Rant & Rave Season 8 [Spoilers]: When you are cool like a cucumber, as evil as the mother of madness, but never as perfect as the pet!

[The Bard of Banefort]

I found a link about Bran becoming king:

https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/e1d6q5/spoilers_extended_david_confirms_the_3rd_holy/

Personally, I don't think this quote suggests that King Bran was the third Holy Shit moment. And while the quote about Jon killing Dany is suspicious, I just can't see these guys opening themselves up to that kind of criticism on their own. We saw how well they took the criticism of the RamSan plot (as in, not well at all), so I have a hard time believing that they'd open themselves up to sexism accusations by having their highly-marketable Yaas Kween icon get murdered by her boyfriend. 

[Ghostlydragon]

14 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

1. Stannis burning Shireen

2. Bran mind-splicing Hodor

Or Shireen being burned but DnD twisting it to Stannis doing it since they love their shock moments, especially ones that make no sense.

[Lady Fevre Dream]

On 3/18/2020 at 8:13 PM, Le Cygne said:

The wildly controversial “Game of Thrones” series finale will be celebrating its one-year anniversary in two months (the episode’s airdate was May 19, 2019), and with some distance comes some brutal honesty from cast member Emilia Clarke... [Her] character dies after being stabbed by Jon Snow. Clarke tells The Times, “Yeah, I felt for her. I really felt for her. And yeah, was I annoyed that Jon Snow didn’t have to deal with something? He got away with murder — literally.”...

Clarke suggests the show could have handled its final season better if it ran for more than just six episodes, saying, “We could have spun it out for a little longer.”

One part of the final season that Clarke did not like was that it was nothing but action set pieces and there was no room for character-driven dialogue moments. The actress said she would have liked more dialogue scenes, an opinion she first shared with Entertainment Weekly shortly after the series finale aired. Clarke said at the time she wished the show gave her more dialogue scenes with co-star Lena Headey, who played Cersei Lannister.

‘It was all about the set pieces,” Clarke tells The Times about the final season.

https://www.indiewire.com/2020/03/emilia-clarke-game-of-thrones-ending-annoyed-1202218667/

Thanks for this link.  I'm looking forward to reading what Emilia has to say.  I feel for her, Emilia, and Kit as well because regardless of what GRRM's plans are for Dany and Jon, the mess D&D made of their own writing had been left to them to be the face of......on screen.  It would have been nice for ANY characters to be allowed to examine the happenings going on in their own stories.  Instead they were left with the horrible 'script notes of revulsion' provided by the Ds instead of any real closure on the characters and story all the actors gave so much to over the years. 

What brought me here today was being reminded of Jenny's Song from the show.  I watched the video clip this morning of the song, and it reminded me of how actors like Kit and Emilia did manage to embody the spirit of characters in the book at times.  They both, even given more and more horrible crap as the seasons went on, still managed to wear the aura of the book characters.  NIK was great at that as well.  Watching that video just reminded how sad I am for them (the actors) and us as well, but thankful too, that they did somehow manage to embody the spirit of the characters.  I still thank them for that.  I'm also grateful that much of the show shit (storywise) is fading for me.  I look at the actors now and can still see them mixed in with my book characters, as I foolishly wonder if I'll get an advance on that book story........but that's another thread, LOL

Anyway, thanks for the link, and here's the video that sent me here today.  All of this makes me wonder what else we will learn from actors and crew with anniversaries of the last airings coming and...........even more and more time.

 

[kissdbyfire]

46 minutes ago, Ghostlydragon said:

Or Shireen being burned but DnD twisting it to Stannis doing it since they love their shock moments, especially ones that make no sense.

Yup. They were wary after the backlash they got for their dumb as fuck Sansa Poole idea, so they were petty and cowardly “clever” and decided to hide behind Martin saying, “when George told us this”. Not “when George told us that Stannis will burn Shireen”, but “this”. Pathetic. 

