BlackLightning

I'm not understanding how you can cover such a large story that touches every part of a continent without having any eyes or ears there. Are you saying that we should've stuck with one POV for Dorne, one for the Free Cities and one for the Iron Islands? The whole goal of writing is to show not tell. You'd be doing a lot of telling instead of showing. Take Ser Barristan for example. He was a key part in unravelling the Meereenese Knot because a lot of stuff had to have happen in Daenerys' court after she left and Tyrion -- still working on securing his freedom from slavery -- was not close to be positioned there. If we had it your way, everything would've been told to us in retrospect and/or with an info-dump.

The first problem with Renly is that he should've set aside his beef with Stannis (even if temporarily or if he was pretending) and focused on getting the Lannisters off the throne. Calling a Great Council between him and Stannis was the best choice.' The second problem with Renly is that his ascension to the throne over Stannis establishes a very bad precedent. Again...set aside your pride, call a Great Council and/or negotiate to be named Stannis' heir.

While Jaime does have very different coping mechanisms than Cersei and Tyrion (probably due to the fact that they spent more time underneath Tywin's thumb than Jaime did), I think the point that @Megorova was trying to make is that being a regular member of the Kingsguard means that he had several bosses that he had to answer (the LC of the Kingsguard, the King, the Hand, the Queen, etc.) Cersei as Queen Regent in A Feast for Crows has no boss. She is the head honcho. And Tyrion as Hand, even though the Queen Regent was his boss, basically was his own boss because he ran circles around his boss. Your question is a brilliant question to ask though.

@chrisdaw why do you want Tyrion to become king? Or why do you see him becoming king? Why would anyone in Westeros be okay with a kinslayer and a kingslayer (the fact he didn't do it doesn't matter -- as of right now, he confessed to doing it on at least two occasions) becoming king? Take all the vitriol that Jaime got and multiply it by three. Also, the fact that he is a known lecherous dwarf who previously was a key supporter of a bad, illegitimate dynasty (which he betrayed no less) also hurts him. Plus, he's a Lannister. Why would the northmen or the rivermen (or the Dornishmen for that matter) pledge fealty to a Lannister?

I would normally agree. But maybe the Boltons will be an issue going into A Dream of Spring if the Wall falls early and/or if Rickon is taken hostage by them? Doesn't Davos still think Stannis is trying to take the Dreadfort? What if he goes there only to find that its Bolton HQ? If the hostage route happens, then Roose Bolton is the one who lives.

What if the Boltons are not all gone by the time that the Starks are reinstalled as Lords of Winterfell? I think the likelihood of either Ramsay or Roose (not both) escaping and falling back on the Dreadfort to continue to menace the Starks and the other northmen is pretty high. Having the North have to contend with Lord Bolton, the Others and maybe King Stannis makes for an interesting, more nuanced story in A Dream of Spring than if it was just the Others that they had to deal with.

@PrettyLittlePsycho it's also important to remember that this is a fantasy story about magic. In Planetos, the king is the most powerful person in the nation...not only that but the king is magical and/or has a magical/ethereal bloodline. Bran qualifies Also greenseer and skinchanger kings beyond the Wall, in the pre-Andal era and maybe even in the pre-First Men era were common. Again Bran qualifies. So you have divine right, popular sovereignty and desperate apocalyptic conditions all playing into Bran becoming king.\ Plus, it's all thematically resonant. I don't know why we didn't see it coming. The books will play out differently and have a completely different end...but Bran becoming king is happening.

It's a legitimate question though. LOL Well Jon won't really be dead would he. He'd be undead. I'm sure he would have sex and produce children if it served his agenda. All undead fire people in the series have a specific goal or agenda that drives them. With Beric, it was justice in the Riverlands. With Catelyn, it appears to be vengeance for the Red Wedding and finding/crowning her daughters. With Jon...?

Are we reading the same stuff? Because Tyrion is not one to be manipulated. Never has been. Not then and not now and certainly not in the future. Oh, I'm sure that this will happen. But it won't be anything good. It will be horrible for Sansa and her family...which means that it will almost certainly erode any goodwill the Starks had for Dany and start a war. Probably Rickon or Sansa. I definitely don't think it'll be Jon.

It is Sorry...I'm serious by nature

Magic. Everyone seems to be discounting the fact that both Dany and Jon are magical beings, even without magical-resurrection-semen. Seriously though: any child they would produce would be more of a god-king than even Bran.

I would ask.... "Do you need help? It's okay, you can tell me. I am willing to help you write for only $10 per hour. I don't need benefits or a 401k plan. And I don't need to be credited as having worked on it."

