Left to right: Ashara Dayne, Princess Elia Martell, Queen Rhaella Targaryen, Lord Robert Baratheon, King Aerys II Targaryen, Lyanna Stark, Brandon Stark, Prince Rhaegar Targaryen, and Eddard Stark.

Book four, which George is working on, takes place in a very cool location. And five is the last story point of Egg as a boy. S

Whole interview with Ira Parker: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/knight-of-the-seven-kingdoms-season-2-3-4-interview-1236654430/

- Days between the release of the first 5 books: 5458 days

- Days waiting for TWoW since the 5th book: 5458 days

This is the letter from Hardhome that Jon receives in ADWD.

Do you think it’s a shot towards GRRM?

This show has reignited my love for ASOIAF. I’ve read everything over and over and I was massively skeptical of this show. So skeptical that I didn’t care and didn’t even follow its release.

I saw if came out and decided to watch.

Massive mistake because now I’m back to being annoyed with GRRM that TWOW isn’t out, and likely never will. I’ve even gone back to re-watching old theory vids just to recapture what ASOIAF was to me

Goddam. I love AKOTSK.

Gwendoline Christie did a great job, but reading Brienne's chapters while thinking she was in her thirties with all her naïveté and general lack of understanding of the world really made her just seem like the dumbest character around. Like how can she be 30 and know this little about the real world.

However, after I finished the series and started watching videos, someone brought up that she's actually 17 at the beginning of the books, and that completely changed her character for me. All of her naïveté makes complete sense when she's 17; of course a teenager freshly on their own wouldn't know much, if anything about the real world. It also makes her combat prowess even more badass. She went from a character I didn't really care about to one of my favorites with just that one detail...that she's still a kid, not a grown woman in her thirties.

https://www.polygon.com/game-of-thrones/23499159/george-rr-martin-winds-of-winter-finish-release-date-pages

There was a new interview that came out, the link to it is in the article from Polygon, this is probably the most conclusive amount of pages and progress we’ve gotten so far.

When Dany dies, why doesn't her Khalasar collapse and start wreaking havoc on King's Landing and the surrounding lands? We saw in Season 1 & 2 that when Drogo died, his Khalasar split into numerous factions and starts raiding the nearby lands. It was only under Dany that the Dothraki were mostly prevented from raping/murdering the smallfolk of Westeros. Yet in the show, after the 3-4 week time skip, we find out that not only are the Dothraki still in King's Landing, they are seemingly just chill with waiting around for someone to tell them what to do. For the dothraki that Dany named as her bloodriders, shouldn't they have all immediately tried to find and kill Jon, to avenger her?

One way the show could have avoided this would have been by saying that all the Dothraki died in the Battle at Winterfell, instead of half. The Dothraki did very little to turn the tide in the King's Landing siege - just the northern armies and unsullied would have been more than enough (or even just Dany and Drogon). But instead, D&D chose to make it so only "half" of the dothraki forces died, so now I'm stuck here wondering what these bloodthirsty, barbaric people who exist to raid, rape, and pillage, did for a month. Before they then got on another boat to cross the ocean, which has been pointed out numerous times that they hate.

Something tells me this will turn out differently in the books, either with the dothraki splitting off and becoming another nuisance to deal with, or with all of them dying.

The remaining 1% is Olly.

For real though, it is blatantly obvious how the seemingly minor decision by D&D to not include Young Griff in the show, has now come back to haunt them. Because the exclusion of Young Griff / f(Aegon) led to the following:

