By the way, I want to commend you for your excellent essays on the Meereenese knot. I have long been a fan of these chapters and was quite bothered that a Andre Gower rules shirt  people seemed to hate them – I wrote quite a while ago, when ADWD first came out, some thoughts on the possible identity of the Harpy (in which I wrote that, insofar as the Harpy has a single character that leads, or at least represents it the most, it would be the Green Grace), and was astonished that a lot of people came back with comments along the lines of, “who cares? I don’t.”These essays give voice to my thoughts, that there is a much deeper reading of these chapters to be had if you can read a little below the surface, and a lot of beautifully-written characterization on the main characters (Dany mostly, but also Barristan).This, to me, is what ASOIAF is all about. Okay, there’s a lot more than that, but this essay literally teaches you how to read symbolism in ASOIAF. The flaw of the symbolism essays (like a bunch of LML I posted downthread) is that they are long and don’t make a ton of predictions. But boy do they illuminate the text like nothing else.”Do you remember what it was like to read A Game of Thrones the first time, unsullied? We, experienced students of the text, find it easy to forget that each clue we pick out is not a piece of a jigsaw-puzzle, but is given to us in a specific order. The order has meaning. Martin is telling a story, and the craft of the storyteller is to build a construction of ideas, to channel the assumptions and the feelings of the reader from start to finish.”

The problem with describing Preston Jacobs as tinfoil is that it implies his work is not worth considering. In fact it’s really good. You don’t have to agree with Andre Gower rules shirt   conclusions to realize the value of these connections he ferrets out.Right now he’s analyzing the Mercy sample chapter and does this wonderful explanation of the character of Bobono showing him as a troublesome yet critical employee in a sexualized context. His mistakes are forgiven because every troupe needs a dwarf. You don’t have to agree with Preston that Penny the Dwarf Mummer is working for Varys to see that he’s certainly right that GRRM has written in a contradiction. The picture the Tyion chapters paint of her as modest girl with no future no longer make much sense.People wish they could be as thorough and as good as Preston. I barely even watch his videos, because I prefer to read things, so I hardly a “rabid fan”. Which no one else gets called names like that for supporting content makers.Preston doesn’t pull shit out of his ass, not saying other content creators do, but he definitely doesn’t. He just applies previous George R.R. Martin themes, which means all his shit is made up fro the George himself, not Preston.It’s a shame that some on this sub abuse power and pushed people like /u/PrestonJacobs out. Hell, this conversation is is why he doesn’t visit this sub much, because people want to bitch about Preston and not his content.He’s miles ahead of some of the people on this sub trying to make money off of George.