And I will say it again, even more pathetic b/c after series 1 aired David and Dan were full of praise for the book fans... they kept saying how amazing that everyone kept quiet and viewers didn’t have Ned’s death spoiled for them. And then they decide that they can “spoil” anything they want, b/c “fuck you book fans who are/have been giving us a hard time, constantly calling us out on our nonexistent writing skills, offensive inventions, ridiculous in universe logic and consistency - or lack thereof - and all the rest”. 

[Angel Eyes]

13 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

I found a link about Bran becoming king:

https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/e1d6q5/spoilers_extended_david_confirms_the_3rd_holy/

Personally, I don't think this quote suggests that King Bran was the third Holy Shit moment. And while the quote about Jon killing Dany is suspicious, I just can't see these guys opening themselves up to that kind of criticism on their own. We saw how well they took the criticism of the RamSan plot (as in, not well at all), so I have a hard time believing that they'd open themselves up to sexism accusations by having their highly-marketable Yaas Kween icon get murdered by her boyfriend. 

Or having the Mad Queen Bomber that they saved time and time again do absolutely nothing of note in the final season and get rocks dropped on her head. Lena Headey's been quite public about her disappointment about being killed so anticlimactically.

[The Fattest Leech]

1 hour ago, Ghostlydragon said:

Or Shireen being burned but DnD twisting it to Stannis doing it since they love their shock moments, especially ones that make no sense.

Oh lawdy, lawdy This is one of the "classic" D&D twists that still makes no sense to this day. And to make it worse, it was re-quote-twisted by other reporters as being something that was never said

[The Bard of Banefort]

4 hours ago, Angel Eyes said:

Or having the Mad Queen Bomber that they saved time and time again do absolutely nothing of note in the final season and get rocks dropped on her head. Lena Headey's been quite public about her disappointment about being killed so anticlimactically.

Yeah, that's why I tend to think the last season was more accurate than most people want to believe. A lot of it just didn't feel like something D&D would come up with on their own (not unlike Hold the Door). Since they conflated Cersei with fAegon, I tend to think that Aegon will be on the throne when Dany attacks (especially given Harry Strickland's appearance and the random Battle of the Bells reference). It wouldn't be too crazy for Aegon to take Cersei captive upon taking the city, similar to how Alicent Hightower was held prisoner in the Red Keep for years. (I've also been theorizing that maybe the valonqar prophecy is more abstract than we give it credit for. If Tyrion eggs Dany on in bombing the city, then it's possible Cersei could suffocate on the smoke, thus "choking her." But if Jon kills Dany, then I'm all but certain that GRRM won't have Jaime also kill Cersei).

Plus. . . Daenerys makes them a LOT of money. HBO even managed to produce an expensive dragon-queen jewelry line modeled after her a few years ago. Dany ending up on the throne would have been a marketing dream for HBO. So while we'll probably have to wait a long time to find out if this is really how things end for her and Jon (a long, long, long time), I'm inclined to think that it won't be hugely different. 

[SeanF]

5 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Yeah, that's why I tend to think the last season was more accurate than most people want to believe. A lot of it just didn't feel like something D&D would come up with on their own (not unlike Hold the Door). Since they conflated Cersei with fAegon, I tend to think that Aegon will be on the throne when Dany attacks (especially given Harry Strickland's appearance and the random Battle of the Bells reference). It wouldn't be too crazy for Aegon to take Cersei captive upon taking the city, similar to how Alicent Hightower was held prisoner in the Red Keep for years. (I've also been theorizing that maybe the valonqar prophecy is more abstract than we give it credit for. If Tyrion eggs Dany on in bombing the city, then it's possible Cersei could suffocate on the smoke, thus "choking her." But if Jon kills Dany, then I'm all but certain that GRRM won't have Jaime also kill Cersei).

