The following is a collaboration between myself and theculturalvacuum.
Wow, what a season! Based on the results of our “game of polls: season in review” edition, these were the ten plotlines voted “most butchered” in Game of Thrones, Season 5. Well, technically we left out “riverlands–general” on this list, but we felt it would be repetitious with Jaime and Brienne included too, plus the fact that the show might include it next year? Maybe? We’re just as confused as you are.
As we looked over this list, however, we noticed a common pattern. It was as if showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss (D&D) took each of these arcs, thought to themselves “now what was the point of these?” and then worked overtime to write the exact opposite. Like, we’re not remotely kidding. We even expanded the list to include an honourable mention (don’t mind us as we fight over Canadian vs. American spellings) simply because it’s laughable at how much they managed to miss the point of Martin’s books this season.
Without further ado…
Honorable Mention: King’s Landing (Cersei, Margaery-Tommen)
In an interesting change for Martin, the A Feast for Crows King’s Landing plotline was told to us through the eyes of Cersei Lannister, who up until that point was a rather opaque villain. Some disliked the Cersei of the books: they found her to be cartoonish and one-dimensional. However, by the time we get into her head she has already slipped into deep paranoia due to a prophecy that foretold of all her children dying (triggered by Joff’s death), a younger and more beautiful queen casting her down (triggered by Marg’s arrival), and then ultimately her death by her little brother, which she interpreted to mean Tyrion.
Like in most literary classics, Cersei’s prophecy seems to us to be a self-fulfilling one. She is determined to capture Tyrion and believes him to be colluding against her with half the realm, while at the same time she also projects her paranoia onto Margaery, viewing her as a ruthless schemer with spies all around who is waiting to cast Cersei aside, rather than a slightly above-average-intelligence girl who picks flowers and gives Tommen kittens. Due to Cersei’s obsession with subverting the prophecy’s outcome, she attempts to frame Margaery for adultery using every means possible, for example the extensive torture of a young, innocent bard:
In the end the Blue Bard told [Cersei and Qyburn] his whole life, back to his first name day. His father had been a chandler and Wat was raised to that trade, but as a boy he found he had more skill at making lutes than barrels. When he was twelve he ran off to join a troupe of musicians he had heard performing at a fair. He had wandered half the Reach before coming to King’s Landing in hopes of finding favor at court.
…
Yes. Cersei blamed Margaery Tyrell for this. If not for her, Wat might have lived a long and fruitful life, singing his little songs and bedding pig girls and crofter’s daughters. Her scheming forced this on me. She has soiled me with her treachery.
Cersei also arms the Faith because she doesn’t want to deal with beggars and sleeps with a variety of men for her own aims (not that we judge, but she’s not doing it for comfort or intimacy, or to express her sexuality; she’s just doing it to use them and she hates it, and them) including the murder of the former High Septon simply because Tyrion appointed him. So when she is finally caught in her own trap due to the false testimony of one of the men she slept with, it is actually earned. Yet as Martin is so good at doing, we weren’t able to savor her “comeuppance,” because Cersei deserved her walk no more than Theon deserved to become Reek. Damn Martin with his moral ambiguity and perversion of wish-fulfillment!
So what was the “point”? That in a situation of her own making, Cersei cast herself down on charges that were quite true, and quite recent.
What did D&D give us? They gave us “Carol,” the relatable tiger-mom, who was legitimately justified in her paranoia about Marg being the younger, more beautiful queen. And we know this because Marg outright tells Loras she plans on removing Carol from power (“perhaps”). They also had Tommen and Myrcella be in very real (not just perceived or projected) danger, as Faullaria Sand sent an blatantly threatening jack-in-the-box to Carol, and Tommen was aged up and thrown into a situation where he was sexually abused and manipulated by Marg (though the show played it off as laughs).
Carol was also tricked by the High Sparrow, who presented himself as a kindly grandpa, speaking against the sparrows’ shaming of the former High Septon. So when Carol armed the Faith Militant as her only potential recourse against Marg, there was no reason for her to think there’d be a surprise government overthrow. There was literally no blood on Carol’s hands this season, unless you count a perjury trap. Quite the tonal difference from torturing the Blue Bard. The charges she ended up getting caught on were having sad, comforting sex a couple of times with Lancel (which they retconned to say happened during her marriage to Robert, though that was never in the show). Also, D&D also went to great lengths this season to make her incestuous relationship with Larry seem like something reasonable and compassionate people would support (Larry proudly championing “you don’t choose who you love” in his final scene), so even the charges of “high treason” seemed unfair and archaic.
In short, Carol was a victim. Literally the opposite of Cersei’s entire arc.
10. The Faith/High Sparrow
In the books, the sparrow movement is a populist response to the horrors seen in Westeros as a result of the War of Five Kings (particularly in the riverlands), and how people are becoming increasingly aware that their Lords care nothing for the suffering of commoners. As a result, many turned to the Faith for both comfort and potential recourse. The sparrows are all about the redistribution of wealth and helping the plight of those suffering, but they still seek to work in a feudal framework; though they may openly speak against private sins such as homosexuality (which is actually only implied to be a sin in the book; never stated) or worshipping “false” gods, they are not chiefly concerned about such things. They are also not particularly gung-ho about violence:
Cersei could feel the weight of eyes upon her. “The king shall know of these atrocities,” she answered solemnly. “Tommen will share your outrage. This is the work of Stannis and his red witch, and the savage northmen who worship trees and wolves.” She raised her voice. “Good people, your dead shall be avenged!”
