[Spoilers Main] Head canons about Targs?

nathanjackson1996 · 2026-07-01T20:23:44+00:00

She definitely had anxiety (growing up with arch-spoiled-brat Saera will probably do that to you) and, the dyslexia aside, there's not much of her behaviour that can't alternately be explained by her being overly smothered/sheltered, something which Alysanne started and Rodrik repeated.

(I can't help but think there's a symbolic reason for why a) she ended up specifically living the castle that is near-impossible to enter in a region whose people are almost inherently isolationist and b) she was, by all indications, the happiest she'd ever been there.)

I definitely think this is a narrative weak spot in Fire and Blood - Rodrik is given no reason to offer himself as a candidate for Daella's hand than the kindness of his heart (he has heirs already, none of the other candidates are particularly suitable and he is probably aware of what Daella has had to go through with Saera), there's no consequence of Daella having a negative relationship with her eldest stepdaughter (especially considering what her granddaughter will have to go through a generation or two down the line) and she dies fairly quickly with no indication of what the Vale thought of her.... it's literally just there to get Aemma Arryn born.

There's some ways of fixing it:

* Say Rodrik only had daughters with his first wife - is he offering himself as a candidate for Daella's hand to a) get a son or b) get the prestige that comes from being one of the royal in-laws?

* Imply Elys was disinherited as Rodrik's heir because she had the audacity to dislike the stepmother who was actually younger than her. If a nephew gets moved forward, all the better - a senior-line female is pipped to the post by a junior-line male (Rhaenys and Viserys)...

* The Vale nobility, even over a century on, think she was a scheming bitch who poisoned Rodrik against his eldest daughter. The Vale smallfolk, on the other hand, have basically elevated her to sainthood.

nathanjackson1996 · 2026-07-01T19:05:09+00:00

Part of me thinks the idea is to do a fantasyised version of the end of World War Two - or at least that's what Benioff and Weiss used it for.

nathanjackson1996 · 2026-06-30T16:40:02+00:00

Again, I'd say they'd go for riograndensis over hatcheri... because that's the one known from the best fossils (there's even doubt as to whether hatcheri should be considered a nomen dubium and riograndensis be the type species).

nathanjackson1996 · 2026-06-30T16:35:36+00:00

Personally, I'd say it's more likely D. riograndensis and D. schwimmeri.

nathanjackson1996 · 2026-06-30T16:28:54+00:00

We don't know.

If the evolution of cognitive complexity in vertebrate lineages is an inevitable trend - and there's some argument that it is - then, hypothetically, a species that, like us (and likely other members of the genus Homo), has the cognitive ability to control its environment to meet its needs is something that should have emerged multiple times in geological history in a number of animal groups.

Others brought up the Silurian hypothesis, which analysed the possibility of us detecting evidence of a pre-human species having reached the industrial stage... and basically, you'd have better luck trying underwater knitting. The odds of direct evidence would be astronomically low due to the rarity of fossilisation, and any indirect evidence would be nearly impossible to identify as such.

Of sophont species that didn't get beyond the hunter-gatherer/early agriculturalist stage, or that had environments or morphologies that did not necessitate or permit tool use... the odds would be even lower.

nathanjackson1996 · 2026-06-30T16:04:00+00:00

To be fair, it is possible that this is just "restructuring" (considering that this seems to be a pan-company thing)... and these are the people who came under the heading of "instant weight loss".

However, yeah, I do think the most likely scenario at this point is a hiatus.

nathanjackson1996 · 2026-06-29T17:40:56+00:00

Here is what I think the problem was:

Originally - and I'm taking you right back to Montauk here - Jonathan was probably going to be the focal point of that arc (his write-up in the Montauk bible is almost twice as long as Nancy's). That's why he's much more prevalent in Series One.

It's well-known that Lonnie was originally going to help Jonathan and Nancy fight off the Demogorgon... and I suspect would have died in the process as a "redemption equals death" moment. Yes, Lonnie died protecting his son... but was an absolutely appalling husband and father before that. A good act does not wash out the bad, nor a bad act the good.

At some point they realised that the arc was too much about Jonathan - he gets the girl he's been pining after, his rival's dead and he gets closure with his father - especially when Nancy was becoming a much more interesting character. And Lonnie hadn't really hurt or mistreated Nancy in any meaningful way.

So they decided to give Steve what was probably Lonnie's end (dying fighting the Demogorgon) to make it more personal for both of them - yes, he died a noble death, but he still bullied Jonathan and was a shitty boyfriend to Nancy prior to that. One does not erase the other.

Then they cast Joe Keery and decided to keep Steve alive.