The people of Flea Bottom can be called, however, by their king. Not true. Not true at all. Oldtown is the second-largest city in Westeros and the Hightowers field men from their city all of the time.

Because Sansa is tied to Tyrion and a fugitive who is being actively pursued by the Iron Throne Arya is a free agent in more ways than one. Also, Catelyn was strongly advocating for Arya to be named Robb's heir...despite the fact that they both knew that Sansa was alive and kicking.

why does it have to hold to the traditional examples of horror fiction? I tend to think the whole Catelyn -> Lady Stoneheart thing is more of a ghost story than a zombie story. A story where the ghost goes on a rampage or has a specific (dark) agenda but the ghost is abated by either having its agenda accomplished, by being exorcised or with a compromise Martin just took a ghost of mother dearest story put it in zombie fiction clothing. The ice zombies evoke Romero-esque, Walking Dead modern-day zombies but the fire zombies are more like the pre-modern ones with roots in voodoo and Pan-African witchcraft in which living people were entrapped and bewitched.

I can tell you've watched the show but haven't really read the books. Why would Sansa want to end up with Tyrion? It was a forced sham of a marriage that is essentially equivalent to kidnapping and rape. And then Tyrion is not a good person. At the case for Sandor is more palatable seeing as Sandor has improved. Tyrion has only gotten worse. Bran is going to become the King of all Westeros. It's how the story ends. Of everything that the show did in season 7 and 8, that is the only thing that has been confirmed as true and final. And to be the King of all Westeros, Bran is going to have to leave the cave. I don't think he'll be able to stay there either. Lots of bad juju going on there Why wouldn't Sansa go north if she and everyone who plays into her story wants her to go north

If she is being accompanied by a couple members of the Brotherhood, they are probably there for insurance not backup.

Why do you think Catelyn and Stoneheart are two different people? Fire wights are not the mindless, maneating puppets that we see in zombie horror. You are mistaking them for ice wights. Beric Dondarrion had died nine times but he was still fairly normal. No real difference between UnBeric and a severely traumatized peasant

Not for penises. Not really. A penis is has more in common with noses and ears than it does with fingers or toes. It's too malleable. Not reason why it should fall off. If you want to talk about actual biology (or necrology), dead male corpses are known for not only sprouting erections but also leaking fluid from the prostate. So yeah. I don't know what exactly Coldhands is but he's probably an ice wight. Big difference between ice wights and fire wights. Fire wights are decidedly more human than the ice wights. The wounds that fire wights receive in life (and un-life) stick around but other than that, there's no reason to assume that there is no blood flow. Fire wights can shed blood and be killed again... so there's a chance that it can still work. Agreed. The same thing happened to Arya in Storm and for Bran and Daenerys in Game

I think Catelyn wants out... ...but not until she has Arya or Sansa (preferably Arya) adorned with her brother's crown and sitting in her father's seat at the High Table in Winterfell. Crowning Arya and securing her throne - not vengeance on the Freys and Lannisters - is what appears to be her ultimate goal. When she learns that Bran and Rickon are alive and (somewhat) well, she's going to want to stay around a bit longer to see them again and to ensure that they too are safe and secure. I think this what might be the thing that saves Jaime. The revelation that Bran is alive and beyond the Wall via the weirwoods and/or the revelation (or at least a major hint) of Sansa's whereabouts.

Well, if you really sit back and think about it, sci-fi, fantasy and horror are really just one genre told with a different lens and incorporating different storytelling devices. It's the same thing. It's all fantasy. Right The problem here when we have magic-based time travel is that there is no reason why if Bran can pull off such a crazy feat that he can't or won't do it again. You have to be very careful or else you jump the shark.

Welcome to the forum We don't talk about the Greyjoy kids and what role they will play in The Winds of Winter enough I feel like Theon almost has to survive this next book. Because if he dies, Asha's story (which - at the very least - seems to have the purpose of fully integrating the Iron Islands and its people with mainland Westeros) ends. Theon is the key.

What do you mean by refusal to tell the truth? She told her father. Her problem is that she didn't tell the king the truth....but the king already knew the truth anyways.

This whole thing is a headache if I am to be honest. It's why I tend to hate time travel stories...they get soooo complicated so quickly. Even more in this case, as we're not talking science-based time travel but magic-based time travel. But good points. There definitely was a lot more that happened at the Tourney of Harrenhal than what we are led to believe.

I suppose you could've created characters, plotlines and even places that were exclusive to the TV show. Walking Dead - for all its missteps - did (and is still doing) a good job of that. And I also suppose that we could've had episodes that were flashbacks or dreams, taking place in a completely different time or place sometimes with a different cast of characters. It's kind of a staple in television (especially 2010s television) and I always found it weird that D&D were so much against those things.