The Sara Hess controversy explained, for those out of the loop
A lot of people have been wondering who Sara Hess is and why there has been so much controversy surrounding her name as of late, so I decided to write a post explaining the situation for those who don't know what's going on.
The drama began to kick off after Episode 9 of the show, which was fairly controversial as people were divided on the logic behind the ending scene. The scene depicts Rhaenys busting through the floor during Aegon's coronation, killing dozens of innocent civilians, and threatening the Hightowers with her dragon yet refusing to kill them before flying off. A lot of people disliked this scene as it (1) was never actually in the book (2) was written with some lapses of logic and (3) felt like it was added in for the sake of spectacle over substance.
Later, it comes to light that writer Sara Hess was behind this decision - she takes credit for it in an interview and even seems to be quite proud of it, saying "well I just thought it would be awesome and cool to add a dragon explosion into the scene!" People... strongly disliked this, as it reminded them of how D&D worsened Game of Thrones by replacing all of the intelligent dialogue scenes and logical politics in favor of large, "exciting" CGI explosion spectacles. As one user put it, it sounded like something a writer for Marvel Studios rather than Game of Thrones would say, which isn't a good sign.
Then the situation escalates after Sara Hess comes forward in another interview where she endorses some rather contentious views on Daemon's character: she basically agrees to somebody who says that Daemon is incapable of loving anybody, that every action he's ever taken (including when he helped Viserys walk to the throne in Ep 8) was selfish, and that he's the type of person who doesn't even give a shit about his own brother.
"Daemon would have let his brother fall flat on his face. In other words, aren’t all of Daemon’s moments, even the seemingly benevolent ones, ultimately self-serving?"
Hess replied: “I agree with you. He’s become Internet Boyfriend in a way that baffles me."
Hess went on to talk about how she cant understand why Daemon even has fans, which was understandably controversial considering that Daemon is one of the most popular characters. Shit really starts to hit the fan.
Finally, some users begin to point out that Hess was also the writer for Ep 6, which had a few unpopular decisions. For example, after episode 6 aired there was quite a bit of backlash over the decision to cut out a scene where Daemon was comforting his daughters. There was nothing in the books about Daemon being a shitty father or ignoring one of his daughters (Rhaena), yet for some reason Ep 6 added that in and deliberately strained to make him look worse.
Episode 6 also went out of its way to contradict book canon by portraying Daemon as a neglectful husband to Laena (the original F&B book makes it clear that Daemon loved her very much). And not to mention the massive changes Hess made for Laena's death - in the book, she dies while being cradled in Daemon's loving arms, yet in the show her death is changed into yet another dramatic dragonfire moment, which some people didn't like.