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Oh god, that's one that's like nails on a chalk board to me. It's a contender for worst idiom, right up there with "words are wind" and "much and more". I thought it was just Asha, saying "my nuncle" instead of "mine uncle". When it started cropping up in other characters I rolled mine eyes. My neyes.

The wolves don't have context for what they see sometimes. From the holy text: Shaggydog just killed and ate something he hadn't encountered before. Oops, that's the next Jon chapter. Stuff blurs together sometimes, Also, a bit creepy that Mel said "you know nothing, Jon Snow". Channeling Ygritte, or just coincidence?

Book 5:

As for who represents the Seven Virtues... umm.... [crickets] Brienne could be Chastity or Diligence maybe Yeah, I got nothin'.

Yeah, food porn becomes more obvious in this chapter. He had a lot of it during the Purple Wedding (77 dishes, though thankfully he didn't describe them all), but that was interspersed with dialog and action. Here, there's almost a whole page of nothing but food. I counted 16 different dishes, not including between-course palate cleansers and wine. Granted, Illyrio is a gourmand, so it's not surprising how much he eats, but for me most of the food descriptions range from unappealing to frankly nauseating. Veal cutlets blanched in almond milk, stuffed swan, bleh. (Blanching in almond milk is a recurring theme, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's some fan theory about it having some deeper meaning) One tidbit from that chapter that intrigues me is the statue Tyrion saw from his window. Illyrio says that it's a statue of him when he was sixteen (sorry, six-and-ten). I found it implausible that a 16 year old bravo would a) commission a statue of himself and b) have the money to pay for it. Maybe the artist paid him to pose for it and Illyrio bought it much later after he'd become wealthy and fat. Book 5 Spoiler I also loved how quickly Illyrio dismissed the idea of crowning Myrcella. "To crown her is to kill her. Dorne might rise for her, but Dorne is not enough." A third party from across the Narrow Sea sees things more clearly than Arianne and the Sand Snakes.

Regarding GRRM liking the "king pretending to be a minstrel / commoner" thing, he does go overboard with it. Mance Rayder infiltrated Winterfell when King Robert came to visit back in GoT (he told Jon about it when Jon joined the wildlings). In a similar vein, Lady Merryweather tried to get Cercei to play hooky from court and dress as serving girls to go out on the town. I just figured he was a huge fan of the scene from Henry V where the king mingles with the troops before Agincourt.

Mystery Knight spoiler: Book 5 spoiler:

Hmm, grown man here, I can confirm that it's possible to stop.

I actually like Cami, particularly when she's in full sarcasm mode. She gets some of the best lines commenting on the absurdity of what's going on around her. (I still love her deadpan delivery of "Oh goody, Papa Tunde's mystical knife of excruciating pain. Glad that's still around."). I just don't like her as a love interest for Klaus. I much prefer them being platonic friends.

I don't understand why the Mikaelson's haven't gone on a Strix-cleansing rampage already. As soon as they knew where Becky was being stored, every single Strix should have been dead dead dust gone away DEAD. Starting with Aya, who annoys me even when she isn't in the episode. I can't stand her smug arrogant posturing, and the actress is really not very good. But I digress. There is literally no reason for Klaus and Elijah to tolerate the existence of any of these idiots, including the three main antogonists. I'm also a little tired of the Strix always being two steps ahead of our heroes. I know, this is the part of the arc where the protagonists are at a low ebb, and things seem darkest before they start resolving the problem, but the unanticipated curse on Becky was stupid. Also, how the fuck did they get the Finn-mulet? It was in Freya's possession when she was poisoned, and the house was never unoccupied afterwards for someone to sneak in and steal it. "You see, we Strix are so powerful that we have an army of trained spiders that snuck in and stole your necklace." Incidentally, Rebekkah has already fulfilled the "fallen by foe (Aya) fallen by family (Elijah)" bit of the prophecy. Just unstake her, have Hayley stake her AGAIN, and the whole thing is fulfilled. Alternatively, if geting stabbed with this stake counts as "falling" but it has to happen to all three of them, then get Marcel to stake Elijah, and one of the Crecent werewolves to stake Klaus. Preferably after they remove the "causes craziness" curse from the stake. I was shouting "eww, gross, no, don't do that!" through the entire Cami / Klaus professions of lurve and kissing. What a nice pleasant end to that relationship, though I guess we're destined for a rehash of "Caroline learns to live as a vampire" or "Elena learns to live as a vampire" or "unnamed character who I don't know because I gave up on TVD years ago for being too repetitive learns to live as a vampire" plotlines. It's been done. How about we try something different, like Cami becomes a mummy or a force-ghost (wrong network) or a chupacabra.

