"Bittersweet" can't happen in the show

[Hodor's Dragon]

There seems to be a lot of talk about "tropes" on this forum. "Bittersweet ending" is a trope, and here's what the Doctors of Tropology say about it:

Quote

[T]he Bittersweet Ending happens when victory came at a harsh price, when, for whatever reason, the heroes cannot fully enjoy the reward of their actions, when some irrevocable loss has happened during the course of the events, and nothing will ever be the same again. A Bittersweet Ending is still ending on a high note, but one that is mixed with sadness and nostalgia.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BittersweetEnding

That TV Tropes definition hits "bittersweet ending" about the same way I would hit it: a bittersweet ending leaves you with things to be happy about and things to be sad about, and neither the happy nor the sad is terribly dominant. A bittersweet ending is a lot like real life.

This story cannot now end on a high note, whether mixed with sadness and nostalgia or not. Period. No high notes are left on this scale. This is also not like normal real life unless we are talking about the real life of one of those minority populations that has, tragically, been subjected to genocide during one of the low points of human history.

The upshot? This is not a bittersweet ending.

The conclusion? Either Martin lied, or this is not his ending.

My guess is that it shares some plot attributes with Martin's ending (or at least the ending he planned when he talked to the show-runners several years back), but it is different enough that it closes out with an entirely different "feel." One that is not "bittersweet."

[Jon Snow Bengal]

Would have reached the same ending if KL was unintentionally blown up but also true to character. Dany would not have known about all of the supposed cache stores of wildfire. That is truely bittersweet - being feared for being the murderous invading usurper anyway.

But anyway.. didn't happen. D&D like the nonsensical cartoon overemotional mad queen route - anything else would've required a bit a brain power   

[Sir Hedge of Hog]

the bittersweet ending I would like to envisage is unlikely to happen. all characters have been destroyed and their is no happy ending...unless d&d get their act together and pull something out of the hat...but from what I hear it sounds truly disappointing...

[LordImp]

Isn't bittersweet subjective though? If it ends the way I think it does ( Dany dead , Jon king) then it's bittersweet imo. But for Dany fans it will just be bitter. 

[Nightwish]

It’s up to readers and show critics to judge it. Despite what they had wanted to achieve, it doesn’t matter, the end will be judged by the final feelings and impression it leaves behind for the majority of people. People don’t share the same psychology and neither have the same  values. So I guess it will be judged by how the majority, the big number sees it. 

for me  it’s not bittersweet, it’s not even realistic, it’s twisted, mean and even sadistic to its own audience. It’s nihilistic and meaningless. At least up to point  it’s now. 

[MinscS2]

2 hours ago, LordImp said:

Isn't bittersweet subjective though? If it ends the way I think it does ( Dany dead , Jon king) then it's bittersweet imo. But for Dany fans it will just be bitter. 

Jon ending up a king after proclaiming over and over than he doesn't want to be, (and also showing over and over that he's really inept at ruling in the first place.) would be sad for both the character and the people he rules.

Jon is really comparable to Robert B in this scenario: Good fighter who inspires loyalty and who's pretty beloved at first, but ultimately doesn't want to be king, is pretty inept at it, and never got to rule with the woman he loved. 
And how did that work out? Ironically it worked out pretty well compared to the rest of the monarch's we've had on this show, but not thanks to the man himself, (but because of the scheming small council) because he was a king who didn't care about anything other than drowning his sorrows in whores and alcohol. 

And yes, while bittersweet is subjective, it's also worth considering that Daenerys is probably the one character with the (by far) largest fan base. Alienating and assassinating her character for no good reason basically right before the credits roll automatically removes the prospects of a bittersweet ending, because you've just given a vast (the majority?) of the fandom a tragic ending.

[Nightwish]

17 minutes ago, MinscS2 said:

And yes, while bittersweet is subjective, it's also worth considering that Daenerys is probably the one character with the (by far) largest fan base. Alienating and assassinating her character for no good reason basically right before the credits roll automatically removes the prospects of a bittersweet ending, because you've just given a vast (the majority?) of the fandom a tragic ending.

True and more than this, the fan base of Dany is enraged with Starks betrayal so no sympathy about their ends.

other  characters arc has been also unfulfilling and meaningless such as Sandor, Jamie, Bran,  Theon, Beric.

Ww arc was a troll, fans that expected this to be the main focus feel misled and cheated. 

Jon’s ID that fans cheered was treated as political garbage.

Brans story useless. 

