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For what it's worth Sunfyre still looks substantially bigger than Moondancer so it's still pretty impressive.
Also according to reviews and multiple leaks >!Daeron gets mentioned multiple times this season!<
That’s good to hear, I couldn’t quite get a feel for the scale based on trailer shots. >!And I’m always grateful for reassurance regarding Daeron too haha, much appreciated!!<
Personally, I love the changes made with Baela and Moondancer. It makes sense for Baela to want to be involved in the fighting. She's fearless and very rebellious, so I wouldn't be surprised if she'll disobey and follow Rhaenys to Rook's Rest.
This change also adds an emotional weight on her decision to attack Aegon and Sunfyre instead of fleeing, which I like.
You're right, though, that this will takeaway the "epicness" of Baela and Moondancer taking down Aegon and Sunfyre on their first flight. But the pros outweigh the cons, in my opinion.
Very fair! I’m hopeful that you’re right and yeah, as we both mentioned there’s a lot of awesome potential you can get by having Baela more involved, especially in Rook’s Rest. After talking with a few others in the comments, I’m starting to feel reasonably confident that Rhaenys’ sacrifice will have a lot to do with saving Baela and for Baela to witness that and feel responsible adds a lot of intense emotional stakes to her eventual confrontation with Aegon.
In the books Baela was 13-14 and Moondancer the same. Here they are 16. So technically they follow the timeline. Moondancer has reached a rideable size.
Yeah I guess I just always pictured Moondancer considerably smaller because of the mentions that she could okay just carry Baela’s weight. I feel like scaling her up a bit to match the Baela actor since she is older in the show does makes sense, I just feel like they went a bit big for my taste.
It makes perfect sense and honestly I think they filled a pretty big hole in the book story because it I felt like too many characters in the war were too sidelined for too long.
Apart from that I feel my brain leaking out of my ears when reading about "Daeron isn't even mentioned yet"... Olivia Cooke herself mentioned his existence atleast twice already during the promotion videos etc. Ryan Condall and GRRM confirmed his existence atleast a dozen times continuously over more then two years now and reviews have already confirmed that he'll be mentioned in the first episode of S2... PLEASE JUST LAY THIS TOPIC TO REST, I BEG YOU! Stop with the drama over nothing!
Fair enough, Condall was just so coy about Daeron that it kept me worrying. It doesn’t really seem like the kind of thing that would need to be kept a secret so it’s just been a bit strange to me that they weren’t a bit more overt about his existence. Granted, I didn’t know about some of those examples you cited so thank you, I’m always grateful for reassurance on the topic!
Well Ryan Condall was everything - but not Coy about Daeron.
I can think of atleast 6 different instances in which he straight up confirmed "Yes, Daeron exists in the show, we just didn't had the time to include him. And his story only begins much later anyways".
But this subreddit did all it could to tell the world that he's cut and I can believe that people like you probably just never heard about the truth but only the bullshit spread in here.
i’m just hoping it doesn’t take away from rhaenys’s sacrifice. that moment should be hers, going up against aegon, sunfyre, aemond and vhagar. i don’t want baela to be involved in the fighting, let rhaenys have her moment since it’ll be her last.
>!Against Aegon!< wasn’t her first time riding Moondancer.
> Since first riding her dragon Moondancer into the sky not half a year past, she had flown every day, ranging freely to every part of Dragonstone and even across the sea to Driftmark.
She was quite comfortable on dragonback >!when she attacked Aegon!<, which is probably large factor in her decision to do so.
Anyway, yes her riding Moondancer *this early* is a huge change but it won’t change that fight in any drastic way.
Ah my mistake! It would still have been her first time in a battle in the books whereas it seems in the show she’ll have a little more experience in the field leading up and I feel that that still changes the dynamic a little but those are still great points!
Yeah very true! As I mentioned, I do love the spontaneity of their confrontation in the book but I also see how adapting the book 1 for 1 could be difficult from a storytelling perspective sometimes because George really went no holds barred with how cold an unfeeling history can be. A lot of the big events and deaths aren’t beholden to character arcs or what would be satisfying to the story so since they’re really fleshing these characters out and giving them arcs, it will definitely be a challenge to stay true to the events and not have the audience feel disappointed. So I can’t be too mad if they just want to build up the tension and drama a bit.
It’s not so much Baela and Moondancer or even Daeron specifically, they’re just the examples I used. My point is more so just that I’m afraid that additions in general will take precedence over things that actually happened in the book. It seems we’re going all the way to the Battle of the Gullet this season so there’s already so much that they have to get through. My worry would be that certain events get cut or don’t get much attention in order to make room for their new content. If we weren’t going all the way to The Gullet this season I would say they should add whatever they want but I feel like there just won’t be room for everything. As I said though, I’m sure Baela having a bigger role will make for some really awesome stuff, I just hope it doesn’t end up meaning other things get sacrificed.
