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theusurpersdog · 5 years

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So Game of Thrones ended on Sunday, and for now it’s going down as potentially the worst ending of any TV show ever. Some of the backlash has come from the more nonsensical elements, such as Bronn being on the Small Council, anyone in Westeros defending Daenerys (the show literally framed her like Hitler, come the fuck on), Tyrion deciding who was King while in shackles, etc. But the truth is, none of that would’ve mattered if the emotions rang true. And that’s been a problem since the show started; go all the way back to Winter is Coming and you’ll see that the Starks have always been sidelined - both as individuals and as a family - in favor of the Lannisters. George Martin is writing a character piece about the Starks and how they survive, and the show was never going to stick the landing when they fundamentally didn’t understand that.

I’m not the first to point this out, but man did it really bother me this episode. D&D really could’ve phoned in 95% of this story and just shown up to love the Starks and everyone would’ve been at least satisfied, and they just couldn’t do it. So many years of bad writing and idiot plots and plain stupidity hasn’t lost Game of Thrones hardly any fans, because the ones they had were deeply invested in the characters GRRM had created and were willing to overlook just about everything to see those characters have some sort of conclusion. That’s why their entire audience has turned against them now - they didn’t care about the Starks for 8 seasons, and GRRM’s ending required the audience and the writers care deeply for Jon, Sansa, Arya, and Bran.

For all of GRRM’s talk about wanting to break his reader’s hearts, and D&D’s version of his story as this GrimDark nightmare, GRRM’s story has a real, emotional heart to it. People debate whether it was a fantasy story with the false premise of a political period piece, or a political story with a touch of fantasy intrigue - but the truth is, this story is and always has been a character piece centered around the Starks and how they survive and rebuild after family tragedy. In number of povs and chapters, they literally overwhelm the series. Jon, Sansa, Arya, Bran, and Catelyn all are in the top povs as well as Ned, who is still competitive despite being in exactly 1 book of the series. Having the Starks as the center of the story, the point in which almost all the action revolves, is what grounds all of Martin’s series even as his povs reach 30+. Martin was being very serious when he said Arya, Sansa, and Bran were the heart of his series. You need them because they make it worth it.

So let’s break down how D&D ripped the heart out of asoiaf’s chest. The biggest problem the show had was something book readers have known for a long time, but didn’t fully realize until Sunday night: The Bran Problem. GRRM has stated multiple times that Bran is his hero, yet the show has never had any interest in his story. They made an entirely random decision not to include flashbacks or dream sequences, which immediately cuts out about half of Bran’s content. But not only did they take away his magical importance, they also stole his political importance. Bran was Robb Stark’s heir, Lord of Winterfell and first in line to be the King in the North. Yet they took Bran’s story away from him and gave the focus to Theon Greyjoy, a character more appealing to the tastes of David Benioff and Dan Weiss. So we never got to see the King of the Six (should be eight but whatever I’m just dying inside) Kingdoms acting in any leadership capacity. And, last but certainly not least, D&D took all emotion from Bran. And no, I don’t mean when he came back from beyond the wall a husk of a person. That was awful, but the damage was done seasons before. If you’ve read the books, you’ll know and love Bran Stark because this is who he is:

He sent sweets to Hodor and Old Nan as well, for no reason but he loved them

Bran was a sweet boy. Everyone loved him

The roots of the trees grow deep, and under the ground the Kings of Winter sit their thrones. So long as those remained, Winterfell remained. It was not dead, just broken. Like me, he thought, I'm not dead either

Old stories are like old friends, she used to say. You have to visit them from time to time

He is a sweet boy, quick to laugh, easy to love

Bran has always represented happiness and people coming together in GRRM’s story. Ned wants to bring him to King’s Landing because he’s universally loved and will ease the conflict between Joffrey and Robb, and just the thought of him being alive makes Jon bury his ego and reach out to his Night’s Watch Brothers. He is Meera’s little Prince, someone that Howland Reed’s children are willing to go beyond the wall and die for. He accepts food on the road beyond the Wall, and promises he’ll repay his debt many times over. He’s the boy who looks back into the past and just wants to see his dad again; who reaches out to save Theon, even when Theon took everything from him. He is Eddard Stark’s son, soft and kind and loving, brave when he is afraid, loyal and honorable, and he is a good person. He’s young, but he is fit to be a King one day.