What I mean to say is that the fan base is upset from multiple angles and for multiple reasons and this sums up to far more fans than Danys fan base. 

Take a look at reddit. And YouTube and the articles that sum up the rage of fans. 

[MinscS2]

As for the ending as a whole, I too am firmly of the belief that we're past bittersweet at this point.
Unless there's some amazing final twist, then we're heading towards a full-blown nihilistic tragedy.

Ultimately this is fiction made for us, so how the audience reacts to the ending is way more important than how the faceless masses in Westeros reacts to the ending. We care about the characters in the story, not about the peasants having a happy ever after. 

Considering how Season 8 as gone out of it's way to make more or less all of the characters (including those who died last episode) either dislikable, totally void of character (including the personality that once made us care about them) or having their personality do a 180 so they become someone else entirely, it's hard for me to feel anything for these characters at this point:

- Jon? Mr Wood. Totally void of character and feelings. He has barely behaved like a human being this entire season. I re watched some of his scenes from the earlier seasons, and except for looking the same, it might has well been an entirely different character. I genuinely cared about Jon and his plights at one point. What happened?

- Sansa? Littlefinger 2.0 aka whiny bitchface. The last two seasons managed to make me go from pitying Sansa for everything she's been trough and ultimately want her a happy ending, to outright dislike her. I'm gonna be genuinely annoyed if she get's a happy ever after where she will just smirk and tell everyone "ToLD YoU sO". 

- Arya? It's a fine line between being a badass and being an ass, and Arya has been on the ass-side more than not lately. I don't mind her killing the NK that much (even if it takes away a huge part of Jon's story arc), but I do mind her having plot armor thicker than Balerions skull. Her character is also all over the place, she continuously switches between "family matters the most" to "I'm gonna kill people" in 5 minute-intervals. Make up your mind already! I felt nothing for her plights in KL last episode because I "knew" she would survive, and even if she hadn't, my reaction would've been a mere "...eh?".

- Bran? :| 

- Tyrion? Was my favorite character from S1-S5. Now you can throw him in the same "Not the same person as the one I once liked"-bin together with so many other characters. Seriously, when did Tyrion became a idiotic foolish pacifist and why? Once upon a time the prospect of him dying would've upset me. Now I couldn't care less. After Daenerys forced change in character, this guy is the second biggest reason we're heading towards a shit ending.

- Davos? I've always liked Davos. Now in S8 he's been nothing more than glorified extra that went from being Jon's right hand man (without a title) to serving soup to peasants. Seriously, has he said anything clever this whole season that ultimately lead to some sort of payoff? The writers clearly don't know what to do with him, and it shows. He should've died defending Winterfell.

- Jamie? Went from being one of my favorites for several seasons right back to being the guy I disliked in S1-S2 in less than one episode. His redemption-arc intrigued me, I rooted for him, he was interesting. Then when he died I felt absolutely nothing for the character. What was the moral of his story? "We are who we are and nothing can change that"? Talk about depressing...

- Varys? Also been a long standing favorite of mine, but in his last moments (last 2-3 seasons in general) he became a glorified extra. Ultimately he also died an idiot. Seriously, Varys was considered to be the Spider, one of the smartest men in Westeros and he... openly talks about betraying Daenerys and Jon being the rightful king while still being on her island, and tries to have Daenerys killed before the war against Cersei is even won? How did he expect Jon and the northerners to win without the Dothraki, Unsullied and Drogon? Tyrion and Varys clearly should've avoided each other because apparently they suffer intelligence-drain when they are alone with each other.

- Bronn? "Bronn finally snaps and is tired of empty promises from the Lannister-brothers, so he punches Tyrion in the face, threatens to kill them both, and then leaves, satisfied with ...another empty promise". Bronn is also one of those characters I enjoyed and who's death once would upset me. Now I no longer care. Fuck the guy. His arc should've ended with Lolys(?). 

- Sam? Never really cared much for him nor his relation with Gilly. He was annoying in the first seasons (I did pity him however) and then he became an exposition machine alongside Bran. Only Arya has thicker plot armor than him. I don't actively dislike the guy however, so I don't mind him surviving with Gilly - I just don't really care. 

- Sandor? One of the few characters on the show who died being true to his character from the earlier seasons. His death was ultimately pointless since the Mountain would've died anyway. I liked the character up to the point he died, but ultimately I felt more or less nothing. Throw him in the depressing "We are who we are and no agency can ever change that"-bin alongside Jamie and Daenerys. 

