I want to see actual resolution of character arcs. I want to see where Jaime or Tyrion or Daenerys end up as people. The show keeps yanking Jaime back and forth, where sometimes he's conflicted about Cersei and then he recommits to her and then gets worried and then comes back until when they were finally ready to move forward, they had passed over a lot of real things that could have turned him against her, and instead made the final straw be her lying to people who wanted her dead or locked up. If he was fine with her blowing up the sept and climbing the Iron Throne over the corpses of their children, why is THAT her problem.

I want to see Tyrion & Dany get better, figure stuff out and get out from under their fathers' legacies. I want to see stories where the Stark kids reclaim their own identity. Where Bran avoids going the path of Bloodraven, getting swallowed up by tree memories, and comes back to Winterfell, which is his special place, that he knows better than anyone. His climbing hobby was not about heights, so that skin-changing a bird is going one better, it was about access to remote places so he could know his home as no one else does. Sansa's character arc is all about showing that you can be a good leader and politician WITHOUT being a manipulative slut or psychopath. I want to see her get the better of Littlefinger, not follow him down the drain of his ammoral self-serving mentality, to break his sexual conditioning and see him punished for the crimes in which he's been trying to implicate her. Arya cares about people, and wants companionship. Ned told her the importance of pack and she's been seeking that ever since. She's not supposed to become this nasty, detached assassin who lives for her kill list. Her end game is not going to be completing her list, but outgrowing it. I want to see Jon actually affected by coming back from the dead, rather than treat it like a minor wound he's long since recovered from. I want it to mean something, to matter. I also want it to matter than despite trying to sacrifice himself on the alter of duty and live to be the best Lord Commander he possibly could, he was murdered by a bunch of short-sighted idiots who thought they were saving the Watch from him. I can't believe the guy whose arc has been all about learning and preaching that the wildlings are humans too and that humanity is what matters in the face of the real Enemy, would hold his post long enough to revenge-hang his murderers and then retroactively claim he's clear by reason of death.

And I want the politics to be reasonable plausible. I get that doing all the seeding to make people understand what's going on can be prohibitive on the TV screen. GRRM trained his readers to understand how his world works, with things like the crisis of Lady Hornwood's inheritance, which illustrates all the ways people can put in a claim to a title, much less how cut-throat even relatively cooperative and homogenous societies can be in the zero-sum game of feudal inheritance & property rights. We have all the backstory about past competitions for the Iron Throne, so we GET where a character is coming from when they might protest "But he's a...." about a would-be ruler.

The show doesn't have to do all that, but they have to adhere to some sort of coherence, so that when Varys insists that Jon's gender is going to be important to the Lords of Westeros, we don't do a quick headcount and realize that by this point, all the lords of Westeros are actually LADIES or sympathetic to female leadership or on Team Dany for their own reasons. GRRM isn't perfect, but he makes an effort, so you get the sense that the details matter, that this is a world people live in, rather than one where the rules are invented to provide conflicts and resolutions to the same. I thought that was the weakest thing about Egwene's rise to power, how the Aes Sedai had all these counter-intuitive rules, and customs about adhering to the rules, which made it possible for Egwene to actually get power without unrealistically changing people's minds about her in a short time. I think RJ did the best he could to support what happened, but like with Rand's three love interests, it's not a very plausible scenario. Game of Thrones, on the other hand, just throws up rules or obstacles without any prior establishment, when it works for the story. GRRM does the legwork to show how bastardy is a real obstacle and how its something that can be felt every day growing up, even more than just an arbitrary label. But he also seeded things here and there to show how exceptions can be made to the rule. If Jon is acclaimed King in the great hall of Winterfell, there is stuff already in the books you can fall back upon. There is the Blackfyre precedent, and there is Robb's will and Benedict Justman. If there is going to be a leadership conflict over Winterfell between Jon & Sansa, we can already see how that is shaped by events in published work, with some inclined to support Jon because it was Robb's wishes, or for his work as Lord Commander or because of his contributions to defeating the Boltons, while others might back Sansa because she's come with a fresh army and maybe those food supplies Littlefinger was stockpiling to corner the market in the "Winds of Winter" preview chapter. And Martin has made it still more complicated with Rickon and the Manderlys' & Glovers' motivations (Davos rescuing Rickon with Robett's help and Stannis liberating their castle & Robett's wife is the basis for a pro-Rickon bloc), and Jon & Sansa both taking one look at "Arya Bolton" and laughing their heads off, and yes Stannis saved the Wall and captured Asha, but he & the Manderlys worship these weird foreign gods and Sansa is pretty tight with all those Valemen who are descended from the first Andals, and proud of how they brought the Seven to Westeros... Oh, and some of the clansmen are passing around rumors that Bran Stark is still alive and was seen in the hills with the Reed kids, but Howland is with the guys who have Robb's will, but Howland knows Jon isn't Ned's son, and Galbart Glover was with him, but Stannis restored Galbart's castle & rescued his sister-in-law and he has Asha, who has Galbart's nephew & niece, and Maege Mormont is also with Galbart and both of them swore to uphold Jon as Robb's heir, but her daughter is with Stannis... GRRM has made everything set up to be a mess. He doesn't have Lyanna Mormont suddenly proclaiming Jon as King and everyone else going along with no known motivations, so it comes out of the blue when suddenly they want to proclaim Sansa in Jon's absensce, and there are no factional distinctions between the Valemen who came for Sansa (why? Has there been a thread from the beginning about their natural affinity for the Starks, and that Lord Royce's son was the guy who first met the White Walkers and how Ned grew up with them and they wanted to fight alongside Robb, but Lysa wouldn't let them, and Petyr betrayed the alliance & Ned so they feel an obligation to make it right? Yeah, I didn't think so). Any forth-coming post-Bolton political conflict in the North is going to feel REAL. We are going to understand how and why they are fighting and what they are fighting about, and that their reasons MATTER to all these people, so that when the Starks come together and drag their factions kicking and screaming into a united force to fight the Battle for the Dawn, there will also be reasons why they accept it. Aly Mormont & Maege and Galbart & Robett Glover and Mors & Hothor Umber will all be back on the same sides. If Lady Dustin survives Roose's downfall, it will be the more satisfying watching her have to go along with the Starks and like it, because of her spiteful backstory. And every person who dies fighting the Others is going to matter a little bit more than the indistinguishable redshirts dragged down in zombie dogpiles.

We aren't going to look back on that battle and talk about all those we lost and the numerous funeral pyres but only be able to name Theon and Dolorous Edd and Beric and the Mormonts (how many of their sixty three soldiers made it? ). FIVE named casualties. Battle of the Bastards cost Rickon Stark, Ramsey, Wun Wun, Smalljon, so almost as high a body count as the Battle for the Dawn.

I guess I want a story with the realistic approach to fantasy everyone credits "Game of Thrones" with bringing to the table.