Girls Gone Canon Cast - ASOIAF Episode 14 Quentyn Intro/The Merchant’s Man Ft. PoorQuentyn

Episode Date: August 10, 2018

Family, duty, honor - Quentyn Martell sets off on an adventure, losing companions and faith along the way, to marry the dragon queen.   SIGN UP for our Patreon - first charge will be September 1st - ahead of time: patreon.com/girlsgonecanon if you sign up for a $10+ tier by September 1st you will get a BELWAS DESERVED BETTER sticker shipped to you      intro by Anton Langhage   Men's Lives Have Meaning, a seven-part essay series on Quentyn Martell by PoorQuentyn PoorQuentyn on Young Griff   Check out PoorQuentyn at the following: @NotACast  | Notacast Podbean | @PoorQuentyn | PoorQuentyn.tumblr.com       Eliana's twitter: https://twitter.com/arhythmetric Eliana's reddit account: https://www.reddit.com/user/glass_table_girl Eliana's blog: https://themanyfacedblog.wordpress.com/   Chloe's twitter: https://twitter.com/liesandarbor

Hello and welcome to episode 14 of Girls Gone Canon, Quentin Martell intro and the Merchant's Man. I'm one of your hosts, Chloe. You can find me on the internet as at Liza Narber and on tumblr as at Liza Narber and I'm another one of your hosts for today Eliana also known as glass table girl on the maester monthly podcast and of course on the Asaga vice and fire subreddit hello thank you again for coming to join us as we start a new journey a new adventure and joining us joining us on that new adventure in this new point of view is of course we had to

get him for this episode you guys we couldn't not get him the one the only poor quentin emmet booth he just did an episode with not a cast on volantis not too long ago, and he is the author of the fabulous seven-part series on Quentin Martell, Men's Lives Have Meaning. You can find it on his blog at poorquentin.tumblr.com, and it's also linked below in the description. Hey, Emmett, how are you? I'm doing great, guys. Thanks so much for having me on. I've been looking forward to it for a while. Yeah, we've been really excited to have you become an official Girls Gone Canon. Welcome. I can't promise to match the performance of my beloved co-host. I can't do Phil Collins

quite as well, but I will aspire. I will reach for that star in Phil. But yeah, I was especially looking forward to coming on to this because as you can tell from what I call myself Quentin is one of my favorite characters and I love how his story starts so yeah this is a chapter I really never tire of talking about awesome and of course please let everyone know places they can find you upcoming projects you have going on yeah so I'm at PortQuentin on Twitter. You can also find me at portquentin.tumblr.com. I'm on

the podcast Not A Cast, A Song of Ice and Fire, which can be found at notacastasoiif, or you can find us, or email at notacastasoiif at gmail.com. My co-host on that is Jeff Hartline, a.k.a. Brendan B. Fish. You can find him at Brendan B. Fish on Twitter. And I covered Game of Thrones Season 7 for Deadspin.

And my stuff has popped up in Vice and Vulture and a couple other areas before. Definitely. And we will leave a lot of those links below in the description for you. Little housekeeping before we can get started on Quentin, which we are so excited about. We wanted to make sure there's a little reminder about right now we're doing a giveaway for some bath products from Fire and Suds that will be going for the next week. It will end on Friday,

the 17th. And of course, do not forget that our Patreon does go live on September 1st. You can pre-sign up right now. For $10 or more a month, you will also get a special edition limited one-time offer belboss deserve better sticker designed by eliana yep and of course we

are opening up these stickers for people to vote for you can uh of course vote for your favorites on twitter but the people who actually get a say, like, the people whose vote actually counts are the people who are our patrons. The Patreon subscribers, because that's who gets the stickers. And that's democracy, man.

Pretty much. That's how it works. It's, uh, I guess we could call them, what are they? What should we call it? Delegates. They registered, you know? If you want to have a vote, you got to register to vote. You know, that's how it is. So without further ado, we'll push into the Quentin introduction overview.