- Daenerys? Still one of the few character in the show I actually care about, but instead of feeling "Fuck yes Khaleesi!", I now mostly feel a sad, hollow, pitiful "Oh Daenerys...not like this". Character assassination 101, worse than Jamie. I'm not gonna go into much depth about how I consider her turn from "Good Mhysa" to "Evil Psychopath" to be laughably rushed, forced, contrived, and completely unjustified (foreshadowing is not character development) because I've written so much on that topic already. Needless to say, that having Daenerys purposefully killing thousands of innocents civilians and throwing her entire 7 season long Mhysa-arc in the flames is the biggest (and also the stupidest) gut punch this show has ever delivered. 


So yeah, ultimately I feel very little or nothing for more or less all of the "good" characters that remained in the show at the start of episode 5. They are more or less all so very far from the people they once where, and neither has changed for the better, so of course I care less, because I feel like I barely know these characters anymore, despite having spent 8 seasons with some of them.

I imagine it will be hard for me to get a satisfying ending when I no longer care about what's going on, because the immersion broke way before the credits will start to roll anyway.

Full-blown tragic, nihilistic ending without a satisfying payoff it is...

[King Jon Snow Stark]

13 hours ago, Hodor's Dragon said:

There seems to be a lot of talk about "tropes" on this forum. "Bittersweet ending" is a trope, and here's what the Doctors of Tropology say about it:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BittersweetEnding

That TV Tropes definition hits "bittersweet ending" about the same way I would hit it: a bittersweet ending leaves you with things to be happy about and things to be sad about, and neither the happy nor the sad is terribly dominant. A bittersweet ending is a lot like real life.

This story cannot now end on a high note, whether mixed with sadness and nostalgia or not. Period. No high notes are left on this scale. This is also not like normal real life unless we are talking about the real life of one of those minority populations that has, tragically, been subjected to genocide during one of the low points of human history.

The upshot? This is not a bittersweet ending.

The conclusion? Either Martin lied, or this is not his ending.

My guess is that it shares some plot attributes with Martin's ending (or at least the ending he planned when he talked to the show-runners several years back), but it is different enough that it closes out with an entirely different "feel." One that is not "bittersweet."

Chuck has a bittersweet ending. I hate bittersweet endings. 

[btfu806]

VEEP, that recently ended on HBO, is a bittersweet ending in my opinion and it felt like a real possibility.

I don't know if this is Martin's ending or not but I know for it to be really bittersweet it has to be executed correctly and that is something D&D haven't been able to do. You can have two people do the same ending to a book but if it is executed differently it will feel different.

[btfu806]

1 hour ago, MinscS2 said:

So yeah, ultimately I feel very little or nothing for more or less all of the "good" characters that remained in the show at the start of episode 5. They are more or less all so very far from the people they once where, and neither has changed for the better, so of course I care less, because I feel like I barely know these characters anymore, despite having spent 8 seasons with some of them.

I imagine it will be hard for me to get a satisfying ending when I no longer care about what's going on, because the immersion broke way before the credits will start to roll anyway.

Agreed. For it to be truly bittersweet to the viewer we have to be emotionally invested in the character. Unfortunately since all the characters don't feel authentic (or how we would expect them to behave after years of character development) you simply don't care anymore. If a bomb dropped on all of them and nuked westeros on Sunday, I don't know if I would really care for any of the characters that are affected or killed from it...

I guess they could possibly make it bittersweet to the characters on the show, but that will feel forced and again, we have no attachment to them.

[ummester]

I do not think TV tropes has correctly defined how bittersweet narratives work. It has nothing to do with the note something ends on, or nostalgia. It is about sacrifice in relation to the narrative goal.

I described this in another thread. Story setup - Evil Knight kills heroes daughter. Hero desires revenge, learns to fight and confronts Evil Knight. Goal is to kill Evil Knight out of vengeance.

Victory - happy Star Wars ending - kill evil knight. Don't think about it anymore, play happy music.

Tragedy - Evil Knight kills Hero. Play sad music.

Tragic Victory - (this is what everyone seems to confuse with Bittersweet) Hero dies killing Evil Knight. Play melancholy music.

Bittersweet type 1 - Hero realizes that vengeance is hollow and killing Evil Knight will not bring back daughter, does not kill Evil Knight.

Bittersweet type 2 - Hero kills Evil Knight and then realizes that they have destroyed something in themselves and made themselves less by doing so.

