#got critique

and yes

but also that why did they do that is something that’s sitting with me because i think we were all so used to the bar on got being so low that things like that were done to shock the viewer and nothing else.  and that’s not hotd’s play.

aemma’s death was setting the stage for eighteen different things—the explicit horror of it was intentional.  it echoes through the following episodes, the seed for what we’re seeing with alicent’s marital rape, with viserys never being able to understand that his “love” for the women in his life (aemma, rhaenyra, alicent) and his “i’m just trying to be a good guy” attitude is nothing more than a velvet glove over a punch that still hits just very hard: he treats the women in his life as pawns.  not just because king, but because that is who he is even in his most private and “human” moments with them.  he waffles and prevaricates and tells different truths to different people he cares about because he himself can’t face his own truths.

and all that is before we get to what’s yet to come, with rhaenyra’s own marriages and childbirths which will absolutely have important echoes of aemma’s death.

Many of us are feeling a great deal of dejection or even betrayal at the hands of the very franchise we fell in love with. Here are some quotes from fellow fans I’ve found on IMDB, echoing the same general disappointment:

"Bring me my 8 years back."

"Watching season 8 made me feel sick."

"I can't believe I wasted 10 years of my life watching this garbage."

"You have ruined something I care deeply about."

"8 years watching it, craving for it, to get so disappointed."

"From a show I couldn't wait to watch to a show I couldn't care about."

"Seasons 1-7 meant nothing in the end."

"I wasted 73 hours of my life for this crap?"

"I can't believe I wasted 9 years of my life!"

I’ve talked to many heartbroken fans and I keep hearing the same things over and over again - Regret and shame in ourselves for ever having been invested in a fictional world at all. Feeling stupid for expressing sorrow or even shedding tears over the decimation of our favorite franchise and its characters.

Hell, this is a quote from yours truly after learning the plot to season eight:

"I feel like this is all some life lesson - not to like anything too much or get invested in fiction."

...And I almost fell for it.

But no. I'm not going to let to two talentless writers who managed to ruin the greatest series of all time in the span of at least three episodes... determine the fate of my future with literature.

And you shouldn’t, either.

What a writer's goal should never be:

Alienate their audience

Make the audience feel regret for having invested time in their work

Make the audience feel shame in having rooted for certain characters

Leave a trail of unused foreshadowing that led to dead-ends

Betray in-universe logic in favor of shock

Retcon entire books or seasons in the endgame

Leave the audience feeling apathetic upon reaching the conclusion

Destroy any desire for the audience to reread or rewatch their material

Drive them to throw out their merch and regret spending their money

What a writer's goal should be:

Aim for complete immersion and suspension of disbelief

Give the audience a cast of characters so rich that they feel represented by someone

Foreshadow. Plant clues and breadcrumb trails and provide payoff later

Inspire the audience to pore over their work for clues and extra detail

Remain consistent with the personalities of the characters they've created

Introduce the reader to new points of view

Avoid problematic tropes (and consider their ill effect on the audience)

Remember that every character, good or bad, is beloved by someone, and their ending should be handled with care (for better or worse)

Have a message. Have a point.

I promise you that while David Benioff and D.B. Weiss do not understand this, most writers and screenwriters do.

Now, on the other end of the spectrum, we've got fans who weren't quite so invested telling us to "shut up" and "stop complaining", insulting us by calling us "cry babies" and "brats" and belittling and dismissing our disappointment as "first world problems" (as seen here).

They’re wrong.

We are not stupid for becoming invested in literature.

To prove that point, I’ll leave you with a collection of quotes to remind you why you invest in fiction or literature, what it is we gain from it, and to help inspire you not to give up on ever falling in love with a fictional world again, because most writers are not here to shock or upset you senselessly, they’re here to inspire you, make you think and feel.

"The use of imaginative fiction is to deepen your understanding of your world, and your fellow men, and your own feelings, and your destiny." ―Unknown

"Literature offers not just a window into the culture of diverse regions, but also the society, the politics; it's the only place where we can keep track of ideas." ―Reza Aslan

"Literature plays a huge role in examining difficult real-life issues." ―Angie Thomas

"That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong." ―F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness." ―Helen Keller

"Literature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers." ―Carlos Fuentes

"Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life." ―Barbara Kingsolver

"Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become." ―C.S. Lewis

"Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination and of the heart." ―Salman Rushdie

"Fiction is a kind of compassion-generating machine that saves us from sloth." ― George Saunders

When people justifies the Mad Queen evolution with "I will take what is mine with fire and blood" BUT Daenerys was always referring to revenge against those who had betrayed her and hurt her and humiliated her: her enemies, her abusers. Not innocent people, she would never harm children. She wants to fight violence with violence, yes, it's morally ambiguous, but not with gratuitous violence against the defenseless. Because she was defenseless too at the first!

Like you don't have to love Daenerys (I don't, especially in the series) for criticizing this mediocre, hasty, superficial, and offensive (because yeah it's a bad representation for mental illness) storyline as it is.

So like, I'm ready for it. And I've had a lot of issues with the show but if they give me this? All bets are off.

I mean, there’s only so much that George can say outright without getting into legal trouble with HBO. He worked closely with D&D during the first few seasons of the show, but it’s my understanding that he hasn’t been as involved in years, choosing to focus on writing TWOW and ADOS and working on his other projects. 

That being said, GRRM has expressed his discontent with D&D changing things from his books, and has said “the books are the books and the show is the show.” Like that post by @thefeatherofhope I reblogged earlier said, George’s actions speak louder than his words. He released one of Sansa’s “Alayne” TWOW chapters after her disastrous season 5 show plot, and one of Arianne’s chapters after the way the show destroyed Dorne.