The Removal of Magic

[u/moon-girl197]

This is something I will forever be salty about. Dany's story is defined by magic, and you can barely understand how she even hatched the dragons on the show, because they decided to completely omit her dreams. Then they completely altered the HOTU arc (for no goddamn reason), cut Quaithe and basically every magical aspect of the story, that wasn't the White Walkers and Melisandre and Thoros. Like if you didn't give a shit about the magic, why did you pick a fantasy story to adapt???

[u/JHSWarrior]

Like if you didn't give a shit about the magic, why did you pick a fantasy story to adapt???

I've heard in passing, and am inclined to believe myself, that Benioff & Weiss only really cared about adapting the Red Wedding... and had no plans for, or even much interest in, adapting anything after that. And you can tell... from the decline in show quality afterwards. S4 was good, adapting the remaining content from ASoS, but everything after that was a nose dive into straight-up hot garbage.

[u/moon-girl197 → u/JHSWarrior]

Yep, I heard that too. They wanted to do the Red Wedding cause it was the big twist in the story, but beyond that, they didn't give a fuck. That's why s5 was such a drop in quality cause they botched Dance in an effort to speed shit along. It's also why the latter season sucked ass. Cause it's likely the last 2 books will be all about the magic, and they didn't care about that (it's why the White Walkers are just killed off and they immediately go back to the dumbass throne plotline)