What a shallow analysis. What good is all that structure if they can't keep their characters consistent and develop them well?

You are entirely tripping sir that was a bad finale to a below average season.

The time skips definitely annoyed me which is why Laenas death 💀 had no real impact on me I didn't feel like I knew her well enough to care

What about fantasy worlds? After all the dragon stuff, I’m hoping to see some of that.

There are lots of goo tips in this video and I'm listening.

I hate this season more than anything of late. This season was good up until ep4. everything later was junk except Vermithor and Hugh. Daemon should stop having visions in ep5. ep 3 and 4 was already boring to see. Meetings of Riverlords should have happened in episode 5, battle of rivermen and winter wolves vs Lannisters should happen in episode 6 or 7.Gullet should have happened in final episode. This is story about war and yes i want to see war otherwise political talks make no sense . Also Alicent betraying her family makes no sense. There is nothing to be said between Alicent and Rhaenyra. War is started and cannot be stopped. Only good thing is that Rhaenys died. I couldn't stand her wisdom talk that actually contains no wisdom at all

This is one long video indirectly asking to see Aegon's conquest 😂. Most of the answers are there from dragons burning doen castles which then cause other kingdoms to surrender without a fight to dragon religions being formed etc.

I ahree with so much of this but I will defend the existence of some of the typical fantasy elements like the typical army warfare and castles. Let's remember when this takes place the Targaryens dynasty came into power with dragons less than 150 years before the point of the show. Most of the castles were built long before dragons came to the continent, winterfell and house Starrk is over 4,000 years old. Like you said they are useless against dragons hence why the burning of Harron Hall was considered an infamous event as one of the few monarchs cooked in his own castle for not bending the knee to Aegon the Conqueror. His Dragon Balerion the Black Dread was bigger than vagar and the bigger and older a dragon is the hotter their magical fire burns. Apparently Balerion's fire was hot enough to melt stone and steel and was colored black. As for armies let's remember this is the first major war in westeros with both sides having dragons because it's a civil war nobody is experienced in this kind of war because dragons were mainely a deterrant and 1 dude, Aegon and his 2 sister wives conquerored 7 kingdoms with just 3 dragons there wasn't combat with 2 armies that both had dragons. Most wars post dragons era was between feuding lords who themselves don't have dragons so atandard warfare would apply until the king sends a targaryen with a dragon and the fight is over instantly. Lastly dragon patrols wouldn't work as only the royal family can ride them and they have royal duties to attend too, not to mention the caloric needs of a dragon would be insane to keep them flying all the time. Dragons on average eat about a herd of sheep's worth of meat every 3 weeks and spend most of their time sleeping like lions while going for an afternoon flight to stretch their wings for an hour or 2 each day at most unless they have a mission with a rider and may be flying for hours on some journey.

I agree the ships make no sense, vhagar could easily swoop down and burn the majority of the valeryion fleet in 10 mins

The first season was perfect and objectively one of the best seasons of TV ever written. This season was a lil weird due to the writer strike and the HBO merger which resulted in them being forced to cut things thus resulting in having to stretch other things to fill the limited episodes we got. They wrote 10 episodes but were told they couldnt film some of the costlier stuff thus we got Daemon wondering around harrenhal to much. But even that was not real filler in the traditional sense, it was a deep dive into the lore and how magick works in this universe. Something D&D diddnt understand and cut from the original show sadly. And yes, a vast majority of book readers are into all the expanded details and huge story and want to know and explore the whole world in detail. Kind of a defining feature of the books. Its the TV audience who is lacking "sophistication" and should spend their time with the latest marvel movie. Also George had NOTHING to do with it and is a master at his craft. So yeah, if your a author, you do want to be like George but probably cant pull off the complexity that is in these books. complex enough for people to have been dissecting it for decades and to continue to do so. The 1000s of years of history, the parallels with real life myth and within the story lore itself regarding character archetypes down through the ages, the mystery's hidden in the seemingly smallest of details, the characters who act like real people and again, the sheer complexity which makes it feel like real history. Nothing happens in a vacuum and every little thing affects everything else; just like in life.

The biggest problem with dragons for me, is that there's no f*king way a beast of the size of Vhagar can take flight and stay in the air with a couple of wing flaps. It's waaaaay too masive to stay in the air. Aerodynamics don't make any sense.

And what bothers is me the fact that these particular dragons agree to fight each other. I mean they are basically all relatives and knew each other for decades

Rhaenys Targaryen's death was unnecessary, she should've flown back

In Valyria they did have a religion based around the dragons. In Westeros the dragons and their riders were viewed as borderline gods, they show as much and the books and show. But it isn't the same as it was. The old religions are deeply entrenched and there are likely other things pulling string.

Dragons fights were inspired by Eagle fights which do lock claws and plummet to the ground.

I wanted more idle dragon scenes, even a background blurred feeding scene wouldn't have been expensive and would have gone a lonnng way toward making me feel the reality of the dragons.

Vaegar is the one it sleeping in the forest, Vermithor is Hugh hammers dragon at dragon Stone...

Did you read Fire and Blood??

