3 Problems with season 6 finale

I think they care about the books, but I think they're telling a slightly different story. One thats following the expected story line but doesn't reveal GRRMs biggest twists.

WTF!? Really?

From the article:

Perhaps, if every episode is loaded with plot progress and nothing but. The time for filler scenes like the one in which Tyrion is telling jokes to Grey Worm... purely to kill minutes, apparently... is over.

The same is obviously even truer for the books, but based on the sample chapters I've seen, GRRM doesn't yet realize it, nor the consequences of it. This reminds me of his account from January in which as late as August, he still thought he could finish TWOW by Dec 31., but as we now know, that was wildly, even ludicrously, optimistic. He couldn't do it, and I'm not sure he can tell half the remaining story in one book, either.

This is easily solved in the obvious and expected way, in both books and show. They're going to feel a lot more meaningful when the Wall falls and Westeros as an entire continent is threatened.

This can't be solved on the show because of the hilariously incorrect angle D&D took on their origin, but I don't think it's particularly problematic because the show audience doesn't particularly care about or want human complexity from them. It wants them to serve merely to provide the conflict by which human nature and interests are revealed... like the zombies on The Walking Dead.

Certainly. D&D are not very good at storytelling compared to GRRM and if you force them to do it, because there's no new canon, things will decline.

The huge majority of the show audience doesn't care about the books, no.

D&D, IMO, don't know the major mysteries yet to be revealed in the books, and so are simply guessing along lines suggested by the books, as the fans have done before them. I don't think they really know or care much about fan theories except for RLJ.

For instance, the origin of the White Walkers provided on the show (Craster provides babies that are transformed into more White Walkers) is directly inspired by the flat statement of Craster's infamous "wife on the left" that the Others are Craster's sons. The idea that the CotF originally created the White Walkers is directly suggested by the creepy imagery GRRM shrouded them in, in ADWD, via obvious measures such as packing the cave with skulls and the throat-cutting weirwood vision. If D&D leaped to obvious conclusions on that canonical basis, and have no idea what fan theories are, I wouldn't be the least surprised.

But I think they will be, should they read the next two books...

Quite true. What I mean by that though (which I'll acknowledge was badly expressed) was the comment of them having time to correct the problems. I don't see much reason to delay production until winter when they've been shooting winterish scenes for 6 years now without a problem. Rather I think they're* waiting to see if WoW comes out so they can source some more material.

And I agree, if they're* going to put fan theories into their show, of course the end product will be predictable. OTOH, these guys are film writers (well one wrote a novel no one read) so just like a film, things will be predictable. And increasingly GoT is feeling more a more like a film with rather long intermissions.

*see that's how you use that word correctly

An image from Bran's ToJ visions of Ned's bloody hand

Under the old English forest laws, bloody hand was one of the four kinds of trespasses in the royal forest, by which the offender, being apprehended and found with his hands or other body part stained with blood, is judged to have killed the deer, even though he was not found hunting or chasing. - wikipedia

nfs.sparknotes.com/macbeth/page_100.html

"The leaders of this war have the blood of many thousands of people on their hands."

Supposedly Lyanna's.  This is a screen shot from the bloody bed scene.  But now I'm suspicious and I wonder if it's Robert's blood.