But no, D&D didn’t stop at Bran. Let’s talk about Arya Stark, and the little girl who never was. Was there ever a character more suited to D&D’s tastes than a little murder girl hellbent on revenging her family’s killers? But was there ever a character further from Arya Stark? She is nine years old when Ser Ilyn takes her father’s head, of course she is brash and reckless and childish, wanting to avenge him. But she is all of those things because she is still a kid. Below the surface, she is very scared and very hurt. Unlike the show’s version of Arya, who is upset Joffrey died because she couldn’t do it herself, the Arya of the books has a realization that Joffrey dying means nothing because she’ll never get Robb back. Arya isn’t turning into an assassin because it would be cool, she’s running away as far as she can.

You can watch the season finale of Game of Thrones s4, and be right in concluding that Arya Stark leaves The Hound for dead in a ruthless move of brutality as she goes to pursue her dreams of being an assassin. Now read the end of A Storm of Swords, and you’ll find an Arya who refuses to let Sandor take a piece of her no matter how he abuses her, and goes to Braavos because she is so afraid that no one could love her anymore - and most of all she leaves because with Winterfell sacked and held by the Boltons, she genuinely thinks she has lost her home. Arya doesn’t make a well-adjusted decision to leave Westeros, she’s trying to keep her head above water before she drowns in grief. Disassociating from her pack is the only way she can cope with the unbearable amount of loss she has suffered, especially at such a young age. But GRRM’s version of Arya is fierce, brave, loyal, loving, and above all she loves her family.

Then there is Sansa, the most empathetic character in GRRM’s whole world. The unfailing hope and kindness in which she views the world are her defining character traits; she echoes GRRM’s own worldview, one where you can see the good and the bad in everyone, and choose to forgive - and if not that, still refuse to be cruel in kind. Sansa is the only one who looks at Sandor Clegane, looks at the ruin fire made of his face, and see that his eyes are why he’s so ugly - and then reach out to show him mercy. The girl who was beaten everyday of her time in King’s Landing, and still mourned Joffrey because he was a person and he died and she understood that it was still awful. She wishes knights who literally beat her bloody would fall off their horse, then feels bad and ashamed when they do. Sansa Stark is kind above all.

And the show took this character and made her cold. They tried to make her Littlefinger. Surprise! Nobody cares about the emotional well being and happiness of Petyr Baelish for a reason. Thankfully Bryan Cogman was there to run interference between Sansa and D&D, so she wasn’t fully the Ice Queen D&D wanted her to be, but goddamn how do you take Sansa “if I am ever Queen, I’ll make them love me” Stark and make her cold?!

The biggest problem with stripping the Stark kids individually of their emotions, is that they can no longer exist as the family GRRM created them to be. Without Arya, Bran, and Sansa’s emotional arcs, everything becomes meaningless. Who cares that Ramsay Bolton is the one to rebuild Winterfell in the show? Certainly not an audience that hasn’t been told to care.

You’ll notice a trend in the type of chapters that D&D decided not to adapt into Game of Thrones; think of all the chapters that are the emotional heart of GRRM’s story. Not the shocking character deaths, or dragons, or plot twists. The moments of intimacy between GRRM, his character, and you as the reader. The moments so small yet so impactful, the lines you remember not because they pushed the plot forward but because they honestly moved you in a way that you felt hope, longing, love? Those chapters are almost always either from Bran, Sansa, or Arya; and are always about their connection to their family. D&D adapted none of them. Here’s three great examples:

Done with Wooden Teeth

When Arya is a serving girl at Harrenhal during A Clash of Kings, it really sucks. Unlike the show, she is not cup bearer to Tywin Lannister; she is just like everyone else: abused, mistreated, underfed, miserable, and uncared for. She’s already at a pretty low moment in life, then the news breaks that Bran and Rickon were murdered by Theon Greyjoy and Winterfell has been sacked. And Arya doesn’t even have someone to grieve with; the one person she tries to tell, Elmar Frey, tells her nobody cares about a serving girl’s brothers when he’s just lost his Princess (the irony...).

