Yeah, I know he's supposed to be the big warrior dude in the family, but he looks 10 years older than the guy they picked to play his older brother. Maybe it's a make-up and costume choice, but they could have done better.

 

I dislike what was done with Vaemond in the eight episode.

Spoiler

While he did die at Daemon's hand, as was the case in the book, there's a big difference between him being killed off in front of Viserys in the throne room and Rhaenyra ordering his death and then sending Daemon to have it done, and then afterwards feeding his corpse to her dragon. It takes away from showcasing how Rhaenyra can be. Granted, this was unfortunately predictable, especially since they didn't bother even having her played by a fatter actress or at least having the actress caked up to appear fat.

Also, one odd thing I've noticed is people obsessing about Matt Smith and I genuinely can't understand why. He has to be one of the worst actors I've ever seen and I've unfortunately had plenty of occasions to see him in various films and shows over the years so it's not like I'm basing this solely off of HotD. He does look the inbred part, I give him that.

 

Largely in the same boat. I like HotD for what it is, a political thriller with flying fantasy nukes, but to really capture my attention there needs to be an element of the mysterious. The show has not set up a single lingering question so far.

Hoping the Jon Snow spinoff gets back to magick-y stuff.

 

If they have the civil war go down bc the king thought he was talking to his daughter but it was his wife and she thought he was saying their son was the chosen one I might actually just give up in disgust. That's so contrived and dumb.

 

Paddy Considine gave an absolutely amazing performance as Viserys this episode, the scenes with him in it were just really emotionally impactful. Especially his entrance into the throne room and the short beat between him and Matt Smith's Daemon, the direction and music were stellar and I'd say the writing was pretty strong.

 

I think you're the first person I've ever seen or witnessed or heard that has some measure of hype or hope for the Jon Snow show, if it ends up existing

Literally the only thing it can do to draw me in is be a complete and thorough late GOT season Retcon show.

 

Ep 9 was a hot mess.

We spent 25 minutes on a "hunt for Aegon" around Flea Bottom. Why did it matter whether Otto's or the Queen's party found him first? Because Alicent wanted her version of the coronation to take place? Without it, she wouldn't have had the authority to spare Rhaenyra despite being, you know, the Queen? Like... what?

 

He - or she - who holds the king (physically) holds authority. I believe the modern day version is "possession is 9/10ths of the law". I don't mind the runtime spent on it too much because some of those scenes pulled double duty on revealing character details, but I agree that it dragged on.

Rhaenys could have ended the succession crisis with one dracarys, but she decided to be noble, goddamnit. I really dislike how that scene played out. They could've just written it so that she barely sees through the dust and decides to just gtfo asap but noooooo, they had to do the intimidating roar from Jurassic Park because it's cool. Daemon would have roasted the whole entourage without a second thought.

I didn't see Tarantino's writing credit for ep 9 anywhere on Wikipedia or IMDB. I'm sure it'll be corrected.

 

Accursed is the Kinslayer. Obviously that shit’s going to be happening very soon, but part of the war includes perception- you don’t want to be the first to kill kin.

 

Yeah yeah, but they didn't need to write the scene this way at all. And if not dracarys then just chew on Aegon and bounce.

Edit: was there an implication that Aegon fucks kids to make bastards?

 

The Red Queen is my favorite dragon so far - in all of Westeros TV

I loved that her horns were crown shaped

 

I'm still partial to Drogon, myself

 

I really dislike how the murder between nobles is still treated so casually. Even with the Queen liking him, Cole really doesen't hold enough authority to get away with casually getting away with murdering a member of the small council. He's not even the lord commander of the kingsguard at that point.

Also yeah the last scene was really a mess. I literally thought to myself as a joke that she's gonna get her dragon and burn everything, when she left, I couldn't believe that they'd actually do something insane like that, without having even accomplishing anything. Even if she didn't want to kill her family she could easily have killed Alicent and Otto, or even just taken Aegon prisoner.

Yes there was, it was heavily implied that the kids that fight are also raped, though presumebly it's not exclusively kids. That scene came after saying that his tastes aren't specific to whores or however they worded it.

 

Jesus

Spoiler

The storming of the dragonpit is going to be some fucking brutal television.

This was just a basic prelude.

 

I just don't know why Sunfyre wasn't at the coronation. You can let Rhaenys have her girlboss moment in a standoff.

Either way, I'm ready for some Storms End Feels

 

I get more and more irritated the more I think about it. I don't even care really about the random smallfolk massacre there, since it could be used to set the stage for a future event, but why wasn't Sunfyre there??

It's a vicious shit of a dragon, but it couldn't take out Meleys in a 1 v 1 even in an enclosed space. Just have Rhaenys and Meleys snarl down Sunfyre until it backs off and then flee. It makes Rhaenys look good, it shows that Aegon II has a capable defender beyond his mother and brother.

Meta question. Are we spoiling here? Fire and Blood lays out the confrontation, and I bet a lot here have read it, but a lot haven't. Keep it in tags? I mean there's spoilers in the thread already, and helll, Joffrey Barratheon spoils the ending in season 3ish, but it's the principle.

I'm just glad that Joffrey manages to be a shit even when he doesn't mean to

 

So here is the final paragraph of what I posted early last year in a different thread we had on here, when the Velaryon casting was announced and there was some argument around it. I have to say I'm feeling pretty vindicated now in terms of my overall concern for what it meant in terms of the HBO producers fidelity to GRRM's story. I will add that I think Steve Toussaint has done a great job of playing Corlys and he's an awesome actor, I just wish they could have had him in a role that didn't create so many issues with the lore.

After the most recent episode I think my concerns from that post are looking pretty valid. Everything about that Rhaenys scene was nonsense, and if you look into the justification the lead writer for the episode gave in the behind the episodes it becomes apparent that whatever lead to season 8 of GoT's quality is still in full effect in the writers room at HBO. Without spoiling anything, from some of the leaks for the next episode I'm now seeing popping up on /r/freefolk and the like on reddit, they're going even further with some of these seemingly random changes from the original story.

I simply don't understand the purpose of a lot of these changes. GRRM tends to write his stories in a way where the significance of one event and the way it happens can have thematic ramifications for the story as a whole in a very particular way, and if you start changing things in a slapdash manner (especially if the justification is stuff like "we need an action scene here, wouldn't it be surprising and awesome if a dragon just burst out of the floor in this scene") a lot of the story tends to start falling apart, or at least doesn't resonate in the same way.

HBO can hire some pretty talented writers I'm sure, but I honestly don't think they'll ever be able to get someone as talented (especially in this specific genre) as GRRM is. When you have a complete work by him already laid out for you, why not just adapt it as it is instead of embarrassing yourselves with making alterations that are inferior to the product your company paid millions of dollars for the rights to? There is of course plenty of room for new writing to be done due to the historical overview nature of Fire and Blood, but when it comes to scenes that are largely already laid out like the Green Council with dialogue and details, why do your own inferior version? Why replace fundamental points of the story like Criston Cole 'the Kingmaker', with Criston Cole 'the guy who wastes large parts of the episode with pointless, zero-stakes chases around King's Landing'?

There's been some great moments this season, Matt Smith has been fantastic despite the fact that the some of writers/showrunners seem to fundamentally misunderstand what makes his character interesting. But everything that was present in early Game of Thrones that we could later look back to as warning signs for what was to come later is also present in House of the Dragon. It sucks watching a train wreck in slow motion, especially when you know the train conductor just crashed the last train he was in charge of in the exact same way.