u/tracyamell

I’ve watched and read several interviews with Ryan Condal, and he always says that the biggest challenge in writing hotd is the lack of information about the characters, some of them completely disappear from the narrative at certain points. Ryan often mentions that they have to fill in the gaps and invent things, and that is quite difficult to do.

Because of that, you would think they would value the existing information about the characters, given how hard it is to create them from scratch.

But that isn't what happens in practice, we see many characters with little background in the original material being well-developed and expanded, while characters who had more substantial information lose importance in the story.

If you had told me many years ago that Gwayne would be an important and compelling character, while Nettles would be cut from an adaptation of the Dance of the Dragons, I would have called you crazy.

And there’s nothing wrong with expanding Gwayne’s role—it was one of the few things hotd got right—but where is that same energy for characters who are better established in the books?

Why were Daeron and Jace’s feats cut? Why was Corlys condemned to spend an entire season stuck at the docks and another complaining about Rhaenyra not legitimizing his sons when he was a crucial member of the Black Council? They didn't even properly introduce Black Aly.

HBO only gave hotd eight episodes and that isn't the writers' fault, but I can't help feeling they don't make good use of the limited screen time they have per season. They prioritize minor characters, while those who needed more attention are sidelined and end up being poorly developed.

In the book, she is described as pale blue with silver details, but the show made her purple with pink wings. Personally, I prefer her light blue, she looks more "dreamy" with that coloring, also because we already have a canonically purple dragon, Joffrey's Tyraxes.

For comparison, Dexter, the actor who played Egg in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms was 9 when he filmed s1. HOTD just refuses to let children be fully fleshed-out characters, and I don't understand that.

They really are milk brothers, they match in every way.

I tried to believe the character was at least in his twenties, even though he looked older, but the actor confirmed that Alyn is 30.

And I just want to ask: why? Baela is still 15 (her age was confirmed by Ryan this week). why on earth did they decide to give their relationship such a disgusting age gap?

The whole thing about their marriage in the book is literally because Baela is being forced by Aegon III's Council to marry some very old lord, so she goes to Alyn—who is the same age as her in the book—and asks him to marry her.

And seeing how they’ve always refused to show a more romantic side to Jace and Baela’s relationship—even though the actors wanted it so much—rubs me the wrong. That, combined with Rhaena’s arc...

In the book, Alyn is quite young, he's a little younger than Jace actually. We don't know Alyn's official age in the show, but the actor who plays him said in an interview that he's supposed to be in his late twenties, which makes sense, because the actor is over thirty and looks over thirty.

That scene with Baela gave me a horrible vibe, it was like watching Daemon grooming young Rhaenyra all over again.

Actually, does anyone even remember that?

Rhaenyra wearing those bland Jedi clothes, several characters wearing the same outfit from season 2, Aemond's armor being extremely uninspired... Hotd's wigs were never amazing, but even Rhaenyra's long braided wig (which was something season 2 did right) now looks fake and stiff.

Those battle sequences have to be the best thing that's ever been shown on TV.