The news that her family is dead almost breaks her:

As Arya crossed the yard to the bathhouse, she spied a raven circling down toward the rookery, and wondered where it had come from and what message it carried. Might be it’s from Robb, come to say it wasn’t true about Bran and Rickon. She chewed on her lip, hoping. If I had wings I could fly back to Winterfell and see for myself. And if it was true, I’d just fly away, fly up past the moon and the shining stars, and see all the things in Old Nan’s stories, dragons and sea monsters and the Titan of Braavos, and maybe I wouldn’t ever fly back

This is Arya giving up. Everything she’s done in this book so far has been to get back to Winterfell, or to Jon at the Wall. Her making the decision to fly away (which she’ll follow through on in A Storm of Swords) is a defeat, the acceptance that she’ll never get her family back.

If the chapter had ended here (it doesn’t), D&D still would’ve gutted it, because no Stark gets to react to Bran and Rickon’s death in the show. Not even a minute of screentime given to the Heir to the North and his brother dying; not a moment where their family can grieve the tremendous loss.

But Arya is a Stark, so before she gives up on her identity, she visits the Godswood:

“Tell me what to do, you gods,” she prayed.

For a long moment there was no sound but the wind and the water and the creak of leaf and limb. And then, far far off, beyond the godswood and the haunted towers and the immense stone walls of Harrenhal, from somewhere out in the world, came the long lonely howl of a wolf

The Godswood is very important to the Starks for a couple different reasons. First, only the men of the North worship the Old Gods, and the trees is the connection they have to them. The Old Gods were who Ned went to for guidance, and every single Stark has huge moments of understanding in front of a Godswood (none of which made it into the show...). But, more specific to the Starks as a family, Bran speaks to his family through them and guides them toward home. So even though they don’t understand that Bran is calling to them, the Starks are drawn to the trees for help.

And the trees always answer them. The Starks get a real, physical response when they ask the Godswood for help:

Then, so faintly, it seemed as if she heard her father’s voice. “When the snows fall and the white wind blows, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives,” he said.

“But there is no pack,” she whispered to the weirwood. Bran and Rickon were dead, the Lannisters had Sansa, Jon had gone to the Wall. “I’m not even me now, I’m Nan.”

“You are Arya of Winterfell, daughter of the north. You told me you could be strong. You have the wolf blood in you.”

“The wolf blood.” Arya remembered now. “I’ll be as strong as Robb. I said I would.” She took a deep breath, then lifted the broomstick in both hands and brought it down across her knee. It broke with a loud crack, and she threw the pieces aside. I am a direwolf, and done with wooden teeth.

In her lowest moment, Arya re-finds her strength by remembering she is a Stark, a direwolf who belongs to a pack. The Godswood gives her Ned as comfort, as a reminder of who she is and what she should do. There is an incredible emphasis on family here. It would be impossible to adapt this chapter unless the writers and audience fully understood just how committed to each other the Starks are - which is why they didn’t adapt it.

I’m Not Dead Either

When Bran finally leaves the crypts at the end of A Clash of Kings, he’s close to giving up on himself entirely. He spent three days inside Summer, and returning to the body he views as broken (”Bran the Broken” is something he calls himself when he feels upset, not the monikor he’d give himself as King) is really hard for him. And when he finally leaves the crypts, he comes out to a Winterfell that has been destroyed; Ramsay has set the place ablaze and killed everyone. Bran knows Ser Rodrik is dead and Maester Luwin is soon to be as well. He looks around him and sees all this destruction, all he smells is fire or blood. But one thing in Winterfell stands unharmed; Summer takes off running for the Godswood:

The air was sweeter under the trees. A few pines along the edge of the wood had been scorched, but deeper in the damp soil and green wood had defeated the flames. “There is a power in living wood,” said Jojen Reed, almost as if he knew what Bran was thinking, “a power strong as fire.”

After Bran says goodbye to Maester Luwin, and him and Rickon part ways with no idea where either is heading, Bran has one last moment to look on Winterfell and find hope:

Beyond, the tops of the keeps and towers still stood as they had for hundreds of years, and it was hard to tell that the castle had been sacked and burned at all. The stone is strong, Bran told himself, the roots of the trees go deep, and under the ground the Kings of Winter sit their thrones. So long as those remained, Winterfell remained. It was not dead, just broken. Like me, he thought, I’m not dead either.

Bran looks back at Winterfell, and because he’s able to see the unharmed Godswood and the Kings of Winter still seated on their thrones, he can understand it’s not dead, just like him. Again, a Stark is drawing strength from their connection to each other, and through a Godswood.

