In the last episode of Game of Thrones, some things went down. This article will be about one of those things. So spoiler warnings, people.
Last chance to turn back.
Ready?
Okay. So, as you may recall, a ship-borne Euron Greyjoy surprises a dragon-borne Dany, shooting one of her dragons—Rhaegal, RIP—with a deck-mounted rapid-fire torsion weapon that the show calls a “scorpion.” Euron’s bolts cut through the beast, killing it, before a sequence of further shots from his ships blasts her fleet to splinters.
I have thoughts.
First, screw Three-eyed Raven “Nut” Bran Stark. Dude sees everything but speaks nothing.
Second, screw Dany for somehow managing to be surprised by a fleet of ships despite the fact that she has superior range of view from the back of a flying dragon. Seriously? She and Jon are just The Worst when it comes to using their heads. Gotta say, I’m fast becoming #TeamNoneOfTheseSchmucks.
Third, I can actually accept the possibility of a rapid-fire ballista. Building one is a significant engineering problem, but it’s hardly insurmountable. Philo of Byzantium actually described such a device in his work Mechanike syntaxis (he called the device a polybolos, meaning ‘thrower of multiple things’) in the 3rd century BC. So I’ll take it. No problem there.
Fourth …well, let’s talk projectile ballistics.
The path of a projectile—in our case, a scorpion bolt—is affected by some major variables, including the initial velocity it has, the air resistance it encounters, and the pull of gravity upon it. And yeah, I know Game of Thrones is fantasy, but I’ve seen no indications that Westeros has anything but Earth-like gravity and atmospheric composition. These facts, plus the relatively calm weather conditions for the event in question and the distance between Euron and Dany, will simplify our calculations considerably.
Sorry to bring high school maths back for y’all, but for simplicity’s sake the end result of all this will be a path that looks like a parabola: a projectile ought to make a rather lovely arc between an initial launching point and a final landing point.
You may already be seeing the problem.
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See, those scorpion bolts went straight. I mean, really straight. Their trajectory was so flat that Euron was using a fixed “iron” sight to take aim. Since a projectile under the influence of gravity cannot have a flat trajectory, the only explanation for such a seemingly straight shot would be that its parabolic arc is so wide that within the range covered it appears to be flat. It’s rather like how over short distances the earth appears to be flat, but that’s only because we’re seeing such a small section of a really wide curvature.
In other words, if it hadn’t hit the neck of a flying dragon, Euron’s bolt would have gone really, really far.
How far?
Let’s have some fun with numbers!
I’m eyeballing things here, but I’d estimate Dany is about 1,000 meters away from Euron. It’s probably more, given the fact that she didn’t see his damn fleet at all, but I’ll roll with this. And of course Euron needs to hit a moving target. I don’t have the exact velocity of a dragon at hand just now, but I do know that the airspeed velocity of an unladen European swallow is about 11 meters per second. So I’ll guess Rhaegal is cruising around 5 m/s. Seems fair.
Before we get to anything else, I’ve got to give some props to some impressive shooting on Euron’s part. An object moving 5 m/s at a range of 1,000 meters is damn hard to hit even with modern, fully adjustable optical sights. Plus, you know, that scorpion is hard-mounted to the deck of a vessel that on the open sea will be experiencing pitch, yaw, roll, heave, surge, and sway. So yeah, it’s (impossibly) impressive shooting.
Ah, you might say, but this is a big object. That makes it easier.
True, true.
To continue, then, let’s see what that first hit tells us. Euron clearly had this moving target in his non-adjustable sights, because he hit it. Now, I’m gonna reckon that Rhaegal’s neck is about 5 meters thick from top to bottom, and we know that this target is moving horizontally (5 m/s) and that the bolt itself will drop from whatever he’s aiming at. Given that he hit Rhaegal smack dab in the middle of its throat, that drop can’t be much more than 2.5 meters.
In other words, he would need to be aiming for the very nose of the beast, and the bolt would need to cover the 1,000 meter distance in about half a second.
The bolt, therefore, would need to have an initial velocity of about 2,000 m/s.
By comparison, a modern sniper rifle propels a bullet around 800 to 1,000 m/s (howdy, Fortnite fans!).
Oh, remember that parabola? Having the projectile drop just 2.5 meters over its first 1,000 meters of travel means it’s a wide one. If we figure that the angle, from Euron’s perspective, between the sea and Rhaegal is about 20 degrees, we can use our initial velocity to trace out that parabola mathematically.
I’m just a lowly medievalist here, folks, but I’m calculating that Euron’s bolt, if it hadn’t hit the dragon, would have reached a maximum elevation of around 14 miles above sea level before it nosed back down to earth. That’s, um, around twice the cruising altitude of most commercial airliners.
And sure, there’s some wiggle room to my calculations. Atmospheric conditions are one of those major variables, after all, and while the weather was great when Euron pulled the trigger, if his bolt hadn’t hit the dragon a lot could’ve happened to it during the—checks notes—more than two minutes it would’ve been airborne after he released it, during which time—checks notes again—it would’ve traveled about 163 miles. A missed shot would’ve passed through weather systems.
Probably this is all academic. It doesn’t matter how many damn torsion arms you put on one, no medieval or quasi-medieval ballistics engine can manage to launch a projectile at hypersonic speeds. Alas.
Oh there he goes again, you might be thinking, with his nonsensical demands that the fantasy of Game of Thrones should better reflect the reality of our history.
Well… yeah, I guess maybe I’m doing that a little. But there’s actually a flip-side to all this. I saw more than one complaint online from folks who doubted that bolts from a ballista could actually blow through dragons and ships in the ways depicted. Knowing something about real ballistae, I thought the same myself when I first watched the episode.
But you know what? I’ve got to give credit where it is due now that I’ve seen the numbers. A bolt cutting through the air at friggin’ hypersonic speed would indeed obliterate anything in its path.
So all’s well that ends well…
…except …damnit, Jon …you pet your direwolf before you go. Always.
Michael Livingston is a Professor of Medieval Culture at The Citadel who has written extensively both on medieval history and on modern medievalism. His historical fantasy trilogy set in Ancient Rome, The Shards of Heaven, The Gates of Hell, and The Realms of God, is available from Tor Books. His new fantasy novella “Black Crow, White Snow” was released on Friday, May 3rd as an Audible Original.
By now, the only plot point I want resolved in the final episode is explained by this:
https://me.me/i/incidents-dog-travels-more-than-100-km-to-bite-its-3b4c824cd78441eebdba7815a60c9c95
Thanks for answering my question on the velocity of unladen dragons that I just asked over at the Pern reread…
There’s so much wrong with the scene that it’s pretty ridiculous. Euron’s fleet is hemmed in by Dragonstone. Ignoring the fact the Dany’s forces still hold the island, so they should have seen the fleet, sent up warning flares or just been plain bombarding the fleet with their own shore defence weapons, Dany could have used the island for cover: come around behind the fleet and burned it before it could turn. The ballista could pivot, but that’s no good because they lose line of sight through the sails.
The show has done pretty badly, consistently, when it comes to military tactics in the battles. In fact, only Blackwater and the battle at the Wall really stand firm as making sense and being portrayed well. Hardhome was also a solid spectacle, given that no-one was expecting a battle and the disposition of the defenders (caught halfway through an evacuation) made any kind of coherent defence impossible. The baggage train also kind of worked, as the Lannisters were caught by surprise (we’ll ignore how ~50,000 Dothraki landed on the coast despite the Iron Fleet and made it as far as the Lannister army without being detected but still). Every other battle in the last couple of seasons – the Battle of the Bastards, the attack on Winterfell, the naval assault on the Dornish/Ironborn fleets, the taking of Highgarden – has been deranged, with one or both sides being presented as lacking even a reasonable amount of common sense.
Most of the issues could have been overcome either by stronger writing (sometimes just tweaked lines of dialogue would have fixed issues) or coming up with better ways of overcoming the odds, or dealing logically with the fallout of events. If you want Jon Snow to go beserk and trigger a premature attack on a superior enemy force which fails miserably and would have resulted in his entire force being wiped out if unexpected reinforcements hadn’t arrived, roll with that and have everyone pointing out that was stupid. Don’t reward him by telling him he’s a military genius and declare him King in the North the very next episode.
