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So is there an Arianna or is that just what we are calling Arianne? 🤔

I would take Martin's interpretation on the suicide. If he was writing it in the style of ASOIAF and not the Fire and Blood encyclopedia, I'm sure that would have came across and been the intention.

Lollolol. A fanfic author saying that GRRM doesn't understand his own work is ridiculers. I think it's the other way around mate. I think you are completely wrong about the entire Maelor thing. Children remember things, even at a subconscious level. I remember when I was like four my dad told my younger brother that he was his favorite and that shit still haunts me. But that's beside the point.

Preston could never see the forest for the lemon trees...

I don’t think GRRM really likes his female characters. All the these torturous character development fr every female protagonists is getting old. How many times do we need tales about rapes, slavery, and mental, physical, psychological and sadistic brutality!

If your cutting maelor from scene, and the future seasons are now only going to be 8 episodes, I kinda get cutting maelor entirely

The biggest problem is Carmine...

Dramaaaa the boys eating good nowadays

Jesus Christ, the more I watch the episodes with Carmine in them, the more I realize how much of an asshole he is... Preston would be much better off not having him around.

I don't buy the production and legal "problems" associated with both including Maegor and having a more gruesome blood and cheese. The actors don't have to even be present for anything at all. Just film some reaction shots of the child actors and that's all you have to do. They act like you either have the children have to act being killed on screen or you can't have them at all, like there's no clever things you can do, or cinematography you can use that would EASILY bypass any "problems". Carmine mentioning it constantly to defend the scene is really giving Condal wayyy too much credit for such a bogus claim.

Time traveling Bran killed Helaena.

‏‪2:17:38‬‏ which freys are in essos?!

I grew up in the 90s and I barely saw any Simpsons. On the other hand, A Sound of Thunder was required reading at my high school

I didn't expect a sudden conspiracy theory about GRRM making the blog post... that was fun :) I think he deleted because he re-read the post and noticed that he fucked up about what was in his own book, the things Preston noticed 🤣That was just too embarrassing for GRRM Is there any chance you will continue the podcast about Fire and Blood? I really enjoyed it, I was listening to it after reading each chapter.

It's the messy bitch Olympics and I'm here for it.

I remember George talking about the butterfly effect way back on the season one dvd commentary when that one random Dothraki ends up killed.

I don’t overly feel bad for George. He worked in TV and Movies for a decade. He was extremely vocal he left that field bc he felt they always messed up adaptations and never did source material justice. He pitched shows and movies and was turned down. He has been vocal about his dislike of how studios function for decades. He 100% knew there was a very large likelihood changes would be made in dramatic degrees. He still signed anyway and now is clutching his pearls fanning himself with hundred dollar bills. He 100% has a right to be upset his story is being messed with in a negative way. I would as well. It is still silly for him to act like this whole thing has wronged him and he was blind sided.

Ryan Condal really needs a guitar jam session with once cool guitar greats to restore his street cred GRRM’s takedown lol

You make season 3 sound SO expensive. And then season 4 is the regency???

Preston I like you buddy but you are way over your head here. I think that you are bashing him just for the sake of bashing him. I originally thought Martin was just being unprofessional but I realized that what he is doing is basically trying to save the brands dignity (which is tied to his books dignity) from another S8. Let's be honest here, if HOTD ends up like how Game of thrones did (and S2 is proof that this can happen) I don't think that the brand as a whole will survive the damage. 'But why didn't GRRM act this way with S8?' Because he blaims himself for not finishing the books and also because the ending is probably close to his ending. This is nothing like HOTD where the manuscript is right there for the writers to adapt. Judging by Martins final comment about 'more toxic and bigger butterflies' the writers are probably cooking some VERY stupid shit for S3 and S4 that are making Martin swet about his legacy.

Ironic, given that he's a writer, but the whole thing isn't worded very well

I don't get it. GRRM was incredibly tactful with his criticism of GoT; he has to know that the deal is you don't publicly criticize a multi-million dollar adaptation of your work this harshly. Why did he briefly think he could do this??? This can't possibly be a spur-of-the-moment rage-post... can it? The lines "Ryan assured me that we were not losing Prince Maelor" and "Sometime between the initial decision to remove Maelor, a big change was made" makes me think Condal promised GRRM they would not cut Maelor entirely, then reneged without informing GRRM (note the passive voice in the second quote). So was this post spurned by GRRM's anger over a communication breakdown with Condal? Does he feel like Condal was making these pledges not to change stuff in bad faith? What did GRRM hope to achieve with this post - getting Maelor written back in, forcing Condal's hand with other changes? Replacing Condal? Forcing HBO to involve him more in the writing process? Burning bridges seems like a poor strategy?