I know Marwyn said that, but I got the impression that it was his bitterness being expressed rather than an actual active conspiracy. He's making the Archmaesters ot to be some sort of Illuminati, which seems weird for this setting. If you read some of the world-building material, it's pretty obvious that the Dance of the Dragons civil war killed off most of the dragons. Does he really think the maesters manipulated the situation into causing that? It seems far fetched to me. More likely, the "Maester Conspiracy" was something like: all the dragons are dead, lets try to build a world without them and without magic, so let's adopt a disdain for the "higher mysteries" and get people used to our scientific-esque paradigm. More of an attempt to change the culture than an active plot to murder the dragons. Unless the Maesters somehow managed to cause the Doom of Valyria, but I just think that's too implausible. There are of course fan theories that say just that. Book 5 spoiler:

Aha, you've reached another crack theory kickoff point! When Cat met Jeyne, she specifically noted that she had good hips (presumably for child-bearing). In Jaime's chapter he describes her as having narrow hips. Thus spawns the "that's not really Jeyne in Jaime's chapter, it's an imposter and Jeyne is off with the Blackfish, possibly even knocked up" theory. It's interesting to see theories spin out of one sentence. Personally, I think it's an example of GRRM's intentional "different POV characters see things and remember things differently" trope. Which reminds me: SInce you've read Sansa's last chapter, did you notice that she recalls the Hound kissing her before he scarpered during the Battle of the Blackwater? If you go back to CoK, he didn't. She's just misremembering.

Season 5 spoiler:

Haleth, with that last comment I think you've taken leaf of your senses. [/rimshot] Season 4 Ramsey was, for me, at least understandable. I didn't sympathize with him or anything, but he did have a character arc (trying and eventually succeeding in winning his father's approval). I don't know that we're really supposed to root for a villain protagonist, but I could see his growth. I particularly liked the changes the season 4 of the show made to his relationship with Theon/Reek. It's much more psychological, and Reek seems to be genuinely his pet. The scene where Ramsey bathes Theon, and Theon's reaction to this tiny bit of kindness, was really well done. There was method to his madness; breaking Theon had a purpose. Season 5 and Book 5 Spoiler:

I liked the last Sansa chapter a lot, even though not a lot actually happens, it's more setup. I enjoyed Sansa finally getting a friend in Myranda Royce, and I enjoyed watching her LARPing as Alayne Stone. The thing that really stuck with me from it was just how stupid the design of the Eyrie is for a castle. Remote, damn near inaccessible, and uninhabitable for the duration of winter, and apparently no one does any road maintenance on the path leading up to it. Also, they use oxen to power the winches for the buckets, but slaughtered the oxen before the final descent. Come next spring, how do they operate the buckets? Does someone hand-carry some baby oxen up the final climb, then they wait for the oxen to grow up? Logic bombs like that bug me.

Well, I thought that was awful. Planet Blue Filter gives me a headache just watching it. The pillow-talk scene has been done to death, and as others have pointed out it didn't make a lot of sense in context. This wasn't Wolverine dreaming of Jean Grey in The Wolverine Daisy: "We're out of time!" (passes out) Mack: "Fire the missiles!" May: (hits the button) Cut to Planet Blue Filter for 3-4 minutes of Fitz screaming that the portal is closing while Coulson takes his own sweet time to slowly kill Ward, remove his hand, toss it on the corpse, stare meaningfully at his rapidly cooling body, then mosey over to the portal at what can't even be described as a brisk pace. Then even more slow-mo reunion of all the team with really loud and obnoxious score! Bleh. He really needs to shave. He's a mouth-breather anyway, and the stubble just draws attention to it. Any time they cut to him when he doesn't have dialog, he's just standing there like a slack-jawed cretin. I said exactly that when Lincoln and Daisy had their slow-mo kiss / forehead touch. They have no chemistry.

Good point about Viserys's fear of assassination being all in his head. That does make it weird that Doran didn't do anything to support them, though I guess it's in keeping with his "two can keep a secret if one of them is dead" approach to things -- he didn't help them out to minimize the chances that someone would find out. It makes me wonder if he had some other schemes cooking that didn't involve the Targ kids. He said that he's been working at Tywin's downfall ever since Elia died; surely that consisted of more than just signing a secret marriage pact 12 years ago and leaving it at that. Doran is one of my favorite non-POV characters, mainly because he comes across as so different from the impulsive, non-strategic thinkers that litter these books. I hope he actually is a player in the Game, and not just someone who stares at children playing in the water park and fantasizes about how he'll get his revenge.