Plus. . . Daenerys makes them a LOT of money. HBO even managed to produce an expensive dragon-queen jewelry line modeled after her a few years ago. Dany ending up on the throne would have been a marketing dream for HBO. So while we'll probably have to wait a long time to find out if this is really how things end for her and Jon (a long, long, long time), I'm inclined to think that it won't be hugely different. 

IMHO, the climax of the books will be fight against the Others, not the fight for Kings Landing.  If Jon kills Daenerys, I expect it's for some sacrificial reason.  Or Tyrion persuades him that she threatens his family, for some base motive.  D & D changed Tyrion from being Richard III in the books, to their self-insert.

I expect that Kings Landing will burn, but there will be a reason for it, rather than it being done for the evulz.  If anyone will be triggered by bells, it's Jon Con.

I doubt if we'll get the author preaching to us "First they came for the slave traders, and I did nothing...."  That's D & D's philosophy.

[Cas Stark]

5 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

Yeah, that's why I tend to think the last season was more accurate than most people want to believe. A lot of it just didn't feel like something D&D would come up with on their own (not unlike Hold the Door). Since they conflated Cersei with fAegon, I tend to think that Aegon will be on the throne when Dany attacks (especially given Harry Strickland's appearance and the random Battle of the Bells reference). It wouldn't be too crazy for Aegon to take Cersei captive upon taking the city, similar to how Alicent Hightower was held prisoner in the Red Keep for years. (I've also been theorizing that maybe the valonqar prophecy is more abstract than we give it credit for. If Tyrion eggs Dany on in bombing the city, then it's possible Cersei could suffocate on the smoke, thus "choking her." But if Jon kills Dany, then I'm all but certain that GRRM won't have Jaime also kill Cersei).

Plus. . . Daenerys makes them a LOT of money. HBO even managed to produce an expensive dragon-queen jewelry line modeled after her a few years ago. Dany ending up on the throne would have been a marketing dream for HBO. So while we'll probably have to wait a long time to find out if this is really how things end for her and Jon (a long, long, long time), I'm inclined to think that it won't be hugely different. 

Agree with all of this.

[Le Cygne]

17 hours ago, Lady Fevre Dream said:

I'm also grateful that much of the show shit (storywise) is fading for me.  I look at the actors now and can still see them mixed in with my book characters, as I foolishly wonder if I'll get an advance on that book story........but that's another thread, LOL

It's fading for me, too. All along we've had fun either saying what should happen (a good adaptation, and of course, this never happened) or critiquing the show, and there's still a bit of enjoyment there. It was such a huge failure, it will always be the bad example.

But I just wanted to add another perspective, the show characters never became the book characters for me. For me, the show was off from the start, and it always just, will we ever see an illustration or two of a good book scene? And we rarely did, so...

And I do think the books will differ substantially. All along he would say the characters in his mind are not the characters in the show, and yet... there is that fear that he will let the show influence the books. And like you said, the topic for that other thread.

[SeanF]

On 3/26/2020 at 5:11 AM, The Bard of Banefort said:

I found a link about Bran becoming king:

https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/e1d6q5/spoilers_extended_david_confirms_the_3rd_holy/

Personally, I don't think this quote suggests that King Bran was the third Holy Shit moment. And while the quote about Jon killing Dany is suspicious, I just can't see these guys opening themselves up to that kind of criticism on their own. We saw how well they took the criticism of the RamSan plot (as in, not well at all), so I have a hard time believing that they'd open themselves up to sexism accusations by having their highly-marketable Yaas Kween icon get murdered by her boyfriend. 

I think they thought that they were such gifted writers that they could make it work.  But they couldn't work out whether they were trying to create a tragedy, or shlock.

[Cas Stark]

The showrunners hated Bran, they even at one point wanted to kill  his character off, so it makes no sense that this would be one of their original twists.  I'm confident that it must come from GRRM.

