Master Virgo wrote: ↑

September 28th, 2022, 4:56 pm

I'd argue that a more creative writer would have probably find a compelling way to tell the story of this season at least, in a non-linear fashion.

I think if you have this many time jumps in a story where decisions and events have such great consequences for the future, going back and forth, so you can showcase the threads that connect the present with the past, will work as the best method to handle your material.

And you also get to play with contrasts for great dramatic effect. For instance

putting a flashback in which Alicent and Rhaenyra are bonding in a charming moment of friendship, would have worked so much better if it was right after a scene where all signs of affection between them, have been replaced by a deep sense of mistrust and icy glares.

I think of this series as a show that is evoking the form of a novel much more successfully than anything I've seen recently. And this novel structure is the reason I believe that this linear approach works much, much better. It almost makes me think of those great pieces of literature like The Brothers Karamazov - I'm not comparing their literary significance or achievements, but rather their structure and storytelling. I am really enjoying the format of HotD, and I'm really, really glad they did not go down that flashbacky route, superimposing those supposedly contrasting scenes. This way, you as a viewer have to draw the conclusions yourself (tbh, the series was, on many occasions, quite on the nose with these sorts of implications anyway). I would actually prefer if even less would be directly addressed, such as

Imagine having all the various kids of Rhaenyra and Alicent both as young children and as adults if you chose a non-linear approach...most people would just check out at some point because it'd be too confusing which adult would be which kid in the flashback, especially since these characters often have silver-blond hair.

The linear approach also pays off when you look at someone like Viserys on the show. You feel the weight of his responsibility and the tragedy of his failure in episode 8 and you would not get that if you told this story out of order.

In many ways it's a lot more mental work from the audience to connect the dots. It is true. You have to piece the thing together, it's not handed to you and that's the beauty of it.

I believe in Nolan's school of writing, which is, anything that can be non-linear, should be non-linear. The creativity that it allows you to have with sequencing and giving information to the audience at the time of your choosing is incomparable to the linear form.

In this particular case it works really well, because you have multiple time jumps that can create emotional disconnects with the audience, considering the changes in the cast, and characters that have developed off screen and are all of a sudden very different than what they used to be. As opposed to something like Breaking Bad where you are witnessing the continuous descent of a character throughout the whole story.

But most importantly in a straightforward telling of a narrative such as this, that happens over a long period of time, you have to either cut it to a few segments and that everything important to the future has to happen within those short sequences in the timeline and that can feel very unnatural, or you are forced to do even more time jumps, sometimes inside the episode, which will create larger disconnects for an audience that is trying to find an emotional foothold with your show.

In a non-linear form however, you will set the structure of the work in a way that you can always go back and explore more of what has transpired in your characters past and their relationships with each other without the limitation of having to stack it all in some party or funeral scene.

This show is great for the most part btw, I'm merely pointing out how it perhaps could have been even better.

Now that episode was dope. Why’d it end so abruptly though wasn’t that the finale?

I really enjoyed the final episode of the first season. It ended more or less where I expected, namely with . I also like the changes in that regard because it gives the character more nuance than he has in the source material. Now . Aemond's actor is just great all around and gives the character the proper menace he should exhude, whilst also letting us know that he's not a one-dimensional villain. The sapphire eye is also from the book. The entire Storm's End sequence in general is a wonderful example of how tension is generated and then ultimately released and the cinematography is astonishing.

I love the score for the show. It's not as action packed as the soundtrack for GOT but it elevates the show in a number of ways. The scene where Rhaenyra receives her father's crown that Ser Errik Cargyll stole in episode 9 is an excellent example of this. Chills all around. Yes, the painted table is the same we've seen in GOT but Stannis didn't seem to have figured out how to use it effectively.

Daemon is also showing us more sides to his character and not all of them are pretty. I would also have to say that EVERYTHING he does in this epsiode is in-character because he's been an abusive POS this entire time. Yes, he does heroic things on occasion and he cares for his now deceased brother but he also killed Rhea Royce just so he would be able to wed his niece. He committed something akin to a war crime in the Stepstones and he and Rhaenyra organised the murder of some sad random guard just so they could get married and so Laenor could have his adventures in Essos. Daemon is not a good person but that does not mean he's not intriguing and his unique relationship to Old Valyria and the dragons specifically showcases that he stands apart from all the other characters.

It's interesting how much focus on the prophecy there is and it usually comes up in discussions between two characters behind closed doors so there would not be a record of it in Fire and Blood. It also creates a frightening moment of tension between Daemon and Rhaenyra during this episode, mainly because Daemon realises that his brother did not trust him with a vital secret and so he takes his anger out on Rhaenyra which is an awful thing to do but sadly also in-line with who he is as a person. It is also interesting how gung-ho Daemon is for war (to the point where he almost comes off as ignoring his queen's commands), as opposed to Rhaenyra who is similar to Viserys in her restraint at least until the final shot of the episode. Dreams vs dragons.

This episode also showcased more dragons than we've seen before. Vermithor (the dragon that Daemon sings to in High Valyrian) was the dragon of old king Jaehaerys and it will be interesting to see how the unclaimed dragons will play into the Dance going forward.

There are a bunch of visual callbacks to earlier moments in the season, notably the birthing scene, the moment on the bridge and the final shot of the episode. I appreciate that kind of silent visual storytelling, as it exemplifies the somewhat cyclical nature of the story. The smaller, unplanned coronation we get in this episode also serves as a nice contrast to the elaborate and grandiose affair that the greens staged for Aegon in the previous episode.

What makes me sad is that we will likely have to wait until 2024 for the show to return.

The teaser trailer for season 2 is here:


Dragons will dance.