc he has the sick child (this one is valid, which makes it all the more worse bc it's so manipulative on the writer's parts). The mother comment bc sex work has a stigma on it, and many people in the fandom and real life don't like disobedient young girls or looking at shit from their PoV. Or they like Jaehaerys a little too much and justify his violence behind his feelings...as if he's not the older one and her parent as well as the dude who apparently never noticed how his own daughter was feeling about her life at court and ignored his own wife when she at least tried to tell him her flawed but close-to-the-truth feelings about Saera? Sure.

What Hugh is is chosen perspective and access to how the smallfolk in KL or anywhere react and are affected by the blacks & greens' actions. Something that really should have belonged to Nettles, Essie/Sylvenna, or really just any random OC.

I said this show was fanfiction as far back as Nov '22. (link)