Hey: SPOILER ALERT! This post contains spoilers for anyone who hasn’t seen the first seven seasons of HBO’s hit medieval gore-and-sex fest Game of Thrones. Do not read this post if you don’t want to learn certain vague and random details about some stuff that happens in the show. Again: SPOILER ALERT!

OK, here we go.

Until this past September, I’d never seen a single full episode of Game of Thrones. When it first became a whole big thing in 2011, I tried to start watching it and made it as far as the scene where Jaime Lannister pulls his helmet off upon visiting Winterfell, revealing himself as an extremely hot man, in the very first episode. I determined then that the show seemed dumb and not worth the considerable time investment it would require.

But now, nearly eight years later, the show remains a whole big thing. And because I am not willing to publicly dismiss something as dumb without ample research, I heroically watched all 67 existing episodes over the past six months so I could explain why it’s dumb in this forum.

In the process, I sort of became obsessed with Game of Thrones, and now I’m very much looking forward to the start of Season 8 this coming Sunday. There are some genuinely cool characters mixed in with all the violent, bleating, nonsensical stooges, and I’d really like to know who winds up on the Iron Throne when it’s all over. I’m even thinking about reading the books.

But I can enjoy something and still recognize it as stupid — see also: baseball. And the one time I thought an immensely popular TV program might actually be smart, it turned out the show-runners clearly had no endgame whatsoever in mind, retroactively rendering the entire run of Lost extremely dumb.

Here are seven questions and concerns that almost certainly will not be answered in the final season of Game of Thrones, which kicks off Sunday, April 14 on HBO:

Game of Thrones/HBO

1. How are there still people?

Rare is the Game of Thrones episode with anything short of, like, 10 grisly deaths. If everyone in this world is so cavalier about killing — killing their friends, killing their family members, killing strangers, killing for sport, killing pregnant ladies, killing babies — how are there still enough people around to put forward any pretense toward civilization? Unless we’re supposed to take it that the on-screen deaths are the only ones happening in this world in that time span (and there’s just no way that’s the case), why would anyone want to live in a place like King’s Landing, where someone lurks around every corner waiting to chop your head off?

All the events of Game of Thrones take place after the long, bloody war that put cloddish Robert Baratheon in the Iron Throne, and yet somehow there are still full armies out there to slaughter with your dragons. I don’t buy it. If the death rate in any real land were half what it is in Westeros, the only people left would be living as nomads or in complete isolation, avoiding everyone else due to the understanding that everyone else likely wants to kill them. And all that’s to say nothing about the longterm effects of mass castration on society.

Game of Thrones/HBO

2. Why are they all so hot?

We know Melisandre is using magic to make herself attractive, but that doesn’t explain the general hotness of practically every other major character in the show. This kid Gendry grew up forging iron, eating “bowls of brown” and living in a place called “Flea Bottom,” where presumably there’s very little in the way of hygiene or nutrition, and still came out of it looking like a chiseled male model. Where’s Gendry getting his stylish haircut? Game of Thrones characters like to rag on Tyrion for being the Lannister “imp,” but actor Peter Dinklage is undoubtedly a very handsome man by conventional standards and his character is extremely charming.

And what’re the chances that the one wildling woman Jon Snow captures would be totally gorgeous? High, because everyone in this world is smoking hot. It’s convenient for viewers, because they’re also very frequently naked. I’m supposed to believe that the first Daario Naharis lived to adulthood looking so fine? C’mon. Someone would’ve killed that dude out of jealousy before he turned 16.

Game of Thrones/HBO

3. They keep making new rules

So I actually went back and rewatched the first couple of seasons after watching all 67 episodes, and it turns out they mention people with the ability to change faces in one of the very first episodes, long before we meet sultry Jaqen H’ghar and learn of his ability to switch between very hot faces. But it took 22 episodes before we learned that some people have the ability to control animals with their minds and 25 episodes before Beric Dondarrion taught us that people can get resurrected in this world. I have no doubt the books did a better job establishing the rules sooner, but I haven’t read the books, so please don’t come yelling at me about the books. If books are so great, why did someone invent television?