A few cheered, but only a few. “We ask no vengeance for our dead,” said the one-legged man, “only protection for the living. For the septs and holy places.”
The sparrows champion their own leader and demand that he is made the new High Septon, as the current Sept practices seem corrupt to them. This newly dubbed “High Sparrow” is, yes, a bit of a sexist asshole, but he also is a shrewd politician who does legitimately seem to want to use the Faith to reduce the suffering of the commoners. His first action as High Septon is to sell off the Sept’s riches to help feed the poor. He manipulates Cersei into arming the Faith and giving it judicial powers as another answer to the atrocities witnessed in Westeros. From there, the Faith Militant mostly scatter throughout Westeros to defend local septs and protect the innocent.
When Osney Kettleblack falsely testifies to having bedded Margaery, she is arrested by the Faith. But the High Sparrow is so suspicious of his eagerness to testify that he tortures the knight to discover the truth about which queen he actually slept with. And because you can’t just up and arrest the Lord of Highgarden’s daughter without consequences, the High Sparrow released Marg into the custody of Reach bannerman Randyll Tarly until the time of her trial. In Cersei’s case, she confessed only to the sins that would not warrant her execution (so she denied having Osney kill the High Septon, her involvement in Robert’s death, and she vehemently denies the twincest), and the High Sparrow agrees to free her after a penance walk, which is most certainly misogynistic AF.
Huh. It’s almost as if religion and its role in public life is a complicated issue. And that’s the point. The Faith’s involvement in all this is messy and it almost feels like the reader is being piled on with…well, messiness. The games the High Lords play with each other have very real and disturbing consequences for the commoners, so a populist response in an effort to hold them accountable is pretty reasonable, and quite refreshing for the genre. The reader may have reacted like Cersei did, with annoyance and a wish that they would just go away, but maybe we’ve been hanging out with High Lords for too long. And the implications of this development for all the characters and plotlines is complicated.
Aaaand, then there’s the Faith Taliban.
Yes, in the asinine world of Weisseroff, the religious movement is a group of strawmen who run around carving religious symbols into their flesh, attacking private citizens for their very private crimes, and declaring a war on “false idols” that poor merchants are trying to sell. Everything about the establishment of the Faith Taliban is backwards. Like, it was Carol’s idea and she also appoints the High Sparrow as High Septon, at least we think (seriously, it’s difficult to call that out of character for Carol, because it’s just so random). The High Sparrow is totes happy to set a perjury trap for Marg Boleyn, because her brother is a GAY (that pervert). And there’s absolutely no problem arresting the HEIR to Highgarden because arming the Faith apparently meant a complete government overthrow (a “new” King’s Landing).
What did they make the “point” of this? That homophobia is very, very bad. Wow, we’re sorry, we’re just so lost in the nuance of it all.
9. Jon
Oh, Jon. Poor old Jon.
In the books, Jon is a leader and he always has been. He proves it in A Game of Thrones when he protects Sam from his fellow recruits, he proves it in A Clash of Kings when he makes the decision to free Ygritte and takes responsibility for it. He especially proves it in A Storm of Swords when he leads a bunch of boys and village people in defending the Wall and manages to fight the Wildlings to a standstill despite odds that would make Leonidas think twice. He was chosen to be Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch basically (well, you know, it’s complicated) because he brings out the best in the people he leads. And, not unimportantly, he was a compromise candidate, and compromise is always something that Jon tries to do.
The central conflict of Jon’s arc in A Dance with Dragons is him trying to make himself a perfect leader and to live up the vows of the Night’s Watch. He does so by drawing on his understanding of leadership from what he saw in his father (caring, but slightly detached from his subjects). Jon sends away all his friends and does his damnedest to always consider the opinions of those who oppose him. He works with the Wildlings despite very reasonable and considered opposition from his own people because he feels like he has no choice. And he has built a relationship with several Wildling leaders based on mutual help and good faith. This is something he explains to his officers that they grudgingly accept, although their trust doesn’t extend as far as his does. And throughout, Jon is haunted by his emotional connections, to his friends, to Ygritte, who he is still mourning, and to his family, especially Arya, who he believes is in danger after being married to Ramsay Bolton. But he talks himself out of acting on any of these feelings because “the Night’s Watch takes no part.”
Basically, he sacrifices his identity, makes concessions and makes decisions that he knows are of doubtful correctness because he is trying his best to do the most good (*cough* perhaps in parallel to someone else *cough*). And when he finally rejects all these compromises in favour of who he truly feels he is, to deal with a personal threat made by the Boltons, his brothers see this as oathbreaking, and they kill him for it, with tears in their eyes. The point is this struggle between the personal and the political and, again, the messiness of everything, the intended and unintended consequences, people’s interacting motivations… IT’S COMPLICATED! OKAY?
And good ol’ D&D managed to take this nuanced situation and make it black and white. Again.