I think George knew he was going to delete this. There are aspects of the show George wanted to keep in because of the butterfly effect. Obviously, HBO writer's team isn't listening and in a desperate attempt to change something, he finally made this post, knowing it was going to cause a stir. He was hyping up this post for weeks.

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GRRM did this before with Mago. Drogo kills him in GOT and George was like "but he is in Winds! What will you do!?" It didnt matter one single bit

Friendly reminder that when B&C happened, Preston himself went on a rant in his livestream discussion about how they removed the Sophie's choice, which was the strongest aspect of the scene in the book. Preston himself complained about this. A lot. Now he has flip flopped and is claiming there actually was a Sophie's choice in the show and that George is wrong. I love you Preston, but this video is absolutely not it. You're just being a contrarian for the sake of it.

I honestly agree with George certain changes causes the butterfly affect. I never agreed with the aging of Alicent down to make her friends with Rhaenyra because they will continue to harbor on this friendship that should be good and dead now.

How craven Martin is to have deleted the post.

preston doesnt seem to understand the concept of butterfly effect george is referring to. He complains george criticizes "minor" changes, therefore "misses the point". except that the point is not that the changes are HUGE but exactly the opposite. they ARE minor, but minor things now lead to huge things later on. think of the minor changes in the first seasons of GOT and the huge pile of shit they turned out to be a couple of seasons later.

George emphasizing that Blood was still a serving member of the Gold Cloaks in Fire and Blood may reflect his anti-establishment seventies politics. A normal Gold Cloak in good standing being capable of such atrocities is more cutting commentary on law enforcement abuses than a Gold Cloak who was already fired for being too violent.

Preston - I love your channel, your content and your takes. Lately I've picked up on something - whenewer you speak about George the person, not George the author you have nothing but contempt for him. He's either silly grandpa, petty, or have no idea what he is talking about. Maybe it's just me, but I don't feel is the healthiest approach. I hope you will stop for a moment and think about it, this video especially got pretty overt and it worries me.

Preston is completely wrong that the “choice” between Jaehaera and Jaehaerys in the show is basically the same as what the books portrayed. The situation in the show is barely a choice at all. Blood and Cheese want to kill a boy. They are there to kill Jaehaerys. They are only asking Helaena about which one is which. Sure, technically she has the option to lie and to pass her daughter off as her son. But what exactly would be the motivation to do that? Tell them the truth and they murder the boy and leave. Lie to them and they might note that something is up, they might check for themselves, they might get angry at Helaena for lying. Worst case they might just kill everybody. In the books Helaena is actively presented with a choice. Which child of yours do you want to sacrifice? She actively has to think of reasons why one of her children would be a better sacrifice than the other. Blood and Cheese do not care which one she picks. The choice is completely on *her*. It’s a huge difference and makes the show version much less psychologically torturous on Helaena as George correctly points out. I’m a bit surprised Preston doesn’t get this aspect but once again he’s too focused on technicalities (“a choice between a boy and a girl is little different from a choice between two boys”) and fails to correctly analyze the impact on the *characters*. It’s classic GRRM “human heart in conflict with itself” god dammit!

I actually agree with George’s criticism, in that, what I found most disappointing about show Blood and Cheese was the lack of Haelena having to choose which of her children she condemns and then them turning around and murdering the other child. I don’t think Preston’s point of “Maelor won’t remember” plays much of a role, because it’s about *Haelena* being wrecked with grief, knowing every time she looks into her young son’s face from thereon that she chose him to be murdered. I don’t think it would be as simple for a mother in such a situation to just convince oneself “oh, he’s fine, he doesn’t remember anything”. Just the knowledge that she spoke those words is enough. Plus there would always be a lingering doubt that maybe he does remember something. This was always the aspect of Blood and Cheese that made it so brutal for me. The show had none of that. It was little more than a mother watching her child get murdered in front of her. Still brutal of course. But none of the lingering self-blame that the books had. Other stuff could have certainly been done better regardig Blood and Cheese in the show, but this was the main thing that let me down.

