Alright, let's do this, Feast/Dance reread. Doing the books separately because I tried the combined read order and didn't think it was really spectacular.

Cities play such a huge role in Feast/Dance, and each of them has so much personality. Oldtown, White Harbor, Braavos, Volantis, and Meereen.

"A stranger. No one. Truly."

Pate isn't the most interesting Prologue/Epilogue POV; he's one of those losers that life eats for breakfast. Just a mediocre washout who says he'll make something of himself and never does.

"Yet somehow his feet turned back to the Citadel."

I also believe he's what the kids these days call a "simp".

Aeron represents a very specific fear to people of faith; that there is no God, only, to quote Pratchett, your own voice bouncing around on the inside of your skull.

Aeron thinks that he's hearing the voice of God but he accidentally admits the truth:

"He had found the answer in his bones."

It's just a game of free association until he finds an outcome he likes, then works backwards from there.

Dornish food sounds really good

Oberyn really fucked up Obara as a girl and she's been overcompensating ever since, huh.

Cersei

"No one frightened her," thinks the woman who spends the entire chapter in paranoid theorizing.

I always liked Feast/Dance, and that includes Brienne's chapters. I love the quirky characters and the careful look at Westeros' nooks and crannies. I like seeing the devastation of war up-close.

Brienne also sees a lot of normal people living normal lives up-close.

Brienne is a True Knight on a Noble Quest, but just because you *have* a quest doesn't automatically mean you can succeed. Typical for this series, Brienne has to learn she isn't the protagonist.

But it's not the quest that makes the knight.

Creighton Longbough and Illifer the Penniless are decent men, and charming in their own way, but they're not true knights, as the future High Sparrow points out.

Is a knight a man of faith? Is he a man on a selfless mission? Neither, it turns out.

Ser Shadrich is just passing through; ironically, he's on his way to kidnap the very maid Brienne has sworn to save.

So, right in our first chapter we're building our central theme by contrasting our POV with these minor characters. Brienne's arc is good!

I want to know why Osric Stark was elected Lord Commander at ten. Was it the Stark cult of personality? Did the Starks in Winterfell rig the game to get a troublesome claimant out of the picture? Was he just Wise Beyond His Years?

Where are the giant ice spiders, George

Braavos is awesome, fight me.

Tywin's funeral, really an incredible chapter.

"His eyes could see inside you, could see how weak and worthless and ugly you were deep down."

Cersei resents her father but wants to be like him. He's the only barometer she has for strength, but she still learns the wrong lessons. Lannister exceptionalism feeds right into her narcissism.

She wants to emulate Tywin, surpass him, but society won't let her.

I do like how even a totally mediocre guy like Gyles of Rosby knows the first thing to do as Master of Coin is get rid of Littlefinger's appointments.

So here's the thing. Jaime will never get the chance to be "Goldenhand the Just". He just doesn't have that kind of time. He will never change other people's opinions of him. The only thing he can do is change the way *he* thinks about himself.

"It was you who told me that tears were the mark of weakness in a man, so you cannot expect that I should cry for you."

Pretty good encapsulation of Tywin's relationship with his children.

There's so much fucking graft in the Royal Court lmao

Mord reappearing in the story with a mouthful of gold teeth is a great payoff.

Asha Queen

The Ironborn are a whole society of people trying to fill the void inside, with toxic masculinity, racial supremacy, religious fanaticism. Even Asha isn't immune. The Reader is the only guy who wants to stay out of the vicious cycle - "History is a wheel."

"Dead history is writ in ink, the living sort in blood."

"Now all I see are crows, squabbling over the corpse of Westeros."

Rodrik is the first to see what's happening, even before Euron says he's here to lead the Feast for Crows.

Tristifer Botley is also a simp.

Cersei cracking an egg for breakfast and finding an unborn chick inside is some serious bad omens shit. The auguries would be having a conniption.

Not to overdo the bit, but: Arys Oakheart is a simp

To be fair, I would also simp for Arianne Martell.

