zaldrīzo ānogar

I wasn't planning on watching season 3 until all episodes were aired because I didn't feel like suffering the slow agony of that fanfiction show week after painful week...

But my best friend, casual hotd watcher who hasn't read a book in her life, kept telling me how cool the dragons were and that it might cheer me up to see them since I've been doing pretty badly recently. She sent me a screenshot of Vermax, irresistible bait.

So I watched the first two episodes. And regretted it.

Sure, the dragons are great, they look so real. But all else is simply a mess and a disgrace to the original source HOTD has "adapted".

Look, I'm a hater. Always have been. But this is not just me being a petty gremlin in my room gobbling up chocolate and hating on the show professional actors have worked so hard on. The writers have butchered so many characters, the script is sloppy at best and the pacing is too fucking fast you'd think the director was held at gunpoint to make every scene as short and shallow as humanly possible.

It's giving seasons 7-8 of GOT and damn George, I'm so sorry.

Even if I tell myself to watch it as a separate universe from F&B (as I did with season 2 because copium) I just keep getting mad at how nonsensical most plot points are, how boring and predictable. Apart from the dragons cgi, top notch cinematography and godlike soundtrack (thank the gods for Ramin), the story on which it all stands struggles on so many ends that it is almost unwatchable.

First of all, behold the most cursed sigil ever on the opening credits. Four legs AND black dragon on red. It has to be intentional, Condal & Hess are either the combined final boss of ragebait or they are hinting (also forgetting about what the actual sigil looks like--dragon leg number is important!!) to the Blackfyre rebellion for NO reason at all. This takes place many decades after the dance, what sense is there to show it now? Are they planning to "adapt" the Blackfyre rebellion after they are done with HOTD? Gods, I fucking hope not. The four legs on the dragon makes me think it's just a huge fucking oversight and they're on the same scale of dumb as D&D.

I get they had to have a reason for Rhaenyra to stay behind at Dragonstone since they didn't go with the original source of the Gay Abandon getting captured and Aegon returning to Dragosntone on wounded Stormcloud (the only reason Rhaenyra stays in the book, to be with her panic stricken, traumatised 9 year old son, and Jace takes over commanding the Dragonseeds to join him at the Gullet, etc), but man, did they really have to butcher every character in the process?

Jace locking Rhaenyra is sort of understandable even if it's not something book Jace would ever do, but the queensguard taking precedence for the orders of the prince of Dragonstone over the actual Queen when she's not a) bedridden or b) absent, is simply ridiculous. And all else hearing her screams to be let out, standing still doing NOTHING about it (there's more than ONE queensguard at Dragonstone, mind you). In what world does this make sense? Ah yes, fan fiction, maybe, not on a fucking expensive show with actual professionals getting paid to write!

Baela joining the fight was the only good thing of S03E01, that, and Jace's death scene. But the entire battle was disappointing af, somehow Vermax getting struck twice while flying, the Rhaena/Sheepstealer humiliation ritual... ugh. Not to mention, the Tryarchy fleet of ninety warships was supposed to cover the entire horizon against Corlys blockade...

How necessary was that Aemond kissing Alicent scene? Do we as the audience no longer understand subtext that we must suffer to see it put on big plain words before us? It seems to once again only serve to put Alicent on this victim role (as with the SA scene on S03E02, SO UNNECESSARY) at the cost of other characters.

To say nothing of how they humiliated Aemond at his arrival at Harrenhal. This is a war criminal and skilled swordsman, but suddenly a bread knife on the back (armoured, too) from a supposedly untrained man caught unawares is enough to have him crawling on the floor at death's door to make Alys into the savior role (again, so on the nose, like we the audience are braindead or something).

No funeral scene for Jace. Why bother, right, CondalHess? You already gave like 70% of his personality and feats to other characters anyway, and didn't bother to show what he did in the North. He's stripped bare, blamed for his own death (stupid teenager boy who defies mommy gets instant karma), a puppet for Rhaenyra to mourn for the duration of like a day. I won't say I didn't love that intro scene though, Emma D'Arcy can act.

I also don't like the fact that Baela is set up as this therapist sort of character, erasing her own grief and personality to highlight other's (I'm mostly referring to her scene with Alyn, ew).

The taking of King's Landing was only half good until they had to humiliate Rhaenyra by making her lose her composure and cry like a child instead of a woman steeled by the blows of unsurmountable grief and treachery seeking rightful vengeance, failing to behead Otto (the main instigator for all her woes and conspirator against her) with a blade of fucking Valyrian Steel, the sharpest there is.

What a joke.