All of Jon’s decisions are unquestionably correct, not that he bothers to explain himself in anyway or detail how, like, Ice Zombies are coming and they use dead bodies for their army so alive bodies on this side of the Wall might be good. His brothers oppose him, not because they have concerns about so many mouths to feed for the winter, not because they’re uneasy about military authority being given to very recent enemies, not because of the troubling concession Jon made to Stannis, but simply because they’re racist and can’t see beyond their own prejudices. And this is made even more ridiculous by the fact that there are actual brothers with eyes who saw the entire army of the dead at Hardhome and can tell them about how the true danger is right upon them and that maybe killing their leader is kind of a shit idea right now.
So uh, an arc about a series of complicated moral concessions at the cost of his identity that were fiercely rejected in his last chapter (ultimately to his doom) was turned into…what exactly? Racism kills. Honor gets you killed, again? (D&D’s understanding of it, as well as of Ned’s arc, but certainly not ours). Hardhome looked cool? Corn chips are no place for a mighty warrior?
8. Tyrion
We’ve spent a lot of time talking about Tyrion’s characterization. Hopefully by now we’ve made it clear that while Tyrion is an incredibly well developed, intelligent person who been through a lot of shit that no one deserves, it doesn’t change the fact that he is also selfish, self-aggrandizing and self-justifying, and that his attitudes towards women are…well, they wouldn’t fly on tumblr, let’s just say that. But that’s what’s great about his PoV in the books. He excels at being both right and wrong at the same time and really forcing us to challenge things.
Tyrion in the show is, of course, our infallible Patron Saint of Good Guys™ who does no wrong ever. He is always perfect.
Now the reason we’re reiterating this is because Tyrion’s arc in aDwD can be described in two words: rock bottom.
Okay, okay, we’re being reductive. We pick up with a PTSD-riddled Tyrion who is finally owning up to his crimes/thinking of himself as a monster and he’s going out of his way to horrify everyone around him and doesn’t care whether he lives or dies. Yet once he meets the supposed son of Rhaegar, he is shocked to discover how much he cares about the potential success of that campaign, going as far as to even lay down his life for the almost-stranger, after which he is captured by Jorah and forced to head towards Meereen, along with another dwarf named Penny, who forces Tyrion to confront his internalized ableism. By the time they are captured by slavers, Tyrion is back to caring about his own life again and strategically navigates an unsafe situation. He manages to tease out some form of agency, ultimately signing onto a sellsword company with a Westerosi captain that he thinks he can manipulate.
And no, he didn’t meet Daenerys. It wasn’t seeing her and her dragons that made him want to live again: it was a storm. It was facing death and realizing there was more he wanted. It was his interactions on the Shy Maid. It was his realization that though he didn’t love or desire Penny, he respected her, and even envied her.
In many ways, aDwD was a recovery arc for Tyrion. Yes, his actions were downright disturbing in his earlier chapters. Yet they were also so completely in-line with his characterization and done with the purpose of stripping him down of everything: self-indulgent rationalizations included. And the thing is, while we’ll call Tyrion a sexist douchebag, the fact is that we very much like his character because his flaws are kind of the point, especially given his obvious potential to be better. And the utter breakdown of his self-delusions, which then enables him to find a renewed interest and meaning in life was the point of his aDwD arc.
So, hopefully we don’t have to even explain to you how St. Tyrion’s Season 5 arc was the complete opposite?
He walks around sad and drunk because he was wrong about Shae loving him for a couple of episodes (don’t get us started on the Tysha omission), though continually has his ego stroked by Varys to make him feel instantly better. Then he runs around from Volantis to Meereen being right about everything and explaining to Daenerys how to run her city because clearly she was so shit at it. Oh and he’s handed Meereen at the very end, with everyone from Daario to Missandei complimenting his wonderful skills, despite the fact that it makes no goddamn sense that the same people who wanted to kill Dany despite her willingness to marry a noble and open the pits would suddenly respect a random foreigner.
The main issue is, there were no self-delusions to be stripped away, because St. Tyrion is always perfect. So even though it’s quite coolio that he looks at Drogon and is inspired, what is the meaning, exactly? The show doesn’t give him any actual character development or room for self-struggles because he is a paragon of humanity. He’s nothing but a boringly perfect dude who runs around being right about everything, and Season 5 continued that trend. Yawn.
7. Ramsay-Reek-Roose
Okay, we cut out our own work for ourselves when we combined three characters for one category. But maybe that was just our naivete talking, because there’s “missing the point” and then there is this. Still, because Reek was our PoV in A Dance with Dragons, we feel comfortable saying that the “point” of this plotline most certainly centers on Theon’s arc.
So let’s talk about Theon. Did you know that we’re not privy to any of the torture porn that Season 3 gave us? Theon disappears from the books after the Boltons take Winterfell away from the Greyjoys, and though Cat gets sent a letter that says he’s being flayed by Ramsay, we don’t see any of it. He’s gone for two books until we come across a “Reek” chapter in A Dance with Dragons, where we are first introduced to the idea of how broken and far-gone Theon is as a result of his torture.
For that reason, he starts his arc with nothing, and everything we see and learn of Ramsay is brand new information. The best that Reek hopes for is a quick death. He is in complete survival mode, going so far as to police his own thought so as not to even THINK things he believes Ramsay would disapprove of. But he finds that shedding your identity and sense of self isn’t that easy (OMG, it’s almost as if aFfC/aDwD had some thematic unity or something!). And when Roose Bolton decides to use him as a political expedient to add legitimacy to the sham marriage between Ramsay Bolton and Jeyne Poole (disguised as Arya, though not many people seem to buy it), Theon is forced to confront not only the lies he tells himself as Reek, but also the lies he told himself when he was “The Prince of Winterfell” all the way back in A Clash of Kings. And in the confrontation of these lies, Theon has a bit of an internal redemption, as he realizes he wants to be a better man that he was.
