I feel like any fan of A Song of Ice and Fire needs one really batshit theory that they have gone all in on—whether it's that Roose Bolton is an immortal vampire or that totally dead Martell guy being totally not dead at all—so here is mine:

Do I have any proof? Nope! But do I have anything to directly contradict me either? Not off the top of my head, but I should reread Daenerys VIII-X AGOT to be sure. I mean, she could probably have gotten lessons from Marwyn after she got sent to the past.

Do I actually believe Mirri Maz Duur is a time traveler? ... okay, maybe not. But I kind of want to write it as a fanfic now. And at least I'm not making youtube theory videos about it.

Reading A Song of Ice and Fire: A Game of Thrones After-Book Report

RIGHT. So I promised both to myself and to the internet that I'd report on my thoughts on the A Game of Thrones POV characters and their storylines before I started A Clash of Kings and this is me making good on that. That said, I don't know if I will have any bold or original thoughts. This is just my feels about things. And since I was thoroughly spoiled for a lot of shit past this book thanks to fandom osmosis and especially fanfic, there's probably going to be those spoilers when talking about POV characters.

Also, I should probably note before we get into things that besides being spoiled by fandom osmosis and fanfic in particular, this is my second attempt at reading A Game of Thrones, with the first attempt taking place in 1997 or so when it was the only ASOIAF book and I myself was in my mid-teens. I ended up noping out after Bran II for Yeeting Reasons and when I found out from @evilmidnightlurker in early 2001 about a Certain Infamous Execution (which is when he decided he wasn't going to read the sequels), I thought I'd had a narrow escape from books that were obviously nothing but nihilism and an author going LOL YOU CARED at the reader. And like, I do know now that that's not how GRRM rolls even if it's how the tv show guys roll but I did not know it then.

(Though like I think at some point around 2003 or so I did read "The Hedge Knight" in the Legends anthology, which I'd checked out from the library so I could read "The Little Sisters of Elluria" because I was totally into the Dark Tower at that point? But I did not retain much memory of it, except for the twist about Egg's identity.)

Flash forward twenty years later when I noticed that a Yuri on Ice fanfic writer I liked had a Pride and Prejudice fusion fic. Now P&P is a favorite of mine and I'm usually willing to read fusions when I only know one canon, so I decided that sure, I'd read this fic. And it was a Jaime/Brienne fic and despite having so little context for J/B outside of what I'd picked up from the cultural zeitgeist of the Game of Thrones tv show existing, I really liked the fic. So I followed the author's bookmarks to other J/B fanfic and read them and also liked them and spent years reading J/B as a pairing without, like, actually reading the canon it came from (because I remembered having to abruptly put down the book back in 1997) and getting more and more spoiled for everything and it became this weird almost special interest of, like, lurking around the edges of the fandom but not actually engaging in the canon.

And then I decided last spring that I would actually engage with the canon or at least read the other two Dunk and Eggs because I'd heard a lot of good things about them and didn't remember minding the first one and so I did and I loved them and my favorite little side character was Bloodraven and I knew from my lurking around the fandom that Bloodraven shows up again in ADWD and so I was all oh fuck, I'm going to have to actually read these books now.

So I did.

And honestly, I was kind of stressed for the first eight chapters, because I remembered being badly affected by the Yeeting (likely because I have a terrible fear of falling), but I pushed through and I'm glad I did because this is really good shit, you guys.

But yeah, okay, I should get ahead with the whole POV report thing. I'll probably make some notes about what little I remember of the 1997 reading here and there, because I definitely am not the same person I was back then and I think it affects how I read things.

Okay, so I said the next thing I would blog about regarding these books would be my thoughts on all the viewpoint characters in AGOT, but I was paging through the appendices and saw that each house had these charming little woodcuts to head their sections and I felt like I should share them all with you.

And honestly? I think someone needs to apologize to the Lannisters and the Targaryens. There is absolutely no reason for the heads of their house symbols to look that silly, even with trying to mimic a medieval style of illustration.

OH SHIT THAT IS SUCH A GOOD ENDING LINE.

A Game of Thrones is COMPLETE. I enjoyed it muchly. A short report on the POV characters and what I thought of them is to come and then I'll start ACOK.

... despite everything GRRM has done to me in this book, at least I get charming scenes like this one where Rickon wants four obsidian blades because he's four. With bonus history from Maester Luwin that is unfortunately going to get interrupted because GRRM likes to be Lucy with the football when it comes to pre-history lore drops.

Okay, maybe this is completely off-base, but it does read to me like Mirri Maz Duur was actually acting in good faith when she first tried to heal Khal Drogo (otherwise she wouldn't have boiled the wine to disinfect the wound when not doing so would have made it even more likely he'd get the infection he actually ended up getting) and he was the dumbass who didn't listen to the healer.

Like I've been spoiled for what's coming. I know what she's gonna do. That's just how it reads to me in the moment? Idk man.

One of the things that always surprises me in actually reading A Game of Thrones after years of absorbing the plot through fandom osmosis and fanfiction is how goddamn much of it happens in the first book. Like we're already coming onto plot points that I assumed would have happened during A Clash of Kings. I don't mind it, but it is surprising.

Unrelatedly, I love that Hodor has a little backpack/basket to carry Bran in. I knew he did some Bran transportation because of fandom osmosis, but I didn't know about the backpack. It's cute. I love how everyone at Winterfell is trying to help Bran with his disability.

I don't think this raven is saying corn, I think he's saying Jon.

One thing about finally actually reading AGOT after so long lurking in the fandom and experiencing the canon second-hand was that I was not prepared for how soon everything starts going to shit for Ned in King's Landing. I'd somehow garnered the impression that things very swiftly go to hell at the end of the book but nope, we're just past halfway through the book and Ned has a broken leg and the king is already on the hunting trip that fanfic/spoilers have told me is going to kill him. I really did not expect everything to get this irrevocably fucked this fast.