I do think that if you apply this level of demand for realism to fantasy shows, you should never watch fantasy. Fantasy is myth. Myths tell us stories: lessons for the future; emotional truths about ourselves. If you start hunting for plot holes in myths, you’ll find them every single time. In fact, you’ll find them in pretty all fiction. You’ll never be able to get the benefits, and you’ll end up like Plato: wanting to ban the poets because they told “lies”.
As for Bran, I think you’re ignoring the possibility that he and Sansa, and probably Arya, are plotting. I don’t have anyway to know the contours of the plot (I’m unspoiled), but I do think the story has to end with the disappearance of magic from the world. That means no dragons, to balance out the end of the WW (I’ve thought this pretty much since I read Book 1). So Bran probably wouldn’t warn Dany anyway.
As for Dany’s reaction, sure we can all see the common sense reaction for her was to attack Euron from behind or even from above, not to fly down the same vector the ballistas used. But (a) Dany has never shown much tactical acumen — she learned from the Dothraki, whose idea of advanced tactics was to charge; and (b) you can’t ignore emotion and human error when dealing with battlefield decisions. Dany was distraught and enraged when Rhaegal went down (metaphor for Jon???), so she reacted out of those emotions instead of the calm tactical awareness we have here on the sidelines. Hardly the first person to make a battlefield mistake like that.
Part of the problem is that Dany has completely self taught herself dragon riding battle tactics (i.e. she knows very little about how to use them effectively against a prepared opponent), still thought her dragons were invincible to conventional weapons (despite having previous experience they are not) and generally not understanding that in a war the enemy can make their own moves so is lazy about recon.
This does happen in real life, like in early WWII when the British managed to lose the fleet carrier Glorious to battleship guns.
@3 – Yes, the only battle that the protagonists seemed to have much understanding of battle strategy is Dany’s raid on the Lannister baggage train. Where she used Drogon to blast holes in the enemy lines for the Dothraki light cavalry to exploit.
In most other situations, the showrunners want to hand her and Jon the idiot ball for drama purposes.
@@.-@: The problem with what you are saying is that it’s saying that “Fantasy is dumb, don’t think about it too much.” The fact is that fantasy and myth actually have much cleverer military tactics and nods to it, or are just very vague and don’t go there at all. Fantasy novels, from Lord of the Rings to the works of David Gemmell and Paul Kearney and, indeed, the Song of Ice and Fire books themselves, also do much better in discussion of military tactics and how it works.
The Dothraki are also a light cavalry force whose advantages are either overwhelming numbers, their mobility (to outflank and hit enemy forces from multiple directions) and their horse archers. If you look at the baggage train attack in Season 7, they wait until Daenerys has disrupted the Lannister pike line with fire and their own archers have smashed holes in the ranks with sustained missile bombardment before they engage, as they know that against heavy, set infantry they are vulnerable (as Robert Baratheon pointed out in Season 1 and as the Dothraki learned fighting the Unsullied at Qohor). Dany spent about a year living with them and another two years since then (in the books, apparently seven years in the show!) leading them, so should have picked up on their military strengths since that time.
I think we’re wandering off here, but as for the Field of Fire — a scene I absolutely love — I’ll discuss it while trying to bring it back to my point. In that episode, Dothraki are shown directly charging an unbroken shield wall. That should never happen, though the stories about them in the books support the idea that they would do that. And Dany failed to flank the Lannister line, which she could have rolled up with fire. Then the Dothraki could have used that missing right flank to get behind the Lannister lines, rather than the small gap she created (and which forced the charge against the shield wall).
I mean, I kind of get where this sort of criticism comes from. We’re all supposed to suspend our disbelief, but something takes us out of that when it affects an area we know well. I’m a lawyer (a retired one, anyway), and courtroom scenes drive me crazy because I can’t stop spotting the errors. So while I’m perfectly happy to watch Superman fly — violating the law of gravity — I can’t stand to see someone get the Hearsay Rule wrong. I’m sure doctors feel the same way about medical scenes. This … doesn’t make any real sense, but at least we can try to avoid it.
I hope nobody who enjoys Westerns ever tries to count the shots fired by a revolver. And I hate to break it to folks, but the actors in sex scenes aren’t actually having sex (well, not in the shows we’re discussing). Etc. These are conventions. You’re not supposed to look for nits, you’re supposed to say to yourself “they’re having sex” or “he shot all those bad guys”. If you can’t do that, then why are you watching?
Okay, I definitely laughed out loud at my desk with the “unladen European swallow” line.
Everything about this scene bothered me. I’ve read fantasy all my life and I understand sometimes you just have to let stuff slide, but this (especially Dany not seeing the fleet!) was SO unrealistic it threw me out of the world. Thanks for doing the math and articulating it wayyy better than I ever could.
I do think that if you apply this level of demand for realism to fantasy shows, you should never watch fantasy. Fantasy is myth.
I agree and I don’t.
Yes, expecting a perfect adherence to rules of physics, or advanced military strategy isn’t to be expected in fantasy. Dragons, as designed, are no more capable of flight then chickens. So you have to accept that some things won’t work as you think they should.
But it should be consistent within the world it resides in*. And we’ve seen gravity work on everything else in this show. A better way to have taken down Rhaegal, would have been to fire A LOT of the scorpions, and show that only a few hit him, but enough to mortally wound him, instead of having three perfectly aimed shots hit him in quick succession. They wouldn’t have even had to mortally wound him, just tatter his wings enough he can’t maintain flight, crashes into the water and drowns horrifically.
This is an example of the “better writing” we are all complaining about. They could have filmed this scene in a way that has the same outcome, and makes sense, instead of asking the audience to just accept the nonsensical.
Another example is the Dothraki charge from The Long Night. I still maintain that they could have easily CGI’d a scene were we watch the Dothraki charge the way a light cavalry should, from above, by attacking the flanks. And the lit arakhs would have made it work, because every time the Dothraki swung around, you could have observed the reduced number fiery weapons, until they were gone. Then the tactics would have made sense, and the outcome remained the same.
I appreciate your attempts to find something worth defending in this mess, Sophist. But I’ve been seeing interviews with the cast, and it’s apparent in their reactions to questions from journalists, that they aren’t feeling what’s going down this season.
The lack of care being taken in this final season is what is so frustrating to me. I love this series, I love the actors, and I love the times when you get to spend time with these characters, which is why eps 1 & 2 were SO GOOD. Since The Long Night though, everything has been careless, despite the parts I really liked. Like Nutter’s attempt at saying that Jon’s abandonment of Ghost without even a good bye made the scene “more powerful” that way, instead of just acknowledging that they didn’t think about it, because we all know the wolves aren’t that important to the show people.
But I’m with you on the Bran thing. Not that Bran thinks that “whatever happens is what needs to happen so he won’t warn people” sense. But really, he sees the past not the future, people.
*One thing that irked me about Marvel, is throughout the entire series, we’ve witnessed Iron Man crash in his deactivated suits from ridiculous heights repeatedly, and walk away without a scratch, but when they need to add some pathos to the story, they cripple War Machine when he too falls from a ridiculous height in a deactivated suit. Either the suits have built in inertial dampeners that protect the person inside, even when the suits are powered off, or they don’t.
There is one thing that is at least consistent.
When Bron shot Drogon with the scorpion when they ambushed the wagon train, it just lodged in his skin. This time it blasted straight through Rhaegal. So there’s the implication that since that battle/ambush, they have seriously increased the scorpion’s power. That would also give them something that blasts straight through ships.
For the aiming, I mostly give them slack in that viewers who saw it realistically would be going ‘Why did he hit that ship when he didn’t have it in his sights?’
I hope nobody who enjoys Westerns ever tries to count the shots fired by a revolver.
I enjoy Westerns, and I love nothing more than when they get it right. And my husband hates it when movies and shows demonstrate that a gun is empty, by having the trigger pulled and the gun going “click” which doesn’t happen.
He also hates Buffy, but loves Gingerbread, for when Xander and Oz fall out of the ceiling after crawling in air ducts, a lot of dirt comes with them, because he used to clean them, and knows they aren’t spotless inside, as so commonly depicted.
