i decided to add "orange" for the imagery stuff i look for - so moon stuff, bleeding stars, weeping, stuff like that. the others are the same - red for sus, purple for stuff i like, blue just regular commentary.
and the Lhazareen had small reason to love them
The cream-and-gold I call Viserion. Viserys was cruel and weak and frightened, yet he was my brother still. His dragon will do what he could not.
this phrasing sent my hackles up
Yet even as her dragons prospered, her khalasar withered and died.
this was an interesting chapter there's just not many lines that jump out, it's more interesting for the vaes tolorro description & the info on her khalasar
altho then i got annoyed bc like. we could have been using this time to actually get to know her khalasar but of course the only one we are invested in is jorah's ass
And above them loomed the pale limbs and dark red leaves of a monstrous great weirwood.It was the biggest tree Jon Snow had ever seen, the trunk near eight feet wide, the branches spreading so far that the entire village was shaded beneath their canopy. The size did not disturb him so much as the face . . . the mouth especially, no simple carved slash, but a jagged hollow large enough to swallow a sheep.
very blood moon king there, the red canopy eclipsing the sun, the mouth "large enough to swallow sheep"
“One thing hasn’t changed,” Ser Mallador Locke insisted. “Fewer wildlings means fewer worries. I won’t mourn, whatever’s become of them. Raiders and murderers, the lot of them.”
meanwhile the reason the wildlings ran away is because the dead are rising
Snow often meant death in the north
that chapter was a bit dry can we get to gilly already
Dobber found a leather purse in the dead man’s belt. Inside were four coppers and a little hank of blond hair tied up with a red ribbon.
The green water was warm as tears, but there was no salt in it. It tasted of summer and mud and growing things.
green (bran) and weeping (catelyn) but no salt (???). summer (bran) here too.
there's always been a lot of earth associations for arya too (i had her on my chart associated with green & brown as well as blue, all earth tones!)
“Open, in the name of the king!”
“Aye, and which king is that?” old Reysen yelled back down, before Woth cuffed him into silence.
normal people faced with a fucked up situation just being normal people protecting each other. idk. makes me emo.
“Can’t they see we’re no lords or knights?” she whispered. “I don’t think they care, Arry,” Gendry whispered back. And she looked at Ser Amory’s face, the way Syrio had taught her to look, and she saw that he was right.
She saw Koss throw down his blade to yield, and she saw them kill him where he stood.
this was a much better paced chapter than the previous one, these deaths really got to me, and the way the countryside is described as just being abandoned wholesale.
It was astonishing to see how angry Cersei could wax over accusations she knew perfectly well to be true. If we lose the war, she ought to take up mummery, she has a gift for it.
these two are so fucking funny together
“Varys told us some years past that Lady Selyse had taken up with a red priest,”
noting that meli has been there for some time
“They even look somewhat alike. Shireen has a mottled, half-frozen face as well.”
This one is more dangerous than I knew, he reflected.
“I would suggest a demon’s head for a helm, crowned with tall golden horns. When you ride into battle, men will shrink away in fear.” A demon’s head, Tyrion thought ruefully, now what does that say of me?
that armor only works so far. he does not actually want to be known as a devil!
Over the door swung an ornate lamp, a globe of gilded metal and scarlet glass.
tyrion journeys to the blood moon dressed in all black, with a red cloak & gold ornaments
i would say this is more shooting star colliding with eclipsed moon imagery, even tho his all black made me think black hole swallowing a blood moon too
it would be nice to get this sex positivity from anyone but the sole black characters in this series 🤧
Long before the first pale fingers of light pried apart Bran’s shutters, his eyes were open.
well that’s creepy as fuck
Once he had been taught to do something, he did it deftly. His hands were always gentle, though his strength was astonishing. “You could have been a knight too, I bet,” Bran told him. “If the gods hadn’t taken your wits, you would have been a great knight.”
“Hodor?” Hodor blinked at him with guileless brown eyes, eyes innocent of understanding.
“Yes,” said Bran. “Hodor.”
i love that big walder and little walder include their mother's sigils in their own arms
Little Walder cast his splintered lance aside, spied Bran, and reined up. “Now there’s an ugly horse,” he said of Hodor.
“Hodor’s no horse,” Bran said.
interesting in comparison to the "hodor is a man not a mule" themes here
“We were having a jape with Hodor,” confessed Big Walder. “I am sorry if we offended Prince Bran. We only meant to be amusing.” He at least had the grace to look abashed.
this is why Big Walder is gonna win the twins tho
he knows when to stop and he knows when he's beat.
imo it's why he doesn't side in with ramsay the way little walder does - he can sense when someone is going too far, socially.