Bittersweet is always about reflection in relation to the goal. It is where the protagonist or the victory condition for a narrative has to sacrifice itself for a greater ideal than the original goal. To work out bittersweet for GoTs you need to define what the narrative goal is - what are the victory conditions for the story?

[Nightwish]

13 hours ago, Hodor's Dragon said:

 

My guess is that it shares some plot attributes with Martin's ending (or at least the ending he planned when he talked to the show-runners several years back), but it is different enough that it closes out with an entirely different "feel." One that is not "bittersweet."

Am I the only one thinking that this is Martin's end and also probably he has a twisted definition about bittersweet himself or just that was what he had intended to do but honestly since he hasn't write it as he says it can't be documented or trusted? 

I feel that if this was a pure DD ending they would show a more "happy" fairytale type because fan service. Plus Martin said that the ending will be the same with his books. 

Now never mind bittersweet as I said before it will be determined by how the vast majority of viewers and critics decide to see it judging the taste it left in their mouths. 

[Cas Stark]

By any definition this is a tragic ending. 

Dany turns villain and dies. 

Sansa turns into Cersei+Littlefinger, a treasonous, untrustworthy schemer

Arya abandons her pack [or dies] so her quest for family fails

Bran is a cripple who lives in a perpetual dream state in the past

Jon is heartbroken and goes North to live in seclusion

Lannister twins are dead with no redemption

Hound is dead with no redemption

2/3 dragons are dead, 4/6 wolves are dead.

*Ned, Cat, Robb, Rickon, Varys, House Tyrell, Tommen, Myrcella, Oberyn already long dead.

Sam, Davos and Tyrion would be the only main characters you could say got a 'happy' ending. I refuse to count Bronn for anything. 

Brienne we might be able to count as bittersweet, she lives, she gains a knighthood, she feels love and then loses it.

 

[lakin1013]

4 hours ago, LordImp said:

Isn't bittersweet subjective though? If it ends the way I think it does ( Dany dead , Jon king) then it's bittersweet imo. But for Dany fans it will just be bitter. 

But aren't we to think directly about a new wrinkle in the game - the people and city of Winterfell and the entire of Westeros.   Hasn't the story moved to make us think about the city in terms that rise above individual players. While I agree, hands down, that our writers are terribly clumsy, they have inserted a new element to our calculations -- what is best for a ruined city, now, immediately.  If Dany dies, Dany fans will be bitter.  But if a better ruler is put in place, then all fans should be happy -sweet.  If the ruler is Bran, then bitter - boo.  If the ruler is Jon, then sweet.  I could go on with other characters like Sansa or Gendry,  and we can all be bitter or sweet, but what has the story shown us about the leadership skills for each character. 

[lakin1013]

37 minutes ago, ummester said:

Bittersweet type 1 - Hero realizes that vengeance is hollow and killing Evil Knight will not bring back daughter, does not kill Evil Knight.

Bittersweet type 2 - Hero kills Evil Knight and then realizes that they have destroyed something in themselves and made themselves less by doing so.

Examples are always helpful

Bittersweet 1- Jon sees Dany killed, and is asked to be king, but he realizes the 'game of thrones' has a catastrophic cost he cannot pay, he declines, and leaves to go North. 

Bittersweet 2 - Jon kills Dany, takes the throne, alone, grief-stricken, and becomes sullen, remote, and less than the man he was.

Have I got the right of it?

[ummester]

4 minutes ago, Cas Stark said:

By any definition this is a tragic ending. 

Dany turns villain and dies. 

Sansa turns into Cersei+Littlefinger, a treasonous, untrustworthy schemer

Arya abandons her pack [or dies] so her quest for family fails

Bran is a cripple who lives in a perpetual dream state in the past

Jon is heartbroken and goes North to live in seclusion

Lannister twins are dead with no redemption

Hound is dead with no redemption

2/3 dragons are dead, 3/5 wolves are dead.

*Ned, Cat, Robb, Rickon, Varys, House Tyrell, Tommen, Myrcella, Oberyn already long dead.

Sam, Davos and Tyrion would be the only main characters you could say got a 'happy' ending. I refuse to count Bronn for anything. 

Brienne we might be able to count as bittersweet, she lives, she gains a knighthood, she feels love and then loses it.

 

Are any of the characters the narrative goal or victory condition for the story though?  I'm not certain what is, especially in D&Ds telling, but am pretty sure in any telling it's not the characters. It's either the throne, Westeros itself, or the White Walkers.