I'm sure that Dany becomes a villain and that she dies, but I doubt very much that Jon stabs her unless there is some supernatural element there, he may have some part in a conspiracy against her that is the ultimate cause of death but the cheesy scene or anything similar to what the show did seems veyr, very unlikely.

[The Bard of Banefort]

4 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

The showrunners hated Bran, they even at one point wanted to kill  his character off, so it makes no sense that this would be one of their original twists.  I'm confident that it must come from GRRM.

I'm sure that Dany becomes a villain and that she dies, but I doubt very much that Jon stabs her unless there is some supernatural element there, he may have some part in a conspiracy against her that is the ultimate cause of death but the cheesy scene or anything similar to what the show did seems veyr, very unlikely.

That's actually why I tend to believe that Jon will kill Dany, because D&D loved both of them (along with Cersei and Tyrion), and were determined to present everything they did as heroic prior to season 8. They hated Bran and Stannis, and I don't think they were ever really comfortable with melancholy characters such as Sansa and Jaime. (Although they went all Yass Kween with Sansa after the RamSan backlash). I'm not sure how they felt about Arya: I think they liked all the praise they received for crafting a "feminist icon," but they never seemed interested in developing her beyond that, which is why she was still acting like a prickly preteen in season 7.

Even if Jon does kill Dany in the books, it's all but certain that he won't be "our Jon." He'll be a resurrected, cold, half-feral Jon that book resurrections have led us to expect. (Which makes it even weirder that Dany would fall in love with him, but I guess we'll have to wait and see how GRRM manages that).

[SeanF]

1 hour ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

That's actually why I tend to believe that Jon will kill Dany, because D&D loved both of them (along with Cersei and Tyrion), and were determined to present everything they did as heroic prior to season 8. They hated Bran and Stannis, and I don't think they were ever really comfortable with melancholy characters such as Sansa and Jaime. (Although they went all Yass Kween with Sansa after the RamSan backlash). I'm not sure how they felt about Arya: I think they liked all the praise they received for crafting a "feminist icon," but they never seemed interested in developing her beyond that, which is why she was still acting like a prickly preteen in season 7.

Even if Jon does kill Dany in the books, it's all but certain that he won't be "our Jon." He'll be a resurrected, cold, half-feral Jon that book resurrections have led us to expect. (Which makes it even weirder that Dany would fall in love with him, but I guess we'll have to wait and see how GRRM manages that).

Did they love Jon?  Think of the snide references to his height and penis size.  And, getting him to kill Daenerys in such a despicable fashion.

As to Dany, they made her more proud, arrogant, and ruthless than in the books.

[kissdbyfire]

28 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Did they love Jon?  Think of the snide references to his height and penis size.  And, getting him to kill Daenerys in such a despicable fashion.

I don’t think they love Jon at all. The thing w/ that is, they knew audiences loved Kit. Huge difference IMO. 

Agree re Dany as well. 

[The Bard of Banefort]

2 hours ago, SeanF said:

Did they love Jon?  Think of the snide references to his height and penis size.  And, getting him to kill Daenerys in such a despicable fashion.

As to Dany, they made her more proud, arrogant, and ruthless than in the books.

More so that they wanted him to be Aragorn, the brave king who always did the right thing. The Night's Watch killed Jon not because he wanted to break his vows and go to war, but because he took in all the wildling refugees and saved them from the White Walkers. He ran ahead to try to save Rickon while everyone else stood back and watched. The sassy little girl character gave a speech about how awesome he was and named him king. He accepted the crown not because he wanted it, but because it was his duty (even though his sister was the legitimate heir, and was sitting right next to him). He's ahead of his time, insisting that the girls should also be taught to fight against the Walkers. When his bitchy sister wants to punish the children of traitors, he shows them mercy. Davos, the virtuous, kind-hearted audience-insert, is so inspired by Jon after meeting him twice that he convinces Mel to raise Jon from the dead, follows him into battle (even though Davos has no real reason to care about the North) and tearfully yells "King in the North!" along with everyone else. Jon is the "greatest swordsman in the North," but he doesn't like violence. He learns how to ride a dragon, even though that goes nowhere. And he only decides to kill Dany after she tells us point-blank that she's going to burn the world down, thus making him as sympathetic as a guy who's about to kill his girlfriend can be.

