Season 6 General Speculation v9

The dead bodies on the crosses were dead pre-Snowbowl. Rickon's there alive at least to begin with from what I've gathered. The recently substantiated reddit spoilers said he dies "in battle". So that's what seems to fit with all we've been hearing.

I obviously don't want Rickon to die, because he is a Stark and directly related to my favourite characters. And I also really liked him in all his scenes in the first three seasons. However, we have no idea what role he is going to play in the next season, nor do we know how he will be reintroduced and how - if at all - he dies. So even if he has a death scene, it is way too early to assess and criticise it and say it's only for cheap shock value (a category I'm not even sure can be applied to this show). Besides, the theory that Rickon is just a "shaggydog" is older than the show itself, because it is actually based on the novels. This may very well be a GRRM idea.
The tendency to say that everything bad is a D&D invention, and everything good must be from the books is a style of argumentation I'm dreading, because it has no basis whatsoever and has very little to do with actual fair criticism.

While speculating on this "surprising death", I think it's LF. I can't see him meeting with both Jon and Sansa in the finale and surviving. I don't think Sansa knows about Petyr's role in Ned's betrayal, but giving her to Ramsay should be reason enough to kill him.

There are no heroes. Only flawed people fighting flawed people.

- GRRM

Autocorrect, eh?

I think the show's reputation about about killing off major characters deaths is overstated. The last major character we lost was Season 3 (Catelyn - POV in Books 1-3). Robb was a minor character in the books. Same for Stannis, Shireen, Tywin, etc.

Selmy was the surprise last season. But he's more of a minor POV anyway. All the other surviving book POV characters are alive (or will be as of 6.02ish). GRRM really didn't kill anybody in AFFC/ADWD.

Sounds horrible, but I'll take a Rickon and Osha deaths over the main core of POV characters.

I think we will lose one major POV characters this season though. We are due.

The only POV characters we've truly lost so far are Ned and Cat, and other one of them got resurrected as a zombie. Like you said, while of great influence, Tywin, Joffrey, and Stannis aren't major characters.

Another supposedly cheap shock value-moment in this story was of course Stannis burning Shireen. I can see why people didn't like how it was done, because again it defies expectations. Surely the father who loves his only daughter would not burn her to death. That's because the trope of a parent sacrificing their child for the greater good or a deity is extremely old and never rarely ends like this instance here. One of the oldest stories is of course the story of Abraham almost killing his son Isaac. There are a lot of parallels and these parallels are not coincidental. In both cases, we have a chosen one (Stannis and Abraham) who has to sacrifice his child (Shireen and Isaac) for a God (R'hllor and Jahwe). Both stories end differently, though. Jahwe saves Isaac by stopping Abraham. R'hllor, however, is ruthless or possibly doesn't even exist. In GoT the "chosen one" cannot hand over his responsibility to a deity, because in the end he alone killed his own flesh and blood. The God that made him do it doesn't exist and even if he does (which is ambiguous in GoT), the responsibility still lies with Stannis. Shireen died because of Stannis. Again, expectations are shattered, but not for shock value, but in order to achieve a deeper understanding of what we as viewers foolishly expect. Nevertheless, it is absolutely understandable why this would alienate a lot of people. It's very uncomfortable and I confess I often have my problems with it as well, but IMO it's also extremely fascinating storytelling. That's why I'm not too quick to judge Rickon's possible death in S6.

You are right. For some reason I completely ignored Greek mythology to make my point. But my main point was that these things occur in a certain cultural and literary context and are not just D&D and GRRM going "OH MAH GAHD SHOCK VALUE!". Of course Iphigenia is another, very fitting example of that.

Furthermore, I think Greek mythology holds a special position in our cultural consciousness, because it is often extremely unusual and bold. In this regard, it is much closer to ASoIaF/GoT than everything Hollywood produces these days. That's why I think my point still stands, because this kind of storytelling doesn't happen that often these days. We are simply not used to it anymore and thus expect something different.