Just like we've done with the past couple POVs with Barristan and with Ned, we are just going to talk about some of Quentin's background, some of his life. Something I love about Quentin Martell's stuff is that, and it's something that also poor Quentin talks about in his Men Lives Have Meeting piece, we see his chapters much like Ned Stark's chapters. They immerse you. You pick up seeing the aftermath of things that have happened and after major battles. We don't get to see his journey fully up to this point, but Quentin flashes back to it as he picks up from it. Where we started Barristan by having a large round of catch up to get used to the end of A Dance with Dragons, The Merchant's Man is the opposite problem. Quentin finds his plot introduced closer to the beginning of A Dance with Dragons, but it

is spread out until the last second in chapter 68, transitioning into a lens for us to see Merton. Absolutely. This is one of the characters where Merton's gardening style in general, and specifically the hell he went through trying to resolve the mirror and he's not and get A Dance with Dragons finished, really had an impact on the story. he said he wrote and rewrote quentin's story in particular multiple times with specific attention paid to the timing of his arrival in mirin he's referred to it as the mirror and he's not his attempt to balance all his characters were trying to get to danny so he wrote a version of the story where quentin arrives well before danny gets married to his dar one version where he arrives well after it's

already done and then the third version which he ended up going with for final publication where quentin shows up the day before uh danny gets married and i think that works best it's the most dramatic like danny's on the verge of this big decision she's already uh feeling distraught about giving up dario in her bed as would we all and uh so she's kind of forced into this corner to make these decisions among these three people right on the verge of it so uh you know i can see where he had difficulties making this work but i think you went with the best of options so i have a question that i think i don't know maybe you two know the answer to do you know if like quentin's chapters were written before or after the decision to split a feast for crows and a Dragons? Yeah, that's an interesting question.

I'm not entirely sure about it because this is one of the areas where the split does matter the most and makes the biggest difference in terms of what's included in the same book with other information, given the offstage role Quentin plays in A Feast for Crows for Arianne.

Yeah, I've never heard anything about what his plans were for quentin in the early stages it's one of the characters he's talked least about in terms of his writing process other than just that structural note i just mentioned but not a lot about the history in terms of where he was writing it in the wake of a storm of swords yeah so if any of you are going to world con which i believe is upcoming like next week this is a question we would like for you to ask george uh ask him around when in his process did he decide to make quentin a pov because yeah i mean it has a lot of ramifications for the story in terms of structure and height

if it were the same book you kind of lose that suspense intention of like but what is quentin really doing and it undercuts Arianne making her seem actually paranoid as opposed to justified in terms of her desire to become princess of Dorne it would be like cutting away to Stannis in the first book for no other reason than just to show him which would kind of ruin the mystery and the build-up of Stannis as an offstage character in that first book. What's he really up to? He fled. What are his plans? Same with, like,

Mance. Martin's really good at building up characters before introducing them, and I think, yeah, Quentin's a good example of that, for sure. And, of course, House Martell at the turn of the century, we do have, to give you background, we have Ariane Martell, who is the oldest sibling. Yeah, she's really the ultimate oldest sibling, man.

She's almost like Tywin in that regard, where it seems like she's just the source of such kind of charisma, but also feeling overlooked and dealing with her father, who seems weak and cowardly, which is also something Tywin was up against. weak and cowardly, which is also something Tywin was up against. Quentyn's kind of like nervousness and shyness makes me feel like Jenna's comment about how Tywin's brothers all felt like they were in his shadow.

Obviously she's not cruel or sadistic or domineering in the way that Tywin is, but same kind of sense of ultimate oldest sibling, I think. And it's kind of funny because sometimes people feel like they're in the shadows of their older siblings, but think. And it's kind of funny because sometimes people feel like they're in the shadows of their older siblings, but for Ariane

it's absolutely the difference because Ariane fixates so much on Quentin in her chapters. Like, Quentin is such a looming presence throughout her story, whereas Quentin thinks of Ariane like once in his entire storyline and he doesn't think about her name.

He's just like like and his sister that's it but they both the kids are very motivated to meet their father's expectations so and of course as arianne is the ultimate older sibling quentin martell is the ultimate middle child. Forever a middle child. Yeah, there's definitely that kind of like scrunching down into his neck like a turtle sense you get from Quentin that he's just like automatically

assuming that everything is gonna start to go wrong even if he's trying to convince himself otherwise. And yeah, he does feel a lot like the other middle sons in the books. Ned is an obvious example. When Quentin thinks of the line someone told him, a girl told him, you have a good, honest face, but you

should smile more. That sounds very much like Ned, like how Catelyn described Ned when she first met him. It's like this overly solemn face, less pretty version of his brother Brandon. You know, found the good heart beating underneath eventually, but like that first reaction seems pointedly similar in description from Martin all right a thought now this other character is a first son but he's treated after a while kind of like a middle child

