thehandwipes

If that's what you took away from the essays I'd recommend a re-read.

Yeah, sure, "he got it exactly, he knew exactly what I was trying to do" means he completely misunderstood the point of the narrative and reached conclusions that were not only wrong, but misogynistic and pro-slavery. Don't believe your lying eyes.

"Apologetic for slavery?" Give me a break. Your criticism isn't of Adam Feltman, its of GRRM. GRRM: "I read those (the Meereenese Blot essays) when someone pointed them out to me, and I was really pleased with them, because at least one guy got it. He got it completely, he knew exactly what I was trying to do there, and evidently I did it well enough for people who were paying attention." Has GRRM ever said anything like that about anything you've written?

Its hard to nail down where Arya's story goes after Braavos. Returning to the RL storyline seems the most likely since its where she spent most of the first three books and its where Nymeria is. She is also intimately linked to Harrenhall and the God's Eye. As well as the RW, and I expect a big showdown at the Twins in ADOS. Arya should certainly be there. I'm of the opinion that they gave Jon's story (barebones) to the show only character of the Night's King which is why they couldn't give the characyer any motive, because they can't write and are hacks. They created a show only character but couldn't give him any show only characteristics. Jon goes north of the Wall post resurrection. Once he sees Jeyne he will assume Arya is dead and has been betrayed by his NW brothers. He goes north, looking for Bran, looking for Benjen, lured by bran, Ghost, Summer, something. At this point Jon story will continue the parellels with Dany. We'll get some "the Others know who you are, do you?" I don't think the Others are Evil, though they will certainly be destructive, and RLJ just doesn't cover all the nothing Jon doesn't know. Jon, I think, gets his Return of the King moment by taking WF from Stannis, who by this point has gone full Denethor staring into the flames. Jon's army (of the dead) then moves south to the Twins. Now I don't take anything from the show as cannon, but Arya's turn away from vengeance, along with her killing the NK (Jon), along with Jon's joke in Arya's first chapter, could all combine for quite the bittersweet ending. But its more likely they were just trying to retcon Mel and Arya from season 3 as well as give something of significance for her to do this season.

This is extremely unfair. Many of us have seen Dany's arc leading to this long before D&D did their hack version of it. This is like saying there won't be a Long Night because the show version of it was ridiculous. I don't consider anything on the show to be confirmation in the books (Cleganebowl, the Others being irrelevant and pointless, other stupid things) but there are a lot of reasons to believe that something like this will happen in the books. They diverged so drastically for all the characters that its just impossible to tell what's a shitty version of GRRM's ending and what's just fanservice. But Dany's ending certainly wasn't fanservice, and the hamfisted way they bent her character makes me think they felt some obligation to end her story that way. Or they just think fanboys love grim dark stories and can't write character arc's and don't care to try.