East, West (Patreon)

We've got two Game of Thrones videos coming soon – one about the mysterious east, and another about Elissa Farman's journey west.

The Essos video is huge. It's got lots of wonderful imagery that we've never used before – as well as art by Unseen Westeros, drafturgy, Mandy Finke, et al., we're experimenting with photography from sites like Picalls and Unsplash to give some subtle visual flavour, eg:

Much better than plain black backgrounds, no?

The challenge with the Essos video is the sheer amount of content we're covering – several continents in ~23 minutes. It's tricky to balance breadth (from Sothoryos to the Shivering Sea to Asshai) with depth (discussing intricate mysteries like the Five Forts and Bloodstone Emperor) without getting viewers confused. The Valyrian steel swords video is a good model – but this Essos video is significantly bigger... The Unseen Westeros Kickstarter is closing soon, though – so it's time to bite the bullet and settle on a final version of the script. Aiming to finish this monster in the next couple days.

The Elissa Farman video is a lot more straightforward. Unlike most of our super-analytical analysis videos, this one's mostly just storytelling, which is refreshing. Am still thinking through some ambiguities in the story, though – like were Elissa and Rhaena gay lovers? And not sure whether to mention Elissa's indirect influence on Westeros' debts, Jaehaerys' roads etc... And the theory of Elissa being Quaithe? Even GRRM's minor side-stories can be mined for rich seams of tinfoil. But the script's pretty much done. Will get the video out after the Essos one.

Have also been thinking about the next videos – since the GOT S1E01 video was so well received, we'll do a S1E02 video to follow it up. The Stark history video is also chugging along... Am thinking about an April Fools video... And no doubt when we least expect it, HBO will drop a GOT Season 8 trailer.

So we're juggling a whole bunch of different videos right now – and they're all pretty exciting. Thank you for making this possible!

ASX