She had other options besides bringing up the letter. Simply talking to Doran about a) why do you keep sending these greybeards to me when you know I'll reject them? and b) I'm your heir, I'm eventually going to be sitting in your chair, so I'd like some responsibilities besides party-planner so I can learn to be an effective ruler. She complained that Doran only sent for her twice a year, but there's really no reason she couldn't visit him whenever she wanted; the Water Garden's are only a couple of hours away by horseback. Show some interest in the responsibilities she's going to inherit. (It's a little like Stannis, who had to be reminded that a King has responsibilities to his subjects) A nice contrast with Arianne, who had no contingencies in case part of her plan failed. She just assumed that she could raise her banners and people would flock to her because they were riled up about Oberyn's death and wanted war. Maybe some would, but given how closely Doran works with the other lords in Dorne (several of them help him delay Balon Swann, for example), that's hardly a sure thing. It is odd that he wasn't providing surreptitious support for Viserys and Dany (though maybe he was since they always stayed ahead of Robert's knives). At this point, it seems like Doran is in cahoots with Illyrio Mopatis, and would support Viserys after he got backing from the Dothraki. 40,000 Dothraki screamers plus the support of Dorne would make Viserys a formidable force against the Iron Throne. Book 5 spoiler:

That's a very good point! After Loras was injured, Marge said she was sending her own maester to look after him, so she definitely didn't need Pycelle's tea-brewing services before that. However, Lady Merryweather said that Pycelle was a regular visitor at Marge's court before that. Hmm. I know there are some fan theories that Lady Merryweather is a double agent and that Marge has indeed been plotting to get rid of Cercei. Now I'm wondering if that is true and Pycelle was part of the conspiracy.

Doran handing Arianne the cyvasse dragon piece and saying "Fire and Blood" was a great way to end that chapter, but the part that really gave me a chill came earlier: D: "You were promised" A: "To whom?" D: "Doesn't matter, he's dead" A: "Well, that can happen with the old ones. What was it, a cold, a broken hip?" D: "A pot of molten gold" My eyes went wide when I read that. Holy crap, this mildly entertaining diversion in Dorne actually ties back to a main character! I loved it, and immediately went back to reread all the Dornish chapters. Book 5 spoiler:

Incidentally, the Ghost of High Heart doesn't say "titan". "I dreamt of a maid at a feast with purple serpents in her hair, venom dripping from their fangs. And later I dreamt that maid again, slaying a savage giant in a castle built of snow". When Sansa builds a snow version of Winterfell, Robin Arryn smashed it with his doll, saying that a giant was attacking her castle. She tore the doll apart, thus "slaying the savage giant". It's entirely possible that the Ghost saw a vision of that scene and put a poetic spin on it -- after all, various characters have commented on the unreliability of prophecies:

Credit to the casting director for Ward's younger brother. His facial features looked enough like Ward's that I thought the actors might be relatives.

I didn't realize this was part 1 of a 2 part "winter finale", so I can give them another week to off Ward before I give up on this show. He was at peak smarm levels tonight, to the point that I contemplated muting him when he was on screen. Lots of set up, not much substance. Bleh.

Really getting into the meat of the "why people like Jaime" chapters. His confrontation with Lancel was, for me, the point where I could really see his character growth. Old Jaime probably would have just killed Lancel on the spot for boinking Cercei. Now, he essentially forgives Lancel and puts the blame where it really lies, with Cercei. His subconscious has been trying to tell him something (hence the "...Lancel and Osmund Kettleblack and Moon Boy..." mantra), and now that he's gotten confirmation that Cercei has been lying to him, he can't avoid it any more. Also, I love the peripheral Lannisters we get to meet. Daven just seems so normal, and Gemma is a delight. It's a nice contrast with how damaged Tywin's children are because of him. Gemma has one of my favorite lines too: "Jaime, sweetling, I have known you since you were a babe at Joanna's breast. You smile like Gerion and fight like Tyg and there's some of Kevan in you, else you would not wear that cloak...but Tyrion is Tywin's son, not you. I said so once to your father's face, and he would not speak to me for half a year" The part that convinced me is that somehow they got his vicious warhorse across the "Path of Faith" mudflats. I can't picture anyone but Sandor being able to lead horse through that tortuous path without getting kicked in the head.

That's my take as well. He may not have set the situation up with reforming the Faith Militant as is goal, but when he met Cercei and determined that she could be manipulated, he decided to go for it right then. Speed chess rather than a long term manipulation.