The culmination of this arc plays out when he helps save Jeyne. Now we should note, this wasn’t a super proactive decision on his part. Theon was basically strong-armed to help free her by Wildling women who Jon had sent to help the person he thought was Arya. And the way these women were able to navigate the castle without arousing suspicion (even stealing weapons and killing people) was because they were women and the Boltons are misogynistic douchebags. It was hella poetic. Still, Theon did make a conscious decision to go along with their plan, and the thing is, it very much matters that he was saving Jeyne Poole, who was just a “steward’s whelp.” No one else in Winterfell was willing to lift a finger to help her despite her obvious, obvious abuse. But Theon was. Not because she was a Stark and he felt like he owed them and wanted to be redeemed. Just because she was suffering and he wanted to save her from pain.
In fact, his leaping out the window with her was not Theon “finding the strength to keep on keepin’ on” (paraphrasing Mr. Weiss), but rather that he felt a fast death would be kinder…a death he considered giving her before her wedding, but didn’t because of fear of torture.
If they take us alive, they will deliver us to Ramsay.
What was the point of his plot then? You can look at it as a redemptive arc and a struggle with identity, for sure. Like always though, Martin never gives us a perfect “redemption,” and in fact the culmination for Theon is not so much that he’s a magically better person, but that he recognizes himself as “Theon” again. Oh, and we should really point out that his re-connection with himself was not solely because of Jeyne’s suffering. It was mostly because of the treatment he received from the Northern Lords within the hall, and his very dispassionate view of their quarrels, the pettiness of which was punctuated by Jeyne’s sobs. Theon’s first moment of clarity though, comes in the godswood, when it seems like Bran is calling out to him from the tree.
The night was windless, the snow drifting straight down out of a cold black sky, yet the leaves of the heart tree were rustling his name. “Theon,” they seemed to whisper, “Theon.”
The old gods, he thought. They know me. They know my name. I was Theon of House Greyjoy. I was a ward of Eddard Stark, a friend and brother to his children. “Please.” He fell to his knees. “A sword, that’s all I ask. Let me die as Theon, not as Reek.” Tears trickled down his cheeks, impossibly warm. “I was ironborn. A son … a son of Pyke, of the islands.”
A leaf drifted down from above, brushed his brow, and landed in the pool. It floated on the water, red, five-fingered, like a bloody hand. “… Bran,” the tree murmured.
We find this rather moving and maybe like, poetic. Or something.
The way this arc was treated on the show is so bizarre it’s hard for us to know where to start. Just… somehow they managed to make Ramsay Bolton the protagonist of the Winterfell arc.
A state of affairs that is so bizarre. Not only did they make Ramsay Bolton the protagonist, but they made him the top point of a love triangle. We just…who in their right mind would think of this?
Theon’s role in all this is very secondary, we get the idea that he’s broken down, but there’s no room for his arc in the middle of Ramsay’s preoccupation with making his dad proud (or something?) and Sansa Bolton being super “empowered.” (see #1) So instead of a richly layered struggle for personhood that many point to as the finest thing Martin has ever written, we get Sansa yelling at Theon for a few minutes (at which time she doesn’t seems to give a crap about the two innocent boys who died in Bran and Rickon’s place) and then he kills Myranda because…and then because…contrivance (?) he jumps off a wall which means…*futile flappy hand gestures*
Like, it’s hard to comment on something that makes so little sense. What was the point of this? We have no fucking clue.
According to D&D in the previously linked “inside the episode,” it was really, really important that Theon save Sansa, because it’s his redemption given how much he dicked over her family. We strongly feel that Martin doesn’t write fairy tale redemptions, and that it was far MORE important for Theon to rescue a “nobody.”
Like, what was that thing we said at the beginning about D&D making sure the exact opposite of the thematic “point” from the books would be what they scripted?
6. Daenerys
It may shock you to learn that neither of us are particularly huge Dany fans. We like her fine, but just aren’t all that stirred by her. But even two tepid supporters such as ourselves see the fact that Dany is a rather complicated character. Her underlying desire seems to be some sort of conception of home and a peaceful life, yet she is determined to continue her family’s legacy, despite only ever truly knowing Viserys. She has some pretty fucked up views on love and desire as a result of being a teenager with a background of physical and emotional abuse, yet never carries around any sort of internalized guilt or shame for her wants. And above all, Dany has some sort of conception of justice, which to her seems to be about the reduction of suffering for the most people possible, hence her strong anti-slavery stance.
We’ve talked about her aDwD arc before, but what’s important to note is that as the Queen of Meereen, Dany is dealing with an incredibly complex political situation. Perhaps the most complex one Martin has presented in his books to date. She is a foreigner who conquered an old, established city and casually smashed their entire economic structure in the process. As a result, there are threats from both within the city and without (Yunkai, a previously conquered city fell back into slavery and after attacking Astapor decided to head towards Meereen), as well as an unfortunate plague that leaves many Astapori refugees sick and dying just outside the city walls.
