I’m digging it so far, real interested to see where it’s going.

OnlyPawns

Unlike me. I’m a great loser. I lose even when people think “there’s no way for this guy to lose in this situation”.

It’s pretty clear Laena is heading for a c-section since the baby didn’t naturally deliver, and that’s pretty much unsurvivable based on the medical state of things HOTD is set in. Even if she survived the blood loss, we’ve seen they have almost no ability to treat infection with how things have gone with Viserys. I…

“Why did this proud, determined woman who clearly cares about her daughters and her own future so abruptly decide to kill herself? Was she so stricken with grief over the loss of her child that she immediately decided to self-immolate?”

The childbirth symbolism and Laena’s choice seems to have escaped you.

There were several midwives and servants attending to Aemma. Assuming Viserys didn’t come out and tell his family exactly what happened, servants talk and gossip spreads quickly. Remember, the Valarians are cousins to the Targaryens and were at Kings Landing for the tourney when Aemma died. So they would have heard…

Just show him missing a new body part every episode. Meanwhile Alicent spends time in the Godswood praying for specific parts to fall off. 

Was she so stricken with grief over the loss of her child that she immediately decided to self-immolate? Is this really what she meant when she said she wanted “a dragon rider’s death”?

Laena ordered her dragon to torch her because she knew that she and her baby were going to die anyway. She preferred to go out by dragon fire than to die in childbirth.

I assumed Laena killed herself because they can't get the baby out. So she either dies of sepsis or ....

Well, what the show could do, is write a flashback episode (or three) with Milly Alcock and Emily Carey returning in season two (or three) and fill in the story of some of these intervening years. Both actresses will be two years older, and could more convincingly play their roles as women in their mid-twenties.

Laena is basically a footnote in the book, like Daemon’s first wife, as well as Ser Harwin. That’s probably why they were basically written out without much characterization.

Laena thought she was going to die like Aemma did in the first episode so she decided to die a dragonrider’s death instead.

Emma D’Arcy still felt in the same vein of Milly’s performance. She seems a little sanded down from the young Rhaenyra we know, which makes sense. I’m sure the spark will return once Daemon is back (who somehow got younger).

I feel like they reached a settlement and if so good for them but man that Deadline statement sounds like Haddish had a gun to Jane Doe's head while she was making it. 

Well that was a sudden and jarring about-face. Wonder who got threatened here...

This feels so very manufactured.   Like they had to know that Warner wouldn’t just be like “Okay, make a movie using our IP”.  The pushback from the “media conglomerate” is part of the show and the goal.  

Bloke I know got six months community service for doing that on a bus.

Nerds are the fucking worst, man.