Mini rant from Discord

I concur.

Within fantasy/high fantasy etc. there seems to be a difficulty surrounding a) complex characters and b) having multiple characters of considerable merit—at least in television/movies, but there’s a particular, like, trope/character type set up anyways. With a story like ASoIaF, you have multiple incredibly capable, relatively or incredibly magical characters with complex backstories, personalities, desires and numerous abilities—plus a fuckton of potential.

As someone who treasures book!Jon and his abilities and how he’s growing into what could be an amazing man for Westeros as a whole, I have to say that they wrote show!Jon into a major corner with all of his bullshit, injecting him into storylines etc. He’s bland. There’s no rage, no fire, no wit to make you root from him outside of the generic dragon-and-wolf R+L=J shit. He’s not interesting outside of the OPness of his ancestry and the fact that he’s the King In The North.

Now compare that to Arya, especially book!Arya and the aspects of show!Arya that we can accept/admire. She’s the tough, spunky kid who’s lost af and even with her inherited abilities and privileges, she gets places on her own by her own strength.

Then add on time constraints, the condensing of a wild, long story, largely inept writers, and you get cheap cut-outs of what could be. They had to dumb down certain characters to fit a sort of style and purpose. Arya is a borderline Deus Ex Machina, I think, designed to kill certain people to brush them out of the plot/tie up loose ends and shock the audience while also just using her since she’s popular.

It’s unfortunate since the whole warg aspect of the Stark bloodline and how it influenced Arya’s journey and bolstered her is so amazing to read. She’s so in touch with her heritage and she’s so passionate about her home no matter the circumstances.

I wholeheartedly agree Stran. The show has many, many  failings as many of us are aware of.
Book!Arya was enchanting because of her struggles and her efforts to overcome them went down an incredibly dark path the same with book!Jon, both engaging characters cheapened to plot devices.

It was disheartening to see an ability that has such potential just so carelessly pushed to the wayside.

I barely know how to post let alone how to change my avatar xD that’s the standard one. I’ll put up my Harold and the Purple Crayon when I’m not on mobile.