In fact, this has been my greatest gripe against the show ever since it went off-book. With no roadmap, the showrunners have taken the opportunity to respond to the online discourse swirling around the show. The result is something that feels more like fanfiction than original storytelling. Every joke is a wink, and moments that should be major feel stale because they've been passed around Reddit threads so many times. Beyond jokes about a hot and broody Jon Snow, this has meant a complete reversal in the portrayal of female characters . And while, yes, that's something to applaud in theory, it also feels tonally wrong, like the writers are going too far out of their way to amend earlier mistakes that should never have been made — like attempting to justify this Cersei/Jaime scene as consensual sex