#got criticism

"The Tyrells...Fighting isn't really their forte, I mean they're just not known for being the most fearsome warriors, so to have a long extended battle there didn't make a lot of sense."

What the fuck was he talking about? The Tyrell’s helped Tywin defeat Stannis Baratheon at Kingslanding. Tywin even entrusted Loras to save Cersei & Tommen from Stannis’s soldiers. His arrival stopped Cersei from killing then both.

GRRM makes the choice not to show us book Theon's POV before Bran and Rickon's escape, only through Bran's eyes. Thats a cool literary device and so heartbreaking, we are left to wonder oh Theon did it feel good at least while it was happening did you have time to feel any joy and vindication before it all went bad?

This left so much room for D&D to play with a contrast of before and after, lots of room for creative portrayal of this downfall arc, but they... Didn't really? Like obviously there was a downfall in a certain sense but Theon is absolutely in Theon VI mode from the very beginning. We have a scene of him bungling an execution and publicly breaking down, it's moved to before the escape. We have a scene of him being confronted by Ser Rodrik on his hostage/loyalty issues and just plainly admitting how traumatized he is because he's just that broken down and raw etc. And thats also moved before the escape. These are his first actions in Winterfell, in fact. I know time costraints etc but just... How the fuck do you read the Beth parley scene and not find it something so cinematic you absolutely must render, what's wrong with you, couldn't they just merge Beth and Jeyne if that was the issue?

The frat boy show writers cannot write original material for any of the complex characters of asoiaf - and least of all one like Sandor Clegane.

They absolutely cannot reconcile that one of the largest, fastest, fiercest warriors in Westeros also:

wears a jeweled brooch

cheers Tommen's jousting play

gently wipes Sansa's mouth

carefully encourages her to dress

gives nicknames to Sansa and Arya

takes Myrcella's side over Joffrey

cares about the welfare of his horse

bends down to pet dogs

cries

knows and secretly enjoys the same songs and fairy tales as Sansa

noticably takes care of his appearance as best as he can

commissions clothing with his house sigil and wears them on special occasions.

sings, laughs, visits bars and brothels

expresses his vulnerablity both emotionally and physically to Sansa and Arya

attempts to comfort grieving Arya and Sansa

House Clegane is a relatively new, smaller house of landed knights - they are not considered smallfolk by any means in Westeros. And there is nothing in canon to indicate that Sandor is unclean, constantly eating and drinking, or swearing, so show!Sandor is the creation of the writers (except in the episodes GRRM wrote).

D&D and Cogman view belonging to any house other than the most powerful in Westeros, as synonymous with being one dimensional, dirty, vulgar, rude, unhygienic, with no manners or social skills.

When asked which asoiaf house they identified with, both D&D immediately answered "House Lannister", which, considering the way they mistreated Sandor Clegane, seems accurate.

They obviously were going for cheap laughs as well. Portraying Sandor Clegane as a bit of a joke allowed them to keep his character development on the shallow side for the majority of the series.

Oh, I’m sure he personally would have preferred to never have been asked what he thought about THAT episode at all. Well, it was unavoidable since it was all anyone was talking about at the time. My impression from what I read is that the answer he was willing to give publically was as vague and diplomatic as possible. His private opinions, of which I’m sure he had many, are between him and his closest confidants. Keep in mind he released the Alayne I TWOW sample chapter about a month prior to the episode’s airing, so take that as you will. 

It’s frustrating as a fan, I know, but some things (like publicly criticizing the show you’re involved with) just aren’t going to happen. You have to consider:

No matter if he said he loved it or hated it, neither one of those answers is going to be worth the inevitable media and fandom uproar because he knows the world dissects every little word he says ad nauseum. 

He’s definitely not going to show himself to the industry hire-ups to be someone who gives bad press to a show that is making them all a lot of money. He’s got a spinoff series in the works at HBO to think about. I know this sounds disappointing, but the man knows which side his bread is buttered on. And while it would be lizard-brain euphoric for me to hear GRRM take D&D down a few pegs, he knows how the tv industry works. He’s not going to fuck up his hard-earned success and future success by dying on that hill. Look how quickly the show is evaporating from the cultural consciousness anyway, and ask yourself if shooting your own career in the foot would’ve been worth it? 

So here is my Post #900! And what a fun “hallmark post” this is!

Not going to lie. At first when I found this video, I was honestly scared this was going to be one of those annoying rant videos by a Dany stan complaining about how the ending was unjust to her character, what she stood for, and the way it ended for her.

However what I actually got watching this video was the overwhelming urge to clap and whoop. This video in just 10:11 minutes summarized almost everything, if not everything that was wrong with the final episode. Heck it even brought up some issues about the earlier part of season 8.

I kind of agreed with his points about Daenerys. The real issue with her is that the final spiral at the end was a bit rushed and not well set up in the sense that she just suddenly decides to burn down King’s Landing for almost no apparent reason. I mean you got some seeds, but it still came across as her just deciding, “fuck you assholes” and just start burning indiscriminately at innocent people unprovoked. She had all this opportunity to just fly to the Red Keep and kill Cersei. Yet she spends all this time burning all the people in the streets before she flies to attack the castle. This is all after they rang the bells indicating they were SURRENDERING TO HER. If this was better executed, it would have been obvious that she just decided if they weren’t going to crowd surf her to the Red Keep, they were ungrateful wretches that would never accept her. Now THAT would be in keeping with how she’s acted in the previous 3 seasons.

Seriously, I highly recommend you guys check this out. This video does a pretty good job covering all the things we collectively hated about the ending. I’m pleased to note that he didn’t complain about Sansa and even mentioned her only in the context of how she warned Jon about Daenerys, but D & D decide Jon need to be a dumbass who only had two basic types of things to say in his dialogue: “She’s my queen” and “I don’t want it.” The narrator doesn’t explicitly say it, but the fact he didn’t complain about her becoming Queen of the North says to me, he was okay with that because that ending seems to be one of the few that was actually deserved and paid off.

What do you guys think?

@jonskory @trinuviel @fedonciadale @une-nuit-pour-se-souvenir @oreoswirl1117 @thelawyerthatwaspromised @nessataleweaver @noonecanprotectanyone @murderouswhoresansa @turtle-paced @cantfightfatetoo @gillyflovvers @gingerlou0120 @an-oranophobic-maniac @kellyvela @sillyanshe @fortunatelylori @jonsameta @ladyandtheghost @jonsameta @qinaliel @nutellaninja0001 @twilight-sparx @wolvesofspring @yol101 @nothinghappensinalstonville @anouk-kim @arin-arryn @bricklebeary

in tumblr, for years, the show was the protagonist of countless analyzes on how multifaceted the female characters were and many of them still today are in gifsets about strong and empowered women (usually with 90% of them being white but this is another topic that deserve an entire post) and eventually when any of these posts return to my dash and i look the scenes in those gifs, I remember that these were just "great moments" of the character before she was brutally r*ped or killed.

the character had no real agency and when she started to have it (with a scene worthy of gifsets) it was just to be killed or cut next. it was so recurrent that in the last few seasons I already knew who would die just because of the sudden importance that the female character gained in the story.