#also the physical effects guys on hotd are so so good at what they do like jesus christ

[mkstrigidae]

Of course there are many things the adaptation of hotd is doing terribly (and I am having so much fun complaining about them), but one of the things I think they actually did extremely well in this episode was the sheer destruction wrought by the dragons. Like, it almost felt like the battle was less about the dragons themselves and more about showing the wholesale and indiscriminate destruction that they wrought when unleashed. Soldiers of all sides and loyalties getting crushed underfoot and really reinforcing this thing that GRRM has been saying over and over again: that dragons are nukes. That it doesn't matter who or to what end they're unleashed in service of, only that people are going to die horribly and pointlessly, and that what's left in their wake won't be able to be fixed. Like Harrenhall itself, standing in ruins as a monument to the fact that, even hundreds of years later, what's been destroyed by dragons (nuclear weapons) cannot be fixed by man in a way that matters (nuclear exclusion zones).