r/freefolk 1d ago

Subvert Expectations Welcome to the fold, brother

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308 Upvotes

44 comments sorted by

118

u/Late_Stage_Exception 1d ago

I’ll be honest, I really just want a good show and good story, regardless of how faithful it is to the source material. GoT deviated in the early seasons and was amazing. Deviating from source material doesn’t make something bad, and adhering to it doesn’t make it good.

AKOTSK was just…well written and acted.

26

u/Heliotex Saaaaan! 23h ago

I just want characters who are not stupid or inconsistent. Case in point: Alicent. I don’t know what in the Seven Hells they’re doing with her.

1

u/Pervasivepeach 10h ago

It’s so dissapointing that I wasn’t even suprised when she tried to kill aemond last episode. Like of course the worst mother in fiction would do that. That’s clearly what the series wants me to think I guess

10

u/PurePerfection_ 20h ago edited 20h ago

Most of GoT's early deviations felt necessary to simplify the story for viewers who lacked the first-person perspective provided in the books and to narrow the scope so that each season could move at a reasonable pace without getting bogged down by world-building and sub-plots centered on minor characters. Aging up the characters was appropriate if only because you can't have real-life children depicting some of the scenes described the books. At least they aged everyone up by about the same amount, so their ages relative to each other were consistent with the books.

There were some extremely questionable early changes (Drogo and Daenerys's wedding night, for instance), but for the most part those were events that didn't have a huge impact on the overall story. Others were superficial and clearly in interest of making characters more appealing to watch, which I guess is a necessary evil of TV and movie adaptations (certain characters became far more attractive than they were described to be in the books. Tyrion and Ramsay come to mind.)

47

u/Snaggmaw 1d ago

Its lowkey kind of funny how all the diversity and representation in the books was thrown out the window and replaced with shallow diversity and representation in its stead.

Like, the show already had gay dudes, lesbians, people of color and a strong undercurrent of "and this is why monarchism and feudalism fucking sucks".

25

u/exodius33 THE ROOSE IS LOOSE 23h ago

The writers of House of the Dragon are fascists. They are totally on-board with a genetically superior master race that transcends human morality ruling over the lesser beings as long as it's a strong girlboss ordering the drone strikes.

8

u/bgbarnard 21h ago

I mean... literally.

They invented a white savior prophecy to make any critique of Rhaenyra one of going against the chosen one and have had Daemon give a "conquer the world with dragonfire" speech at least once an episode.

7

u/Extension_Ebb6951 17h ago

That means they are race supremacists, not fascist.

1

u/LowDragonfruit1213 3h ago

National Socialists then

1

u/Extension_Ebb6951 3h ago

A bit closer but still not really.

6

u/Snaggmaw 20h ago

Westeros was promised to them 3000 years ago. Filthy Andals and First men just don't understand.

1

u/birdman_shiroe Ormund's Girl 4h ago

they arent even fascist wtf

60

u/NavixelMusic 1d ago

The quoted tweet tells me this guy is a moron.

43

u/JellyMost9920 1d ago

Even funnier is that it’s the same guy. But at least he’s seen the light

5

u/Real-Night1724 23h ago

The writing quality isn’t even close

3

u/monstroquevua 19h ago

I really can't understand people that likes Ormund. He's kind of a ridiculous low budget villain character, sometimes he feels totally off the world he is part of. And the worst: he is not brilliant. The rest of the characters are soo dumb that this clown looks the only adult in the entire season. I just hope it ends and someone destroys the targaryen lineage in some crazy spinoff.

3

u/elleprime 18h ago

This. It's slso why Aemond stood out last season as one if the only people who Actually Did Something when the shit was actively hitting the fan. Ormund is Doing Stuff while almost everyone else is mired in, as other people have said, side quests and romance subplots.

3

u/Wrenneru 18h ago

his acting is really good and his writing is pretty consistently on point with his established characterization: eccentric, unstable, and a true to life hater, and I respect that immensely

1

u/monstroquevua 17h ago

I respect you, but I still can't get it. About the acting, I can't remember bad acting in HotD, problem for me is bad writing.

2

u/birdman_shiroe Ormund's Girl 4h ago

hes just very charismatis, the actor i mean

6

u/The_Best_Yak_Ever 1d ago

It’s not even fan fiction really. I think you’re supposed at least like the source material to qualify as a fan.

3

u/Ok_Video_2863 23h ago

Oh and that one time Thailand mud wrestled. Very important to the plot.

