Game of Thrones Season 6 Discussion [SPOILERS WITHIN]

[FatAndFaithless]

After properly digesting the finale and the season as a whole, I have one big problem: the main theme of the story has changed. The books are anti-war and anti-violence. This is especially clear in Brienne's Riverlands chapters in "A Feast for Crows." The show, however, is promoting war and violence and vengeance. Sansa having Ramsay's dogs eat him, Dany having the Masters killed, Cersei killing everybody, and most of all, Arya killing, chopping up, and baking two human beings and forcing their father to eat them. And this was all made to be celebrated and make the audience happy. This is the world they created. The lesson they're giving is: "The world is fucked up, so the only way to compete is to be just as fucked up." That's the polar opposite of what GRRM is trying to get across. I don't know how I feel about that.

It's hard to say, especially considering that a large number of the events you mentioned haven't happened yet in the books.  I don't think GRRM's anti-war theme was that "all war is bad" or "violence is always wrong," I think it's more about the effects of violence and war, and that even the best people are permanently, fundamentally changed (and in some cases damaged horribly) by it, and that war is not something that's glory and honor.  

I actually think the show captured this very well with the Battle of the Bastards.  The dirt, chaos, confusion, and overall insanity of violence was perfectly on show.  What we cheered for wasn't the violence itself, it was that characters we cared about managed to survive it, though they still can be (and visibly are, in some cases) damaged by it. And even Sansa's actions with the hounds, a ton of people after that episode were saying how Sansa has changed, how Ramsey's final jibe "I'm a part of you now" is more true than she knows.

And hey, the shows are the shows and the books are the books, GRRM has said over and over how people should view them as two separate things. For all we know Jon could lose the Battle of the Bastards or someone else entirely could kill Walder Frey (though Frey pies were already, supposedly, in the books).