I mean, if the story is good enough I can ignore these things, and argue myself into plausibility.
But when the story itself is faltering so badly in other ways, this lack of care in the minutiae becomes quite glaring.
Yes, lots of media ignores these details. But I myself give more credit to the media that takes the time to get it right.
@@.-@ We’re not asking for realism, we’re asking for common sense.
It’s okay to like the show despite how dumb it has become. There’s no shame in that. Just don’t try to convince everybody that the avalanche of stupid that’s taking place is actually good writing, makes sense within the show, or underscores dramatic choices. Apologists for the noticeable decline in quality are stopping just short of arguing that the Starbuck’s cup Danaerys had was a deliberate choice by the showrunners to show how she feels like an outsider among the Northern lords and Wildlings, who are drinking ale, while she is struggling to enjoy her pumpkin spice latte while feeling completely left out.
I just assumed that Qyburn (or whatever his name is, my nickname for him is Doctor Frankenstein because of the way he stitched the Mountain back together) had developed a magnetic railgun enhancement for his scorpions. Not only because of the flat trajectories of the bolts, but because they were propelled with such force that they went through both sides of a wooden vessel. Napoleonic navies would have given their eye teeth for guns that shot balls with that kind of power, although the recoil would have been hellacious.
Fantasy needs rigor and consistency just like science fiction. Playing with the nets down doesn’t make for satisfying storytelling.
And my husband hates it when movies and shows demonstrate that a gun is empty, by having the trigger pulled and the gun going “click” which doesn’t happen.
Revolvers definitely click. (Semi-autos and machine guns probably don’t, although I am not a shooter.)
Agree the point here is the battle could have been depicted realistically and still end up an L in the team Stargaryen column without making Dany and Jon look stupid.
Another way this scene could have played out, would have been to have Dany see the fleet, and keep Drogon back, but have Rhaegal ignore her commands, because he’s “imprinted” to Jon now, and fly towards the fleet to attack and get taken down.
Same effect, and gives Dany a legit grudge against Jon, without whom she’d still have control over her dragon and been able to save him.
Of course, the problem with the ideas I’m suggesting, is that they aren’t telling the story the writers WANT to tell. They are definitely trying to build up Euron into a more credible threat, like they did with Ramsay, and they are doing it at the expense of better characters, just like Ramsay. Euron and his crew makes three impossible shots to kill a dragon because they are just that awesome! and sensibility and character development be damned.
@15, Yes, he knows revolvers click, and that’s what movies started with, and they just kept the click as they integrated pistols in.
I myself cut them slack, because movies have to telegraph things to make them apparent to the audience, and a clicking gun is just audio shorthand for an empty weapon.
I mean, don’t EVEN get him started on the weapon design in Firefly. “If it’s a revolver, why does it shoot lasers???? Why make it LOOK like a revolver, if it’s a laser pistol. THAT EPISODE JUST HAD A LASER PISTOL THAT LOOKED LIKE A LASER PISTOL WHY AREN’T THEY ALL THAT WAY.”
The ballista bolts shredding Dany’s ships was laughable. Most of their energy would’ve been spent by the time they reached her fleet. They would’ve stuck like spears or arrows, not destroyed decking and sank ships. No way hard wood shatters like that from a non-explosive missile. Then again, maybe the ships were built with balsam wood.
@3 As a former officer, I can add that the Blackwater was utter rubbish as well. The battle involved an amphibious landing. Under fire. Using ships and boats not…ahhh…optimized for tactical movement over an interface (DoD-speak for an amphibious or airborne landing under fire). There’s a reason that, since WWII there has been ONE amphibious attack (In’chon) and ONE parachute assault (Army Rangers landing at the airfield in Granada) both conducted by surprise, and one opposed by laughably inadequate forces. Because they involve getting your troops massacred.
Up to WWII, and ever after, when conducting a landing, you find somewhere well away from other troops and you get your Army closed up and organized before you go looking for trouble.
And when I watched The Long Night the utterly RIDICULOUS ranges on the Trebuchets (300-400m at BEST) and Catapults (300m) fired over horses that can cover a quarter mile in a bit over twenty seconds drove me nuts. Those rounds (only one each) most likely impacted right in front of the horses as they charged, and were no where near the enemy. And they were positioned wrong, in front of the troops, like they were some kind of smoothbore gunpowder cannon.
My wife rides and she can’t STAND when the riding is wrong in a movie. I can’t handle crap military portrayal. The only saving grace is that Dany and Jon are no worse than any other military leader on Westeros OR Essos. They’re all idiots.
Personally I am rooting for an Everybody Dies and Westeros Sinks Into the Sunset Sea ending. Seems the only way out of this mess.
“Another way this scene could have played out, would have been to have Dany see the fleet, and keep Drogon back, but have Rhaegal ignore her commands, because he’s “imprinted” to Jon now, and fly towards the fleet to attack and get taken down.”
THAT IS SO MUCH BETTER I CAN’T HANDLE IT.
A much more minor issue, but as I understand it one of the biggest issues with scorpions (i.e., torsion-powered ballistae) is that they don’t handle variations in moisture. Which would be a bit of an issue on a ship…
Hey Michael, just wanted to say that your assumption of 1,000m for distance is right in the ballpark of what I calculated on my lunch break for distance. A redditor directed me to this page, great work!
https://www.reddit.com/r/gameofthrones/comments/bm7k8f/spoilers_season_8_episode_4_scorpion_math_i_did/?st=JVFJ9I5R&sh=8af4cf9c
I think that if someone has criticisms of the plot or the dialogue or the acting, they should make those criticisms. Focusing on “lack of realism” in a myth strikes me as mythtaken (that’s a reference for Aeryl). The fundamental problem with that focus is that there’s no stopping point. We’d just have to give up the genre, which seems counterproductive on a site dedicated to science fiction and fantasy.
@24 The problem is that it’s surrendering to the Rule of Cool. A huge part of what makes the series work is taking apart tropes such as the Rule of Cool (like Knights are supposed to be Cool) and being more “realistic” about them. Introducing hypervelocity darts gets in the way of that.
I realize the show exists in a different universe than the books, but part of the problem is that Westeros already has a historical record of how effective medieval artillery is against dragons. Historically speaking, not very!
Fictional universes do have rules; I think it is okay to bend those rules, but you have to have a pretty good reason for doing so. If bending a rule lets you deliver an important and believable character moment, that’s one thing; ignoring the rules for table-setting is something else entirely.
I’ve never heard of the “Rule of Cool”, but I like it. I love the Field of Fire because it was cool, notwithstanding the unreality of it. And I love the idea of dragons, though they can’t exist; couldn’t possibly fly; couldn’t possibly breathe fire; and couldn’t possibly be ridden by humans just holding on due to the G-forces involved. Zombies are cool too, especially when you see them raised up. So I plead guilty.
I agree with 26. That’s a legitimate point.
Even from that picture! Fly around the damn boats!
@17 Counterpoint: why would I NOT make a laser pistol that looked like a revolver?
On the more serious matter of suspension of disbelief, the key issue is that it’s an agreement between creator and audience, not a blank check. If the creator doesn’t hold up their end of the bargain, the audience bails. What the audience will accept is admittedly a moving target that depends on a lot of factors.
I’ll accept the existence of a railgun-ballista if it’s part of a fun story. For me, making the world’s least interesting villain look invincible while the erstwhile protagonist looks like a nitwit isn’t a fun story. I want my first reaction to be “Things look bad for that character I care about” instead of “Oh look, it’s time to raise the stakes again.”
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RuleOfCool for a definition. Click at your own risk. Sorry not sorry.
I think there’s a difference, even within fantasy, between self-conscious myth like the Silmarillion, and a piece of fiction that has repeatedly invoked realism to justify plot and character like ASOIAF/GOT. No one complains that Ancalagon couldn’t possibly have been that big; but I think people rightly complain when plot hinges on magic ballistae and teleporting Plot Device Pirates taking out a dragon in the latter. Of course dragons aren’t real, but these are very clearly different cases, and should be treated as such.
In any case, we engage with myth by engaging with myth. Sometimes that means asking hard questions or looking askance. Passive consumption isn’t a nutritious way to read or watch stories.
