WHERE ARE MY DRAGONS??!!!!!

So, back to the associated question and other worst moments.

The brothel scenes need mention here. Many will think of "play with her arse" in S1E07 but I didn't mind that one because it was used to cover the most insightful exposition by Littlefinger, telling his game and his motives. Yes, it was overdone, but it felt like it was on purpose, to distract viewers from the real stuff they were hearing at the same time. That made it deviously justified.

What was indeed a lesser moment was its comeback in S2E01, with Ros repeating just the same to another prostitute.
"Do you have any idea how ridiculous you sound?"


At this point, it felt unnecessary and was topped by the next brothel scene, in S2E02, with Littlefinger peeking through a hole, watching his customers. That had no added value whatsoever, we could have just as well gone to grieving Ros immediately and I worried about the series getting worse at this point.



Fortunately, it stopped there and the series did not fall into some soft porn excuse for… I don't really know who should have been the target for that, really. In the age of free porn on the Internet, I did not understand the point of this attempt at titillation. When Caligula was made in 1979, that was something else but by 2012, no, I'm afraid I didn't get it. Filler.

By comparison, Theon shagging the captain's daughter on the ship was not filler. It exposed Theon the best way possible.

Another bad moment in S2 was the shadow monster. I never liked the fantasy part of the story so when magic killers started appearing to resolve plot points, I feared the absolute worst. What was up next? Gandalf? Fortunately, that stopped too.

Romans were good to lions. Barbarians turned Christians the very moment no one was looking. Choosing sides wasn't exactly difficult 

I like Ros and showing her rise was a good thing. I took issue at the need to show casual intercourse and prostitute training for the sake of it.
I feel the same about explicit depictions of violence. Both display an artificial attempt at appearing "adult" to come on top of the competition. Such scenes are equivalent to a plump advert saying "this is HBO and you don't get this from others".

To butthurt book wankers, anything done by the showrunners must be nonsense, even a straight "A = A" statement. That's their level of stupidity.
Then they regularly go mad about their beloved characters not being portrayed as they wish and it's mostly Stannis, whom they fail to see as just another of the disposable pieces the story has on offer.

That scene was to say that reality trumps fantasies, that knowledge is not power, no matter how much knowledgeable underdogs want it to be.
It was the first part of the power riddle which Varys gives Tyrion a couple of episodes later. "Power resides where people believe it resides". Varys is right and Tywin, for once, was wrong when he asked Tyrion if he believed that a crown gives power. It does, that's why people created them or any other power symbols, to feed the belief that makes power real.

Stannis: "You think a few bolts of cloth will make you King?"
Renly: "No. The men holding those bolts of cloth will make me King."

Renly says it, just like Cersei, these men following him are power and Stannis' belief in a fantasy is not.

It seems that "ridiculous scene" book wankers don't understand was part of a larger whole. I won't disagree with Littlefinger's behaviour being out of character in it, it didn't fit his otherwise more cautious demeanour. That was sacrificed to the overarching point.

Littlefinger, like Varys, was always a second row character never meant to reach main significance. Their death or survival are side events. Their purpose is to work as archetypes, shape the plot and be milestones in the arc of main characters, so Littlefinger is to Sansa what Varys is to Tyrion. Littlefinger is free chaos, Varys is compulsive order. D&D knew that. They likely knew from the start who was to make it to the end and who not or they were told the hierarchies by GRRM. They knew Stannis would be a loser, knew Rickon would remain a footnote, knew Hodor had to be made some sort of silent fan favourite for the sake of a big twist, knew Davos would survive to be Jon's enabler.

I wonder if Varys will die. I gathered it was hinted at his questioning Daenerys in S7. Maybe he'll be the eye opener, the one who calls to abandon ship after finding out that the lizard bitch is not "good for the realm" after all. It will be nonsense since he has been planning with a disruptive invasion from the start, but at this point it might as well be shoved down the audience's throat and most of it won't even notice.

Criticism of people and wildly unverifiable assumptions about their motives or abilities are the most common thing you'll see and it will come from the most common part of the audience. I don't know who said that famous thing, but it fully applies here too: "Great Minds Discuss Ideas; Average Minds Discuss Events; Small Minds Discuss People".

So you'll get a lot of "D&D can't do it" or "D&D like this and want that" from the little minds who get it all wrong instead of attempts at explaining what is bad and why. To book worshippers, different is often the only reason they'll need. I have found the show preferable to the books in many occasions and am quite happy they changed characters the way they did, even if I regret the turn they took after Season 5. I have no intention to watch the final season but I will still look for the overall outcome and the potential "ideas" in it, because I am pretty sure there will be food for discussion in there, intended or not.

Most are fools. Deviations improved the show from the juvenile fantasy crap it was taken from starting in the very first season. The quality drop in later seasons results from conscious adaptation to a mass audience, not to simply being deviations, as purist dumbfucks want to believe.

No text walls for me, I'll just say one word: Dorne.

That is all.