Inside the walls, Dany was forced to juggle multiple sellsword groups, suspicious murders, numerous nobles from different factions with their own advice and understanding of the situation, and continual petitions from freedmen. To us, it seemed that Dany made the best choices she could with the information she had, took in all council and weighed it fairly, and ultimately made an increasing series of moral concessions to allow things to run peacefully.
These concessions led her to fall out of touch with her own identity, yet that was quickly shattered in Daznak’s pit, when Drogon came (of his own volition, posing a danger to everyone), and Dany raced out to meet him, ultimately to fly away.
So the point or central theme of her arc is how her political struggles serve as a backdrop to her internal struggle of identity as the last Targaryen, which despite growing more and more out of touch by necessity throughout aDwD is fiercely reasserted in the climax of her arc.
But with Deadpan Stormborn’s arc…good gods, what happened?
Her personality changed more often than Daario’s accent! One second she’s establishing due process, the next she’s holding public executions. One second she’s feeding former-masters to her (magically tamed) dragons, the next she’s…marrying them?
We guess this is a struggle with identity, but it seems more like a struggle with multiple personality disorder. And the whole falling out of touch with herself and making a series of moral concessions? Totally absent. Deadpan makes decisions based on her mood and what she feels like, which includes her use of her dragons. In fact there’s never a moment where it feels like she’s conceding anything (except the ex-slave’s execution, which was just a 180 from earlier in the episode for the hell of it). She’s going to marry Hizdahr just because! She just thought of it!
We might have been able to forgive some of this, but we became increasingly aware that her arc was unfolding in an incredibly sexist way. Barristan was killed off randomly and Dany’s decisions were erratic to make room for St. Tyrion and his magic powers of showin’ her how it’s done! And for all the build-up and twisting of plots there was to make their meeting happen, their only conversation sank like a giant beer fart. Deadpan wants to break the wheel? What the fuck does that even mean? She’s out to CONQUER Westeros with DRAGONS for the good of the people and is anti-feudalism now? This has nothing to do with her “claim” and how she feels the throne is her right?
Then adding insult to injury, what should have been an amazing, pro-active moment of Dany rushing out to embrace her dragon/identity became a passive damsel in distress being spirited from one point to another by men, only to be ultimately rescued by Drogon (rather than the other way around). And her beautifully written vision quest that, among other things, made us feel for Viserys Targaryen for the first time and involved her body literally rejecting the fruit of her labours in Meereen? Yeah, right. And then instead of chilling with a half-tamed dragon and eating some charred meat when 500 Dothraki show up, she wandered off alone for no reason to get captured by like, 10,000 Dothraki and was forced to “smartly” drop breadcrumbs so she could be saved. Probably by Jorah and Daario. Again. (What a hilarious bro-trip that will be! Should we start a counter to track the number of female characters who get shafted for the sake of bro-trips?).
It’s like they couldn’t have missed the point of her arc more if they tried! Fuck, if anything Dany’s arc was altered to service St. Tyrion, so that he could come in and have a city in need of his rule. Lest any of her decisions have a positive outcome.
Oh, and we’ve gotten over our coughing fit from #9 long enough to point out that D&D missing the point of both Dany and Jon’s arcs undercut the thematic significance of their near perfect parallels. Though where he was altered to be an Action Hero™ who really didn’t do anything wrong and was stabbed because of racist assholes, Dany was dumbed down so that a situation could be created where she was in desperate need of St. Tyrion’s council and probable future rescue by more men. Yay.
5. Brienne
Here’s the thing. Brienne’s arc in aFfC gets shit on a whole lot. And as two feminists that very much enjoy how most of her story contains this silly thing called “character development” centered around her conception of identity as a woman and whether or not she has a place in the world (while also refusing to apologize for being who she is), we are a bit defensive of this plot. We get that it might not be all that cinematic. However, it is through Brienne’s eyes (along with Jaime’s) that we see the horrors in the riverlands. Throughout her travels there is a building feeling of dread with suspiciously hung corpses and murmurings of a “Lady Stoneheart,” which ends with Brienne encountering the resurrected, yet now crazed Catelyn.
And we REFUSE to believe that would have made for worse television than Brienne watching a window for some tiny ass candle for 7.5 episodes, only to then skip happily into a battle, somehow locate the king that no one else cared about, and lop his head off because of some twisted understanding of her “duty.”
To give you the down and dirty, Brienne’s A Feast for Crows arc is all about her grappling with the concepts of “what is a knight?”; “what is justice?”; and “what is honor?” (a horse), with her travelogue serving as the backdrop. She follows a series of leads to the best of her ability to try and locate the missing Sansa Stark (and at one point the previously presumed-dead Arya), and in her travels comes across characters that help frame her internal journey: from the overly “just” Randyll “Rape Apologist” Tarly, to the religiously peaceful Elder Brother on the Quiet Isle.
Want to hear something crazy? The thematic climax of Brienne’s AFFC arc was when she killed someone for the first time. Which not only completely tied into the questions she had been grappling with, but also marked her definitive breakdown of idealism. From there, Brienne was then captured by Lady Stoneheart, once again calling back into question “what is honor” (because of the oath she swore to Cat). And Brienne poetically chose to sacrifice her own conception of justice and knighthood to save her companions. We can’t wait to find out what happens next with her. Her arc is so thematically deep that it actually grows on us every single time we revisit it. We won’t deny that the first time through may have felt slow, or say that we don’t understand the criticism. We just strongly disagree with it now.
