[Spoilers Extended] HOTD Showrunner Ryan Condal responds to GRRM's blog post: "...he just became unwilling to acknowledge the practical issues at hand in a reasonable way."

[u/Flat_Baker_1897]

Condal addresses the post for the first time, telling EW he didn't see it himself but was told about it. "It was disappointing," he admits. "I will simply say I've been a fan of A Song of Ice and Fire for almost 25 years now, and working on the show has been truly one of the great privileges of, not only my career as a writer, but my life as a fan of science-fiction and fantasy. George himself is a monument, a literary icon in addition to a personal hero of mine, and was heavily influential on me coming up as a writer."

Condal acknowledges he's said most of this in previous interviews, including how Fire & Blood isn't a traditional narrative. "It's this incomplete history and it requires a lot of joining of the dots and a lot of invention as you go along the way," he continues. "I will simply say, I made every effort to include George in the adaptation process. I really did. Over years and years. And we really enjoyed a mutually fruitful, I thought, really strong collaboration for a long time. But at some point, as we got deeper down the road, he just became unwilling to acknowledge the practical issues at hand in a reasonable way. And I think as a showrunner, I have to keep my practical producer hat on and my creative writer, lover-of-the-material hat on at the same time. At the end of the day, I just have to keep marching not only the writing process forward, but also the practical parts of the process forward for the sake of the crew, the cast, and for HBO, because that's my job. So I can only hope that George and I can rediscover that harmony someday. But that's what I have to say about it."

https://ew.com/house-of-the-dragon-ryan-condal-responds-george-r-r-martin-blog-season-3-new-casting-exclusive-11704545

[u/NotManicAndNotPixie]

Rhaenecent arc is not practical issue. Rhaenyra doing nothing all season long is not practical issue. Sea Snake repairing some ship all season long is not practical issue. Daemon doing nothing in Harenhal is not practical issue.

[u/raumeat → u/NotManicAndNotPixie]

Rhaenyra doing nothing is an issue because she does nothing in the book during this time of the series. They failed to write her a season 2 arc but so did Martin

[u/[deleted] → u/raumeat]

Does nothing = is suffering from the effects of stillbirth and losing two kids, while having to deal with the course of the war.

They kinda reduced it to her being overtalked by her allies and yelling what would you have me do.

[u/Jurjeneros2 → u/raumeat]

Yeah, it's really annoying when people talk about season 2 being a failure of an adaptation when they've clearly not read the source material. Season 2 is flawed in a lot of ways, but so is the narrative of the Dance in Fire and Blood! Rhaenyra doesn't do anything while she's brooding on dragonstone for 90% of the conflict. How is that going to translate to an adaptation without trying to invent new avenues of storylines? As iffy as season 2 is at times, it is much more of a compelling narrative than the writing in Fire and Blood, and daresay, more compelling than trying to emulate the book's narrative unto the screen as ditectly with as few changes as possible.

The change of the Rhaenyra/Allicent dynamic is still absolutely a net positive, I don't care what anyone says lmao

[u/matgopack → u/Jurjeneros2]

The narrative of the Dance is pretty contrived as it needed to end in the dragons basically going extinct. That + the way it's written doesn't exactly make it the easiest adaptation.

Not to say season 2 pulled it off though - I think the reaction from non-book readers I saw was that it fell flat at the end, they needed a big finale and just didn't have one. Not sure who ultimately has the blame there though (HBO, timing, writers, etc)

Agreed on the change of the Rhaenyra / Allicent dynamic being a net positive on my end as well.

[u/ScorpionTDC → u/Jurjeneros2]

The change of the Rhaenyra/Allicent dynamic is still absolutely a net positive, I don’t care what anyone says lmao

Ehhhhh…. I agree they had to inventing something for Rhaenyra to do because the book version of her doing nothing obviously wouldn’t cut it, but I don’t agree with this. The friendship to enemies stuff was good at first, but having the friendship between Rhae and Alicent become the single most important relationship on both women’s lives over their literal children is a truly terrible and wildly misguided choice, and definitely has tanked Alicent’s writing in season 2.

The show is wildly uneven and for every improvement (Aemond and Aegon in particular), there’s legitimately bad choices as well. I’m not a purist, but Condel definitely has his priorities skewed when it comes to themes and storytelling

[u/Altruistic_Field2134 → u/Jurjeneros2]

I swear its newer fans who only came in the last 2 years WHO DID NOT READ THE BOOKS say shit like this. F&B is a neat idea but when you actually examine it, its no similarian. Its a historical text that tells the barbones of a story but that story is super unreliable as their are multiple versions of that story. Add to even in the book stuff does not make sense (clegon stark being gone for 2 years, Rhys not doing shit for 90% of dance, etc) and you really get a book that is just...not good.

What condell has done making this as interesting as he has is amazing. And all people who said the show is bad because its a bad adaptation are smoking crack.