Submission Day Chatter.  Connington's Bracket submitted and reviewed!

My bracket is submitted. I kept it lingering in the edit phase and now it is there for all to behold. I didn’t realize the analytics component of this competition would be so irresistible. As of this writing--Thursday afternoon on the final day to submit brackets-- Arya is CRUSHING it in terms of champion votes. She’s the only one who’s even in the triple digits with champ votes.

It would be cool to think that she’d be there without the events of the recent “Long Night” episode in which she (apparently) killed the Night King and defeated the supernatural/existential threat forever. But I bet she got a huge boost from that moment. Regardless of that career apex in which she leapt from an unseen, undisclosed precipice to tummy-stab the chief Other, she is still, to Connington, the quintessential G.O.T. character. The “best,” even.

Think about the Criteria. “Violence”? She’s been connected to it deeply and expertly since the pilot and we’ve got to see her train to become a Water Dancer and Faceless assassin as well as an old-school Westerosi edged-weapons and hand-to-hand combat ace. Cunning? She'd had to rely on more than her trusty Needle to span the kingdom and stay alive, and her ruse with Sansa to eliminate Littlefinger was only one of many moments of Arya out-foxing her enemies. (It helps to have the knowledge of the Faceless masks, as in her murder of Ser Meryn Trant, Lord Walder Frey, and ALL of the male Freys, but she's also a master of analog cunning, as in her dispatching of the Waif in that dark room beneath Braavos.)

On the “Impact” front she's tops as well, not just for her Night King ownage but for the Frey and Baelish slayings. These killings have ripples across the whole realm and narrative, which makes them different than her Polliver and Tickler-type revenge-slays. She's a guaranteed 10 in the “Prominence,” or, “Screen-time” category. In terms of “Acting” I'm already on record that Maisie Williams is the most interesting performer on the show, and as for “Attraction,” well, I don't score her in that column because as a book-reader, Arya is a child to me despite the show aging her up. But she still clocks in with a monster overall score, and the character's intangibles are through the roof. So, best.

Which brings us to what I call the Daenerys Problem. What is with Daenerys' performance on this bracket? She was a 1 seed, HAD to be a 1 seed, considering all the variables, yet people aren't picking her to win. She seems to be a very obligatory vote for people, myself included. She's an obvious high-scorer across the board but people seem to have more of an affection for Cersei, an amoral arch-villain with no super powers, than they do for Daenerys, a dragon-riding un-burnable magical queen who is meant to be a main protagonist. You might blame her very strange more-white-than-silver wig with its thousands of looped braids, or maybe it's what many consider to be Emilia Clarke's flat, uneven performance. Either way, look for her to finish in a way that looks strong, but is actually miles from the top spot.

Folks may be surprised to see ole Ned in my final four. In this case I had to go with my own logic and also my own heart. As far as the predictive part of winning this bracket, I might have blown myself up there. I don't see many people voting with me for Ned over his nephew Jon Snow as the two of them come out of that corner. But Ned is the cornerstone of the saga. Without his refusal to play the Game, there is no Game. Besides raising six of the more compelling characters, his unflappable honor is the standard by which all of the other characters set their own morality. Whether a character mocks, flouts, subverts, perverts, or seeks to replicate Ned’s honor, they are all acting in his wake. That goes for for everyone, from minor-key players like Roose Bolton to heavy hitters like Jaime. And again, intangibles. It's Sean Bean as Ned Stark.