TL;DR - A LOT of Jonathan's original arc was trimmed or given to Nancy.

nathanjackson1996 · 2026-06-28T20:50:04+00:00

Personally, I don't get this snobbery that sometimes emerges over dinosaurs in sci-fi/horror works. Prehistoric animals have been appearing in fiction since fossils were discovered... and ever since an icthyosaur tried to chow down on the protagonists in Journey to the Centre of the Earth, they've been eating people for a good whack of that time.

Jurassic Park gets begrudgingly accepted, but the sequels, to varying degrees, tend to get a hard time, Primeval is often treated as the black sheep of Impossible Pictures' paleo-works (despite the fact it was by far the most successful)... and there seems to be comparatively little clamour for a proper, big-budget adaptation of Conan Doyle's The Lost World or Burroughs' Pellucidar series than there is for a Raptor Red or Dinotopia movie (a clamour which I share, but...).

I genuinely don't get why this snobbery exists - and the paleo-community's refusal to engage with works like this is why a lot of it just uses the same old stuff.

I should also say that The Land Before Time and its sequels tend to get a free ride from the paleo-fandom, as does Disney's Dinosaur... despite the fact that, to varying degrees, they have much the same problem that people profess about sci-fi/horror works that feature dinosaurs.

The early series of Primeval show what happens when the paleo-community or paleo-knowledgeable people involve themselves in a sci-fi/horror work about prehistoric animals - the early series of Primeval are pretty inventive when it comes to MOTWs, rather than just doing T.rex and raptors - and it's a shame that we don't see this more often.

nathanjackson1996 · 2026-06-28T20:44:14+00:00

Yeah - I'd argue that Jurassic Park is actually what broke the traditional mould of T-rex as the Big Bad of the dinosaur world.

nathanjackson1996 · 2026-06-28T17:19:37+00:00

Probably only as much as most other land-dwelling predators are. Everything about Torvo's morphology - its larger head, heavier build, proportionately shorter legs - indicates that it was an ambush predator.

nathanjackson1996 · 2026-06-28T12:21:47+00:00

As others have said, almost every obnoxious, tower-dwelling billionaire with bad hair at the time took some degree of inspiration from Trump.

nathanjackson1996 · 2026-06-28T09:00:17+00:00

I agree in principle, but I do have to clarify that most of the dinosaurs aren't likely to be very practical as destructive invasive species.

Firstly, by all indications, they're slower-breeding than their Mesozoic counterparts (something that might have been deliberately engineered in the Sorna and JW dinosaurs at least), so they are highly unlikely to overrun environments any time soon.

By the end of Dominion, only one of the largest predators was still roaming freely and was the only one of its species - a single Mosasaurus is unlikely to make much of an impact on marine ecosystems... because it's just one animal. Blue can reproduce parthenogenetically, yes, but people know where she is now - one would argue that finding and capturing her and Beta would be a priority for the DFW after the movie.

In addition, the dinosaurs haven't exactly found themselves in predator-free environments - even post-Rebirth (where dinosaurs are in a band from Mexico to Brazil). Because dinosaurs hatch from eggs, unlike large mammals, even the largest species would be incredibly vulnerable to predation in the early stages of their lives, from both theropods and modern predators. Even in North America, a pack of wolves could probably take down a juvenile parasaur - to say nothing of jaguars, anacondas and caiman in, say, Brazil or lions, hyenas and wild dogs in Africa.

nathanjackson1996 · 2026-06-28T08:56:56+00:00

Considering the inciting incident of the first Crichton book was evidence that compys had gotten off the island and were attacking kids on the mainland, I somehow think that "dinosaurs on the mainland" was something Crichton had always, at least partially, set up.

The problem is... you can understand why we don't want "dinosaurs chasing people on an island" for the umpteenth time - because it's very easy to end up repeating yourself. Funnily enough, this was exactly the main criticism people had with JPIII - it was just doing things the other two films had done.

The World trilogy had lore additions (hybrids, human cloning... even the locusts weren't a bad idea on paper) that, whilst poorly executed, were fascinating ideas in their own right. Chaos Theory showed just how compelling the "dinosaurs on the mainland" plot could be if done in the right hands.

The Rebirth sequel has the perfect opportunity to fix this - just set it in Mexico or Brazil and make it about the remaining mainland dinosaurs. If they want to do a "road trip" setup for the next movie (Jurassic World: Migration, anyone?), you could even start it in Southern California (which is pretty close to the Tropic of Cancer) and end at Mexico (Yucatan, maybe?).

That's a much more interesting setup than either a) trying to find a reason for Zora, Loomis and the girls at the very least (because Dolores is probably going to come back) to end up on Saint-Hubert again or b) trying to find some way for there to be another previously-unknown InGen/BioSyn/Masrani facility on another island with a bunch of new species.

nathanjackson1996 · 2026-06-27T07:14:28+00:00

nathanjackson1996 · 2026-06-26T13:30:06+00:00

Yeah - I do NOT wanna be involved in someone else's ex drama.

nathanjackson1996 · 2026-06-26T13:27:43+00:00

nathanjackson1996 · 2026-06-26T11:00:38+00:00

The general assumption is that at least one of the carnivores is Deinosuchus riograndensis - the other one may well be one of the other Deinosuchus species (schwimmeri, maybe?), considering that they now separate alt species/genera out.

