re: Am I the only one pulling for the Night King?

Again, it doesn't bother me, your ingratiating "I'm indifferent...you guys are ridiculous lol. Okay now back to indifference." is what kind of rubs me the wrong way.

Being passive aggressive and then retreating back to ambivalence and having a laugh is the part I just wanted to point out. Intellectual honesty and all that. You can certainly point out someone being hypocritical and not be 'bothered'.

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So how mad are you going to be when in the books it's still Arya that killa the NK and still Bran that ends up King? Will you be smarter than GRRM then?

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I don't think he'll finish the books. He might finish the next one, but the one where these things will have been revealed are, sadly, years and years away.

Similarly, I don't think many people actually have a problem with the who, it's more the how. d&d also tacitly admitted that "they" decided it in one of the 'making of' episodes where they said: "We had decided Arya would kill the Night King three years ago."

"We" obviously wasn't Martin because he had already peaced out from giving the series direction and it was fully d&d's project.

It may very well go the same direction by some stroke of luck/fortune, but if you think it's essentially going to be Arya warp ninja'ing 50 feet and killing the Night King 1 on 1, you might be disappointed.

Just to finish up with the question: Bran being king in the show is ridiculous because he's basically been a giant potato the entire time. Barely talks, almost never expresses himself deeply, doesn't really "want" anything and has very little interaction for years. Again, I think Bran would be very different in the book.

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ingratiating "I'm indifferent...you guys are ridiculous lol. Okay now back to indifference." is what kind of rubs me the wrong way.

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If I were being truly ingratiating, I would be flattering you about your feelings about the show. If I were completely indifferent, I wouldn't have commented, or found the bellyaching to be amusing. I've been neither ingratiating nor indifferent in this entire exchange. All I've said is that I enjoyed the show and find the ubiquitous internet panning to be over the top.

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Intellectual honesty and all that. You can certainly point out someone being hypocritical and not be 'bothered'.

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Being completely aboveboard about my feelings regarding the show and my complete lack of motivation to change anyone else's feelings about it is intellectually dishonest and hypocritical?

I'm not ambivalent about the TV show. Obviously I cared enough to comment on it. Just because I don't personally find it worthy of the emotional capital others choose to spend upon it is hardly hypocrisy on my part. It's really do different from my wife looking at me funny for getting emotional after the Spurs won their last championship or something. It's mystifying/amusing to her because she didn't invest as much in it emotionally or otherwise as I did. Her observing as much, or holding that opinion isn't hypocrisy or intellectual dishonesty on her part. She enjoys the game as much as I do, but isn't as invested in as many aspects, perhaps. Like, even after a Spurs win, I can probably be heard grousing about our shitty defense, or a particular player's lack of progression, etc. She doesn't have to turn her brain off or something to enjoy it in spite of what I deem glaring holes in the team's performance, it just doesn't affect her enjoyment of the event.

Sorry for all the basketball analogies. I say all that to say, I do understand where you're coming from. If I were as invested as you and others in the aspects of the show y'all found to be egregiously lacking, perhaps I'd feel the same way. Or perhaps not. Who knows--depends on how everyone's wired, I guess. Like I said before, I'm truly sorry the show didn't live up to your expectations. Clearly, this diminished the experience for you, and as someone who truly enjoyed GoT from start to finish, it's unfortunate you felt you were robbed of similar enjoyment. That just sucks. No way around that, since the show is over.

Hopefully the next big TV spectacle outstrips your highest expectations. Perhaps it'll fail mine, and then we'll be on opposite sides of the same discussion. Who knows

More of a day man kinda guy

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I don't think he'll finish the books. He might finish the next one, but the one where these things will have been revealed are, sadly, years and years away.

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I honestly think he's probably been finished with WoW for a while now and already started on ADoS, but was waiting to put them out so he could go back and edit some things that lead up to his intended conclusions based on how people reacted to the show.

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Similarly, I don't think many people actually have a problem with the who, it's more the how

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I agree to that. Overall I think the conclusions were mostly satisfying, but the way they got to those conclusions were rushed, lazy, and full of holes.

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but if you think it's essentially going to be Arya warp ninja'ing 50 feet and killing the Night King 1 on 1, you might be disappointed.

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I really think you're overplaying that way too much. She didn't jump that far, and has already shown her great leaping ability and athleticism in her final fight with The Waif anyway. She's also shown countless times since she started training with the Faceless Men and got back to Westeros her ability to silently sneak up on anybody to seemingly appear out of nowhere, which makes total sense considering she trained with the best assassins in the world.