Daenerys is an admittedly more cynical case. HBO was able to sell a LOT of Daenerys merch, and I'm sure D&D loved all the praise they got for creating a "feminist icon." I think in their minds, Dany being arrogant was supposed to be "empowerment." Whenever she would give one of her Empowered Speeches, it was always shot with the sun shining down on her, the wind whipping through her hair, and soaring music in the background. With the exception of the Dothraki in season 6, all the men who hated her were portrayed as spindly and effeminate, complete with pastel robes and guyliner. She had all these one-liners that were always followed by dramatic pauses ("I'm going to break the wheel." "My reign has just begun.") Tyrion, who was always suspicious of power and hard to impress, is on his knees pledging himself to her after about five minutes of screen time together. When Daenerys feeds an innocent man to her dragons in season five, it should have been an unsettling moment, but instead it was used to show how strong she was (which goes back to a long-time criticism of GOT, that violence = empowerment). When her and Hizdahr are at Daznak's Pit, and he argues that she doesn't know the Meereenese as well as they know themselves, Tyrion sides with Dany, implying that Hizdahr is the one in the wrong. When Dany burns down a sacred Dothraki temple, everyone bows down to her, instead of being horrified.

And then we get to season 8, and suddenly all the things the showrunners were telling us were good--the speeches, the fire-breathing dragons, the enormous pride--are bad. Even as someone who was never much of a Dany fan, I can see just how dumbfounded most fans must have felt after having the rug pulled out from under them like that.

To be clear, neither of these two are anywhere near as dear to D&D's hearts as Cersei and St. Tyrion are.

[SeanF]

6 hours ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

More so that they wanted him to be Aragorn, the brave king who always did the right thing. The Night's Watch killed Jon not because he wanted to break his vows and go to war, but because he took in all the wildling refugees and saved them from the White Walkers. He ran ahead to try to save Rickon while everyone else stood back and watched. The sassy little girl character gave a speech about how awesome he was and named him king. He accepted the crown not because he wanted it, but because it was his duty (even though his sister was the legitimate heir, and was sitting right next to him). He's ahead of his time, insisting that the girls should also be taught to fight against the Walkers. When his bitchy sister wants to punish the children of traitors, he shows them mercy. Davos, the virtuous, kind-hearted audience-insert, is so inspired by Jon after meeting him twice that he convinces Mel to raise Jon from the dead, follows him into battle (even though Davos has no real reason to care about the North) and tearfully yells "King in the North!" along with everyone else. Jon is the "greatest swordsman in the North," but he doesn't like violence. He learns how to ride a dragon, even though that goes nowhere. And he only decides to kill Dany after she tells us point-blank that she's going to burn the world down, thus making him as sympathetic as a guy who's about to kill his girlfriend can be.

Daenerys is an admittedly more cynical case. HBO was able to sell a LOT of Daenerys merch, and I'm sure D&D loved all the praise they got for creating a "feminist icon." I think in their minds, Dany being arrogant was supposed to be "empowerment." Whenever she would give one of her Empowered Speeches, it was always shot with the sun shining down on her, the wind whipping through her hair, and soaring music in the background. With the exception of the Dothraki in season 6, all the men who hated her were portrayed as spindly and effeminate, complete with pastel robes and guyliner. She had all these one-liners that were always followed by dramatic pauses ("I'm going to break the wheel." "My reign has just begun.") Tyrion, who was always suspicious of power and hard to impress, is on his knees pledging himself to her after about five minutes of screen time together. When Daenerys feeds an innocent man to her dragons in season five, it should have been an unsettling moment, but instead it was used to show how strong she was (which goes back to a long-time criticism of GOT, that violence = empowerment). When her and Hizdahr are at Daznak's Pit, and he argues that she doesn't know the Meereenese as well as they know themselves, Tyrion sides with Dany, implying that Hizdahr is the one in the wrong. When Dany burns down a sacred Dothraki temple, everyone bows down to her, instead of being horrified.