@24 – If we must accept in genre fiction that anything can happen without reference to any sort of rules of what is possible in the setting then we probably should give up as that is just an invitation to poorly done and unclever writing.
Of course in fantasy one need accept an enormous fire breathing reptile can exist, that does oblige the reader to accept anything at all. Those are would be being stories for adults.
@32 Notably, if it had actually been a “magic ballistae” they’d get a pass on realism-based criticism.
Or, for those who read the books and know that a full-grown dragon’s scales are impervious to Scorpions, according to GRRM. Westeros has its own lore and logic, and D&D have cast it all aside for cool moments, that defy in-world lore and real world logic.
I agree that “we engage with myth by engaging with myth”. That’s why I agreed with 26. If a story fails to follow its own rules, we should criticize it (though slight deviations for dramatic effect are fine with me). But that’s not the subject of the OP. The objection is that something violated “real world” rules. But everything about ASOIAF does that, including the creatures at the core of the story. It’s that “real world” attitude that I’m questioning.
@35: That would be a fair point, except that the show long ago departed from the books and we’ve all had to live with that.
@36 I do think exactly like you!
@36
That’s fair, but even then, I think there’s a default assumption of–if not precise realism–something approaching it. Human characters need to eat because humans need to eat; were it otherwise, we’d need it explained. Dany will likely not grow to be 100 feet tall and conquer everything herself in the next episode, not because humans can’t do that, but because there is no precedent within the show to suggest normal human rules ought not apply in that regard. When there are exceptions–the dragon fire not burning her–there is established lore which is then visually confirmed.
Those are slightly silly examples and I’m rambling a bit, but the point is that ballistae behaving as they do fails because the aberrant behavior is not teased or suggested, merely demonstrated in such a way that makes the plot very convenient. And so we’re left feeling less that this moment is mythically resonant, and more that it is structured to conform to the whims of TV budgets, plotting, and scheduling, which ends up imposing far more reality on the show than “realistic” weapons would.
@24, Focusing on “lack of realism” in a myth strikes me as mythtaken (that’s a reference for Aeryl).
I am about to cry because I am not getting this reference, and I feel bad! I know I should!
@30
Counterpoint: why would I NOT make a laser pistol that looked like a revolver?
I even have an answer, that the older looking weapons that are evocative of westerns are intended to demarcate the class differences between Serenity’s crew and the Alliance worlds.
Sadly, that explanation is not sufficient, when there is a Vera.
teleporting Plot Device Pirates
I have to point out again, that King’s Landing is only a day’s sail away from Dragonstone!
@36 The objection is that something violated “real world” rules. But everything about ASOIAF does that
But everything doesn’t do that. Bran still fell to the ground at 32~ feet per second. There has been nothing in the show, aside from the existence of magical creatures, that indicate our physics doesn’t apply.
Again, if the ballistae had been “magic ballistae” no one would complain, just like no one really complained that a nick from a piece of dragonglass caused a wight to collapse into a pile of bones, because we’re told thems the rules for magic dragonglass. But the show has been specific that Qyburn’s science developed these, and so it’s fair game to question the basis for the science, IMO.
Prof. Walsh: We thought you were a myth.
Buffy: Well, you were mythtaken.
And you’re right: “everything” was rhetorical exaggeration (though Bran’s survival kind of stretches things). I’ll rephrase to say that a whole lot of the basic world of ASOIAF does violate our own “real world” conditions.
I think this is a fair way to put it. Personally, I’m willing to overlook this, just as I am when a rider on a galloping horse hits a bullseye, because I see it as a genre convention. But the borders of such conventions are gray areas and I accept that reasonable people can disagree with me.
Yeah, I have to say I’m on the side of ‘a story must follow its own rules’, unless there’s a really good/compelling reason not to, or it’s an obviously dramatized/stylized scene. But in this case – there wasn’t really a reason. It was a disservice to the characters, and just seemed to be somewhat lazy/uncreative writing to serve the end goal in mind.
I don’t even mind that Rhaegal was killed by the scorpion, as we know those have been a plot point and that Qyburn has been working in improving them – just at least have Dany et al at least have seen them first, or, perhaps they were hidden and they decided to engage the fleet and then they were unveiled before it was too late to turn back, or SOMETHING.
@41, I knew it was a Buffy reference! It’s been too long! I was just telling my daughter(who is now about to graduate high school, FYI) that we needed to do a rewatch, because I referenced something Buffy and she didn’t get it!
Wow, graduate high school. That’s great, even if it makes me feel old. :)
“I’ve seen no indications that Westeros has anything but Earth-like gravity and atmospheric composition.”
We’re talking about the show with three massive flying dragons. Including the undead one with multiple holes in its wings. Gravity on Planetos is harder to understand than the climate. I think this is a clever way to introduce the GoT spin-off that they’re about to start shooting, in which the next monarch of the seven kingdom starts a space program to explore strange new worlds, with dragons (there’s a precedent for this – in French)
@46, Dragons are magic, they don’t have to follow the rules of science. That’s the delineation people make. Magic only has to make superficial sense, but when you are going to pit magic against science, the rules of science, as established by the universe, should be respected.
I’d also say that what’s unfortunate about this whole thing is that they didn’t even NEED anything outlandish to kill a dragon if that’s what they need. Besides the fact that using dragons as weapons seems to be dangerous all on its own, GoT already has tons of characters who have died for dumb or random reasons. Rhaegal could have like, eaten a diseased sheep, passed out mid-air and drowned in the sea, and that would have been just as effective in dispatching a dragon (like the writers wanted) while adhering to the logic of the setting.
@40: Dragonstone is 400 miles from King’s Landing, which is more like five days sail using caravels. There is some significant evidence that Show Westeros is smaller than Book Westeros, maybe even down to half the size, but it isn’t a day’s sail even then.
@43: I’m sympathetic to the point in your second paragraph, but as I said above it’s also true that people make mistakes all the time. It’s often easy to see in hindsight — just what was Dan Sickles doing at Gettysburg or Howard at Chancellorsville? — and any professional athlete knows that it’s much easier for fans to see the right play than it is to make that right play on the field in real time under stress. So yeah, of course Dany should have seen Euron’s fleet. But Dany’s experience in Essos was that her dragons were invulnerable. Sure, the NK took one down, but that’s different. She was careless, and that’s her fault, but that alone didn’t make the episode bad.
The death of Rhaegal would have been better if the writers had contrived, not a still-better ballista, but a contraption based on the Ming-era nest of bees, which would at least made the near-simultaneous bolt-strikes, along with their range and velocity, seem more plausible. Perhaps also tipped with some kind of spearhead that explodes on impact, to better explain the sinking of the ships. If you object that that’s too high-tech for a Medieval fantasy world, I counter that we’ve already seen examples of at least comparable engineering on the show. The appearance of the newfangled weapon could have been rationalized as a Eastern innovation, brought over to Westeros by the Golden Company.
As for the believably of the surprise attack itself, that could have been solved by the expedient of Euron’s forces “false-flagging” as a friendly fleet. It worked in Captain Blood and Master And Commander. It could have worked on GoT.
You quote the speed of a swallow, then have a much bigger dragon flying much more slowly. I guess this is the dramatic trope of small and fast versus big snd slow (spaceships and so on, in everything from games to novels). Well, I don’t know much about history, but I do know biology, at least the physics of it (I’ve been paid money for alien design). Speed goes up with wing loading and wing loading (for biological flyers) goes up with mass, so the dragon will be flying much faster than the swallow, not slower. 20-30 m/s at least. Making the shot even more implausible than if it was flying 5 m/s.
“Fantasy is myth. Myths tell us stories: lessons for the future; emotional truths about ourselves. If you start hunting for plot holes in myths, you’ll find them every single time.”
No, most modern fantasy is not myth. Not about, or not just about emotional truths, but about worldbuilding and speculation — speculative fiction — with magic. Like science fiction with more arbitrary assumptions.
Dragons are magical. In fact in this setting, some people consider them the *source* of magic, with magic getting stronger when Dany hatched her eggs. So they get to break rules. So do other explicitly magical things, like Bran and Red Priests.
But otherwise Westeros is a ‘gritty’ ‘realistic’ ‘medieval’ world, where things like “do we have enough food” and “my wound got infected” (hi, Drogo) matter. Bullshit ballistas are bullshit.
