chocolatepot | Further in (Reply)

- I remembered after I made my last post that I'm not supposed to know about the prophecy I described as self-fulfilling - on the second or third mention of Maggy (Meggy?) I looked her up on Wikipedia because I wasn't sure if she had been in ASOS and I'd just forgotten her. It makes it interesting to consider how Cersei's relationship with Margaery would come off if I didn't know about it.

- I've been 95% sure that Taena's playing Cersei since her first appearance. It's just too handy, having a really enthusiastic spy in Margaery's women who's also dependent on her for advancement - now that she's a PoV character, I don't trust things to go right for Cersei.

- Srsly tho, it seemed like things used to go a lot better for Cersei. She's coming off kind of unsavvy nowadays. Take for example her exchange with Margaery on p. 478, after Cersei thinks about how the ordinary people* love Margaery because she's always out mingling with them. Cersei tells Margaery she's never thought of M. as a rival and Margaery appears not to know she's been insulted - Cersei, obviously she gets it, if she responded in any way you would just think she was a pathetic fool. Margaery is better at all of this than you, in terms of both concealing her own emotions and her PR. And probably statecraft/strategy as well. For all that Cersei says things like "Robert never had the stomach that a king requires if he hopes to keep peace in the realm," the kingdom seemed to be doing all right while he was still alive.

- This book is quite a lot about women and religion, separately. I don't know if that's significant.

- I'm so sick of Victarion moaning about how sad he is that he ~had~ to kill his wife. The people of the Iron Islands are all a bunch of miserable shits that I don't really want to read about (except Asha).

- The rape mentions are starting to wear on me. In the first couple of books, they made sense and served to show how harsh the world was, but as Westeros has disintegrated into factions and lawlessness it's just gone OTT. I don't even mean things like people talking about rape generally happening elsewhere, it's the direct rape threats and graphic "he raped these women and then bit their noses off" descriptions in dialogue and "she wants a good raping" and yeah.

- Aemon's line, "Fire consumes, but cold preserves," is interesting. I don't generally like the R'hllor people, you never trust aggressive monotheists in fantasy universes, but it seemed clear to me in the last book that they or R'hllor or something were the opponents of the Others, and the Fire was going to be necessary to get rid of the Ice. But this sounds like it could be ~foreshadowy~ and mean that there's some kind of benefit to the existence of the Others.

- NOT. ENOUGH. SANSA. It is depressing me to think that the sixth book isn't going to come out for years and years.

- *Can I just say that I hate the term "smallfolk"? Also, "nuncle" and "wayn". What is wrong with "the people", "uncle", and "cart"? SMALLFOLK SOUNDS LIKE HOBBITS.