So. Imagine our delight when all that complexity was stripped down to…nothing.
Brienne the Brute is an asshole who spent her season browbeating Pod, randomly stumbling across Sansa Stark through no proactive effort of her own, slaying (without hesitation) Vale knights who are protecting her, and then spent her ass parked, watching a window for the rest of the season.
Challenge: describe Brienne the Brute’s character development this year. Really. We’ll wait; we’re quite comfortable here. Because to us she just seemed like a conveniently positioned sword when D&D wanted to off Stannis. They probably thought it was thematically deep or some shit too. Like it was so poetic that Brienne killed him because it was her “life-long mission” (just…what?) and that it’s totally not a big deal at all that she would abandon potentially helping Sansa for revenge. Or that she pretended it was her “duty.” We guess all of this kind of counts as development, if by “life-long” they meant literally one scene before swearing an oath to Cat, and if that sword “oathkeeper” was totally about keeping her Rainbow Guard vows. Sure.
What is honor? Apparently lopping Stannis’s head off, but tastefully doing so off-screen lest we see a man with an undignified death.
4. Jaime
Similarly to Lady Brienne, Jaime’s AFFC arc is in many ways a slower-paced travelogue through the riverlands (wait, was that intentional or something? We haven’t the foggiest). But where the “action” may be “lacking” (we’re a little confused by this claim tbh), there is more than enough in terms of character development, as he struggles with his conception of identity separate of Cersei along with his understanding of internal vs. external honor. He strives to be Goldenhand the Just, yet may only ever be “the Kingslayer,” as his past continually haunts him.
And as he makes his way through internal journey and comes to fully realize how toxic his relationship with Cersei was and who the man he wants to be is moving forward, he also deftly maneuvers the political situation in the riverlands, ultimately getting Riverrun to surrender and bringing some semblance of peace to the area.
But zoinks! That’s not entertaining TV! Why not send Show!Jaime (we call him “Larry”) on a zany bro-trip to a foreign land with colorful residents and hilarious bumbling father moments!
And in fact, why not throw him into the middle of random fights. It doesn’t matter that he’s adjusting to a disability that is very much tied to his understanding of self-identity…he’ll do fine! And won’t it be a hoot when that golden hand stops a sword?
The thing is, in the books, Cersei sends Jaime away to the riverlands to “keep the peace” as kind of a like “we’re on a break” type of deal. The fact that she forces him to retake Riverrrun, despite knowing about the vow he swore to not take up arms against the Tullys, and despite him begging her not to, kind of highlighting how little she actually cares about him. But for some reason D&D didn’t want to have Carol send Larry of…probably because Carol is a super whitewashed, “problematic fave” unlike her rather villainous book counterpart. But they were determined to send Larry down to Porne (see #2), so they needed to have him offer to go, which kind of casually throws out Jaime’s characterization. Unlike Jaime, Larry was super into Tywin’s “legacy” and paranoid about people “taking that away,” and when Carol began to reject him for fucking up (getting Tywin killed, not acting like a father to their children), Larry decided that he better make up for it!
Aaand, that’s how we got Larry sneaking around in a turban on the dumbest (and most culturally exploitative) field trip ever, when apparently a letter to Doran would have sufficed. Because the plot was so divorced of logic, poor Larry didn’t really have a prayer of navigating through it with any semblance of in-tact characterization. He tells Myrcella he’s her father? Why not!
And what really gets our goat is that even if you somehow did put Jaime in that stupid situation, he would never have acted that way. He would have written Doran a letter. He would have talked his way out of that stupid beach encounter. Sure, he probably would have done it with threats (something evocative of his catapult threat to Edmure), but in the end, he would have solves this problem without a comical Snake-Fu scene. Especially given that like, he is not a great left-handed fighter who can magically hold his own against a “warrior-monk.”
Talking about Larry missing the “point” of Jaime’s arc is an exercise in futility, because Larry’s arc didn’t have a point. All he’s had is a racist adventure. We guess you could kind of view it as Larry coming to terms with his love of Carol being a-okay and wanting to be a more proactive parent? Which is, not surprisingly, the exact opposite of what happens in the books.
3. Stannis
Don’t kill us, but we’re a little confused by “Stannis the Mannis.” Like. Stannis is fine. We just don’t really connect to him. He is the law, and incredibly into the concept of duty and order. He’s also a bit of a proud guy, grinding his teeth at any and all perceived slights. He’s not wrong about what’s “owed to him” legally, but he also seems to undervalue the very human and subjective aspects of politics.
But even with our rather tepid opinion of him, it’s not like we can’t see that he is driven by his sense of duty. There’s also the whole “he thinks he’s Azor Ahai and will need to save the entire world” thing, which yeah is equal parts self-delusion and hubris, but he at least has a kind of “big picture” understanding of what conflicts really matter, and we grudgingly admire his determination to see it through, despite the fact he knows what it will cost him.
Stannis is not a POV character so he doesn’t really get his own “point” in the books. He’s the guy that Davos is loyal to, the guy that Melisandre projects her hopes on to, the implacable authority figure that Jon and Asha have to deal with, but he does have a character. A character D&D seem to actively despise.