***
I don’t think Bran and Arya have an anti-magic plot. But the show writers might. They’ve already ignored a lot of the magic that’s in the books, like most of the Stark kids being wargs themselves. (Arya shares dreams with Nymeria from *across the Narrow Sea*.) So they can’t give Euron the dragon horn from the books, to outright steal a dragon. (Or make him a warg and let him do it that way.) But if they want to pretend the scorpions aren’t magic, we get to call them on it. Along with the poor use of tactics.
In the books, an Archmaester says that there is an anti-magic plot by the Citadel, and that they manipulated things to kill off the dragons and are not happy that they came back.
@54: Yes, the books clearly have an anti-magic plot and I expect that if GRRM ever finishes the books, they will end with magic gone from the world. I also expect that ending in the show. Both of these are pure speculation on my part.
@53: As for Bran and Arya (I assume you mean Sansa), I do think the signs point to a plot. Again, speculation on my part but I think it’s reasonable. Whether that incorporates the end of magic or not, I don’t know. But I do think Bran is manipulating people towards a pre-determined end.
As for fantasy and myth, well I think you’re just debating definitions. According to Merriam-Webster, a myth is “a usually traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural phenomenon.” That strikes me as a pretty good description of ASOIAF.
In the Medieval period a “song” was an epic poem (e.g., The Song of Roland or a Chanson [Song] de Geste). So the “Song” of Ice and Fire is an epic, which typically involves mythical elements.
Any good epic will, of course, involve world-building (see the definition). But it generally does that not as an end in itself, but as a means to an end — perhaps a cultural defense (The Iliad) or an emotional truth (Paradise Lost).
As for dragons being magical, well of course. But I don’t think saying that gets at the points I’ve been making.
As for dragons being magical, well of course. But I don’t think saying that gets at the points I’ve been making.
I mean, I guess the delineation between magical/technology isn’t relevant to you, but based on a lot of the responses it is to most people. We can’t argue that “dragons shouldn’t work” because dragons aren’t real in our world. But ballistae are, so when they don’t work, we can say why.
To get into another example of attempting to inject “real world science” into the story that breaks the worldbuilding.
In Westeros, there is a plant that is an effective and safe abortofacient. A lot of lower class women, and some of the more forward thinking noble women, like Olenna, talk about it.
And its a nice thought, in a world like this, that there is something that gives women a modicum of control over their bodies.
However, for me, being reminded of that, breaks immersion for me.
Because, birth control, safe, effective, accessible birth control, has transformed our modern world for women in the span of 50 years. But, despite existing for centuries in Westeros, it changed not one thing for the women who live there.
It’s a risk authors run when they try to put something recognizable from our world in their world, because people will expect it to work the same.
So, we have no real world basis for “how dragons work”, and thus, can’t critique it, but there is for “how giant crossbows work” and “how birth control effects patriarchal societies”, and thus we can.
To some extent I’m questioning that whole distinction by pointing out that nearly all forms of fiction use conventions to highlight the drama, rather than “real world” physics or chemistry or whatever. But limiting myself to your distinction, let’s take dragon riding as an example. Grant that there are dragons, that they can breathe fire, and that they can fly because magic. But riding a dragon is an act for which we have plenty of real world analogues, and there’s no “magic” explanation ever given.* Yet riding a dragon is utterly implausible, though nobody ever complains about the G forces, the lack of a saddle or belt, the grip strength necessary, etc.
In my view, the reasons people are willing to suspend disbelief in some cases but not others need to be examined more closely (as with my personal issues about legal scenes), and that everybody needs to be more willing to suspend their disbelief more often in order to let the story flow and get to the emotional truth that’s the purpose of art.
*There’s mixed evidence in both books and show about who can ride a dragon, but I’m talking about how they ride.
Also want to point out that clearly nobody on the show played Skyrim. Shooting even a relatively slow dragon with arrows, or even magic, is hard! You gotta bait those things into landing so that you can put an axe in it’s eye!
@58: IIRC the books never went into enough detail as to how exactly Dany rides her dragons, so I always pictured it as the dragons flying carefully enough as to not drop her as opposed to them havign some magical sticky field. I would definitely agree that the way Dany rides her dragons in the show is crazy dangerous, impossible even, and I think it’s dumb – Rule of Cool clearly overrode sensible wirting once again.
Fictional worlds need to be rooted in real world rules, otherwise the reader/viewer won’t have a baseline expectation as to how things work and this leads to confusion and frustrartion, because it’s not fun to constantly not know what to expect. In other words – unless the writer says things are different from how we’re used to, they aren’t (unless it’s something that is intended to confuse readers). “It’s magic” is not a legitimate explanation, but a crutch and mark of a poor writer who dug himself into a hole regarding the rules of his own world.
Proof by contradiction: assume the above is NOT true. Then the reader could make any sorts of assumptions about the author’s world that the author did not intend at all. Why didn’t character X do thing Y? The writer doesn’t show it’s impossible, and since it’s a fictional world, anything goes so he could have! That’s not how stories work, you don’t let your readers assume basic rules, you base on real world assumptions and explicitly build changes from that (again, barring cases where you want to confuse the reader).
@58
Yet riding a dragon is utterly implausible, though nobody ever complains about the G forces, the lack of a saddle or belt, the grip strength necessary, etc.
I have been complaining since Dany first climbed upon Drogon about the need for flipping dragonsaddles, so again, I don’t get your point. I haven’t been accepting these things that break immersion for me, and I’ve been complaining about them. Maybe not everyone on this thread ever has, but I am nothing if not consistently annoying about this stuff.
This isn’t a “you accept some things, and complain about others scenario” for me. This is a “none of this is acceptable, and demonstrates a real flippant attitude towards this story that is honestly a disgrace for people who called themselves ‘fans’*”.
I mean, if they don’t bother you, I’m not going to sit here and try to convince you that it should. But I don’t get the point, of trying to convince people who are bothered that they shouldn’t be.
I mean, you might say that without that, Tor wouldn’t need a comments section, LOL, but I don’t think most these discussions are as simple as that. For example, the thread about Endgame and it’s women characters. There were discussions from both sides about what bothered them and what didn’t, and the discussion boils down to people just disagree about the intent or purpose of the writing, and there is some mind changing going one once other perspectives are explained.
But here, pretty much everyone agrees this was shoddy on its merits, we are just discussing whether it should bother us. And I feel like that’s completely subjective, and an issue that no one is really going to change any one’s mind.
I’ve also pointed out that how much leeway I’m willing to grant, boils down to how much I enjoy it.
The prequels are mess, but I love them, and will forgive them a lot.
Buffy season 6 has some definite misses in the story, but’s my favorite season for the way it deals with depression and toxic relationships, so I let the mistakes go.
At this point with GOT, I’m mad as hell that the attitude from it’s creators seems to be “Eh, they aren’t going to quit watching at this point, so fuck ’em, we can do what we want”. Nobody stopped and asked “Are we stretching credulity when we have Rhaegal taken down this way?” they just didn’t care. And Weiss and Benioff seem to feel that they’ve earned some leeway from the audience, but they haven’t. Since they outpaced Martin, there hasn’t been a season where the fans haven’t been outraged with what they’ve written. And while I can agree, that a show “written by the fans” would be horrendous, the fact that D&D outright reject the concept of “themes” demonstrates that they should never have been trusted with this, and the fans are spot on with their assessment that they just don’t get what the books are really about.
*Referring to Weiss and Benioff here.(Kathleen Kennedy, PLEASE, pull a Trevorrow on them and find someone, ANYONE, better!)
There’s so much bad, trope-filled scriptwriting for GoT since GRRM left the story-writing duties. If the first two seasons had been like the last two, I might not have bothered watching this overblown nonsense. For the record, I’m a fantasy-lover. And I love Song of Ice and Fire. But the story and action have to “ring true.” When writers who know nothing about military tactics or character-motivated story arcs take hold, because, you know, “we have to be cinematic,” it’s all over for me. What I’m seeing is SFX and sentimentality. Yawn. None of this is how GRRM would have written it. It makes me angry to see how some of these characters have been treated; they’ve been made into buffoons doing stupid or unbelievable things just to move a plotline in the direction the producers want it to go. That isn’t entertainment, it’s opioids.
