Game of Thrones - Spoilers

[Deacon Blackfire]

^ Can I like this twice?
(lots of book / show spoilers follow)

I loved the early seasons, and after the fourth I finally picked up and read all of Martin's books. Doing so put in perspective some of the biased, wrongheaded, and questionable decisions the showrunners had made in adapting the material already - Tyrion is stripped off all his more regrettable traits to the point where he is basically a paragon of human virtue (and his delusional "relationship" with a teenage prostitute is entirely rewritten and re-conceived, mostly to absolve him for eventually murdering her), compared to the books Cersei is practically a protagonist, Catelyn is severely sidelined in importance and focus, Renly - an absolute scumbag in the books who believes he should be king because he has a huge army and coasts off of having extremely wealthy, well connected allies who have much to benefit from his claim - is portrayed as a kind and caring contender for the throne whose claim deserves support, and Stannis, one of Martin's most fascinating and morally complicated characters, is generally portrayed in the show as villainous and evil (Stephen Dillane was perfectly cast and brought nuance to the table but the writing for him was pretty weak from the start). Even so, I was very excited for season five. But by the end of "Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken" aka the awful Sand Snakes fight / ending with Sansa getting raped episode, I was disgusted and in denial about how badly it had gone off the rails. Surely they wouldn't have rewritten one of the strongest, most intense plotlines of the fifth book just so Ramsay could rape a more pivotal character? But they did.

In the books Ramsay is wedded to "Arya" - in reality Sansa's old friend Jeyne Poole, who went with her to King's Landing and was captured when everything went to shit - in order to consolidate the North "legitimately" and savagely mistreats her, in ways that are tolerated by the Northern lords because most of them know she isn't really Arya. Between that, and Theon's abuse and transformation into Reek, it is a storyline where a crucial theme is that human dignity is something everyone, regardless of name or importance or status or even guilt, deserves. And the showrunners read it and thought, "no one will care about Jeyne, Ramsay needs someone more important to abuse and rape."

The denial was broken by the fifth season's penultimate episode, where - after seeming like they were finally delving into the nuance and more redeeming qualities of his character - they did Stannis so absurdly dirty. The character from the books would sacrifice a child, perhaps even his own, if he thought it was a choice between that and the survival of the whole world. The character from the show immolates his daughter and only heir for a short lived tactical advantage, for "ambition" as the showrunners put it and to misread the character that deeply speaks volumes about their general reading comprehension. I stopped watching after season five and everything I have heard about it since then has validated that decision and my resentment of the show. It was so vindicating watching people lose it online about Daenerys, after suffering an implausible defeat at the hands of an illogically effective and plot-armored villain, suddenly and meaninglessly shedding all of her character development to become a one note monster, because it's exactly the bullshit I called when Stannis burns Shireen to stop flurries a short stroll away from Winterfell after Ramsay and "20 good men" magically make his camp's damp, freezing tents burst into flames (we literally just see the tents going up in flames and don't get any indication of how they do it because it makes no goddamn sense).

The fact they are even trying with this prequel is sad. Whoever is involved, they burned any goodwill they had, and it's all due to Benioff and Weiss destroying the original show by being pampered hacks who started thinking they were better writers than the guy whose incredible lore they were privileged enough to work with. I mean, my god, Benioff's track record speaks volumes - X-Men Origins: Wolverine showcases a Deadpool as laughably off-base as most every character in Game Of Thrones seemed to be by the end. And does anyone remember what they were originally planning on following Game Of Thrones with? Because fuckin' yikes.