The fact that D&D think of Stannis as someone who is so personally ambitious that he’d burn his motherfucking heir because of a few snow flurries seems just a bit ridiculous. The fact is, this is a character who in the books is in a much worse scrape and doesn’t even consider burning a loyal moop. And then, adding insult to injury, D&D went out of their way to have Shireen’s death do nothing. Stannis’s army still lost, and lost horribly. Even Mel abandoned his cause before the end because…reasons.
Like, we know you might think us terrible hypocrites, because we’re always on about how depiction =/= endorsement. Horrible things can be depicted if it fits into the larger narrative and does so in such a way where we’re challenged by, but not blindly supportive of, what is shown. But what we don’t mean is that if something bad happens, the narrative should then contort itself to be like “YOU SEE THIS IS A REALLY BAD THING.” Which is hilarious, because that’s exactly how D&D talk about it. They repeatedly call Stannis a “monster” and about how Stannis “did the worst thing a person could possibly do in the world.” And like, we agree. We dubbed him “Satannis” ffs. But just in case we, the dumb audience, couldn’t have reached that conclusion on our own, they made sure to be like “seeeeeee? It was a bad thing and EVERYONE is punishing him for it!”
Also, we’re uncomfortable about the way in which Selyse’s suicide was kind of used as a weird punchline to a joke. “Speak up. It can’t be worse than mutiny.” Oh but it is! Ho ho! Fuck you, D&D. That was just tasteless.
Satannis’s demise in the season finale was farcical, and he deserved better. When you’re making an adaptation, you don’t have the right to completely fuck over a character just because you happen not to like him. Stannis is a skilled and experienced battle commander who values loyalty and honest council. He’s approaching Winterfell with a plan, after spending aDwD gaining a following, not having people abandon him left and right because he’s such a jerk.
People were literally rooting for the Boltons because they’re less asshole-like than Satannis. If that’s not a perfect reflection of how they failed to successfully adapt his aDwD plot, we don’t know what is.
2. Dornish Characters and Myrcella
We love Dorne. We love every man, woman, and child in Dorne and are very protective of them and their characters. If you asked us who “Timoth” is, we’d be able to tell you about his dripping dignity without batting an eyelash. So for that reason, little other than a dramatic reading of the Dornish chapters in aFfC/aDwD would really please us, but gods, this was more horrible than even our lowest expectations. And to give you an idea of those, we were imagining Doran as a sexy lifeguard with zinc oxide on his nose.
As soon as we learned that Arianne wasn’t cast, we kind of gave up on all hopes that this subplot could make sense. Not be good or anything, mind you, just make sense. Because the thing is…Dorne is Arianne’s story. We would say that the politics are secondary to the personal in this arc, but one of the points of it is the intersection of the personal and the political. Is it ever okay for a prince to go to war for personal reasons? When does “personal” become “political” anyway?
But, at its essence, the story is a family tragedy. It’s about two people who love each other, but misunderstand each other because of a character failing that they both share. The possible war with the Lannisters that looms over Dorne is not as important as the “war” in Arianne’s mind as she tries to secure not only her political birthright, but also her personal “birthright” to her father’s trust and love.
And yes, all that said, there is still a kind of awesome and dramatic reveal that Doran has been working at the downfall of the Lannisters since his sister was killed during Robert’s Rebellion, and moving into aDwD, it’s quite clear that Doran and Arianne need each other on both a political and personal level as they further plans for Dorne. But the overarching “point” of Dorne is most definitely the Shakespearean family drama, and how it poetically unfolds such that it reveals the perfect parallel between Arianne Martell and her father.
Okay, we’re going to makes ourselves cry now.
The only time we cried during the Porne scenes was when we were laughing so hard at the Snake-Fu.
Hopefully we’ve already covered the reasons why Larry and Bronn in Dorne make little to no sense. But looking at the Pornish “characters” in and of themselves, Ellaria and the Sand Fakes are racist caricatures (well we’ve said much worse about the former’s characterization…she’s “Faullaria”). Trystane is a punk with no personality. Doran is just some dude sitting in a chair who trusts Larry and doesn’t think to lock up the person actively threatening the peace because…reasons. Porne itself is just the Water Gardens and some desert.
We guess we could talk about how there were aspects of the Pornish plot that were outright insults to our intelligence. Like how in Faullaria’s first scene she told Doran that the Sand Fakes were with her, only for the next scene to be her asking the Sand Fakes if they were with her. Or how the Fakes dragged a guy that helped them into the middle of a desert and buried him, but waited for Faullaria to arrive to kill him for no reason. Ignoring geography and suspension of disbelief, there’s the fact that Bronn and Larry stumbled into the Water Gardens at exactly the same time the Fakes were going to kill (?) Myrcella, which happened to be in broad daylight as Doran looked on.
^actual HBO facebook ad
We’re not even touching the boner-activated poison or the fact that if Faullaria really wanted to murder someone with her Poison Ivy lips, Larry would have been a far more logical target.
But it’s overkill. Even disinterested partners of show-only watchers would be able to point out these issues. There was no thought given to Porne. Porne is a narrative of incident that exists to service the Lannisters and Bronn’s Sass. They wanted to film in Spain and have Tyene flash Bronn because Dornish women are so sexually liberated. And given that, it’s not really worth commenting on further. It had no meaning. It was a wasted opportunity. Just an exotic land for two white guys to have an adventure in.
1. Sansa Stark
Oh Sansa. It shocks officially no one that she landed in the top spot, right?