I think the difference here is what we’re willing to let slide in a well-told story, and that which makes us go, “Oh, please!”
And I’m sorry to say that ever since Benioff et. al. decided to ignore GRRM’s plots and plans for the unpublished stories to the point that he washed his hands of the series, the show has been full of those moments where we are jerked our of our WSOD-Willing Suspension of Disbelief-(which is necessarily extremely high in a fantasy series such as this) and we find ourselves going, “Oh, please!” instead of remaining inside the story as we should be.
This week’s episode wasn’t the first, but it was by far the worst.
I could accept one of the bolts hitting Rhaegal. Even Euron Greyjoy could have dumb luck at some point. But when Dany couldn’t figure out that coming around from behind could have solved the problem of the Greyjoy fleet once and for all, I’m not buying her lack of experience with military tactics (I know MUCH less than she does about military tactics and it was obvious to me), or even the fact that she was distraught at the loss of Rhaegal can’t keep me from being yanked out of my WSOD.into “Oh, please!” And, of course, the subsequent destruction of the ships took me from, “Oh, please” to “OH, PLEASE!!!!!”
That never happened for me while GRRM was a major influence (and a part-time screenwriter). Even when I could find plenty of things to critique on later watchings, his storytelling kept me believing during that crucial first viewing.
To give credit where it’s due, I have to acknowledge that the distant extinguishing of those flaming Dothraki swords was a truly brilliant moment of visual storytelling, whatever its tactical faults. And despite shamelessly stealing from Henry V, the episode before that’s night before the battle moments were really wonderful.
But I must say that this episode really left me with a bad taste in my mouth. And that was even before the murder of Missandei. Why in hell’s name wasn’t Dany or Grey Worm or Jon or SOMEBODY ready to put an arrow through Cersei’s heart the moment Missandei was harmed? I sure would have. And that moment, I’m sorry to say, took me from “Oh, please!” to “I’m outta here.” (And, of course, I meant that emotionally, I won’t be able to stop myself from watching the last two episodes. But I won’t care about the characters any more.)
@62, you beat my post by a hair, but you expressed my point much more succinctly. Cudos!
The idea that you can use medieval-level catapults as if they were modern anti-aircraft guns is ridiculous.
#4 ” she learned from the Dothraki, whose idea of advanced tactics was to charge”
Which is also very logical, considering they have centuries of experience with warfare. The real-world apparent model, the Mongols, used well thought-out tactics for a cavalry army. Not being a sofisticated people in areas like art and science does not make you incapabable of waging war cleverly.
The depiction in the novels is almost certainly based on silphium, a plant in Roman times that was used for birth control. It only grew in the wild and could not be cultivated, but it’s use was so popular that it eventually became extinct. So, it’s not entirely outside the bounds of realism to have that existing in Westeros.
All of the above is true, don’t really care about ballistics, I just wanna say:
I was really surprised how Jon just walked away from Ghost. Like he didn’t save his life or protected him risking his own life several times? He kept company for Jon from the very beginning. It was utterly disrespectful towards a loyal friend and companion.
I believe this moment was to show he walked away from being Jon Snow to become Aegon Targaryen, but still..
You don’t know nothin, Jon Snow…
I agree with the OP. My other issue was how the bolt was fired around the rocks the Iron Fleet was ostensibly hiding behind in order to not be seen by Jon or Dany from their high vantage point.
I think 60 and 63 express the basic dilemma pretty well: all of us are willing to let some things slide but not others. What I’m suggesting here is that (a) people aren’t consistent about this; (b) in some cases the complaints involve long-standing TV and movie conventions which shouldn’t bother anyone; and (c) it’s a very subjective determination. All of these factors should cause us to hesitate before slamming an episode.*
I gave the example of me watching courtroom scenes because that’s a personal pet peeve. In fact, I can’t get beyond it most of the time. But if I’m honest with myself, it’s pretty hard to explain why it’s so important to me that the showrunners get the Hearsay Rule right when I’m perfectly ok with watching TV doctors “operate”. I’m sure an MD would have exactly the opposite reaction. And it’s precisely because we’d have opposite reactions that people should question why they’ve reacted so strongly.
In the specific case of the ballistae, I’d say there are a couple of considerations. We know that Medieval Europe didn’t have them, though nothing in ASOIAF or the show precludes them. The show did play fair by having a less-effective model created last season, and the creation was by the established “mad scientist” character. If the sole problem is the one-in-a-million shot, I’d again use the example of Westerns, probably every one of which showed impossible shots. So do most of their successors today. It’s a genre convention, not a plothole.
@65: Yes, the Mongols were much more sophisticated than the Dothraki. But what we see of the Dothraki in both books and show is that they’re tactically unsophisticated. In fact, the very first story we’re told about the Unsullied is how they turned back repeated Dothraki charges, which would have been foolish of the Dothraki (light cavalry wouldn’t charge a phalanx).
Using the ballistae as anti-ship weapons stretches credulity pretty far.
@61: I think this sentence sums it up pretty well: “I’ve also pointed out that how much leeway I’m willing to grant, boils down to how much I enjoy it.” I absolutely agree. But note that this reverses the causation from what we usually see. Under your rule (it’s a rule because I agree with it:)), someone would say “I loved the episode but didn’t like X”; or “I didn’t like the episode, so X really bothered me”. What I see more often on line is “I didn’t like X, therefore I hated the episode”.
*Personally, I didn’t think E4 was all that great. I liked the previous 3 much better. In fact, I thought 2 and 3 were among the best in the series.
@66 The depiction in the novels is almost certainly based on silphium, a plant in Roman times that was used for birth control. It only grew in the wild and could not be cultivated, but it’s use was so popular that it eventually became extinct. So, it’s not entirely outside the bounds of realism to have that existing in Westeros.
That’s mostly myth, FYI. Especially the “could not be cultivated” part. Roman soil was inhospitable to silphium, that didn’t mean it couldn’t be cultivated in it’s native Northern African environment. We don’t even know for sure what plant is being referred to as”silphium”, so we can’t even be sure it’s extinct. It’s very likely still existent, in Northern Africa.
A lots of herbs and plants can cause spontaneous abortion. What those spontaneous abortions are, are neither “safe, effective nor accessible”, like Moon Tea is shown to be in the books. Most can make you dangerously sick, many require a dosage level that can’t be attained through normal consumption, and the people who knew for sure what worked and what didn’t were few and far between.
Silphium was mainly used in cooking, which priced it outside the means of most commoners, and I promise, Roman nobles were having plenty of kids, which they wouldn’t have been, if they were eating as much of it as we know they were(we have recipes), and it was an effective form of birth control.
I know that it’s what inspired Moon Tea in the books, but the very factor that I complain about in Martin’s books, is also the greatest anthropological evidence we have for the fact that it’s abortofacient powers are a myth, it didn’t revolutionize Roman women lives.
The last book is missing and with no direction except an ending, I just see a lack of continuity. The characters seem to have lost some intrinsic quality that made them galvanizing. My interest in reading that last volume has been awakened by the filings of this last season.
I think the argument that it is fantasy, so the audience should just accept anything is a poor one. Following that line of reasoning, we should also not be bothered if characters suddenly float off up into the sky mid conversation without warning.
Those scorpions were horrible. Look, it takes energy to throw things. What was powering those scorpions? One prepared shot, sure. The fleet could have all had them cocked and ready to go, and maybe if every ship had fired they might have managed to hit a flying dragon once. But they apparently reloaded in moments. Faster than navy artillery in the days of sail.
Back in the sailing days, the gunpowder provided the energy to throw things. One just poured it in (or slid in bags of it). There’s no magical powder for those scorpions. If they’re being recocked, it’s by muscle power. There’s no way any of them were ready to fire a second time in anything less than several minutes. Not and exhibit the amount of power they showed.
The rate of fire in destroying Dany’s navy was like breech loading artillery. There’s no possible method to recock those things that fast.
Never mind what the recoil should be doing to the ship positioning, etc.
Agreed.
@69, but it makes no sense that they should be, when they have been a warrior people for generations… even if it is in the books, then I think GRRM didn´t think it through.