because he's kind of a black sheep of his family but again going back to how like feast and dance were once one book maybe should we be viewing viewing uh quentin through the lens of sam tarly's journey like there are ships there's awful adventures there's maesters dying and all this like feeling of maybe you're not really the hero of the story but we must keep paddling on as some people like to say and the catch with all that of course is like in storm i mean yeah we've been to sam since like a game of thrones but you know sam is shown to be kind of a hero he does some pretty like very hero story like things so we're primed to think like oh maybe it's maybe it's gonna work out for Quentin when you first see him you're like oh there's this guy I guess it's like an

underdog success story or like you you think maybe it's gonna be an underdog success story at first the way Sam's was but then everything keeps getting worse and there's never the triumphant moment like Chloe was saying like the way it's structured where his chapters keep opening up after something terrible has happened the merchant's man opens up right after his best friend gets killed and the windblown opens up right after the sack of astapor so the focus is less on the thing itself and more on why he's still going like that's what each chapter ends up being about is him wondering to himself okay is this enough to stop is this enough to give up? And the answer is always no for a variety of reasons.

And that's something that Sam deals with a lot in Storm. Like his POV opens in Storm with him sobbing and taking another step and deciding he can't go on. And in Feast, he almost can't go on. So I think there's, yeah, there's that question in common of why you're on the journey and if you can make the journey happen. And I think that's something interesting when you have characters who are trying to be a hero, but dealing with almost like mundane logistics and seeing if they can rise above those. Yeah, and something obviously that's been mentioned is they do have the hero story. something's obviously that's been mentioned is they do have the hero story they are going on to be the hero but obviously different alterations of that story just like with old nan saying the last hero story to brand stark i mean especially with quentin one by one his friends died his

companions died and we'll definitely dive into this more especially in the dragon tamer because there's this great line about the hero's journey quentin thinks about but yeah i think that's a perfect comparison to liken it to the hero's journey not hero's journey the the last hero's story also the hero's journey but like the fire version if like the last hero's version was the ice version of that story quentin's going into a wasteland where there's fires everywhere and the pyramids are set on fire and he reaches out to the dragons instead of the children and ends up getting burned for it.

It's like a version of The Last Hero where the ending is just they die and there's no moral. Which I imagine is a story Old Nan would enjoy telling to Bran. The story of the boy who died and there was no point. And of course he has kind of become his sigil in the end. You know, I mean, he goes looking to play with fire

and he becomes his own sigil at the very end. Yeah, the spear flies too close to the sun, absolutely. All those last hero stories have some kind of spin on it. Like Sam's not questing, he's actually just in a horrible retreat. Even in the earlier chapters in Dance, like Varamyr has a version of the last hero story, but the twist is he's the worst person ever. So you can see Martin kind of playing with his own arc

whenever he brings this up again. For sure. Then we got another Martell who like, are you a hero? What's your story? Who are you? Named Tristain. He gonna die, too.

They're all gonna die. It's a shame. Doom little kid. I wish we had anything from that kid, but the only time we see him, I think, is him playing Savas with Myrcella. And even then, it's a flashback, if I recall correctly. I might be wrong about that. Yeah, I think, if anything, I think it was Aereo was talking about them I want to say about watching them play I think he's mentioned a bunch of course because Cersei makes a dumb plan even by Cersei standards to kill him but we don't we haven't actually had any plot or character

stuff with him so I hope we do before he dies because otherwise it's just going to feel kind of empty as it did in the show when he was just stabbed for no reason. Wait, you're saying they had the Martells in the show? The what? This must clearly be a fever dream brought on by excess of Philly cheesesteaks. Mmm, Philly cheesesteaks.