I’m hoping Season 8 brings no new surprises in terms of the magical abilities people might have in Westeros, but it’s practically even-money it turns out that Three-Eyed Ravens can form dragons out of thin air with their minds whenever they want. And did you know Bran is the Three-Eyed Raven now? He keeps talking about it. All this is related to the issue that…

Game of Thrones/HBO

4. There’s just way too much going on

Game of Thrones is so dense with violent, sexy storylines that it’s extremely difficult to figure out what the heck is happening unless you’re keeping notes. I swear I had no idea who Theon Greyjoy even was when Robb Stark sent him back to the Iron Islands to try to secure his dad’s loyalty in Season 2. Sure, he talked about the Iron Islands in Season 1, but they reference a lot of random places, many of which never seem like they’re going to matter. Who are the Andals again? Where’s the Fist of the First Men that people keep talking about? What was the deal with Bran the Builder?

It’s an incredible feat of world-building on the part of both George R.R. Martin and the show’s creators, but it’s also very confusing. And if you fall down enough online rabbit-holes into fan theories, you’ll learn how practically every person and place ever mentioned on the show might wind up factoring into the endgame. Dial it back, Game of Thrones.

Game of Thrones/HBO

5. How can they not tell which people are evil?

Here’s a tip: If you live in the Game of Thrones world, you’re having a conversation with someone, and the conversation comes to a natural end, DO NOT LOOK AWAY. Wait to see what face the other person makes after your conversation ends, because if that person is secretly evil, there will always be a transparently evil reaction shot after they stop talking to you.

This dude Littlefinger exclusively speaks in evil monologues, and yet people still keep trusting him somehow even after he literally tells them not to ever trust him. Most characters on the show are at least a little evil, but the very evil characters give themselves away with their voices alone. This guy who got kicked out of the Maesters for his controversial experiments and speaks in a weasely tenor? Yeah, no reason not to trust that guy. Old crotchety mega-creep Walder Frey? Heck yeah, let’s go to his party.

Game of Thrones/HBO

6. Why do they all have British accents?

I mean, I guess England provides the best frame of reference we have for this type of medieval knight-type stuff, but this is a fantasy world, no? Best I can tell, medieval England had no dragons. Do the Starks and Lannisters and practically everyone else really have to be British? Is that just the accent we require to buy into this stuff? I’m not just trying to be funny here, and I get that logistics probably have a lot to do with it — they’re filming in Europe, so it makes sense to hire a bunch of European actors. But it’s all make believe, and I, for one, would find it immensely entertaining if there were one Great House of Westeros wherein everyone spoke like a Valley Girl.

Why do skin tones, in general, range from downright pasty to just sort of vaguely swarthy? I’m not here to woke-shame Game of Thrones, but we really couldn’t come up with a single meaningful role for a person of color until Daenerys started liberating slaves? Couldn’t Bronn easily be Asian? Certainly there are plenty of extraordinarily hot actors of all shapes, sizes, colors and creeds that could be getting naked and killing each other on Game of Thrones.

Game of Thrones/HBO

7. What makes these people do all the crazy stuff they do?

So there’s a lot of Machiavellian scheming in Game of Thrones, and Machiavellian scheming totally makes sense to me. You know what doesn’t? “Honor.” It’s sort of like in Sons of Anarchy when guys kept doing outrageous things “for the club.” Honor and oaths make for sort of a catch-all excuse for doing just about anything in Game of Thrones. Even Jaime Lannister will sometimes fall back on his King’s Guard oath to get out of stuff, as if he’s not also romantically involved with his own sister.

There are a bunch of characters who seem far too reasonable to be caught up in the lives they lead. What are you doing, Davos Seaworth? Get out of there! Go back to smuggling. Was this really the life you wanted, Loras Tyrell? The only character who really has things figured out is Hot Pie.

There’s also the whole subtext of sparring religions and the way people use them to justify the wild things they do. But then I guess there’s a lot of that in real life, too. Still, burning your daughter at the stake to appease the Lord of Light? Even Stannis Baratheon seemed like too normal a guy to do that.

Also: Why wouldn’t everyone just move to Dorne? What’re we doing in Winterfell when we can go to the land of sexually liberated rich people, far away from the army of the undead, where it never, ever snows? When people in Game of Thrones have nowhere else to go, they mostly head toward the wall, and that’s by far the worst place to be. Don’t join the Night’s Watch. Get to Dorne!