In the Fellowship of the Ring movies I think most battles were portrayed reasonably realistic, even though Tolkien is more towards the epic myth/fairy tale pole and Game of Thrones is supposedly more gritty realistic fantasy. For example medieval weapons expert Skallagrim looked at the weapons in the movies and considered that with some isolated exceptions they are all plausible designs. The Rohirrim have helmets (even the named characters) and unlike all the sword-armed cavalries in fiction, they have spears as primary weapons, which is the only choice that makes sense for chock cavalry. I don´t think anyone did anything obviously asinine like sending out your cavalry far ahead while the rest of your army sits behind the walls of a fortress. Even the AI of early Total War games wasn´t as stupid as the commanders in Game of Thrones.
@Aeryl There’s letting things bend a little to make a story work, then there’s flat out stupid like 99.999% of everything to do with technology in “The 100”.
> Because, birth control, safe, effective, accessible birth control, has transformed our modern world for women in the span of 50 years. But, despite existing for centuries in Westeros, it changed not one thing for the women who live there.
It would change a lot for some individual woman who controls how many kids she has. But I don’t know how societally transformative birth control *by itself* would be. We got it *after* universal female education and suffrage, in an market-dominated economy transforming to being based on education and not strength, with collapsing infant mortality rates, home appliances like washers that reduced domestic labor, industrial textiles taking away what had been a major domestic occupation of women.
What happens when the *only* thing on that list you have is birth control? When half the kids still die of disease (not sure if that’s true in GoT actually), most people are uneducated and doing physical labor, society is dominated by the sex that stabs people with upper body strength…
I agree with the O.P.
Fantasy and SF work when the story changes one thing about an otherwise ordinary world and then see what the consequences are of that change – as logically and realistically as possible. This creates immersion. It is interesting.
If a story is told in like: well if you believe dragons than you will also believe that every noble is cruel, traveling parties can sometimes take too short to get somewhere and battles make no sense but are nice eyecandy, then lots of people will lose that immersion. All GoT series did some of these but series 8 tops the list already.
I for one am dreading the last two episodes as there will be at least one more stupid battle… and I now suspect that either Jon or Dany will not see the end of the series.
It’s a commonly taught rule in storytelling that you only get a certain number of items on which an audience will be willing to suspend disbelief. On what and how many times an individual consumer will do that clearly varies, but even so, too many’s gonna cause a negative reaction to the work on a large scale. This isn’t just about fantastical elements either: implausible plotting or characters acting inconsistently also draw from the same “suspension of disbelief” bucket. I think novel writers have *always* paid more attention to this rule that screenwriters, but it’s a universal storytelling rule. It’s always kind of irritated me why that is, movies and shows in general get to me on that front very often and as a result there are few movies and shows I genuinely think are as enjoyable as books. But I’m a physicist, so, visual storytelling that blatantly violates it is one of my buttons.
But in SF&f, the fantastical or science fiction elements you use occupy one of your “suspension of disbelief” slots, so you have fewer to spend on things like blatant character common sense errors, implsusible plot points, unsatisfying or inconsistent character choices, as well as huger errors in historical, military, or other realisms. The latter is why novel writers hire experts and sensitivity readers to help them at least not fail miserably on the things they don’t know much about. The former are why novels receive content edits. If your fantastical elements are really internally self consistent, maybe you can claw back an extra disbelief suspension or two. But if they’re not, you’re even worse off, and the magic in GoT isn’t. You’ve got zombies and dragons and people being raised from the dead by a god who aren’t zombies and people wearing dead people’s faces and some guy rurning the Mountain into Frankenstein. And a girl whose genes seem to make her (but not her brother) immune to fire. Maybe it’s all related to the existence of dragons and/or the whole child of the forest creation of white walkers things (ones the fire, ones the ice?) but it’s not coherently explained yet. (ASoIaF hasn’t quite either, but I have more trust in an established novel writer to do so as part of wrapping up.*) So amid all that, seeing some implsusible ballistae, along with the characters making poor decision after poor decision in service of a plot that feels forced…yeah, that’s a risk of audience alienation. I dont understand why they took the dragon horn out, honestly, it would make much more sense than physics-defying ballistae. It would also be something Dany would not have any reason to suspect, making her tactical errors less glaring.
*i will say as counterpoint though–screenwriters are tasked with, and paid for, producing. On a production schedule. Yeah, the forced timeline undoubtedly leads to sloppier writing than would survive in the novel world. But GRRM, who has a novel writer’s skill at weaving complexity with a resonating sense of realism…still hadn’t finished the next book. Will he, ever? The act of creation with quality is truly a balancing act.
We got it *after* universal female education and suffrage, in an market-dominated economy transforming to being based on education and not strength, with collapsing infant mortality rates, home appliances like washers that reduced domestic labor, industrial textiles taking away what had been a major domestic occupation of women.
If you don’t understand the earthshaking difference a woman no longer being tied to the biological imperative has, I don’t know what to tell you.
Yes, those things are important. All of them pale in comparison to the fact that women could plan their pregnancies, that women could take control of their reproduction from the men they married.
I mean, you seem to imply that women having their domestic workload reduced by appliances led to their workplace participation, but the reality is that the vast majority of women worked outside the home, were still family breadwinners, while having no control over their fertility. They could not establish a strong CV for themselves, commonly forced out of the workplace by unplanned pregnancy. Women’s increased economic power is directly correlated to BC access. Women were no longer forced to marry men who impregnated them, often having to sacrifice their financial independence to that husband. They could stay at careers long enough to secure promotions and job security, timing having a child til later. And that freedom quickly led to the expansion of more economic freedom for women, like no longer having to have a husband sign off on a credit card, and no fault divorce.
You ignore that part of what caused infant mortality rates to fall was that women who knew they were not healthy enough to carry children were now able to prevent pregnancy, instead of being resigned to death if they got pregnancy.
I mean, literally every feminist scholar ranks access to birth control as the greatest factor towards women’s equality(because it can still benefit women who are not educated, who do not get to vote, or work outside the home). The impact of access to BC can not be separated from the domino effect of increased rights for women it caused.
@55, ASOIAF is nothing like a myth. Myths are part of a world’s heritage, attempting to explain the unexplainable for that world. They are not a description of the world itself. There are myths within ASOIAF because worlds have them, but ASOIAF itself is simply a fantasy novel that is not attempting to be a myth for ours, and which cannot be a myth for its own unless there’s some epilogue that turns it into one written by Sam or someone else after the fact.
I think the point is more that both are needed – would BC work in a vaccum without those other changes, which is also what I was wondering, especially as I ponder the shape of my own life, and how it might compare to my mom’s and grandmother’s and so forth. Or on its own would it have spawned those other changes?
I’m a working professional in a STEM field (and also hold a BS and MS). I’m also married, and have kids. I feel like a bit of an imposter to this particular argument as I don’t actually use BC (as we commonly think of it), but I do benefit from a lot of current science that has allowed me to intentionally space my kids, so I definitely agree that empowerment and knowledge of your body, however you do that, and being able to make those choices for the benefit of your health, family, etc is part of what allows women more control over their lives – regardless of how one chooses to do that.
But if it was just that – without access to education, without being encouraged to go into science/tech fields, without laws allowing me to work and vote and control my own finances, without the technological advances that allow me to do things like pump at work (or supplement with formula), or even just make it easier to maintain the home (although I have a stay at home husband so I guess that really benefits him instead)…I think ALL of those things were needed. Along with more enlightened policies around mothers at work and school that DON’T punish them when they DO decide to have children (or fathers, for that matter, if they actually want to take a more active role in their childrens’ lives).
It seems like there was kind of a perfect storm that blended all these factors together. I guess the question is, in the cultural mileau of Westeros, would that alone have been enough to push for other changes in their society, especially for the smallfolk? Even the men don’t seem to have much upward mobility and aside from maesters (and as evidenced by the Tarlys, some families disdain even them), there doesn’t seem to be much value on education. We might have seen more women in merchant/artisan positions, perhaps.