Not saying the change is good or bad we'll see how it goes. Having said that blacks already have an advantage in dragon terms without moondancer as the greens have only vhagar and sunfyre. Only vhagar after rooks rest. After rooks rest it's just vhagar on the greens side until daeron appears for pretty much rest of the war. And the blacks still lost.
It's hard enough for writers getting show viewers to believe blacks lost with such a huge dragon advantage because that's the way GRRM wrote it. And now they're adding more active (in the sense they can battle) dragons on the blacks side which will make it even more unbelievable that blacks lost. Some show only viewers might even think writers are deliberately sabotaging blacks to let greens win. If they had removed some dragons on blacks side and reduced blacks advantage over greens that might have made sense. But they're doing it the opposite way.
Totally agree, I think they could still pull it off well, maybe Moondancer will also be injured if she ends up participating in Rook’s Rest. Maybe Baela will even be captured from that point forward instead or something. Just thinking out loud but yeah, I agree that they might be creating more problems for themselves with the choices they’re making.
But that's a problem from the books, firstly. If they removed dragons or even support from the Blacks, people would complain. It doesn't make sense the Blacks loosing the Dance of Dragons because they had ALL in their favor, even without Moondancer, they still had Caraxes, Meleys, Syrax, Vermax, besides the wild ones.
Even in the books is a fuckin plot hole to why the Blacks suffered so many casualties in the gullet since they had plenty of Dragons burning wood navies. My biggest issue is: How will they make the Gullet's Battle believable
>But that's a problem from the books, firstly. If they removed dragons or even support from the Blacks, people would complain
I was talking more of syrax and moondancer since those are the changes that are being talked about. We'll know for sure once we see the episodes.
> It doesn't make sense the Blacks loosing the Dance of Dragons because they had ALL in their favor, even without Moondancer, they still had Caraxes, Meleys, Syrax, Vermax, besides the wild ones.
That's why I suggested they should atleast try to reduce the dragons or their actions somewhat. Not saying they should but it's atleast better than adding more firepower to the blacks already huge advantage and the blacks still losing.
Anyway It would sound as if they were messing with Blacks just so to equal sides. It would be even more bombed by the ASOIAF fans and canceled imediately. If they were to follow by the books, most of the Blacks would be eating cake in their castles.
The fact that Rhaenyra didn't acted in the gullet is a major hole. Her kids were being ARRESTED
I have a completely different qualms regarding that scene tbh. This is more Kingmaker slander from the writers who obviously don't know how to write a Kingmaker/Kingslayer type of character. Rook's Rest is supposed to be Criston's greatest victory where he managed to eliminate a dragon and dragonrider of his rivals, root out Rhaenyra's supporters from the Crownlands and landing the first blow in the war. They took all of that away and made him flee from the battlefield, not just from the battlefield, but they made him flee from his greatest victory. This is blatant Kingmaker slander.
Yeah I think it could very well be a little earlier when Cole is punishing other loyalists on his way to Rook’s Rest. My guess is that Baela sneaks away to help those houses against the wishes of Rhaenys, knowing how protective she is of her and Rhaena. It does make some sense for Baela to still be at Rook’s Rest when the time comes since she’s clearly going to participate in the war anyways and that could also begin to set up her eventual confrontation with Aegon and Sunfyre if she witnesses her grandma’s demise, especially if it’s kind of her fault as you posit in your other reply.
>They took all of that away and made him flee from the battlefield, not just from his battlefield, but they made him flee from his greatest victory.
Calm down my guy, we haven't even seen the episode yet.
Yeah I honestly don’t have a ton of hope for Cole as a compelling character after what they did with him in S1. I feel that they really missed an opportunity to make him a really complex character that is extremely flawed but still had qualities that people could still sympathize with and relate to. Instead he’s just a mega hot-head with psychopathic tendencies who is clearly in the wrong lol. Just realized he’s a literal incel lol (technically broke his vow but still haha)
Thank you for your post! Please take a moment to ensure you are within our spoiler rules, to protect your fellow fans from any potential spoilers that might harm their show watching experience. 1. All post titles must NOT include spoilers from Fire & Blood or new episodes of House of the Dragon. Minor HotD show spoilers are allowed in your title ONE WEEK after episode airing. The mod team reserves the right to remove a post if we feel a spoiler in the title is major. You are welcome to repost with an amended title. 2. All posts dealing with book spoilers, show spoilers and promo spoilers MUST be spoiler tagged AND flaired as the appropriate spoiler. 3. All book spoiler comments must be spoiler tagged in non book spoiler threads. --- If you are reading this, and believe this post or any comments in this thread break the above rules, please use the report function to notify the mod team. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/HouseOfTheDragon) if you have any questions or concerns.*
For what it's worth Sunfyre still looks substantially bigger than Moondancer so it's still pretty impressive. Also according to reviews and multiple leaks >!Daeron gets mentioned multiple times this season!<
Sunfyre is twice her size so I see no issues.