Also, Dragon travel speed is debatable/inconsistent in both the main show and House of the Dragon. In season 7 of GOT, Danaerys receives the raven requesting help from Jon while he’s chilling on that rock beyond the wall. Unless they had teleportation powers no one was aware of, it would take her a fair old while to travel a few thousand miles (assuming they had built in GPS, as otherwise they’d definitely have gotten lost). But the fact that she rocks up not looking remotely dishevelled indicates she made a few stops to redo her hair to make sure she looked good rescuing Jon. Also, she would have to not gone full pelt otherwise she wouldn’t even have been wearing that outfit by the time she arrived, I reckon a leisurely 40mph max as she looks immaculate upon arrival. Oh and the lore says dragons can go from Dragonstone to King’s Landing and back in a day - it’s around 400 miles each way so that gives us an idea I guess 😂

Hi - interesting video. I see someone already pointed out Vhagar is Aemond’s dragon - also worth mentioning she’s a she, not he. She’s known as Grumpy Granny Vhagar.

Great video

The only dragon fights we’ve seen so far have been emotional attacks of the dragon rider. It will be interesting to see what happens in the actual war next season.

The dragons are cool. The look, the sounds, the effects--awesome. But how real do they feel? What do you think of how the show has handled them?

it was bad. too much build up. zero pay off. it was a obvious writing downgrade from season 1.

I felt the one major plont point unfulfilled, which I would have appreciated a resolution towards, would be the taming of Sheepstealer by Rhaena. I felt the dinner scene in Tyrosh with Tyland could have been cut. An agreement should have been made after the mud wrestling match. It felt like time spent on a new subplot rather than resolving a mid-tier active subplot. I felt the Rhaena subplot to already be a little messy, so the cliffhanger felt unnecessary.

If they want to do it this way give them more episodes. If Daemonds ark was more spooky and the main story characters had more agency - I'd be more engaged.

George may be bad at pacing, but the absolute king of terrible pacing in the book series was Robert Jordan.

Harenhal hallucinations scenes are total garbage.

HAH! I like how you have a lot of my favorite things in the background (Lego and the best board game ever - Gloomhaven <3) Lovely discussion and it clearly helped <3.

Cool prospe tive and very insightful 👌 subbed

This would have been a great episode if it was ep 8 / 10, and not the season finale

I fully disagree, since I enjoy the season 2 fully. The last episode was realy touching. There's more to the tales than just slaughtery, there are new dragons, a reversal of forces, a complete reversal of Daemon's personality seeing the future and bending the knee. The high peak is on E4, then the consequences appear on 5, 6, 7 and 8 = super long outro bonus. Then cut to the table turns. A good effort to have offered this. The longer the better, no need for twists and turns every 20 minutes. By far the best epic fantasy tales on screen.

I think it worked. What do you think? What parts did you love? What parts did you hate?

They definitely pulled it together for the finale.

I might be jumping the gun, or crossing the bridge before I get to it, (insert proper expression here), but I like the plans you've come up with, and may implement a few of them, even though I am still two chapters away from completing the first draft. The first read through, the scene breakdown, a combination of characters and arcs, all good stuff. However, I already know much of what needs to be changed, modified, and dropped. I'm not saying I remember everything, and the read-through will be a refresher on some of it, but the biggest stuff I already have a hang of. So, I might do at least the dropping of certain scenes on my read through.

Felt like a tease. I’d hoped to see more dragon action this season. Sigh. Guess I’ll be waiting for season 3 😖

Maybe instead of having Daemon walking around Harrenhal and repeat the similar dream/hallucination scenes 20 times, they could have added some interactions between different characters, and in different regions

Make that 3 episodes

Alicent betraying her family for Rhaenyra? The woman that wanted Aemond tortured right after he lost an eye, starved a city, and husband decapitated her grandson? Please someone make a video about this fanfic plot...

Season 1 was worse, it had terrible pacing with nonsensical and confusing time skips

Thank You!!! I'm amazed more people haven't realized this fact! HoD is being stretched by HBO/Max for $$$ rather than quality story telling

George didn't write the show

George calls himself a gardener, but what he doesn't seem to know is that in the garden of a good gardener, every plant grows precisely where and how the gardener wants, and those that do not are weeds that must be cut.

season1 had something special about it that was lost i noticed with the beach dragon scene it was the most reductive version of that no intensity nothing cinematic ect had a bad feeling that never got better

Am I out here on a Ledge all alone? Am I the only one that felt the whole first season just felt like a lackluster writing and not a single line of dialogue or its delivery stuck out to me? I can pick at least four lines from every single episode of season 1 of Game of Thrones and say damn that was some good writing. I don't remember that spark here once...

Is this a criticism of the show or books? As from what you are saying this can all be attributed to the show. ASOIF has not finished yet so the question of if it has bad pacing remains to be seen. And Fire and Blood is written a lot differently to how its portrayed in House of Dragon.

I think you've hit the nail on the head. Gorm clearly loves to expand and world-build, which is good for beginnings but not for endings. Gorm just felt like having a Pirate story, so along comes the whole Euron Greyjoy plotline in AFFC.

I feel that if your settings are all super unique it draws from the fact that it’s a world. Sometimes you need that one cliche overused city dirty city to add to the grandeur of the super important settings. Though adding slight changes to personalize and add to your settings can really go a long way for even the smallest areas. your advice was amazing! Keep up the good work!

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