Our Flight Time Today Will Be

OUR FLIGHT TIME TODAY WILL BE…? This publish does comprise spoilers by way of the episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones that aired Sunday, August 20, 2017 (Season 7, episode 6: “Beyond the Wall”), so read accordingly. GAME OF THRONES SPOILERS FOLLOW: YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! I am an enormous fan of Game of Thronesâ€"I’m there, with bells on, every Sunday at 9:00 pm then watch that week’s episode no less than one more time during the week between. This just isn't going to be any kind of review or condemnation of Game of Thrones. Nor am I, imagine it or not, one of those people who insist on picking gnat shit out of pepper on every final detail of any TV sequence, film, or e-book to search out the tiniest mistake or inconsistency. Frankly, I don’t even do that as an editor. I not solely accept however fully embrace a Story First philosophy during which fudging the occasional bit of lore is a lesser sin than telling a boring story. And it’s with that in thoughts that I’ve overlooked a bunch of stuff in Game of Thrones, like the notorious question mark of Melisandre’s necklace. Does it magically make her look young and exquisite? Does she get all old and ugly when she takes it off in season six as the present appears to point? Because if so, she would have been old and ugly when she was within the bathtub, sans necklace, speaking to Selyse in season 4â€"however she was younger and exquisite. I noticed it, nevertheless it didn’t ruin my expertise of the show one bit. But then this Sunday we had some timing issues that have been, for meâ€"and apparently, I’m not aloneâ€"a bit more durable to miss since the implications within the story have been so much larger. This was an enormous escalation within the warfare with the white walkers and within the relationship between Jon Snow and Daenerys . . . only a big, pivotal second in the ongoing story. And once I stated I’m not the one one to note, I started seeing it in my circle of associates pretty much immediately, like this Facebook po st from creator and recreation designer Keith Baker: Last night’s episode was FILLED with issues that merely make no logical sense in any respect: by appearances, inside a day one individual ran the space it took them at least a day to cover on foot; a raven flew midway across the seven kingdoms; and then, what happened subsequent occurred. IT WAS AN AWESOME *SCENE*, and albeit, I’m OK with the fact that it makes absolutely no sense and was simply a way to hand a significant weapon to the Night King… But we’re definitely in the “don’t think too hard about it” territory. I doubt that is how the books will deal with issues, and that’s OK. I’m hardly abandoning the show or anything, however for me, it’s not quite as okay. And it also looks as though a fan reaction is being heard, at least sufficient to immediate one of many principle creatives concerned in the episode to speak to Variety, as quoted in the article “‘Game of Thrones Director Alan Taylor Breaks Dow n Timeline in ‘Beyond the Wall’” “We have been conscious that timing was getting a little hazy,” Taylor toldVariety. “We’ve received Gendry running again, ravens flying a certain distance, dragons having to fly back a sure distance… In terms of the emotional experience, [Jon and firm] kind of spent one dark night on the island by way of storytelling moments. We tried to hedge it a little bit with the everlasting twilight up there north of The Wall. I assume there was some effort to fudge the timeline a little bit by not declaring precisely how long we were there. I assume that labored for some individuals, for different people it didn’t. They gave the impression to be very involved about how fast a raven can fly but there’s a thing referred to as believable impossibilities, which is what you attempt to achieve, quite than impossible plausibilities. So I think we had been straining plausibility somewhat bit, however I hope the story’s momentum carries over some of that stuff.” Fudge the timeline as needed. I’m okay with that, however I agree with Keith Baker, who advised me: Some people are suggesting that they had been supposed to have been stranded on the rock for days waiting for Dany; if that’s the case, we needed extra scenes establishing the passage of time, like a minimum of yet one more night scene. Whether it was their intention or not, as a viewer it FELT prefer it was all occurring in a day. Felt like that to me, for certain. And that interview with Taylor was picked up by Germain Lussier for iO9.com in: “The People Behind Game of Thrones Admit This Week’s Rescue Timeline Didn’t Quiet Work” Hey, at least he admits it. There are probably people out there who would vehemently defend the timeline no matter what . . . But Taylor’s reasoning a minimum of feels honest. Either you were entertained and didn’t care, do care and have been aggravated, or are someplace in between. For the record, I did care however was ent ertained. But for all of us writing fantasy, science fiction, and/or