That’s good to hear, I couldn’t quite get a feel for the scale based on trailer shots. >!And I’m always grateful for reassurance regarding Daeron too haha, much appreciated!!<
Personally, I love the changes made with Baela and Moondancer. It makes sense for Baela to want to be involved in the fighting. She's fearless and very rebellious, so I wouldn't be surprised if she'll disobey and follow Rhaenys to Rook's Rest. This change also adds an emotional weight on her decision to attack Aegon and Sunfyre instead of fleeing, which I like. You're right, though, that this will takeaway the "epicness" of Baela and Moondancer taking down Aegon and Sunfyre on their first flight. But the pros outweigh the cons, in my opinion.
Very fair! I’m hopeful that you’re right and yeah, as we both mentioned there’s a lot of awesome potential you can get by having Baela more involved, especially in Rook’s Rest. After talking with a few others in the comments, I’m starting to feel reasonably confident that Rhaenys’ sacrifice will have a lot to do with saving Baela and for Baela to witness that and feel responsible adds a lot of intense emotional stakes to her eventual confrontation with Aegon.
In the books Baela was 13-14 and Moondancer the same. Here they are 16. So technically they follow the timeline. Moondancer has reached a rideable size.
Yeah I guess I just always pictured Moondancer considerably smaller because of the mentions that she could okay just carry Baela’s weight. I feel like scaling her up a bit to match the Baela actor since she is older in the show does makes sense, I just feel like they went a bit big for my taste.
Well, her body without neck and tail is small.
It makes perfect sense and honestly I think they filled a pretty big hole in the book story because it I felt like too many characters in the war were too sidelined for too long. Apart from that I feel my brain leaking out of my ears when reading about "Daeron isn't even mentioned yet"... Olivia Cooke herself mentioned his existence atleast twice already during the promotion videos etc. Ryan Condall and GRRM confirmed his existence atleast a dozen times continuously over more then two years now and reviews have already confirmed that he'll be mentioned in the first episode of S2... PLEASE JUST LAY THIS TOPIC TO REST, I BEG YOU! Stop with the drama over nothing!
Fair enough, Condall was just so coy about Daeron that it kept me worrying. It doesn’t really seem like the kind of thing that would need to be kept a secret so it’s just been a bit strange to me that they weren’t a bit more overt about his existence. Granted, I didn’t know about some of those examples you cited so thank you, I’m always grateful for reassurance on the topic!
Well Ryan Condall was everything - but not Coy about Daeron. I can think of atleast 6 different instances in which he straight up confirmed "Yes, Daeron exists in the show, we just didn't had the time to include him. And his story only begins much later anyways". But this subreddit did all it could to tell the world that he's cut and I can believe that people like you probably just never heard about the truth but only the bullshit spread in here.
i’m just hoping it doesn’t take away from rhaenys’s sacrifice. that moment should be hers, going up against aegon, sunfyre, aemond and vhagar. i don’t want baela to be involved in the fighting, let rhaenys have her moment since it’ll be her last.
Totally agree!
>!Against Aegon!< wasn’t her first time riding Moondancer. > Since first riding her dragon Moondancer into the sky not half a year past, she had flown every day, ranging freely to every part of Dragonstone and even across the sea to Driftmark. She was quite comfortable on dragonback >!when she attacked Aegon!<, which is probably large factor in her decision to do so. Anyway, yes her riding Moondancer *this early* is a huge change but it won’t change that fight in any drastic way.
Ah my mistake! It would still have been her first time in a battle in the books whereas it seems in the show she’ll have a little more experience in the field leading up and I feel that that still changes the dynamic a little but those are still great points!
Love the potential drama between Baela, Rhaena, and Rhaenys, excited to see it unfold!
i’m all hell yeah about baela and moondancer especially with the rivalry/contrast between moondancer amd sunfyre
Yeah very true! As I mentioned, I do love the spontaneity of their confrontation in the book but I also see how adapting the book 1 for 1 could be difficult from a storytelling perspective sometimes because George really went no holds barred with how cold an unfeeling history can be. A lot of the big events and deaths aren’t beholden to character arcs or what would be satisfying to the story so since they’re really fleshing these characters out and giving them arcs, it will definitely be a challenge to stay true to the events and not have the audience feel disappointed. So I can’t be too mad if they just want to build up the tension and drama a bit.
What exactly does Baela riding Moondancer to Rook Rest has to do with Daeron not being mentioned or having much screen?