And then we get to season 8, and suddenly all the things the showrunners were telling us were good--the speeches, the fire-breathing dragons, the enormous pride--are bad. Even as someone who was never much of a Dany fan, I can see just how dumbfounded most fans must have felt after having the rug pulled out from under them like that.

To be clear, neither of these two are anywhere near as dear to D&D's hearts as Cersei and St. Tyrion are.

And don't forget all the trappings of national socialism they gave her at the end.  The black and scarlet banners, the furious speech to her followers, and Tyrion referencing Niemoller's "First They Came" prose poem in order to equate dead slavers and rapists with murdered Jews and trade unionists.  (D & D probably showed inadvertently where they stand on a lot of real world issues).  They showed they did not understand her character, either in the show or the books, and had no understanding of Hitler either.  Funnily enough, I ended up liking her more at the end of Season 8 than at the beginning because her vilification was so forced and ridiculous.

The show glorified cruel deaths being inflicted on evil men for 7 seasons, before they tried at the end to claim this was not so.  I couldn't really work out whether we were meant to be judging characters by the standards of medieval military ethics, or by the standards of modern military ethics, and I don't think that D & D worked it out either.  By the standards of the former, capital punishment for defeated enemies is simply the norm, and the more brutal the punishment, the more it is thought to be an effective deterrent.

Jon was just a useless jellyfish through Season 8, beginning with way he threw Dany under the bus by claiming he had no choice to bend the knee (a big continuity error)

My greatest loathing is for Tyrion.  He was the authors' self insert, whitewashed at every turn.  The murder of Shae is very ugly in the books.  Here, it was portrayed as self-defence, as Tyrion shed manly tears.  We were meant to feel his pain, not Shae's.  Sex slaves loved him so much they gave it away for free.  He was criminally incompetent as Dany's Hand, but we were constantly told  he was very clever.  Then he failed upwards at the end to be reinstated as Hand, after persuading the gathered lords to make R2D2 the King.

[SeanF]

In the end, this is how I felt about the Show.

Season 8 was mostly bad, but can’t be seen in isolation. The problems that overwhelmed Season 8 were present in Season 7, and to a large degree in Seasons 5 and 6. In no particular order:-

1. Actions stopped having consequences. Actions certainly had consequences in earlier seasons, but now Arya could be stabbed in the stomach and recover after a short time in bed; Cersei could massacre half the nobility, hundreds of the Smallfolk, and the equivalent of the Pope, and nobody in Kings Landing, nor the Sparrows, nor the relatives of murdered nobles minded.

2. People began acting illogically and out of character, in order to advance the needs of the plot. Cersei ought to have been kerb-stomped at the start of Season 7. Instead, Tyrion and Varys devised a series of hare-brained military strategies, all designed to prevent Daenerys striking the Red Keep. No military commander in any era would hesitate to strike the Red Keep if they possessed the means. Tyrion and Varys had no qualms about killing people in war in earlier seasons. Now they’ve changed into virtual pacifists (after Varys promised Olenna “fire and blood”).

3. The plot, such as it was, was driven by silly contrivances. So, we got the nonsense of the wight hunt, which gave the Night King the means to breach the Wall, and the “secret annulment” which give Jon an undisputed claim to the Seven Kingdoms, based upon a diary entry. Probably the first of the silly contrivances came in Season 5, when Sansa agreed to marry Ramsay Bolton, whose father had murdered her family, in order to get her to Winterfell.