I don't think Arys Oakheart is a totally useless POV, he's just like, pathetic; spineless and easily blinkered by his prejudices. Being inside his head isn't really profound.

Even Areo Hotah will get to fight Darkstar in Winds.

"They found Lord Tarly in the fishmarket, doing justice."

When Hyle Hunt stops the guards from harassing some farmers, the farmer calls him a true knight. He's not, of course, but it does show that Hyle isn't bad all the way down - just a cynic. Look at how he talks about Renly.

The Randyll Tarly theory of justice: the beatings will continue until public order improves.

Cannot stress what an irredeemable asshole Randyll Tarly is.

Nimble Dick

There's a big theme in Feast of cyclical history, the past haunting us, compelling us to come back around and repeat it.

"Egg? Egg, I dreamed that I was old."

I love how by Feast the twincest is just, an open secret, like everyone knows but they have to keep pretending because there's nothing else to do.

I've said this before but man, Cersei's only frame of reference for authority figures is Tywin, specifically Tywin-as-unloving-father. And really, who else was there, in a post-Joanna Casterly Rock?

Casterly Rock is really this Gothic monstrosity, where Cersei and Jaime and Tyrion are isolated, with only servants who they're conditioned to think of as lessers. No mother, a father who hates them, and even Tyrion is confined to the deep bowels of the Rock.

That sort of thing has to fuck up your childhood development.

Feast has a lot of...almost recursive references. Criston Cole comes up in Arys Oakheart's chapter, then again in Jaime's. After Hyle Hunt appears in Brienne's POV, Sam remembers Hunt saving him from drowning (possibly a good sign?). It's tight worldbuilding, I like it.

Oh yeah, and then the dwarf septon Brienne meets winds up dead because of Cersei. That one's sad.

Qyburn is doing some very sloppy espionage work, thinking he can just take over Vary's spy ring without expecting any security breaches.

Cersei praises herself for the "sheer elegance" of her plotting but all her choices are either sitting back and waiting for the conflict to resolve itself, or clumsy, vindictive plots.

The Kingsmoot.

"Godless? Who knows more of gods than I?"

The thing about the Godless Man speech is that there's really nothing to say about it. It's a twisted campaign rally. The only thing it reveals is Euron's sacrilegious attitude. The mask has not yet begun to slip.

Gylbert Farwynd is on such a trip. Fuck yeah dude, skinchange into an orca and then lead us into the Uttermost West. I want to believe.

This really is one of the best chapters in the series. It's one of George's most theatrical moments, with staging and dialogue that are just begging to be put on stage - or screen.

The Ironborn have a choice between repeating history ("All you'll get from me is more of what you got from Balon.") and forging a new path ("Crown me, for peace and victory.")

They choose neither.

Tempted by gold and glory, the Ironborn careen right over the edge into the abyss. As with all conservatives, Victarion has no choice but to follow the reactionary wave. Asha at least knows to get out while she can.

The Old Way keeps going down to defeat because the people in charge will not, cannot admit that there is another way. They cannot give up the superiority the Old Ways give them. And so, what has happened before must perforce happen again.

I do actually really like the Ironborn. Not because they're cool or anything, but because they're such fucking losers. The Old Ways don't make sense because they're *made up*. They're a prelapserian fantasy used by the political and religious establishment.

And then Euron, this soulless motherfucker for whom no cultural more or value is sacrosanct, shows up, hijacks the whole thing by pushing the right buttons, and leads them all into the gaping maw. It's the perfect metaphor. Why do people not love this shit?

More of our theme of cyclical history as we go to Crackclaw Point. I love this place, the backwater of the world that stubbornly refuses the march of time, its own little world with its own little myths.

"We're all good dragon men, up Crackclaw way."

Before the fight at the Whispers, Brienne has already learned her lesson: be as true a knight as you can be, but don't flinch from killing. Use the bloody sword.

F in the chat for Nimble Dick

"He was a Crabb. This is his place."

lol Darkstar