#not the actual real happy ending

[blitheringmcgonagall]

The Very End

31st July 1980

“He looks just like you, sweetie,” Lily said, beaming up at James with a look of pure joy.

James stared again – at Harry’s tiny hands, at his surprising amount of black hair, at the shape of his forehead, at his tiny, cute lips. He rubbed his wet cheeks with the back of his hand.

“He’s far cuter,” he sighed, placing his hands on either side of her shoulders, tenderly kissing the top of her head again, like he couldn’t quite believe she was safe.

“He’s gorgeous,” she whispered, holding Harry against her chest, still in a daze.

“I love you both so much, I can’t find enough words…” James said, as though annoyed at himself, and using the front of his T-shirt to wipe his eyes.

“You don’t need to, James,” Lily said.

It didn’t matter that she was more drained than she had ever felt in her life, that she felt worse than she did coming back from Order missions that went awry. Harry was the sweetest thing she had ever seen, and he was their baby. She hadn’t known it was possible to feel such overwhelming love for someone she had just met.

September 1981

“Prongs? Prongs! Pick up your mirror! It’s me. Fuck, Merlin, fuck! I can't... I don't… fuck!"

“Merlin, Pads, calm down! Are you alright? You look like shit. What happened?”

“I think Remus is the spy... fuck! Remus is the spy, I know he is!”

“Don’t be daft.”

“This isn’t a joke, Prongs!”

“Are you out of your mind, Sirius?”

“Don’t get angry, Prongs, I swear it’s the truth.”

“Don’t you dare accuse Moony of-“

“The only people who knew about the Prewetts’ mission were-“

“Fuck off, I’m not listening to your bullshit! Get some sleep, you look exhausted, old chap.”

“I swear to you-“

“And eat something, damn it! And apologise to Moony!”

October 1981

“Pettigrew, you are aware of the concept of a sell-by date?”

“My Lord?”

“Shall I spell it out for my Gryffindor spy? If fresh fruit isn’t consumed by a certain time, it rots and is thrown away.”

“M-my Lord?”

“Find me the Potters, or else!”

🎃🎃🎃🎃

“Prongs! Thank Merlin you picked up! I’m not risking using the mirrors again after today, they have spies everywhere, I feel like someone is watching us right now. I need to be quick!”

“Padfoot, I’m worried about you, you don't sound-“

“Listen to me! I’ve done more research on the Fidelius Charm. If I die, the protection dies with me. We need a back-up plan! They’ll come for me anyway, they’ll presume it’s me, and when they do-”

“Fucking bloody fucking -“

“Shut up and listen! And when they do, they won’t realise I wasn’t the Secret Keeper. You’ll still be safe, a double layer of protection. We need to swap. We need to make Peter the Secret Keeper!”

🎃🎃🎃🎃

“Sirius, we need to talk,” Remus said.

Sirius remained seated, his haunted eyes looking up at him devoid of happiness.

“Yes, we do,” he answered eventually, reluctantly.

“Sirius, I can’t keep doing this, sharing a flat with you knowing that you believe me to be a traitor, that I’m working for Voldemort,” Remus’ voice shook.

Sirius pressed his lips together tightly.

“What do you want me to do?” Sirius said after a long pause.

“I can’t live like this,” Remus said.

There were tears in his eyes and Sirius couldn’t stand it, couldn’t stand the part of him that longed to hold Remus tight and believe everything he said.

“What do you want me to do?” Sirius said.

“I… please, Sirius, you must know I would never,” Remus’ voice sounded like he was panicking.

He couldn’t keep doing this, throwing more and more complicated wards around the flat and then lying in bed wondering would Remus let Bellatrix in, or would he be found one day, murdered by his ex-lover in his sleep. It was slowly driving him insane.

“You’re right, we can’t live like this any longer,” Sirius said quietly, digging his nails into his hands to stop him falling apart.

“Sirius, please,” Remus said. “I can explain, I’m not supposed to, but I’ll tell you everything…”

Not so long ago he would have fallen for whatever falsehoods Remus told him, anything to persuade himself that Remus was on their side.

“Don’t bother!” he said, standing up, afraid to even let Remus start to speak, in case he fell for his elaborate stories.

Hadn’t they marvelled for years at how Remus always managed to get away with pranks, the only one never to get caught?