I Am Stronger Within the Walls of Winterfell

This next one, you’re probably thinking “but the show did adapt Sansa’s snow castle chapter”, and I’m here to tell you they didn’t. I could write an entire book on how that scene is the perfect example of how adaptations fail; they *technically* adapted it, with pretty much the same events, but it was completely stripped of its emotional impact and narrative importance. It is the perfect microcosm of why Game of Thrones was a bad adaptation of A Song of Ice and Fire, as well as how D&D consistently missed the emotional beats the Starks were supposed to have.

The show’s version of this chapter somehow centers it around Littlefinger, while simultaneously underselling the fact that Lysa killed Jon Arryn (they sandwiched this episode and scene between Tyrion’s trial and Oberyn’s death, when this chapter ends A Storm of Swords. All of the climaxes in that book, and GRRM saved this one for last). The end product is a rather forgettable scene that most people overlook.

In the book, this chapter is everything. It is the best chapter in asoiaf, and the best writing of anything ever. Period. And it’s a chapter centered around Sansa’s relationship to her home, to Winterfell. Unlike the very small castle of the show, Sansa spends hours building a castle big enough that she can step inside and continue building details. The fact that she can stay outside for hours, while several onlookers get too cold and go back inside, is a reminder that she is a Stark.

And this chapter is centered around a Godswood. The tree never took root, because the Eyrie is too high for weirwoods, but the courtyard Sansa’s in was meant to be a Godswood. And since she doesn’t have a real one, Sansa builds her own inside her snowy Winterfell.

Being up in the mountains is also the first time Sansa’s seen true snow since she said goodbye to Robb in Winterfell, and just the thought of it makes her dream of home and of memories with Bran and Arya. She wakes up having dreamed of home, and thinks she’s sleeping next to her sister until she wakes up enough to realize she’s not in Winterfell.

When Sansa’s alone with no real connection to home, she finds the closest thing to Winterfell (the failed Godswood) and builds her own. She literally gains strength from it:

She wondered where this courage had come from, to speak to him so frankly. From Winterfell, she thought. I am stronger within the walls of Winterfell.

Her home and her family give her strength to stand up to her abuser, just as Arya was able to escape the abuse of Harrenhal and Bran escaped the Boltons.

There is way more than these three instances, but these are the best examples of D&D failing to adapt the Starks as a pack, or as individuals with feelings. Of course the ending didn’t feel right emotionally, because we had no explanation for what emotions led our Starks to their destinies.

I’ll probably make a post specifically about this in a couple days or weeks, but I can see GRRM’s ending stuck within D&D’s sloppy rush to the end:

The first time Arya leaves Westeros, she leaves because she thinks all her family is dead or taken, and that Winterfell is gone forever. At the end, she’ll leave because she is sure her family loves her, and that she has a room in Winterfell whenever she wants to visit Good Queen Sansa. Arya is also fast to make friends of all different people, and would start her own pack of rogues as she travels the world.

Sansa won’t be alone because she, like Arya, is good at finding her own pack. (And GRRM has built his world out so extensively, it’s honestly a joke to think we could be in a crowded room and recognize no one). Sansa’s friends are her people. She throws feasts constantly, and like Ned, always has a seat at the High Table for the small folk. She has many ladies in waiting, true friends of hers that help her write songs and stories, and sew dresses. She is a good and kind Queen, and visits the Wall constantly as she helps the Lord Commander resettle the Gift.

King Bran the Wise (or ya know, just not broken) rules from his Weirwood Throne on the Isle of Faces, at the heart of his kingdom. After Daenerys burns King’s Landing, he moves the capital since The Red Keep was a monument to Aegon’s Conquest - a symbol of tyranny King Bran is trying to move forward from. He fills his council with highborn and lowborn alike. He constantly talks to his siblings; Sansa waits for him at the Godswood, and Arya and Jon see him through Ghost and Nymeria.

Just because they’re far in distance, doesn’t mean they aren’t a pack. They all know the others are safe, and that they’ll see see each other soon. GRRM will invest the right amount of time explaining the emotional beats of this ending to make it feel right. He cares so much about the Starks. He wrote them a whole epic fantasy because he saw Bran finding pups in the snow. He loves them more than we do, guys.

The Starks are the Giants!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

#game of thrones #Sansa Stark #Arya Stark #bran stark #asoiaf meta #if you're wondering why Jon wasn't included #it's because that boy was a whole mess #needs his own post to explain the unique injustice that was done to him

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