4. Facts that were established in one episode were forgotten in another, or retconned. At the end of Season 7, Daenerys agreed to come North without pressing her claim. Jon gave her fealty. Come next season, and Jon is claiming he had no choice in the matter. Daenerys kinda forgot about the Iron Fleet, in Episode 4, despite their talking about it a few days earlier. The Scorpions were more accurate than modern missiles in that Episode, but ineffectual in the next. Daenerys gave independence to the Iron Islands at the end of Season 6, but Yara retook them in her name in Season 8. After being “finished as a people” the Dothraki regenerated in Episode 5.

5. Teleporting armies. Thousands of men whizzed around Westeros at the speed of light. Gendry sprints a hundred miles to the Wall, and Daenerys flies North at the speed of concorde. Even in fantasy, there comes a point at which you can suspend disbelief no further.

6. Tell don’t show. We’re constantly told how clever Tyrion is, despite the fact that he’s a bungling fool. Every bit of advice he gave Daenerys was useless, and he insisted on believing that Cersei was a good person, right to the end. The military advice that Olenna, Ellaria, and Yara gave to Daenerys was sound, but the show runners wanted us to think it was evil. The only good bit of advice that Tyrion gave was persuading Jon to kill Daenerys at the end - good for Tyrion that is, not for Jon. Likewise, we were told that Jon and Daenerys were in love, but we get no sign of it, between the end of Episode 1, and Jon driving a knife through her heart. After all nothing says “I love you “ quite like a knife through the heart.

7. Absurd military strategies. See 3, above, but the Battle of Winterfell was bonkers. Sending light cavalry charging against the army of the Dead; positioning catapults outside the walls. At the end, Cersei had 20,000 soldiers drawn up outside the city, rather than embedded behind the walls. To be fair, however, the Field of Fire was well done.

8. People stopped acting in ways that were true to the values of this world. Tyrion makes the inspired guess that Brienne is a virgin. No shit, Sherlock. That’s what we were led to expect of a highborn, unmarried woman. People react shocked to the execution of the Tarlys, despite the treatment meted out to the Freys, and Boltons for their breach of faith, or Robb threatening to hang the Greatjon if he didn't follow him to war.

9. Bran becoming King. Even the actor thought that was a joke. It’s like making R2D2 galactic emperor at the end of the Return of the Jedi.

10. Daenerys, obviously. If you want to portray a character finishing up as Timur the Lame, you need to portray that character becoming Timur the Lame. I’m afraid that killing some slave dealers, rapists, and pair of rebel lords does not establish that. And, you need to avoid gaslighting that character. You aren’t paranoid, when your so-called allies and supporters are plotting to bring you down. Which leads to the next point.

11. Prioritising surprise over coherent narrative. Bran becoming king was one example; the Iron Fleet inflicting huge losses on Daenerys was another; Casterly Rock being worthless; Jon killing Daenerys after the showrunners had dropped strong hints they would have a child together at the end of the last Season; Bronn springing out on Jaime and Tyrion with his crossbow etc. In earlier Seasons, you had Sansa suddenly turning on LF, or the Vale Knights suddenly attacking Ramsay.

12. The bad political messages. Obviously, YMMV; but variously, the messages were that Daenerys broke bad when she started fighting against slavers at Astapor; resisting injustice places you on the same moral level as those who perpetrate injustice, and ultimately results in genocide of the innocent; the Six kingdoms are best run by oligarchs who view the Smallfolk as livestock; suspicion of foreigners is justified; rape makes you stronger; women who seek power are problematic; people who work to obtain political power should not be given it.

[Angel Eyes]

6. Don’t forget Arya’s comments about Sansa being “the smartest person she knows”, although since Arya doesn’t know many smart people, that might be genuine.

[Angel Eyes]

Question for Season 7: Why couldn’t Daenerys just fly up to the Red Keep and intimidate Cersei into surrendering? It’s not unheard of, Visenya did the same thing with Vhaegar in the Vale. Also, they hadn’t started mass-producing ballistas