GRRM is both extremely straightforward, and often very predictable. The whole “subverting expectations” thing was marketing for the show more than anything from the actual book. Daenerys has a vision of the Red Wedding a book before it happens, virtually the entirety of AGoT was telling the audience that Ned is gonna die at the end of the book, etc.
GRRM’s subversions are more about playing against audience expectations that come from genre conventions by doing things like choosing realistic consequences over plot armor, not just weighing down the narrative with deliberate misdirects or red herrings. GRRM’s thesis behind why Daenerys is the chosen one and why it is subversive is stated verbatim by Maester Aemon. “No one ever looked for a girl”. She’s hidden in plain sight narratively by the patriarchal constraints of the culture of Westeros, and also meta-textually, because despite it being spelled out for the audience, people just don’t want to believe it, their misogyny is too entrenched.
Genre conventions vs "unbalancing/shocking the audience"; the latter a misunderstanding and distortion of the first as "audience's expectations" itself could be built from their experience of certain genre conventions. Which includes a male hero saving the entire world. But "audience's expectations" is also so vague and encompassing a phrase that it could and has also come to mean those expectations denying breadcrumbs and foreshadowing when it serves to maintain those "expectations" of a male hero/utter destruction of dragons/power dependent on or exclusive to women's agency. Or/and, it could and has been taken to mean "delightfully shocking audience's for the sheer thrill".
la-pheacienne writes about such stuff HERE.