“I don’t want to hear your lies!” he said, trying desperately to keep his voice hard.

“Sirius, you’re not yourself,” Remus whispered.

His halting voice sounding kind, how could it sound so kind, despite Sirius’ words?

“Don’t!” Sirius couldn’t keep the panic out of his own tone. “Don’t try to manipulate me. Get out!”

Remus seemed stunned now. As though he genuinely hadn’t expected this. How?

Remus nodded dumbly and started walking slowly towards his room. Where was Remus going to go? He couldn’t afford to rent anywhere, would the bastard Death – Eaters give him a place to stay, a proper place, or shove him in some hovel and –

“Wait! I’m leaving,” he called out after Remus.

Remus turned around slowly, as though composing himself.

“Pardon?” he whispered.

“I’m going, I can’t stand this place since Prongs left, since Wormy left, it’s not home, I’ll find somewhere else,” he said, throwing on his leather jacket.

“Pardon? Pad- Sirius, I can’t stay here by myself, you know I can’t afford to pay for this,” Remus said, looking at him in utter confusion.

“I don’t want your money, Merlin, fuck!” Sirius said heatedly. “I just don’t want… just stay here… so Moody can keep an eye on you!”

“What will you…?” Remus still looked lost.

“I don’t give a flying fuck what happens to me, Remus,” Sirius said, striding towards James and Lily’s old room and throwing a few of his clothes haphazardly into his black backpack.

“Sirius! Where will you go?” Remus said, and he could see the concerned expression, the worried frown.

He had to get out or he would cave.

“It doesn’t concern you any longer, Lupin,” he said, his throat closing as he tried to speak.

He watched Remus swallow.

“I won’t stop fighting Voldemort or his men, you can tell them that,” he said. “My own miserable life may be falling apart, but I never deserved any better, and that doesn’t matter, not in the greater scheme of things. The show must go on.”

“Seren1,” Remus took one step forward, looking as though he might burst into tears.

“Fuck off, Lupin, leave me alone!” Sirius gasped, frightened at his own weakness, his lack of willpower.

31st October 1981

“Marvellous news, Wormtail,” Voldemort says, griping Peter’s shoulder and causing the small man to nearly faint with shock. “I haven’t felt this elated since I can’t remember when!”

Voldemort looks positively radiant, and Peter…

Keep reading

[cairafea]

On the idea of Theseus's Ship: in the end, it's still his, isn't it? It was known as Theseus's, and it will continue to be known as Theseus's.

Even after he has returned to the ground which grew the wood of the hammer used to nail the ship's frame, Even after generations of new wood have rotted and the sails are rags clinging to threads, Even after millennia,

it will still be Theseus's Ship.

Thank you for bringing us home.

Goodnight, Phosphophyllite.

[surreal-duck]

live drama adaptations part 2 (prev)

cast reveal and girls movie night 🔥

[lunarharp]

more kitchen vibes. + they made their neopets faeriesonas.

[faelapis]

i feel like i'm in at a lonely table for one here... but i don't want any SU continuity to be a prequel. and i think some people who want a prequel, haven't really thought through what that would look like.

either a war prequel or a rose quartz prequel would end up as a huge downer. the steven/post-steven era is the only one that has any HOPE for the vast majority of the characters.

idk. i feel like if you really want flashbacks, there's nothing STOPPING a post-SU future series (whether an anthology series or a new main character) from having flashbacks. maybe pearl's the main character for an episode, and its mostly her telling old war stories. maybe bismuth and garnet finally have that beta raid flashback.

but if you set it in the past, definitively, then its going to be a bummer. because all the characters end up corrupted, shattered, deeply traumatized, or fleeing to homeworld. nobody feels like a winner right after the war. not a single character.

most gems are only beginning to heal from it now.

SU, thematically, has always focused on the possibility of hope and change. that's only possible in the future, not the past.

you want lore? you can have that in an anthology or post-future series. there is nothing stopping peridot or the diamonds from having a "explaining gem origins and religion" ep. you want action sequences? again, pearl can narrative war flashbacks, or we can even set an anthology episode in the past proper. or have a new conflict!

personally, i don't see a reason to set it only in the past. that's just an unnecessary limit on the stories you're able to tell.

[genericpuff]

man i really loved the new FP episode

[yume-fanfare]

day 7 of torikasa week is future! what will they do after graduation?

[impommyyawl]

Hi guys haven’t posted in 2 years but i’m back for the official ending of Boku no hero academia.

Happy tears, sad tears

This was such a journey and while i will keep posting fics im so sad that there will be no more manga updates.

Or maybe they will continue the story in another manga and i can just forget i made this post.

Anyways to celebrate the ending and hopefully new beginning I went through the twitter and found all my favorite fanarts and official arts and i’m going to share it with all of you.

Most of these arts have the creators watermarks but the ones that don’t I found almost everything on the tag #ThankyouKoheiHorikoshi on twitter so go there and support these artist. They put there soul into their work and it all came out so beautifully.

Thank you Kohei Horikoshi for the most beautiful work of art i’ve ever read. I will never forget your story and the way you made fictional characters become so important in my life even if it was for a short time.

live laugh love My Hero Academia

[booksandmore]

i really would not change a single thing about the malec plotline (breakup and all) but sometimes i really do wish we got to see alec date at least one other person yk? and i dont mean that in a pre-cog focing himself to date a woman to hide his sexuality way, i mean in a post-breakup rebound/fling kinda way like i just know the drama would be legendary

[fallen-mario-bros-au]

Aight just a warning I'm pretty new to Tumblr and I'm DEFINITELY new to making AUs so I'm pretty nervous to post anything here but I figured I'd just rip the band-aid off.

FIRST POST HYPE!! :D

Anyways I love Mario and I love Undertale and I NEEDED TO COMBINE THEM LEGALLY so I decided to make an au about it! Dunno if I'm actually going to do anything serious with this, I mostly just want to imagine cute shenanigans with my favorite characters and whatnot, but who knows? Maybe I'll actually try to give this a proper plot

So here's the basic info:

- Mario and Luigi, in the midst of trying to chase down Bowser, who has just kidnapped the princess again, somehow wind up far away from the Mushroom Kingdom and on Mt. Ebott. Where, of course, they fall into the underground.

- All the monsters are pretty much their canon counterparts (at least, my best interpretation of them ����)

- Mario ends up discovering he has the power to reset/load/save/etc, but Luigi does not. This is because Mario has the most determination to get out of here and save the princess

- Toriel isn't quite as overprotective of them as she would be if they were a literal child like Frisk, but she is still very motherly towards them because it's just kinda who she is. She would probably be concerned about them potentially attacking the monsters so she might make them promise not to hurt anyone. I still don't think she would want them to leave because Asgore would take their souls

- Honestly mostly this is just an excuse for the Mario Bros and the Skelebros to hang out XD

- the thing that is really interesting is that Mario and Luigi are not 1, but 2 humans, which means only one of their souls would be needed to break the barrier. This ends up becoming a real issue but I could see it being resolved in a few ways.

1. one of the bros self sacrifices so the underground goes free (much to the dismay of the other, and also my heart would break haha)

2. They decide to just stay in the underground instead of going home (but they would be pretty sad about it because oh no their kingdom is still in danger

3. ??? IDK tbh

- Since Mario can load saves, he's just constantly in this angsty cycle of trying to keep his bro from getting killed off ;;

- Not sure if Mario could keep the resets secret for long since Flowey would taunt them about it, but he definitely would be pretty closed off about it, especially to Luigi. He does NOT want Luigi to know about the horrible things he's seen

-ofc cut to Luigi being confused as heck as to why Mario seems to already know what's going to happen.

- they have cute sweaters because I said so

- not sure how omega fight would work, but either way Mario would have to fight to save both of them (probably all by himself :c)

- I want them to eventually do true pacifist but IDK how it would work so I'm not gonna think about it too hard rn

- Mario and Undyne having a friendly rivalry about who's the most heroic

- sans trying to convince them they could just stay in the underground and they're like "no we have to save the tiny mushroom people" and he's like "ur just like my bro fr"

- monster speculation about the purpose of mustaches

- It would be kinda funny if they had the firebrand and thunderhand since... Like... Humans aren't supposed to be able to do magic

- "are you sure you're humans? You're so small"

- *confused Italian noises*

Also here's some assorted doodles (I know the quality sucks 😭)

[zukkacore]

Something about a Pygmalion take on Jaceporter is so appealing to me… in that way that Porter reveres power and domination… the tension between his desire to seek out and keep a Jace as a perfect spineless compliant lackey vs a need to remake Jace in the image of someone who is powerful and dominant and assertive. Jace that is complacent and cowardly and passive is a Jace he can use and control but never respect, and he loves what that Jace can do FOR him. But as Jace is transformed by rage, a Jace who is furious and oppositional and autonomous and actualized and powerful and is able to stand in the face of Porter and tell him he cannot stay even if it means death is a Jace he can respect and maybe even admire but no longer control. In the same way Henry Higgins cannot truly make a Lady until she has outgrown him, (“Eliza you’re magnificent. 5 minutes ago you were a millstone around my neck and now you’re a tower of strength. A consort battleship. I like you this way Eliza” “goodbye professor Higgins”). Because conflict is at the heart of war, Porter cannot truly anoint a Saint of the God of War until Jace has outgrown him.

[vanmarkus]

Tease Tidbit Tuesday 🩹

heey~ guess what? today i was tinkering with one of my many messy little bucktommy wips and since it's been quite a while since i managed to write anything coherent, i thought i'd share a little snippet.

Something was off and Buck couldn’t quite pinpoint what exactly… for a moment, he thought it was just his own jitters, until Tommy finally, graciously ended the suspense and dropped the metaphorical bomb, just as Buck stuffed the first few bites into his mouth to try and distract himself. After that, not much of his appetite was hanging around. “So, this was on Tuesday?” He asked, trying to keep his tone even, but only marginally managing to keep the tension from bubbling over. “Yes.” “And I’m only hearing about this now because…” “Because I didn’t wanna tell you over the phone.” “That’s fair.” Buck huffed, uneasy. “He asked if I was interested.” Tommy continued, audibly losing the same battle to keep his voice level and calm that Buck was failing to win himself. “And you said…” Tommy sighed, a light frown between his brows clearly signaling his slowly building frustration. Good, Buck thought, that makes the two of us. “And I said I’d consider it.” “As in?” “As in, I would think about it.” “About moving to Arizona.” Buck clicked his tongue with a sharp pop. “Evan.” “No, no, it’s okay, I-I get it, it’s uh, it's a big deal.” “It is a big deal.” Buck exhaled slowly, only hanging onto his composure by a thin thread. He hated saying those words, but having them repeated back to him? Somehow that felt even worse.

✨I have been tagged by and am tagging the ever so lovely @queerdiazs @spagheddiediaz @jeeyuns @diazsdimples @honestlydarkprincess @watchyourbuck @loveyouanyway @likegoldintheair @evansboyfriend @pirrusstuff and anyone else who feels like sharing consider yourself tagged by me mwuahh 💛

[pancake-shmamcake]

Talking with @thatsafuckeduptale about a UTY au/bad ending where Ceroba succeeds in taking Clover's soul to fuse with Kanako and we get a fucked up fmab style amalgam situation

Starlo is horrified and betrayed that his best friend did such a thing to innocent children. Kanako, whom he probably viewed as a nice, and his new human friend whom he had grown close to as well. He saw the tapes in the house like in pacifist, but he was just too late to get there and stop it from happening

Martlet is furious, Ceroba is inconsolable about the fact she's caused such suffering, to her own child no less, and now there's an unstable, dripping, shambling mass that's always in pain/on the verge of death but can't really die because there's like two human souls worth of determination in there. And Flowey can't reset either because he's not the one with the most DT in the underground anymore.

This is the "everyone is unhappy and fucked up forever" ending

[mephistopheleswasrobbed]

Ahh, I don't want it to be over! But alas, here we are, so let me tell you about all the gay moments in Peaceful Property one last time:

1

We begin the episode with Home and Peach sitting next to each other and saying sentimental things. Framed by a flamingo. Which is literally a symbol of love (because they're pink and monogamous).

Saying your meeting was destiny while looking each other in the eyes lovingly is somehow not the most romantic line in this episode. It comes pretty close, though.

2

Back in the action, Peach is extremely worried about Home, alone with his would-be murderer.

And when evil lawyer mentions the possibility of Home being dead already, Peach loses is completely. (Though, in a parallel that is funny to me, exclusively, he's again held back by two *according to themselves* oh so weak women. Just like in Kan's home when one woman was enough to completely immobilise him. I'm really not sure why Panpang is so insistent that Peach is so much stronger than her)

Peach knows that they don't have enough time to waste it on those useless cops so he sacrifices himself by confessing to a crime he didn't commit, so at least Kan and Pangpang can try to rescue Home. That's some ride or die devotion right there.

3

A found family bond so strong it single-handedly derailed these scooby doo villains' evil plots several times.

4

Pangpang (seen here cosplaying as a ghost pizza) knows that in true romance fashion, Peach must be the one to save Home. (And because we've already established that physical strength can't be the reason, I'm choosing to believe it's the strength of his love for Home that's giving him the advantage.)

So Peach arrives just in time (there's that destiny, that soulmate timing) to prevent Somkid from stabbing Home. And I've previously talked a lot about how much Home has changed because of Peach, but let's take a second to appreciate how much Peach has changed because of Home. He went from hiding behind his little sister at the sight of a ghost, to jumping without hesitation at an armed murderer to save Home.

And once Somkid has been distracted, Home's first priority is, as they always do when there's danger, to go check on and help up Peach.

And then he just keeps holding him while Somkid is busy coming to the realisation that all the evil shit he did was meaningless.

5

There is no way Mr. Real Estate Heir doesn't know how to tie a tie. This is an excuse to share some comfort before the funeral and it is as understandable as it is boyfriend-coded.

6

There's been a lot of Home/Peach doing something the other had previously done, and here's one more:

Just like Home before, Peach also notices immediately when something seems off with Home and wastes no time to go to him and see if he needs to offer help or comfort.

7

And what is the problem? It's, of course, the impending separation that has Home moping over an electric stove cooker thing.

But well, after almost watching Home die, again, Peach has realised he doesn't want to leave. Because even if Home goes back to the US, at least he'll be around the memories they've made together. So Peach decides to stay.

And despite the excuse he comes up with about dialect speaking ghosts, we, and Home, know the real reason.

The "I love you and I don't want to leave you" might be unspoken but Home hears it anyway.

And Home has also finally figured it out.

So he's not leaving either.

And Peach might be a little obtuse about it at first

But Home's real dream has always been to have a family. And he knows he's finally found his. Grandpa knows he's finally found his.

So Home makes it clear to Peach.

And Peach gets it this time.

(Of course, then they immediately have to make a joke out of it because those two might actually be allergic to seriously talking about their feelings for each other. But the message has been recieved, anyway)

8

Their absolutely perfect timing can only be explained by soulmate shenanigans. (also look at him smile)

9

Even the universe is trying to tell them to embrace the gay. With their Cok Long bar turned Cok Long restaurant.

10

The dialogue from the beginning plays again, over shots of their family meal. And with the expression of destiny, the camera focuses in on them. Because while "family" is for all five of them, their "destiny" is just between the two of them. And they look so soft and happy in its glow.

And they look at each other when they laugh, and we leave them to their truly happy ending.

(And maybe one day in the future they will be able to plainly say "I love you" to each other without having to hide it behind five jokes and three metaphors, but until then, they know the truth of it anyway.)

Lesbian Corner

Kan has come to seriously trust and believe in Pangpang. And Pangpang, who felt like a useless burden at the beginning of the show, is made better by it.

And in reverse, Kan, who's been completely serious and focussed on revenge for the last decade, who'd had trouble letting loose and making connections with others even before her father's not-completely-but-in-effect-death, has found in Pangpang someone who can not only make her smile, but make her make jokes to make others smile.

Just like Home and Peach, these two also complement each other. They make up for each others shortcomings and both grow into happier, more well-rounded people through each other.

And with that it's over. Except not quite because I've still got some extra that didn't fit here.

[silverraes]

JEFF SATUR!! GIVE ME FICTIONAL CHARACTER X REAL HUMAN PERSON MURDER HUSBANDS AND MY LIFE IS YOURS!!

[greenerteacups]

oooh please someday tell us what you think of GOT

oh, no, it's my fatal weakness! it's [checks notes] literally just the bare modicum of temptation! okay you got me.

SO. in order to tell what's wrong with game of thrones you kind of have to have read the books, because the books are the reason the show goes off the rails. i actually blame the showrunners relatively little in proportion to GRRM for how bad the show was (which I'm not gonna rehash here because if you're interested in GOT in any capacity you've already seen that horse flogged to death). people debate when GOT "got bad" in terms of writing, but regardless of when you think it dropped off, everyone agrees the quality declined sharply in season 8, and to a certain extent, season 7. these are the seasons that are more or less entirely spun from whole cloth, because season 7 marks the beginning of what will, if we ever see it, be the Winds of Winter storyline. it's the first part that isn't based on a book by George R.R. Martin. it's said that he gave the showrunners plot outlines, but we don't know how detailed they were, or how much the writers diverged from the blueprint — and honestly, considering the cumulative changes made to the story by that point, some stark divergence would have been required. (there's a reason for this. i'll get there in a sec.)

so far, i'm not saying anything all that original. a lot of people recognized how bad the show got as soon as they ran out of Book to adapt. (I think it's kind of weird that they agreed to make a show about an unfinished series in the first place — did GRRM figure that this was his one shot at a really good HBO adaptation, and forego misgivings about his ability to write two full books in however many years it took to adapt? did he think they would wait for him? did he not care that the series would eventually spoil his magnum opus, which he's spent the last three decades of his life writing? perplexing.) but the more interesting question is why the show got bad once it ran out of Book, because in my mind, that's not a given. a lot of great shows depart from the books they were based on. fanfiction does exactly that, all the time! if you have good writers who understand the characters they're working with, departure means a different story, not a worse one. now, the natural reply would be to say that the writers of GOT just aren't good, or at least aren't good at the things that make for great television, and that's why they needed the books as a structure, but I don't think that's true or fair, either. books and television are very different things. the pacing of a book is totally different from the pacing of a television show, and even an episodic book like ASOIAF is going to need a lot of work before it's remotely watchable as a series. bad writers cannot make great series of television, regardless of how good their source material is. sure, they didn't invent the characters of tyrion lannister and daenerys targaryen, but they sure as hell understood story structure well enough to write a damn compelling season of TV about them!

so but then: what gives? i actually do think it's a problem with the books! the show starts out as very faithful to the early books (namely, A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings) to the point that most plotlines are copied beat-for-beat. the story is constructed a little differently, and it's definitely condensed, but the meat is still there. and not surprisingly, the early books in ASOIAF are very tightly written. for how long they are, you wouldn't expect it, but on every page of those books, the plot is racing. you can practically watch george trying to beat the fucking clock. and he does! useful context here is that he originally thought GOT was going to be a trilogy, and so the scope of most threads in the first book or two would have been much smaller. it also helps that the first three books are in some respects self-contained stories. the first book is a mystery, the second and third are espionage and war dramas — and they're kept tight in order to serve those respective plots.

the trouble begins with A Feast for Crows, and arguably A Storm of Swords, because GRRM starts multiplying plotlines and treating the series as a story, rather than each individual book. he also massively underestimated the number of pages it would take him to get through certain plot beats — an assumption whose foundation is unclear, because from a reader's standpoint, there is a fucke tonne of shit in Feast and Dance that's spurious. I'm not talking about Brienne's Riverlands storyline (which I adore thematically but speaking honestly should have been its own novella, not a part of Feast proper). I'm talking about whole chapters where Tyrion is sitting on his ass in the river, just talking to people. (will I eat crow about this if these pay off in hugely satisfying ways in Winds or Dream? oh, totally. my brothers, i will gorge myself on sweet sweet corvid. i will wear a dunce cap in the square, and gleefully, if these turn out to not have been wastes of time. the fact that i am writing this means i am willing to stake a non-negligible amount of pride on the prediction that that will not happen). I'm talking about scenes where the characters stare at each other and talk idly about things that have already happened while the author describes things we already have seen in excruciating detail. i'm talking about threads that, while forgivable in a different novel, are unforgivable in this one, because you are neglecting your main characters and their story. and don't tell me you think that a day-by-day account tyrion's river cruise is necessary to telling his story, because in the count of monte cristo, the main guy disappears for nine years and comes hurtling back into the story as a vengeful aristocrat! and while time jumps like that don't work for everything, they certainly do work if what you're talking about isn't a major story thread!