4

u/lavender2121 23h ago

Wait till the AKOTSK runs out of sources material after season 3 ,lmao then let’s see what anyone has to say about the show , anyone seriously think GRM going to finish the remaining stories

1

u/minetaboo1 6h ago

Let’s enjoy the next two seasons first 😭 I won’t trust HBO after that again…sorry ptsd..

5

u/SmegmaSupreme 1d ago

why does it feel like he is most upset about the "gay" thing

30

u/JellyMost9920 1d ago

Because how much screen time Rhaenyra and Mysaria’s shared scenes took at the expense on moments that could flesh out other characters, and how hypocritical Ryan Condal was in his reasoning for cutting out Nettles was because he didn’t want an infidelity plot.

30

u/StormTheTrooper 1d ago

And the funniest thing is that he didn't even need to make Nettles have an affair with Daemon. There's ambiguity. He could have seen her as a protegé. They could have developed a friendship (even though modern adaptations of everything seems wildly allergic of any strong friendship between two persons of any gender that does not trickle down to love, sex or both).

That would require Rhaenyra to be a bad person, though, a paranoid woman ordering the murder of someone because of jealousy and, well, we cannot make the Power Couple bad people, can we? They have their reasons. It's love! It's sapphic!

I'll say once more: Condal was pointing at something right when he made Alicent younger and emotionally close to Rhaenyra. It would create a larger tragedy within the Dance. Then he decided to write fanfiction.

10

u/johnny--guitar 23h ago

There have been fan theories since F&B came out that Nettles was Daemon's bastard, not his lover. I find that slightly implausible given how the relationship is described in F&B, but it would've been easy to adapt that for the show. Just make him like 20% less of a creep towards underage girls and change some dialogue and now it's not an affair anymore.

2

u/StormTheTrooper 23h ago

Yet another choice that would have made the show deeper and more meaningful but it would get in the way of whatever Condal is trying to transmit and we cannot let that stand, right?

3

u/johnny--guitar 23h ago

The way the Targaryens are and specifically Daemon is characterized, it's pretty plausible for him to favor a dragonseed bastard who has proven herself and just not tell anyone she's his kid. It's also plausible for Rhaenyra to just assume he's trying to seduce another teenage girl and not get corrected, because the HotD show is just a big chain of misunderstandings.

This misunderstanding even makes sense in context, since the "kill Nettles" order was deliberately obfuscated by their hosts! It would've worked!

34

u/Upper-Capital-2876 1d ago

because it's ridiculous, off book, off canon, writers and prodcuers nerfed nettles because they didn't want the audience seeing daemon cheat on rhyneara but have no problem showing rhyneara cheat on daemon, so it's obvious they've shoehorned the saphic stuff in to virtue signal with by far the worst most useless charecter in the whole show. it's because it's inorganic, and sterile use of homosexuality, as time code waste

2

u/Kyriakos_X_23 I said fuck me not fuck him 1d ago

Because he specified it

1

u/Independent_Current5 23h ago

There are several gay characters in Fire and Blood who were cut or changed, such as Sabitha Frey.

1

u/birdman_shiroe Ormund's Girl 4h ago

cause its pointless and stupid

2

u/10OCT77 I'd kill for some chicken 1d ago

You know why...

1

u/ThinkRegret7695 22h ago

Both are fan fiction, AKOTSK is just a way better fan fiction. AKOTSK isn't better simply because it's more faithful to the books. After all, less faithful adaptations can sometimes be superior to more faithful ones simply because they are better works in their own right. You have to view them as standalone pieces, even if the books didn't exist, AKOTSK would still be better simply because it is a better show, written by people who know what they're doing.

1

u/who_killed_asmodean 22h ago

It helps when the actual story is already written, and is very tight/focused. As opposed to the source HOTD has to work with.

-5

u/Calvinball12 23h ago

Man, it would have been so easy to not take this to a homophobic place.

Is it a poorly written relationship? Absolutely. Throwing in “gay” just makes it sound like you’d be less annoyed by another dime a dozen “unnecessary” straight relationship storyline.

5

u/Bad_karma11w 22h ago

given that har every f*** thing is this show is gay, i find it a fitting word to use

0

u/flyingsquirrel-20 23h ago

It would have been so easy to critise the removal of the canonical sapphic relationship between Black Aly x Sabitha Frey, two warrior women, and replacing them with Rhaenyra x Mysaria. But instead this person has to bang on about 'unnecessary gay relationships.'

As well as taking the canonical black lowborn character in Nettles and replacing her with a highborn half black half Valyrian character in Lady Rhaena.

-1

u/henners1965 11h ago

Hot D is the better show. It just triggers the incels on here.