horror, let’s take this as a good instance of what occurs when we play even just a bit too fast and free with our personal rules. Let’s leave the world of complicated, costly, and time-crunched TV collection manufacturing out of this for the remainder of this post and fall back to prose fiction. In a novel or short story, you don’t have to worry about your results price range, time on location, strain from the network, and so forth. You have the time to cease and suppose before you set your guidelines, stop and think about the way you’re following your rules as you’re writing, cease and take into consideration when and how you need to change your rules as you’re writing, stop and take into consideration what you’ll have to return and revise to accommodate that rule change . . . You have time. You’re sensible. These are your rules, and also you’re in command of them. So stop and think and do the wo rk. Because plausibilityâ€"not realism, and I’ve hit you over the pinnacle with that often sufficientâ€"does matter. I took no less than one movie (Legion) to task for that here at Fantasy Author’s Handbook, and belabored the point in both The Guide to Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction and Writing Monsters. How far is it between Eastwatch and Dragonstone? How fast can a dragon fly? It’s entirely up to George R.R. Martin to determine these numbers. The distance between two purely fictional locations is totally as much as you to decide in the middle of your worldbuilding. Write that down, and once someone travels between those two locationsâ€"as soon as it truly matters in the storyâ€"that’s locked in until you decide to vary it and revise accordingly. But once it’s in print in Chapter 2 it needs to be the same in Chapter three. How quick can a dragon fly? I don’t know; dragons are fake. I can’t look that up. You inform me. But again, when you’ve told me it’s that fast. Is there some magic item that may make them go quicker? Sureâ€"however establish that early sufficient so it doesn’t come out of nowhere. Could they fly through some sort of magical gate that jumps them forward a hundred miles in a flash? Of course they can, as a result of this is fantasy and in fantasy everything is possible should you establish it properly and it functions consistently inside the context of your created world. How quick does a raven fly? Now you’ve stepped out of your fantasy world and into the actual world, as a result of in contrast to a dragon, a raven is a real animalâ€"I see them in my neighborhood up here in the Pacific Northwest all the timeâ€"and we are able to all look up how fast they can fly. And not unexpectedly, it seems I’m not the primary individual to Google that within the final couple days. According to DinoAnimals.com (you must discover it in the feedback, since ravens aren’t one of many ten quickest birds), they max out at 31 mile s per hour. This is the thing you possibly can’t fudge. Unless you present us the fudge. Show us the little ring round its ankle that imbues it with magical speed. Show us that these are bred from the traditional speed ravens of yesteryear. Show us something that will take them out of the sensible and into the believable. But Game of Thrones never mentioned these had been magical ravensâ€"just unusually well-trained ravens. And Gendry wasn’t carrying boots of speed. Usain Bolt’s been clocked at “practically” 28 mph, and that was only in a one hundred meter dash. If this episode exhibits us that a dragon can fly, say, 100 miles and hour, okayâ€"that might be uncomfortably windy for Daenerys, however okay. The finest I may find on-line is that it’s as far as 1900 miles between Eastwatch and Dragonstone, in order that’s a minimum of 62 hours, a method, for the raven, which is sent after some unknown number of hours of Gendry operating, and if a raven might fly for 62 hour s straight at maximum pace (and I’m positive it could’t), and the dragon goes one hundred miles an hour or 19 hours again to Eastwatch, further ignoring the additional distance they walked north of the Wall, we get eighty one hours not including Gendry’s run that they stood on that rock, surrounded not just by dumb zombies however the zombies’ clearly sentient commanders, who didn’t realize the lake had frozen over again. Roughly estimating Gendry’s run, let’s call that 4 days. If it took the raven twice as long, which is much more plausible, it’s truly extra like six days. Just standing there. Waiting. Maybe we will get Alan Taylor to take my subsequent online Worldbuilding course. It begins Thursday. â€"Philip Athans P.S.: But then there’s this: Is the Night King holding off on objective? Waiting six days knowing, or at least hoping, that Daenerys will come and convey a dragon for him to kill and reanimate? That will probably be how they fix thisâ€"exhibiting us it was all a part of his master planâ€"but that also doesn’t show us those guys were stuck on a rock for no less than the higher a part of every week. About Philip Athans Fill in your particulars beneath or click an icon to log in: