#starving kingdoms sharing suffering? I feel like a lot could have been resolved if they could ask the magical ppl for help

[thats-my-passion-right-there]

Is it just me or are the dragons from the dragon prince kind of assholes? (Not counting Zym obviously)

[batmansymbol]

a compleat list of what i want to happen in GoT season 8.

i’m not going to call them “predictions” or “theories” because i really don’t think most of them will happen, but here, ranked in order of how important they are to me, are the elements i would find most satisfying to see in season 8!

(also, sorry for not putting this under a readmore, but on the impossible chance that any of this does come true i want hard solid time-stamped proof that i guessed it. cheers lol)

jaime and brienne finish falling in love. i think this remains one of the most emotionally potent subplots of the show, simply because it hasn’t had that much airtime since the plotting started to slip. brienne represents everything that jaime has developed toward: a sense of reclaimed honor in the face of a disgraced past, plus friendship, trust, and attraction outside the lannister family. in kind, jaime represents everything that brienne has needed to grow: from trusting him, she’s developed a more complex sense of morality than her original black-and-white honorable-and-dishonorable views.

that said, i don’t think it makes much sense for them to have anything approaching a happy ending. i'm hoping for this much: brienne will redeem jaime in the eyes of the North with the revelation of why he killed the mad king. he’ll realize how much their relationship means to him, they’ll have a brief time together, and he’ll die tragically in her arms.

sansa stark takes the iron throne (or becomes Queen in the North). it’s always been my opinion that sansa stark operates as an audience surrogate. the series was originally written as a kind of counterpoint to traditional fantasies, in which plot armor rules the day, good wins over evil, and characters cleave toward archetypes. i’m sure all the dudes people who hated sansa stark at the beginning would hate to think this, but we were her: sansa started out believing in fantastical songs and stories, believing that chivalry was a protective force. if you were shocked by ned’s death or by the red wedding, congratulations! you believed in the same kind of literary tradition that sansa did back then. you believed that people were safe because they were good or important.

since then, sansa has undergone the same disillusionment and transformation that we have as an audience. we’ve grown up alongside her, learned how this world operates as she does. and yet, even while she’s learned to play the game, out-manipulating an increasingly impressive list of players (i have all sorts of problems with how the littlefinger plot was played, but the broad strokes are there and i’m sure it’ll be better in the books), she’s still maintained a sense of goodness. while we all tense up in anticipation for a great battle, sansa is thinking about the smallfolk starving. she has never sought power, but in power, has been fair, pragmatic, and effective. “if i am ever a queen,” she thinks in A Clash of Kings, “i’ll make them love me.” that still rings true.

i don’t think sansa deserves the throne because of her suffering (i’m not sure anyone deserves it). but i’m convinced she would be the best candidate because she’s displayed innate intelligence and adaptability, and especially because of how wonderfully her narrative operates on a meta level.

daenerys goes dark, resulting in jon’s death. i think it would be some great plotting for this underdog Great Emancipator character to turn out to be an ultimate antagonist (therefore underscoring the issues with the conqueror & savior elements in her narrative). dany is obsessed with loyalty. it’s helped her survive, but i think when jon reveals his parentage, there’s no way she’ll see that as anything but an immediate and existential threat.

i think it would be satisfying if daenerys turns out to be azor ahai, the prince/ss who was promised, and destroys the Night King. i say this because i think adding this title to her long list could prove an important tipping point: if dany defeats the night king, there’s no way anyone is ever convincing her to give up or even share the throne. the belief that she was born to be the savior of Westeros is now bulletproof, and importantly, if she is azor ahai, Melisandre and the followers of the Lord of Light would now be at her back (eta: forever), reinforcing her belief that she is essentially a god. this is a crew who really loves burning people and hero worship.

i don’t think it would make sense for dany to kill jon, but i’m imagining that during battle, she has the chance to save his life and makes the ultimate and horrible choice not to, eliminating her major challenger to the throne. separately, but similarly: i think if word about gendry’s parentage gets out, daenerys would have no qualms whatsoever about killing him, since he’s the child of the Usurper. (related: if arya sees either of these deaths happen, there goes her uneasy neutrality wrt daenerys. i think it could be kind of thrilling for dany’s name to be last on arya’s list, but if this happens, arya isn’t making it out alive.)

in conclusion: this leaves us with a North ever more hostile to daenerys’s reign and cersei still preparing to stage her final play for the throne. depending on how the night king ... uh, works, the army of the dead could still be in play, too.

arya kills cersei wearing jaime’s face. does this count as fulfilling the valonqar prophecy? i think so? idk: i used to think jaime had to kill cersei himself for it to feel satisfying, but his leaving king’s landing at the end of last season was played so dramatically that i don’t think that’s necessary anymore.

i imagine cersei killing arya while this happens. i think there’d be something poetic in cersei stabbing "jaime” while he throttles her, and thinking all the usual cersei thoughts about how they do everything together, they were born together and lived together and now it’s time to die together, etc.—only for arya to reveal that it’s her, a stark, and jaime actually already died, having moved on from cersei’s influence in the arms of a woman who made him a better man.

some other scattered hopes:

you know, the more i think about it, the more i like the Tyrion Targaryen theory. there’s an awful lot of literal language in Tywin’s show dialogue (”i raised you as my son,” “you’re no son of mine,” etc.) that makes me think the showrunners were writing toward something they wanted people to rewatch with new ears.

theon dies in a final redeeming moment of bravery, as his throughline so far has been about how craven he is

sandor wins cleganebowl. damn it, i want that crotchety old fucker to make it out of this.

euron dissolves into obscurity. ugh, euron

if the 7 kingdoms remain divided at the end, gendry takes the southern throne, with arya on his kingsguard. this is way too optimistic and won’t happen, but it makes me happy to think about.

you’ll notice i haven’t said one (1) word about bran stark......... i am sorry to confess that i can see no satisfying way to resolve absolutely anything pertaining to bran stark, as i haven’t been satisfied with anything that’s happened in his storyline since The Door.

that said, i also am pretty certain that bran will turn out to be sort of the key to the whole thing, which is tragic as i Just Don’t Care about anything he does, and so i can’t waste any energy theorizing about what might happen to or with him.

if u have any bran theories, feel free to send them to me... or tack them on here... except the night king one, i’ve read all about that already

annnnnd that’s all i’ve been thinking about for the past two months. cheers!