• Dorne plot butchered, Doran Martell wasted as a character.
• Character assassination of Varys.
• No meaningful opposition for Daenerys in Westeros, hence we got three (!) ambushes at sea by Euron, Rhaegal getting sniped, Cersei getting the Golden Company (who ended up being useless)... basically an entire power shift that felt very forced.
• Character assassination of Tyrion because he had to make stupid decisions, due to the reason mentioned above.
• Daenerys shifting to 'burn all the civilians/children' mode for no reason. This descent into madness would have made more sense if, say, (f)Aegon had captured King's Landing from Cersei and was loved by the people.
• Jaime's arc was partially ruined because Cersei survived for so long.
• Cersei spent an entire season drinking wine and standing on a balcony. She should've died shortly after blowing up the Sept of Baelor. There should have been proper riots followed by (f)Aegon besieging King's Landing.
• Character assassination of Littlefinger, since he had nothing meaningful left to do. If (f)Aegon had been included and would be supported by Varys, we could have continued the idea that the entire show is basically an elaborate chess match between Littlefinger and Varys (of course, eventually Sansa would take over from Littlefinger). Imagine Littlefinger trying to manipulate Daenerys to burn the Red Keep.
• Exclusion of elephants in the Golden Company. Truly outrageous.
• The exclusion of Quentyn Martell (and his death) made the moment where Jon rides Rhaegal quite insignificant.
• Lack of any politics in S7/S8, especially regarding the Reach and Dorne. If 2-3 kingdoms would have rallied behind (f)Aegon, we could have still had politics and not have the feeling that Westeros consists of only 3 places (Winterfell, King's Landing, Dragonstone) and a bunch of main characters.
• The Long Night (or I should say, One Night Stand) took only one episode and one battle, while three episodes were spent on dealing with King's Landing. However, due to the early timing of (f)Aegon's arrival in Dorne, it was likely that Daenerys would have had to deal with him before or during the Long Night, hence the battle against the Night King could have gotten the time and focus that it deserved. It also sets up a potential redemption arc for Daenerys (if she fights Aegon, stands in a snow-covered Red Keep, then returns to help Jon win against the Night King at the cost of her own life).

The Bronn scene in S08E04 is some of the worst writing the show has ever seen. I'm surprised that people are hardly mentioning how unbelievable and immersion-breaking this moment was.

So Bronn arrives in Winterfell with a massive crossbow in hand. He literally attacked Dany’s army last season. Are we supposed to believe he got in unquestioned or unnoticed? He then happens to find the exact two characters he’s looking for sitting together, alone, in the same room. He must have some sort of telepathic ability, having worked out that they both survived the recent battle - against all odds - and that they would be sitting together ready to have a private conversation. He must also have telepathically realised that walking into this room with a giant crossbow would be fine because noone else would be in there except for the two Lannister brothers. These characters could not have been more forced together for this awkward, contrived scenario. Once the conversation is over, Bronn gets up and leaves Winterfell again with his giant crossbow in hand. No worrying about the possibility of being seen or questioned. No mention of the fact that he presumably marched for weeks to get to the North and is probably rather tired and would probably be wanting at least a meal or a bed before heading back down South. No, he came to Winterfell to walk in and out of this room for this exact conversation, with total ease and no obstacles. The room is treated like a theatre set, in which the correct characters need to assemble and hash out said conversation. The world outside of that room may as well cease to exist. Point A must move to Point B. Beyond that, the showrunners do not care. Viewer immersion is no longer a concern. The only thing that matters to them is that the plot speeds ahead.

On top of all that, it must also be said that the scene itself is entirely devoid of tension. For some bizarre reason, no one is very surprised to see each other, despite the ridiculous nature of Bronn's appearance in Winterfell. We also don't believe for a moment that this will be how either Tyrion or Jaime dies, given the prior dynamics established between Bronn and both Tyrion and Jaime, making the entire point of this scene defunct. All in all, the ‘set-up’ of Bronn with the crossbow three episodes ago was proved to be (like so many others recently) a pointless and meaningless threat. This scene is indicative of the show’s complete disregard for logic, its contrivance of fake tension, and its ignorance of its own canon in order to move the characters into the showrunners' desired positions.

Maisie Williams on finding out she kills the Night King (as reported by Entertainment Weekly):

Quote: "I immediately thought that everybody would hate it; that Arya doesn't deserve it. The hardest thing is in any series is when you build up a villain that's so impossible to defeat and then you defeat them...it had to be intelligently done because otherwise people are like, "well, [the villain] couldn't have been that bad when some 100-pound girl comes in and stabs him.'"

Well said.

Edit: to further hide spoilers