I was just listening to this and realized Tolkien managed to put in more bittersweet in a song than GRRM or D&D did in the whole GoTs universe. Seems to me the goal of the song is to get home, or save home but they never make it home and by the end of the song realize that the life they lived trying to get home is better than home ever was - that is the essence of bittersweet, redefining the expectation with a more meaningful ideal.

Brienne is kind of bittersweet it is true because I think she lived her life for honor, realized at the end she wanted love, but could only have honor. Her expectation was redefined.

[ummester]

5 minutes ago, lakin1013 said:

Examples are always helpful

Bittersweet 1- Jon sees Dany killed, and is asked to be king, but he realizes the 'game of thrones' has a catastrophic cost he cannot pay, he declines, and leaves to go North. 

Bittersweet 2 - Jon kills Dany, takes the throne, alone, grief-stricken, and becomes sullen, remote, and less than the man he was.

Have I got the right of it?

If the goal of GoTs is the throne, which seems a logical conclusion to come to and the protagonist is Jon then

Jon deciding that the goal is not worth it and there is more to life is definitely bittersweet type 1.

Jon taking the throne and become an evil, bitter man would be bittersweet type 2.

So yes, rereading what you wrote, you have the right of it - given the throne goal and Jon protagonist conditions.

[Sir Hedge of Hog]

2 hours ago, MinscS2 said:

As for the ending as a whole, I too am firmly of the belief that we're past bittersweet at this point.
Unless there's some amazing final twist, then we're heading towards a full-blown nihilistic tragedy.

Ultimately this is fiction made for us, so how the audience reacts to the ending is way more important than how the faceless masses in Westeros reacts to the ending. We care about the characters in the story, not about the peasants having a happy ever after. 

Considering how Season 8 as gone out of it's way to make more or less all of the characters (including those who died last episode) either dislikable, totally void of character (including the personality that once made us care about them) or having their personality do a 180 so they become someone else entirely, it's hard for me to feel anything for these characters at this point:

- Jon? Mr Wood. Totally void of character and feelings. He has barely behaved like a human being this entire season. I re watched some of his scenes from the earlier seasons, and except for looking the same, it might has well been an entirely different character. I genuinely cared about Jon and his plights at one point. What happened?

- Sansa? Littlefinger 2.0 aka whiny bitchface. The last two seasons managed to make me go from pitying Sansa for everything she's been trough and ultimately want her a happy ending, to outright dislike her. I'm gonna be genuinely annoyed if she get's a happy ever after where she will just smirk and tell everyone "ToLD YoU sO". 

- Arya? It's a fine line between being a badass and being an ass, and Arya has been on the ass-side more than not lately. I don't mind her killing the NK that much (even if it takes away a huge part of Jon's story arc), but I do mind her having plot armor thicker than Balerions skull. Her character is also all over the place, she continuously switches between "family matters the most" to "I'm gonna kill people" in 5 minute-intervals. Make up your mind already! I felt nothing for her plights in KL last episode because I "knew" she would survive, and even if she hadn't, my reaction would've been a mere "...eh?".

- Bran? :| 

- Tyrion? Was my favorite character from S1-S5. Now you can throw him in the same "Not the same person as the one I once liked"-bin together with so many other characters. Seriously, when did Tyrion became a idiotic foolish pacifist and why? Once upon a time the prospect of him dying would've upset me. Now I couldn't care less. After Daenerys forced change in character, this guy is the second biggest reason we're heading towards a shit ending.

- Davos? I've always liked Davos. Now in S8 he's been nothing more than glorified extra that went from being Jon's right hand man (without a title) to serving soup to peasants. Seriously, has he said anything clever this whole season that ultimately lead to some sort of payoff? The writers clearly don't know what to do with him, and it shows. He should've died defending Winterfell.

- Jamie? Went from being one of my favorites for several seasons right back to being the guy I disliked in S1-S2 in less than one episode. His redemption-arc intrigued me, I rooted for him, he was interesting. Then when he died I felt absolutely nothing for the character. What was the moral of his story? "We are who we are and nothing can change that"? Talk about depressing...

- Varys? Also been a long standing favorite of mine, but in his last moments (last 2-3 seasons in general) he became a glorified extra. Ultimately he also died an idiot. Seriously, Varys was considered to be the Spider, one of the smartest men in Westeros and he... openly talks about betraying Daenerys and Jon being the rightful king while still being on her island, and tries to have Daenerys killed before the war against Cersei is even won? How did he expect Jon and the northerners to win without the Dothraki, Unsullied and Drogon? Tyrion and Varys clearly should've avoided each other because apparently they suffer intelligence-drain when they are alone with each other.