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Bran being king in the show is ridiculous because he's basically been a giant potato the entire time. Barely talks, almost never expresses himself deeply, doesn't really "want" anything and has very little interaction for years. Again, I think Bran would be very different in the book

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It's been a book theory for years, albeit one of the lesser known ones, that Bran becomes the King and it actually makes a lot of sense. "Bran the Fisher King". GRRM said in 2014 that at least one fan had correctly guessed the ending, and people are now pointing out that he made that comment very shortly after a book festival where a fan specifically asked him about the "Bran the Fisher King" theory, so I believe that's what he was referring to. Everybody expected Jon to become King after killing Dany, but this series has never done the expected. Jon becoming King is the fairy tale ending, and this series is anti-fairy tale storylines on purpose.

I can see why people are mad and it's a "wtf" moment in the context of the show only, because of the way they dumbed down Bran's character (especially this season) and because of how poor the lead up to it was in the show bc of the lazy, sloppy writing. But it still makes sense and feels right to me, and the show has always dumbed down characters to a huge degree in comparison to the books, so it's really dumb to continue to compare the show to the books like you keep doing. Just look at Rickon as a prime example, in the show they barely acknowledged his existence most of the time and killed him off in the dumbest way imaginable. In the books he's actually a pretty interesting character who's potentially a freaking Cannibal King on an island full of unicorns, and book readers are excited to see how hus story plays out. But show Rickon was not only boring, but a screen nuisance, and no viewer really even cared at all about the character. So yeah, if you keep comparing show and book like you are then it's no wonder you're so bitter bc you can't see the forest through the trees.

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I honestly think he's probably been finished with WoW for a while now and already started on ADoS, but was waiting to put them out so he could go back and edit some things that lead up to his intended conclusions based on how people reacted to the show.

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His updates don't really give me hope that he's going to do anything soon. I think there was one he just made saying that he's got tons of projects going on which, to me, is like saying: Shut up nerds, I'll do what I want when I want.

Which I think is reasonable. He's an older guy and with his weight there's no way he's going to last 5 - 10 more years unless he drastically changes his life. There are some people who said he was sitting on the book, and I think where I am is probably 50/50. One side saying he has finished it, it will be published soon (6 months to a year and a half) and that we might have a chance at the second book. The other side that says he got really mad at HBO and doesn't actually want to finish either of those books and would much rather coast on what he has and do things in which he has more creative freedom.

To the Conclusions: They're actually nice, and it's a weirdly sweet way to end the series but the way it got chopped up and streamlined (as you said) just makes it extremely unpalatable.

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I really think you're overplaying that way too much.

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Let me put it this way: We really didn't see her training with the Faceless men and she didn't even complete her training. We just saw her gettin' cracked around by a stick and failing the one mission she was sent on. I think my biggest problem with it in general is that they also chopped this up in a way that it not only seems unreasonable, it just feels like "magic". The jump, the sneaking, the fighting like an expert with every weapon etc. etc..

Then there's the conflicting strength from episode to episode, not just for the NK but for the dragons/arbalests as well. What's to stop the NK from just crushing her neck before the blade drops? If he can detect, react and catch a Faceless assassin in midair, why does he just stare stupidly while having her by the neck? The entire scene needed to be completely rewritten, but I digress.

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"Bran the Fisher King".

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Which, I think, would actually make sense if they had just taken the fricking time to develop this story. I have no problem with book Bran (assuming Martin will/would have fleshed him out) taking the Throne, but hoowee, show Bran is literally just so apathetic and...quite plainly, useless. He could have helped Dany, Jon, everyone, anyone, by providing recon or even just by spying but I think (this is my theory) that the writers were trying to downplay his access to the throne so it'd be like a "HHHHOOOMMMMMMGGGGGG" moment in Episode 6.

Most people were surprised for different reasons.

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Book vs. Show

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I never read the books, almost all of my information from them is just by seeing people who actually had. If I had the books to fall on, it would have stung a lot less after all the time spent and reading up on theories here and there.

They did everyone a severe disservice by simply not allowing other people to take over the show and go on from there. I'm almost positive the entire cast would have stayed outside of maybe Lena.

I mean, you can't throw away the other seasons. A lot of people (apparently) disliked Season 7, but I don't think there's much better TV than the first six seasons of Game of Thrones.

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incorrigible bastard

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must look this up