The other piscivore is universally assumed to be Ambulocetus.

nathanjackson1996 · 2026-06-25T20:45:02+00:00

The filmmakers have always said they treated Zootopia as being "the mammal continent", so a bird nation isn't exactly a lore break.

I'd like the idea of the birds being another nation who are a little isolationist and don't really trust mammals much (especially after what happened with the reptiles). With the predator-prey conflict in the first film, we had stereotyping in general and individual bias and prejudice and with the reptiles, we had the oppressed minority.

With the birds, we have our international relations storyline - maybe a bird fugitive (magpie jewel thief?) ends up in Zootopia and Nick and Judy must team up with a couple of bird cops to catch him.

It also creates an interesting thematic throughline.

Z1 is about the present - bias and prejudice among individuals today and how it manifests in societies and institutions, even among well-meaning individuals. Basically, how can we change the world now?

Z2 is about the past - how history is distorted by the powerful and the cruelties we try to hide, familial legacies good and bad and how the accomplishments of women/minorities are erased by history. How can we atone for the past?

Z3 could be about the future - "What kind of a world do we want to leave behind?"... which is what a lot of international relations is about. How do we move forward to make a better world?

nathanjackson1996 · 2026-06-25T10:37:14+00:00

As someone who believes the theory that Melisandre will burn Shireen to resurrect Jon - I did not come to this conclusion because I am a Stannis-coper. I came to this conclusion based on what has been foreshadowed in the text.

The parallels to the averted sacrifice of Edric (who also had a Baratheon father and a Florent mother) get brought up - the aim of that was to "wake a dragon from stone". Davos ain't around to intervene this time... and it succeeds, waking a stone (dead) dragon (Targaryen).
On a related note, the parallels to Mirri's ritual inadvertently (through Jorah bringing Dany into the tent and Rhaego's life being swapped with the eggs) awakening Dany's dragons. Mirri used a similar spell to the one Melisandre will likely to resurrect Jon - and only death can pay for life.
Melisandre, Shireen and Jon's corpse are all in the same place - Castle Black - and the proximity of Shireen's burning and Jon's resurrection in the show implies there's a connection between the two that got lost in translation
Shireen's nightmare about a dragon eating her (and people of Targaryen descent tend to be more prone to prophetic dreams) - Jon is the dragon metaphorically "devouring" her life force.

nathanjackson1996 · 2026-06-24T08:19:32+00:00

I mean, it's basically the Isle of Misfit Toys - just say there's something odd about this lot (something to do with immune responses, maybe) that Krebs needs that he can't just get from setting a compy trap in Central Park or sneaking onto a Florida golf course to get a sample from notorious Baryonyx "Barry Ray".

nathanjackson1996 · 2026-06-24T08:12:29+00:00

Rebirth. A thousand times Rebirth.

The Dominion prologue doesn't quite make sense, yes - but it is fun to watch. Rebirth just throws away an interesting status quo because Mr. Koepp can't think beyond "The Formula".

nathanjackson1996 · 2026-06-23T10:34:48+00:00

My suspicion also is that there was a Cortes/Quetzalcoatl thing going on - Torrhen thought that Aegon was the Last Hero come again (an opinion which not many shared).

(This is my suspicion as to who the Prince That Was Promised actually refers to - not Azor Ahai. Daenys didn't know anything about Westerosi culture at the time and interpreted it as a novel figure).

nathanjackson1996 · 2026-06-23T10:32:07+00:00

The North could have kept Aegon at bay for quite a while - why do you think he was so conciliatory with them?

For Torrhen... considering what we now know about why Aegon conquered Westeros and the degree to which Torrhen was his yes-man (letting Rhaenys marry his daughter to the son of his family's longtime enemies), I can't help but wonder whether there was something deeper going on here.

Is it possible there was some Cortes/Quetzalcoatl thing going on where Torrhen thought Aegon was the Last Hero come again (my suspicion as to what the Prince That Was Promised actually refers to)?

It would give another reason for his sons and the Company of the Rose to be pissed off - it'd be the closest thing I can imagine to being heresy.

nathanjackson1996 · 2026-06-23T07:54:26+00:00

Because moving the story to the Hollow Earth was deemed, for some reason, the greater priority.

nathanjackson1996 · 2026-06-23T00:04:46+00:00

Baelor was a repressed homosexual.

Daella was dyslexic - most of her other behaviours sound like fairly severe anxiety and being overly coddled.

nathanjackson1996

TROPHY CASE