Preston acting like he wrote the books lol

George is going senile. We are never getting twow

George gets misled, ignored, and even outright lied to during production - shut out to the point where he feels like his only recourse is speaking publicly, something he (especially as someone who’s worked in Hollywood before) probably doesn’t want to do and wouldn’t if any other private avenue were still available to him. Preston: “Don’t air your dirty laundry in public dude. It’s unprofessional.”

What people like Carmine don't understand: this post was only about the first two episodes. He has a TON more criticism for the season. If he has this much to say about Maelor's omission, imagine how much he has to say about Nettles'? To me, it seemed like this post was setting up an even longer/more scathing post about Nettles not being included, and that ruining the entire story with regards to Daemon and Rhaenyra's downfall. I'd like to see Carmine scarf down some crow, along with those calzones.

He is not saying these are his biggest problems with the show. He says there are larger and more toxic butterflies. Meaning he has bigger issues with other choices not mentioned in the blog post.

Would love an actual analysis of what George is talking about and what changes being made now in season 1 & 2 will be detrimental to the story’s logic.

I totally get what GRRM is saying. He is just talking about how when adapting a book to film sometimes these small changes sort of balloon into the whole story becoming unrecognizable. I think after seeing what happened with GoT with the later seasons culminating in the disaster that was season 8 he is a bit defensive. He is now seeing the issues with HoTD season 2 and he is bothered by it and the potential of where it is going. I'm glad he is making a big deal out of it.

I think they are followed as the protagonists because in the show, Daemon clearly asks for aemond to be killed. Aemond is not a sympathetic character, and we would probably like to see B+C succeed. But blood and cheese are both shown over the sequence to be cruel such as kicking the dog, threatening and stealing. It then ends in killing jaeherys, a betrayal of their original orders. So it it twist that they do something awry and horrendous, but only to people who have not read the book, as we know who eventually gets it. Without showing their misadventure, we probably would take Daemon to have ordered jaeherys death outright.

Clearly George is more upset about the bigger changes. Dragon lore change and the loss of Nettles. He just let that come through and his discussion of episodes 1&2.

Blood and Cheese couldn't tell the kids apart cause they didn't want to assume the kids gender. I'm sure you're not saying that just because someone has a dick (as a part of the body), that he a boy/man. There's no physical difference between men and women, its all social constructs.

My tinfoil hat theory is that the blogpost scandal is completely intentional and George told us exactly what he's doing with the Butterfly story. It's not a wild assumption that he has resentment for the downfall of the later seasons of GoT, and I would bet good money that he had plenty of discourse with the creatives that at the time was done silently and through the proper channels; and what probably happened was that he was blown off whenever he raised an issue. Fast forward to the production of his next work he's seeing the exact same tiny adaptational compromises that seemed necessary in the moment but ultimately led to his previous story going completely off the rails - and his concerns are once again being ignored. In a way, he's the time traveler who's back in the past and is seeing history play out, knowing full well that it is on the road to repeat itself. So what does he do? He makes a post and then half an hour later, he deletes it. The time traveler steps on a butterfly. I think he knew EXACTLY how inflammatory the blogpost would be in the HotD community, and he posted it anyways with the full intention that the ripple effect would cause a disruption in the production process. Whether it inspires good change or bad change is yet to be seen but I think George's entire goal was simply to throw a monkey wrench in the cogs of HBO's machine, and he's clearly accomplished that.

I live watching y’alls podcasts. I feel like everyone tries to have an extreme view of something. I’m so happy that someone has a reasonable normal person take that sees the fault on both sides and the pros of both sides.

8:00 Dude!! I remember hurtful things told to me when I was as young as 2 and still suffering from them.

LOL HBO must have had those lawyers on GRRM real quick

The nightmarish choice in the show is very badly done: sure we can retroactively say that, oh, if we squint we can still recognize that Helaena was still making a conscious choice as to which of her children would die, but that is NOT how it comes across. I watch the series with my wife (who has read the book) and 4 friends (none of whom have) and the people who haven't read it were shocked by the events but were also very confused about what happened there. Also, you say that Cheese's zinger to Maelor isn't impactful, and I disagree very hard there, just viscerally as a reader I found that part perhaps the most horrible. And sure, it's not a thing that impacts Maelor because he's too young, but it does Helaena.

Disagree with Preston on there being a Sophie’s choice in the show - the wet bandits ask specifically for Jaehareys; Helaena doesn’t choose anything, she just answers their question as to which one is the boy. That’s not a Sophie’s choice.

GRRM would NEVER write this plot line like so, that just seems lazy how the whole darkstar plot is unfolding