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“[Red Pen Reads] A Game of Thrones – Arya and Sansa”

After chapters of chasing cats and balancing precariously at the top of stairwells, Arya is finally getting to practice some swordplay. Syrio is calling out his blows (high, low, left, right) and she’s parrying accordingly, but then he calls left when actually swinging right and Arya starts that eternal refrain of the adolescent soul: it’s not fair! Syrio tells her that she should’ve paid attention to the cues from his body language instead of just relying on him to tell the truth. Get it? It’s thematically appropriate, because it’s the mistake Ned made. Oh those silly Starks and their touching attachment to truth and honour.

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“[Red Pen Reads] A Game of Thrones – Eddard”

Ned! Back again so soon? Yes, yes he is. On one hand, King’s Landing is where all the action is reaching its climax, so it makes sense that we’d spend so much time there. On the other, when you have a book with multiple POV characters, it feels really unbalanced to be favouring one character so heavily. I’m not complaining, exactly, I’m just saying it’s really noticeable and also I miss Tyrion. Luckily, I have an active imagination and I’m still having fun pretending that Ghost!Tyrion is commenting on the action.

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“[Red Pen Reads] A Game of Thrones – Jon”

It’s been a while since the book’s last visit to the Wall. I believe we last left Jon on a high note — he’d just arranged a suitable placement for Sam, probably saving his life in the process — don’t worry, it won’t last long. If this book was plotted as a chart, it would be in the shape of lightning: a series of false peaks in a downward trajectory.

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“[Red Pen Reads] A Game of Thrones – Eddard”

Do you know how competitive reality audiences can predict, with some accuracy, who’s going to be eliminated at the end of the episode? They know because the episode footage and contestant “confessionals” tend to get edited to focus on that person. It’s a Ned chapter again. I’m just saying.

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“[Red Pen Reads] A Game of Thrones – Daenerys”

The Dothraki have their own interpretation of “dinner and a show” and it’s something. Drogo cuts a heart out of a stallion and serves it to Dany, who has to consume it for the benefit of the dosh khaleen, the Merry Widows of Vaes Dothrak. I’m not at all squeamish about the fact that it’s a heart, but it’s raw and she’s pregnant! Surely that’s bad for reasons of salmonella or, I don’t know, it just seems axiomatic that pregnant ladies should not be consuming large quantities of fresh blood. Then again, I fully plan to eat sushi if I feel like it if I’m ever pregnant, so maybe I’m just a big old hypocrite.

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“[Red Pen Reads] A Game of Thrones – Eddard”

Ned’s chapters are coming so often that he’s starting to remind me of Old Spice Man. “Now back to me!” Unlike Old Spice Man, however, Ned does not have the abs with which to entice me. He doesn’t have diamonds either, and he’s one of the few Starks who are not, have not been, and are not planning to be on a boat.

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“[Red Pen Reads] A Game of Thrones – Eddard and Sansa”

Ned is internally whining about how uncomfortable the Iron Throne is. That’s not a metaphor about the burdens of kingship, the throne is literally the least comfortable seat imaginable. On the other hand, at least it’s a seat, the people flooding the hall to seek the king’s justice have to stay standing, except for Varys and Littlefinger (and Pycelle, who doesn’t count). I think the entire scene is a metaphor for this book: the little guys are screwed, the kings are screwed in a more showy fashion, only the slimy bastards are doing well for themselves.

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“[Red Pen Reads] A Game of Thrones – Jon and Tyrion”

Ser Alliser Thorne is giving the Night’s Watch recruits an inspirational speech, a phrase that here means being emotionally crippled by deep-seated childhood trauma, stemming from the incident during which he witnessed his mother fellating a pony only to later find out that it was his father indulging a My Little Pony fetish, and therefore being able to express feelings towards men younger than twenty-five only by metaphorically jerking his dick and ejaculating a pile of abuse all over them.

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“[Red Pen Reads] A Game of Thrones – Catelyn”

Catelyn is feeling poetic about the view from her window. It sounds very pretty, but Tyrion’s fate is hanging in the balance, so maybe we should hurry this along, hm? I will say this about the picturesque beginning to the chapter: it’s about a waterfall named Alyssa Arryn after a woman who’s been dead for six thousand years. Now, it could just be me, but six thousand years seems like an awfully long time for one family to still be ruling this one patch of land. I don’t think any dynasty on Earth ever cracked the thousand-year mark, and I’ve done extensive research, a phrase which here means spending five minutes on Wikipedia. Forget ruling dynasties, is there even a family, any family, that can be traced back that far? How politically stable would a region have to be for allow for that kind of longevity not to mention records-keeping? Look up 4000 BC, we certainly don’t know much about it.

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“[Red Pen Reads] A Game of Thrones – Eddard”

Ned is flying high on “milk of the poppy.” We all know what it means when a character is injured, unconscious, and medicated: it’s dream-sequence flashback time!

(The role of a dreamscape’s shimmery border is here played by italics.)
Ned is accompanied by six people, but the only name we need to bother remembering is Howland Reed. He’s facing three enemies, knights of Aerys’s Kingsguard, and we don’t really need to care about any of them except maybe Arthur Dayne. Even in his dreams, Ned is on top of his favourite high horse — honour and duty! — and questioning the knights about their absence from the Battle of the Trident, the slaying of Aerys in King’s Landing, the Siege of Storm’s End, and Ser Willem Darry’s flight to Dragonstone with the pregnant queen and little Viserys. The knights are fairly certain that Ned’s mother was a hamster and his father smelt of elderberries. Ned apparently took offense, because a skirmish ensued, and at some point before, during or after, Lyanna was wailing her brother’s name and Ned was promising her something.