CrypticWeirwood

I'm pretty sure that's by design, but yours is an astute observation nevertheless.

That's well put.

Yes, he was indeed Wart all along. The double-bluff worked, enough so that Martin still surprised a great many even though the setup was so clear -- at least before the fall. Certainly he received advice about ruling. Who better a teacher of rulership than Bloodraven, Hand of the King and Defender of the Realm? The wheelchair having come from the design of a king whose reign was beyond living memory was the show's way of showing that Bran had the history and background needed for just rule. Of course a hundred thousand million righteous replies will vehemently and vociferously deny any such artifice however reasonable. It's like Martin has so recently said: the internet is toxic.

"Then I shall have enjoyed the pleasure of your company, little griffin."

I’m pretty sure that the word you were looking for there is bathetic, not pathetic. Pathos it had in plenty. It was its bathos that you so lament.

I fully expect the end of the books to be as like the end of the show as the two versions of everything that transpired in Qarth resembled each other -- from the spice king to the warlocks, from gay Xaro to Dany drinking shade of the evening, from dragonnapping to her visions in the House of the Undying. In other words, any similarities will be almost unrecognizable.

People forget that the secret of the Manderlies lies hidden in plain sight right there in their very name: the Mander lies!

Wait, when did they spread black lies about Stannis to defame his good reputation? That doesn't make any sense. Character Assassination refers to the slandering or vicious personal verbal attack on a person with the intention of destroying or damaging that person's reputation or confidence. In other words it is malicious verbal assaults designed to damage or tarnish the reputation of a person. ... It is a form of defamation.

Doesn't he? I think he does. He becomes a ghost in at least two senses and perhaps others. First, he died of a knife to the heart so his continued presence is like an after-death ghost. Second, he goes off to wander the realms beyond the Realm, beyond the Wall. He will become a legend while still alive, just a wanderer who may or may not even exist. Finally, it seems certain form Varamyr’s prologue in Dance that Jon's spirit was for a time housed in his direwolf after his body lay cold and dead.

Bran didn't get to walk again. Arya didn't get to kill Cersei. Sansa didn't get to marry a prince. Jon didn't get to marry the girl he loved. Robb and Rickon didn't get to live. Neither did Cat or Ned. Or Lyanna or Brandon or Rickard. Tell us again about your Disney ending, the one where all the Starks got what they wanted. None of them did.

Even if Jaime and Tyrion each killed the other’s father rather than his own, Tywin would still be Tyrion's first cousin once removed.

All greenseers are skinchangers par excellence.

Treason is only attempting to overthrow the current regime, whether through open war or a narrow coup or assassination. It is not disagreeing with someone, doing something they don't like like walking out if a meeting, or revealing that the queen is sleeping with her brother, or saying that the king is a fink. Only seeking to "kill" the regime and replace it with a new one is treason. Telling Sansa the truth that he is her aunt's son not her father's cannot possibly be treason. Dany may not want it to happen but that is not for her to decide. She cannot force him to lie to his own family because that severs the feudal bond, just as it did when her father called for Ned's head.

I'm pretty sure that the reason they stare at her like she's an outsider is because she actually IS an outsider. Hard to fault them for calling a spade a spade.

I'm assuming you're referring to Benjen when you mention Jon’s uncle, not to Ned, right? It's probably worth noting that Maester Aemon was also Jon’s uncle, just “many generations removed” so to speak, making him his many-times-great uncle. (Just how many greats depends on whether you follow the family structure from the books or the shorter one from the show.) Maester Aemon was also full of “grief and dutifulness”, and conveyed these “avuncular” lessons to Jon. And while it didn't come out in the show, Bloodraven was half-brother to Maester Aemon's own grandfather, Daeron II. So Bloodraven was also related to Jon, but not to Bran whom he mentored. It reminds me of the monarchies of Europe, where it sometimes seems that everyone is related to everyone else if you trace it back far enough. Heck, even Bilbo and Frodo and Merry and Pippin (but not Sam) were all related to each other.