We’ve talked before about how the fandom pans on Sansa sometimes. She’s an incredibly internal character whose primary “weapons” are her intuition, empathy, and ability to cloak her thoughts and feelings under a courteous exterior. She is also a very morally ‘good’ person, if that’s possible in Westeros. For that reason, her characterization and development can be a bit obscured, because so much that occurs is in her mind rather than through her actions. This has given rise to the notion that Sansa is boring, or even stupid, despite the fact that her brain will whir away for paragraphs as her read and understanding of a situation becomes increasingly clear, and her approach, increasingly strategic.
Still, it’s no surprise that Sansa’s A Feast for Crows arc has received criticism for being “boring.” But we think that’s a bit weird, especially because it’s three chapters, all of which advance the plot pretty steadily. Loosely speaking, it is her and Petyr navigating Vale politics and setting up a situation where she’ll eventually be able to take back Winterfell from the Boltons. At the same time Sansa struggles with playing the part of Petyr’s daughter, who is a giant creep and whose bullshit narrative she doesn’t buy into. She’s able to navigate her position to torture out some agency, but at the same time she is aware she’s still a bit of a caged bird.
We’re really sorry to say this again for the umpteenth time, but the “point” of Sansa’s arc is most certainly her struggle with adopting a new identity. She is trying to become Alayne Stone, even feeling guilty for thinking “Sansa” thoughts, while also figuring out how to find some kind of freedom in her prettier prison. And this struggle happens to run in perfect parallel to her sister, who is actively determined to become “No One.” Also we’d be remiss if we didn’t point out the fact that both sisters have sample chapters that were originally planned for aDwD, which may or may not tie thematically into the publishe endpoints of other characters, such as Jon, Dany, and Bran. It’s almost as if Martin did this on purpose, but we couldn’t tell you ¯\_(シ)_/¯ .
Did D&D include this theme of identity? Of course not! They had Sansa dye her hair, yet every single person and their mother (lookin’ at you, Fat Walda) referred to her as “Sansa” this year. Pod knew her at a glance, a good 50 feet away.
Now look, it’s a visual adaptation, and one that’s winding down, so we accept that things need to be cut. While we might be very interested in the Vale plotline and how they will enter the fray, we get that maybe it couldn’t be established (though it looks like we might be going back there in S6?). Maybe it’s a great adaptational decision to send her to Winterfell. I mean, we’re not purists. There’s potential there that could be in-line with Sansa’s characterization. And fuck, they could even create an arc that is somewhat in-line with the themes at play for her in the books, and have the parallels to her sister remain.
Last year’s “Darth Sansa” conclusion showed us a character who was able to use her intuition and ability to mask her feelings to her advantage (albeit in a cartoonish manner), and she made a clear and choice that earned her the support of major Vale Lords and power over Petyr.
Play on that Sansa! Send her to Winterfell in disguise. Fucking call her “Alayne Stone” or even “Alayne Baelish, Petyr’s daughterniece” if you can’t make the bastardy thing work (not that we’re bitter about losing that parallel either). Maybe she could try and destroy the Boltons from within, seeking out loyal Northerners who “remember,” eh? Or hell cast Jeyne Poole and have Sansa struggle with the choice between helping her friend vs. undermining the family that betrayed hers. Does she assert her “Sansa Stark-ness” and help or does she remain “Alayne Baelish” and continue on the political mission. Seriously. Anything. Anything vaguely proactive.
Even having her work in the kitchens under the tutelage of a baker as she learns how to perfect a lemon cake recipe would have been closer to the mark.
But…no. They had one role in mind for Sansa and one role only: Jeyne Poole. And why? For Ramsay Bolton’s benefit. Not even Theon’s…Ramsay’s. To force Sansa into this role, D&D had to defy every ounce of logic to put her there. Sansa would have literally nothing to gain and everything to lose by marrying the Boltons? Bah. Littlefinger would do basic background research before sending ravens carrying treasonous messages flying all over The North? Who cares. They were determined to stick Sansa in the role of a tertiary character where she would be raped and brutalized, so damn logic and characterizations.
To make matters even worse, once they stuck her there, it was clear they simply had no grasp on who Sansa is or how she’d act through this horror show. She’d have a new personality every time Theon opened the door, at times doing outright daft things like taunting Ramsay to his face, or worrying things such as likening herself to Ramsay by telling Theon she would have tortured him too.
Zero respect was given to her characterization, and in the end the only proactive thing she did was light a tiny ass candle and then tell Ramsay’s girlfriend that she was okay dying. Which like, we’re sorry but the girl whose narrative is all about internal resistance to the point where she burned a mattress in desperation to have a chance at controlling her own sexuality is now tossing in the towel?
Like, what’s the point of even calling her “Sansa”? She seems to bear no resemblance to her book counterpart in terms of plot and personality, and D&D’s use of her as the punching bag of Weisseroff comes with some really, really troubling implications. Like, revenge porn troubling. Most butchered? Hell yes. She was robbed of everything central to her character while actively punished on our screens for in an attempt to shock us. But no, Stannis was too dignified to be beheaded on-screen. That would have been gratuitous.
What was the “point” of Sansa Bolton? We don’t have a fucking clue. The closest we can come up with is that Darth Sansa was a stuck up little lady who thought she was in control of the situation and was taught differently. And that is so horrible that we would rather just assume incompetence, thank you very much.