now put aside whether or not all these meandering, unconcluded threads are enjoyable to read (as, in fairness, they often are!). think about them as if you're a tv showrunner. these bad boys are your worst nightmare. because while you know the author put them in for a reason, you haven't read the conclusion to the arc, so you don't know what that reason is. and even if the author tells you in broad strokes how things are going to end for any particular character (and this is a big "if," because GRRM's whole style is that he lets plots "develop as he goes," so I'm not actually convinced that he does have endings written out for most major characters), that still doesn't help you get them from point A (meandering storyline) to point B (actual conclusion). oh, and by the way, you have under a year to write this full season of television, while GRRM has been thinking about how to end the books for at least 10. all of this means you have to basically call an audible on whether or not certain arcs are going to pay off, and, if they are, whether they make for good television, and hence are worth writing. and you have to do that for every. single. unfinished. story. in the books.

here's an example: in the books, Quentin Martell goes on a quest to marry Daenerys and gain a dragon. many chapters are spent detailing this quest. spoiler alert: he fails, and he gets charbroiled by dragons. GRRM includes this plot to set up the actions of House Martell in Winds, but the problem is that we don't know what House Martell does in Winds, because (see above) the book DNE. So, although we can reliably bet that the showrunners understand (1) Daenerys is coming to Westeros with her 3 fantasy nukes, and (2) at some point they're gonna have to deal with the invasion of frozombies from Canada, that DOESN'T mean they necessarily know exactly what's going to happen to Dorne, or House Martell. i mean, fuck! we don't even know if Martin knows what's going to happen to Dorne or House Martell, because he's said he's the kind of writer who doesn't set shit out beforehand! so for every "Cersei defaults on millions of dragons in loans from the notorious Bank of Nobody Fucks With Us, assumes this will have no repercussions for her reign or Westerosi politics in general" plotline — which might as well have a big glaring THIS WILL BE IMPORTANT stamp on top of the chapter heading — you have Arianne Martell trying to do a coup/parent trap switcheroo with Myrcella, or Euron the Goffick Antichrist, or Faegon Targaryen and JonCon preparing a Blackfyre restoration, or anything else that might pan out — but might not! And while that uncertainty about what's important to the "overall story" might be a realistic way of depicting human beings in a world ruled by chance and not Destiny, it makes for much better reading than viewing, because Game of Thrones as a fantasy television series was based on the first three books, which are much more traditional "there is a plot and main characters and you can generally tell who they are" kind of book. I see Feast and Dance as a kind of soft reboot for the series in this respect, because they recenter the story around a much larger cast and cast a much broader net in terms of which characters "deserve" narrative attention.

but if you're making a season of television, you can't do that, because you've already set up the basic premise and pacing of your story, and you can't suddenly pivot into a long-form tone poem about the horrors of war. so you have to cut something. but what are you gonna cut? bear in mind that you can't just Forget About Dorne, or the Iron Islands, or the Vale, or the North, or pretty much any region of the story, because it's all interconnected, but to fit in everything from the books would require pacing of the sort that no reasonable audience would ever tolerate. and bear in mind that the later books sprout a lot more of these baby-plots that could go somewhere, but also might end up being secondary or tertiary to the "main story," which, at the end of the day, is about dragons and ice zombies and the rot at the heart of the feudal power system glorified in classical fantasy. that's the story that you as the showrunner absolutely must give them an end to, and that's the story that should be your priority 1.

so you do a hack and slash job, and you mortar over whatever you cut out with storylines that you cook up yourself, but you can't go too far afield, because you still need all the characters more or less in place for the final showdown. so you pinch here and push credulity there, and you do your best to put the characters in more or less the same place they would have been if you kept the original, but on a shorter timeframe. and is it as good as the first seasons? of course not! because the material that you have is not suited to TV like the first seasons are. and not only that, but you are now working with source material that is actively fighting your attempt to constrain a linear and well-paced narrative on it. the text that you're working with changed structure when you weren't looking, and now you have to find some way to shanghai this new sprawling behemoth of a Thing into a television show. oh, and by the way, don't think that the (living) author of the source material will be any help with this, because even though he's got years of experience working in television writing, he doesn't actually know how all of these threads will tie together, which is possibly the reason that the next book has taken over 8 years (now 13 and counting) to write. oh and also, your showrunners are sick of this (in fairness, very difficult) job and they want to go write for star wars instead, so they've refused the extra time the studio offered them for pre-production and pushed through a bunch of first-draft scripts, creating a crunch culture of the type that spawns entirely avoidable mistakes, like, say, some poor set designer leaving a starbucks cup in frame.

anyway, that's what I think went wrong with game of thrones.