But Ser Rodrik promised only to send the proposal on to Robb for his consideration, while Maester Luwin scratched at the parchment.
this is crazy shortsighted and i'm glad wyman basically ignored them and started building the ships anyway. buddy you're at war with like 3/4s of the continent build the fucking ships.
"I’ve heard tales, things I can scarce believe, even of a Bolton. And now that my lord husband and my sweet son have gone to the gods, the Bastard looks at my lands hungrily.” Bran wanted to give the lady a hundred men to defend her rights, but Ser Rodrik only said, “He may look, but should he do more I promise you there will be dire retribution."
obviously i have context here but i also think this is remarkably shortsighted as well. he's literally threatening her and she has no one
also this "you have to remarry" so she can't have kids. what are you expecting here. you need to explore other options for the hornwood lands
i really do think the larence snow thing is the only option here. frankly giving the lands to manderly/prompting her to marry so her lands can be given to her husband is just as dicey as bastard inheritance and has the added risk of upsetting the other lords because someone (manderly, it seems) all of a sudden has acquired a significant amount of the north. ya it does suck for donella but poltically speaking there are not a lot of options here.
i've noted before that bran gets a bit uncomfortable around nudity and sex (fair given he's eight but relevant imo when you think about where his story goes wrt meera and hodor) (not the rape theory just in general the bodily autonomy. what's interesting here is that he's not uncomfortable with osha at all when he catches her bathing in the woods - she even challenges him, asking if he's never seen a naked woman before bc he's kinda staring but it's not sexual and it's not uncomfortable. i think that's interesting when you think about the fact that they're in the godswood - the whole being closer to nature thing.
She gave him a sour grin. “That it’s a fool boy who mocks a giant, and a mad world when a cripple has to defend him.”
this is interesting to me too. she's quite offended by the idea that hodor was being made fun of and that bran had to step in. i wonder if she felt perhaps they'd be "above" that because they're stationary as a people (so less brutalistic towards their disabled) (this is not be excusing leaving babies out to die to be clear lol).
also - bran the true knight
The big one they call little, it comes to me he’s well named. Big outside, little inside, and mean down to the bones.
brynden appearance here (the twisted mouth weirwood)
also black hole imagery - the crow coming at him from the white tree to peck at his eyes
oh wait i dead ass forgot about the cousin thing. i actually love how both times a REAL solution is offered for the hornwood inheritance - lawrence, and now the tallhart cousin - Bran seizes on it as a good idea. he's a smart cookie!!!
The bastard of the Dreadfort would not be joining them...there was sickness at Widow’s Watch.
“Aye,” said another, “the gods hate incest. Look how they brought down the Targaryens.”
It put out his left eye and then his right, and when he was blind in the dark it pecked at his brow, driving its terrible sharp beak deep into his skull. He screamed until he was certain his lungs must burst. The pain was an axe splitting his head apart, but when the crow wrenched out its beak all slimy with bits of bone and brain, Bran could see again.
again, a lot of the black hole stuff with Bran is very crow oriented
“And a woman, to be sure,” Grand Maester Pycelle said. “A most uncommon woman, and yet … it is no small thing, to tend to all the cares of the realm, despite the frailty of her sex …”
he wants to be her qyburn so bad unfortunately he's not freaky enough
"There’s a moneylender from Braavos, holding fancy papers and the like, requests to see the king about payment on some loan.”
Look at me, Pod. It unnerves me when you talk to my codpiece, especially when I’m not wearing one.
it's so funny that littlefinger is a genius simply because he like...invests money lmao. they're like "it's crazy he doesn't just spend money he builds stuff taht we can use to make more money" wow. this is like theon & the ironborn later sneaking up on witnerfell by just coming in at night & being quiet lmao.
but that's true to history bc if u read the art of war it's just a lot of "you should feed your army or they'll desert you" lmao
"i had their maidenheads" he's so fucking gross irdgaf if he thinks he fucked cat he's so nasty for telling everyone he did. slimy little bitch. doesn’t help that i’ve been watching love island bc he really does belong with the jag offs they cast on that show. the one guy gal dead ass looks like blond littlefucker. anyways.
i think it's also a huge miscalculation to think that handing over gregor would be enough to mollify dorne. they know who gave that order!
this was a good section but the jon snow chapters do be dragging