Of course, the other possibiity (which would kind of make this discussion moot) is that Moon Tea isn’t actually as well known/accessible as we think. It’s been a really long time since I read the books, so while I definitely remember Moon Tea being discussed in the context of characters like Lysa, Margeary and her ladies, etc, I don’t remember if it was something that smallfolk knew about, or would have been able to make themselves. Did the maester have to brew it?
Jesus, that was bad. I’m willing to except the existence of dragons, magic, fairies, giants, undead armies, pseudo progressive women’s rights in ancent times, magic firebombs, and flaming swords; but this was just too damn much.
You were being way to generous, they had to be over a mile away and at least 3000 feet down. Having a supersonic machine gun rapid fire crossbow at that distance that can pierce an oarnge, let alone a dragon, is just beyond absurd. I do wonder, just how big the crossbow would have to be to generate that force. Come on people, when are you just too lazy, just write in some magic fairy iron or something. Please keep physics out of it.
would BC work in a vaccum without those other changes,
I addressed that, because yes, ask women in countries where they don’t have education or suffrage, and they’ll still tell you how it changed their lives, and even led to those things changing.
Is it as impactful? No. But I wasn’t arguing that BC would turn Westeros into the US, I am just pointing out that the civilization would not have sat stagnant for 10,000 years if women had reproductive freedom.
there doesn’t seem to be much value on education.
Septa Mordane says what?
It’s been a really long time since I read the books, so while I definitely remember Moon Tea being discussed in the context of characters like Lysa, Margeary and her ladies, etc, I don’t remember if it was something that smallfolk knew about, or would have been able to make themselves. Did the maester have to brew it?
No, a woods witch would know how to make it too(especially considering a Maester likely stole the recipe from one). This was covered more extensively in Leigh’s read, and it’s been awhile, but I recall talks about how it was more common among the lower classes, than the noble, because the noble women weren’t supposed to be having these sorts of extra martial relations, because bloodlines, but nobody cared what the proles did, because they didn’t have any wealth to bequeath anyone.
Maybe it was a space battle? Takes care of little details like gravity and air friction.
It’s ignorance of writers that translates into characters appearing stupid. All they needed to do was hire one or two military consultants, tell them the character “beats” they wanted in the story, then let them craft the battle accordingly. For instance; the Dothraki would have been better placed on the high ground given to Brienne’s group, dragons could have dropped dragon glass studded logs or barrels of oil from extreme heights onto AOTD under cover of darkness that could have been ignited later, trebuchets inside the walls, multiple moats, most of the forces inside the walls, etc. The same sense of dread could have been crafted by watching the AOTD be slowly whittled down by a methodical defense in depth that ultimately resulted in them still scaling the walls and all the other “beats” the story tellers wanted to hit. They hired some good fight coordinators for individual combat, but obviously didn’t bother to hire a military consultant. A big oversight, and it shows.
Well, I don’t want to offend Septa Mordane :) I meant in a widespread sense like we understand it today; Septa Mordane was instructing Ned’s kids, right? I just meant that in general, the average Westeros smallfolk weren’t seen as having a right to further education.
But, more to your point, thank you for the refresher on the books, as it has been way too long since Leigh’s read. Wonder if we’ll ever get more books and if she will be able to pick it up! I did find a wiki that referenced some of the other places it was used – it was apparently also known beyond the wall, although they already seem to have a more egaliatarian society.
To quote Tawny Madison; This episode was badly written!!
I meant in a widespread sense like we understand it today; Septa Mordane was instructing Ned’s kids, right?
Yes, but there were Septas all over King’s Landing.
I imagine literacy was a problem for the lower classes, for both genders, though women were likely impacted more.
But among noble women, an education seemed to be valued. If nothing else, Westerosi noble men did not appear to want to be married to women who couldn’t engage in conversation(aside from Jorah, of course). Septa Mordane also taught “womanly arts” like sewing, but Sansa and Arya both knew how to read, so did Margaery, Cersei, Catelyn, Lysa… I can’t imagine the education that Sansa and Arya got was exceptional by Westeros standards.
I did find a wiki that referenced some of the other places it was used – it was apparently also known beyond the wall, although they already seem to have a more egaliatarian society.
“You can have a wife, or you can have a knife”
But that gets to my point, I think. Having access to BC as it’s insinuated in the books, would have led to a greater egalitarian society, though of course, not one like ours, of course.
Do human beings make mistakes? Yes. Do the laws of physics change? No.
Best velocity for a modern crossbow is 460 ft/s. Assuming they were able to scale this up to giant size, shot at 45 degrees, assuming no air resistance (perhaps dragon farts produce a vacuum), a projectile would reach a maximum height of 1674 feet, well short of the dragon target. Back to the drawing board. Perhaps if they had given the missle wings for lift, anti-gravity, or magic pixie dust, it could have been credible,. but they didn’t and that dragon shot didn’t happen.
I’m pretty sure that dragon had trick arrows under it’s wing and this was just all a ruse from a clever dragon. That would at least be physically possible. According to my calculations, that dragon is alive.
This was actually a fun read. Even though it ultimately feels like a lot of work to make something less enjoyable.
I’m always impressed by the level of scrutiny this show gets. For instance, watching it live I didn’t even notice that coffee cup (which apparently wasn’t Starbucks, btw – free advertising for all the wrong reasons).
It makes me a little proud and sad at the same time. I have absolutely nothing to gain from defending the show or its creators, yet I do feel compelled to make excuses for its flaws. Kinda like if someone were to insult my son or daughter. It’s probably a psychological thing. I’m not qualified to analyze myself.
I won’t defend this scene. Because it really did break my suspension of disbelief. It just didn’t bother me as much. I viewed it more as a means to an end. Conversely, I didn’t care much for Missandei dying either.
Anyway, keep these posts coming! I may not agree, but it’s always fun to see the effort.
“pseudo progressive women’s rights in ancent times”
That’s not a fantasy like dragons and ice zombies. Many real societies were nicer for women than Westeros.
I am onboard with all of the physics behind the launch (with high-tension rope?) and it’s implausibility, but I’m too far removed from my physics classes to even begin to understand how those bolts fly. Like at all.
The shaft is clearly wood, and the arrowhead looks like a nice big chunk of iron. So, unless I’m missing something, that bolt should nosedive right into the sea because all of the weight is forward – those fins in the back are nothing – even with the high-tension rope launching it.
“but I’m too far removed from my physics classes to even begin to understand how those bolts fly”
I think you are right. The barrel length to make sure a handmade asymmetrical arrow to not wobble when propelled from the bottom of the shaft at the required force is probably much longer than depicted.
There is just no way those missles would have flown straight over long distances.
Instead of violate physics, why didn’t they just poison crossbow missiles and ambush the dragon from a reasonable distance?
Ah! But what if the world of which Westeros is a part exists on a ringworld or Dyson Sphere?
https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/115452/in-a-spinning-dyson-ring-would-objects-not-touching-the-surface-experience-grav
Has there been any study of the path of a ballistic object on a ringworld-type structure? ‘Gravity’ on a ringworld, or to an extent a Dyson Sphere, is generated by spin, yes?
So, if the world of Westeros is a construct circling a variable star, how would a ballistic projectile function? Not that the variable star will have anything to do with targeting, I just think it’s obvious that the star is a Cepheid Variable.
Westeros is the name of the continent. Basically the Western continent, with Essos the Eastern continent, much bigger and largely unexplored (at least in the books).
We don’t actually know the name of the planet. Not sure if it’s apparent in the books that anyone is aware they are on a planet. Maybe they have a astronomy maester’s degree at the Citadel.
They could be humans from another planet, crash landed and devolved to medieval tech levels.
The other side of the physics is not mentioned, the fact that the mounting on the ship would have to be able to stand the same stresses. This is why no ballista/scorpion in history that large was ever mounted on a ship of that size. To be able to withstand a fraction of that stress you would have to have a mount/ship that was much larger to absorb the recoil. The little spindly frames that were on the ships and topping the walls at Kings Landing were too light to last, the stress would start bending the ones on the walls from the first shot.
As an aside, the ones on the wall of Kings Landing overhang the wall, and I did not see enough men manning them to load the non existing reloads. With the platforms wider than the turret, how do you get up there, and how do you get reloads up since every bolt is about 10 ft long and about 4 inches or more in diameter. These are not some light thing a man can carry like a six pack of beer.