Quentin was fostered at House Ironwood to actually repair the relationship after Oberyn and Edgar Ironwood had a duel which was kind of a blood debt and a little bit of a stain on the Martell honor because Edgar did kind of die mostly from poison they kind of speculate

which we've never seen that happen from Oberyn ever never seen it in my life that does not fit his MO at all who would do such a thing that happen from over and over. Never seen it in my life. That does not fit his MO at all. Who would do such a thing? So of course in House Ironwood we have several different members to get to, but the first

is Cletus. Which is an amazing name. Just throwing that out there. I do love in the middle of these vaguely exotic sounding dornish names are supposed to capture like you know mediterranean languages and but then you have like cletus and edgar edgar who sound like they're they're just squinting at you from a porch in kentucky it's just a it's just a weird little mix and which which is which is perfectly fine i just

think of cletus as the redneck from the simpsons because that's the way i was raised aka right so that's just that's just a shortage i've i i picture cletus from with his horrible accent whispering give your bride a kiss for me and it ruins the story forever yeah i can kind of see that now i think you might have just ruined this for me thanks yeah i thought cletus was a perfectly fine name i I try. Until now. I was just like, oh, what a fun name. I was like, Edgar is like really pulling out of the story. Archibald a little too. Edgar and Archibald. Like, what is this?

Yeah, where do they get these names? Yeah, Archibald is a whole other thing. That sounds like he's a foppish British lord from like a mid-level Monty Python sketch. That's out of nowhere. But yeah, Cletus Ironwood, who is described by quentin as always randy and always laughing and is in the couple flashback scenes he gets he's always like joking about sex and slapping back so he's clearly like if quentin is ned then uh cletus is either the robert arguably or maybe even more so the brandon because he he dies unexpectedly right at the

beginning of everything that gets going, just like Brandon did. So you can see Martin kind of playing with that same kind of dynamic where our protagonist, there's that great Ned speech where he says that everything about this was meant for Brandon, and I never asked for this cup to pass from me. And Quentin similarly says in this chapter that he never asked for this, and that, well, of course, this was always his quest and never Cletus's. You get the sense that Cletus's, like, drink, kind of more superficially at least cut out for this, of course, this was always his quest and never Cletus's. You get the sense that Cletus is, like Drink, kind of more superficially, at least, cut out for this sort of thing. Or more self-possessed in a way that would work.

And Quentin is plagued by this self-doubt that he doesn't fit that role. Oh yeah, absolutely. And he feels that this whole entire time. He is surrounded by these friends that he just feels like are way more capable of all of this than he is. And except for Jairus who's the worst we're gonna get to we're gonna get to that i hate jairus so that who doesn't that brings us to archibald archibald's pretty chill who i love he's adorable i love archibald if cletus is his Brandon, Archibald would be his Robert.

He even wields a hammer, and he vaguely threatens to kill Kang Harzu with a tap of it at one point. Of course, an interesting line that we get from Barristan on these young knights from The Queen's Hand is, The Dornish men were knights, at least in name, though only Ironwood impressed him as having the true steel. Drinkwater had a pretty face, a glib tongue, and a fine head of hair. So I love him as having the true steel drink water had a pretty face a glib tongue and a fine head of hair so i love that emphasis on the true steel oh yeah me too yeah especially as someone who's really into the baratheon brothers as characters that's a very clearly deliberate double callback to how donald noy uh talked about the baratheon brothers the true steel is the way he talked about Robert, of course.

And the way he describes drink is very similar to how he and other characters have described Renly as being a pretty face, a glib tongue, and a fine head of hair. That's almost identical to how Olenna talked about Renly as being, you know, he knew how to bathe and knew how to dress, and somehow he got in his head that this made him fit to be king. So, yeah, that's a great contrast and yeah i like that uh arch who is this sweet little moment when quentin dies of beating out the flames with his bare hands and like holding his burned corpse and like sobbing over him when they find him um wait he dies and then yeah no no no he's coming back that was a fake no no no they all lying. That's so much more emotionally satisfying.

So you're telling me he dies? That's a story. So I'm telling you he dies. So you're saying there's a chance. Oh my god. We just invited, we invited Emmett on this so we could just make him mad. That's a fun if easy task. But I do think that's a great catch

of finding that line of the true steel as a comparison. This of course brings us on to Jairus Drinkwater, everyone's least favorite fuckboy. He is a fuckboy. Boo. Like, definition favorite fuckboy he is a fuckboy like definition fuckboy like his picture is there in the dictionary right next to it also i thought it was really interesting there's this line later on from when he meets daenerys and his real name is g. Who? Yeah, so it says, handsome young Gerald bowed.