- Bronn? "Bronn finally snaps and is tired of empty promises from the Lannister-brothers, so he punches Tyrion in the face, threatens to kill them both, and then leaves, satisfied with ...another empty promise". Bronn is also one of those characters I enjoyed and who's death once would upset me. Now I no longer care. Fuck the guy. His arc should've ended with Lolys(?). 

- Sam? Never really cared much for him nor his relation with Gilly. He was annoying in the first seasons (I did pity him however) and then he became an exposition machine alongside Bran. Only Arya has thicker plot armor than him. I don't actively dislike the guy however, so I don't mind him surviving with Gilly - I just don't really care. 

- Sandor? One of the few characters on the show who died being true to his character from the earlier seasons. His death was ultimately pointless since the Mountain would've died anyway. I liked the character up to the point he died, but ultimately I felt more or less nothing. Throw him in the depressing "We are who we are and no agency can ever change that"-bin alongside Jamie and Daenerys. 

- Daenerys? Still one of the few character in the show I actually care about, but instead of feeling "Fuck yes Khaleesi!", I now mostly feel a sad, hollow, pitiful "Oh Daenerys...not like this". Character assassination 101, worse than Jamie. I'm not gonna go into much depth about how I consider her turn from "Good Mhysa" to "Evil Psychopath" to be laughably rushed, forced, contrived, and completely unjustified (foreshadowing is not character development) because I've written so much on that topic already. Needless to say, that having Daenerys purposefully killing thousands of innocents civilians and throwing her entire 7 season long Mhysa-arc in the flames is the biggest (and also the stupidest) gut punch this show has ever delivered. 


So yeah, ultimately I feel very little or nothing for more or less all of the "good" characters that remained in the show at the start of episode 5. They are more or less all so very far from the people they once where, and neither has changed for the better, so of course I care less, because I feel like I barely know these characters anymore, despite having spent 8 seasons with some of them.

I imagine it will be hard for me to get a satisfying ending when I no longer care about what's going on, because the immersion broke way before the credits will start to roll anyway.

Full-blown tragic, nihilistic ending without a satisfying payoff it is...

that is how I feel 100% in a nutshell - well said

[Nightwish]

37 minutes ago, ummester said:

Are any of the characters the narrative goal or victory condition for the story though?  I'm not certain what is, especially in D&Ds telling, but am pretty sure in any telling it's not the characters. It's either the throne, Westeros itself, or the White Walkers.

I was just listening to this and realized Tolkien managed to put in more bittersweet in a song than GRRM or D&D did in the whole GoTs universe. Seems to me the goal of the song is to get home, or save home but they never make it home and by the end of the song realize that the life they lived trying to get home is better than home ever was - that is the essence of bittersweet, redefining the expectation with a more meaningful ideal.

Brienne is kind of bittersweet it is true because I think she lived her life for honor, realized at the end she wanted love, but could only have honor. Her expectation was redefined.

I stick to the first sentence. In a concrete story (at least) the readers (us) need to understand what the quest is about. If we don't there is a problem with the script all together. 

Saving Middle Earth is a straight point.

Wanting to Go Home is a straight point. 

And its the writer through his characters and what his characters goals are that defines the quest, and the quest defines the victory and the loss. 

GOT is all over the place. By now we should be able to tell the Quest. But we don't.

We just see different characters wanting different things and betraying each other in an indefinite circle just like soap opera characters do. Not epic characters. There is no quest, just conflicted interests. Not a journey, just transportations from place to place, half of them, failing to deliver any meaningful story changes. 

I think Martin shouldn't refer to Tolkien. Tolkien told his story with consistency, with very clear narrative, with true heroic figures that had moral compass and perception. 

Honestly the plot in GOT is a mess / all the characters ruined, they end up worst than who they were before as characters.

I think its more like a high budget soap opera: 

"The bad sister who got jealous of the beauty queen and the everlasting casanova who fucks and leaves to go back to his evil sister," and "Oh I did it for the love of my brother who tossed your brother from the window" and "you are my queen but I wont fuck you tonight" and LOL.

I wasn't expecting this to be an endless rumble over family drama with dragons and zombies at the background just to draw the attention. 

How do the say it in reddit: Subverted trashpectations.

At least I am happy that I never paid attention to all of these theories for the Night King, and Bran and Azor Ahai and whatever and saved my self some time.