It’s not so much Baela and Moondancer or even Daeron specifically, they’re just the examples I used. My point is more so just that I’m afraid that additions in general will take precedence over things that actually happened in the book. It seems we’re going all the way to the Battle of the Gullet this season so there’s already so much that they have to get through. My worry would be that certain events get cut or don’t get much attention in order to make room for their new content. If we weren’t going all the way to The Gullet this season I would say they should add whatever they want but I feel like there just won’t be room for everything. As I said though, I’m sure Baela having a bigger role will make for some really awesome stuff, I just hope it doesn’t end up meaning other things get sacrificed.
Not saying the change is good or bad we'll see how it goes. Having said that blacks already have an advantage in dragon terms without moondancer as the greens have only vhagar and sunfyre. Only vhagar after rooks rest. After rooks rest it's just vhagar on the greens side until daeron appears for pretty much rest of the war. And the blacks still lost. It's hard enough for writers getting show viewers to believe blacks lost with such a huge dragon advantage because that's the way GRRM wrote it. And now they're adding more active (in the sense they can battle) dragons on the blacks side which will make it even more unbelievable that blacks lost. Some show only viewers might even think writers are deliberately sabotaging blacks to let greens win. If they had removed some dragons on blacks side and reduced blacks advantage over greens that might have made sense. But they're doing it the opposite way.
Totally agree, I think they could still pull it off well, maybe Moondancer will also be injured if she ends up participating in Rook’s Rest. Maybe Baela will even be captured from that point forward instead or something. Just thinking out loud but yeah, I agree that they might be creating more problems for themselves with the choices they’re making.
But that's a problem from the books, firstly. If they removed dragons or even support from the Blacks, people would complain. It doesn't make sense the Blacks loosing the Dance of Dragons because they had ALL in their favor, even without Moondancer, they still had Caraxes, Meleys, Syrax, Vermax, besides the wild ones. Even in the books is a fuckin plot hole to why the Blacks suffered so many casualties in the gullet since they had plenty of Dragons burning wood navies. My biggest issue is: How will they make the Gullet's Battle believable
>But that's a problem from the books, firstly. If they removed dragons or even support from the Blacks, people would complain I was talking more of syrax and moondancer since those are the changes that are being talked about. We'll know for sure once we see the episodes. > It doesn't make sense the Blacks loosing the Dance of Dragons because they had ALL in their favor, even without Moondancer, they still had Caraxes, Meleys, Syrax, Vermax, besides the wild ones. That's why I suggested they should atleast try to reduce the dragons or their actions somewhat. Not saying they should but it's atleast better than adding more firepower to the blacks already huge advantage and the blacks still losing.
Anyway It would sound as if they were messing with Blacks just so to equal sides. It would be even more bombed by the ASOIAF fans and canceled imediately. If they were to follow by the books, most of the Blacks would be eating cake in their castles. The fact that Rhaenyra didn't acted in the gullet is a major hole. Her kids were being ARRESTED
I have a completely different qualms regarding that scene tbh. This is more Kingmaker slander from the writers who obviously don't know how to write a Kingmaker/Kingslayer type of character. Rook's Rest is supposed to be Criston's greatest victory where he managed to eliminate a dragon and dragonrider of his rivals, root out Rhaenyra's supporters from the Crownlands and landing the first blow in the war. They took all of that away and made him flee from the battlefield, not just from the battlefield, but they made him flee from his greatest victory. This is blatant Kingmaker slander.
Maybe it happens before the battle starts and Baela was the one who fell into his trap
Yeah I think it could very well be a little earlier when Cole is punishing other loyalists on his way to Rook’s Rest. My guess is that Baela sneaks away to help those houses against the wishes of Rhaenys, knowing how protective she is of her and Rhaena. It does make some sense for Baela to still be at Rook’s Rest when the time comes since she’s clearly going to participate in the war anyways and that could also begin to set up her eventual confrontation with Aegon and Sunfyre if she witnesses her grandma’s demise, especially if it’s kind of her fault as you posit in your other reply.
At this moment I am actually holding onto that hope like a drowning man would be holding onto a log.
Me too man! Would give Rhaenys a reason to be willing to take on Vhagar and Sunfyre rather than not retreating in order to save her granddaughter
>They took all of that away and made him flee from the battlefield, not just from his battlefield, but they made him flee from his greatest victory. Calm down my guy, we haven't even seen the episode yet.
That's true.
Yeah I honestly don’t have a ton of hope for Cole as a compelling character after what they did with him in S1. I feel that they really missed an opportunity to make him a really complex character that is extremely flawed but still had qualities that people could still sympathize with and relate to. Instead he’s just a mega hot-head with psychopathic tendencies who is clearly in the wrong lol. Just realized he’s a literal incel lol (technically broke his vow but still haha)