Sir Garrus Drinkwater, your grace, my sword is yours. So Jarrus is short for Gerald? Really? So he's mini Darkstar. Like, Darkstar wasn't pathetic enough on his own. You gotta have a mini Darkstar. He's the Darkstar of Quentin's plot. Pretty much.

dark star he's the dark star of quentin's plot pretty much when i think gerald i think of gerald from hey arnold who was the best and who is the best he was an absolute absolute precious cinnamon bun and this man does not deserve to be named gerald okay this is this is a perfectly fair point we're getting all these characters from tv shows. The Simpsons and Hey Arnold are just messing with Quentin's quest the entire time. Let's talk more about the 90s cartoons. I also like, I love that his last name is Drinkwater. You know, like a drink of water. I know. Really, George?

Like a tall drink of water. Yeah, God. Some old woman talk like, oh, there's a tall drink of water over there. of water yeah god some old woman talk like oh there's a tall drink of water over there quentin's quest feels like um an rpg in a lot of ways like he's got his little quest together and they're all like little chibis on the screen going off on the map and and drink is absolutely like a mid-90s final fantasy supporting character with like the slanty haircut and like you know always like doing like putting his fists on his hips and moving around on the screen saying brash things he's completely recognizable and completely obnoxious but works works well because martin

intends him clearly to be as obnoxious as possible he's probably a bard he is oh god he is a bard and not even a cool one like Mance. A lame one like all the other ones. Or like Darian. You know, at least. Yeah. Oh, true. That's a good comparison, yeah. Darian, also the worst.

Anyways, so William Wells. Tell me about William Wells. I actually don't know much about him other than like, that's a name. That's a name. Well, it's kind of interesting because he's one of the ones they lost. And there's a house wells in the north as well. There's a northern and southern one, which in the RPG, the role playing fantasy game, there's info more on the northern wells. But it kind of reminds me of Ned's trip to the Tower of Joy and taking a handful of Dornish friends with him instead.

Almost on his journey. Like, A Song of Ice and Fire is really just repetition, to be fair. But the northern wells you do get a peek at in Cersei's plot. Theoden Wells is actually the head of the warrior sons. And he's who takes Cersei to Margaery when she requests to go visit her when she's being contained. So he's of the Northern Wells houses, and it's a completely different house. I thought that was very interesting.

That is interesting. Yeah, I like the comparison to the Tower of Joy scene. I mean, Quentin's quest ends in a bed of blood in the same way, and he even finds a Kingsguard who tries to stop him and warn him, you know, Barristan, as opposed to the three at the Tower of Joy. So yeah, there's definitely a lot of connections there. Oh yeah, it really continues this whole Ned parallel and King's Landing parallel we've been talking,

which of course George is doing what works because the politics and the drama and intrigues of King's Landing are what grips us in the very first place. So why not repeat them in another plot? Exactly. His Wheel of Time stuff stuff he does love that Quentin is knighted at the age of 18 and he actually turned down

Oberyn's offer to knight him but accepted Lord Anders Ironwood's yeah that's so telling we don't get much about Quentin's childhood but that's a really telling detail because that's quite a snub, especially from someone in the family as impressive and intimidating as Oberyn. It's a big deal to be netted by that guy. And it's kind of a statement on Quentin's part that gets at the division Arianne thinks about in one of her released Winds chapters, where she's thinking about how, given that Quentin was only at Ironwood because of a blood date Oberyn was paying, there was this kind of instant division between Quentin and the Sand Snakes, which I imagine was only exacerbated when Quentin turned down being knighted at Oberyn's hands.

And Arianne makes it clear she chose the Sand Snakes, in part because of, I mean, geography. They were the ones who were there. Quentin was being sent halfway across Dorne, but also because, as we know, she's always been really close to them, Tyene especially. So right away you get this sense of this sibling not even a rivalry because as Eliana said Quentin doesn't even really think about Arianne they're not interacting with each other but a sibling a gap a kind of alienation from each other which ends up having really negative consequences for both of them it kind of reminds me too that it's looked at as kind of

a slight on Oberyn by Arianne and the snakes, but at the same time, it would be looked on as a bigger slight if he had the offer from both and he chose to go with Oberyn because he was sent to heal that blood debt. So, in a way,

it's kind of, yet again, another thing Arianne doesn't really understand the all of it you know kind of a thing she does uh and of course it brings the very strong the brother he chose vibe with cletus and arch and lord anders much like ned with robert and john aaron absolutely yeah yeah i think that's a really great point that's that's an excellent point and i'm also kind of surprised i never really paid much attention to it that oberyn i guess was a knight because you never hear anyone say sir oberyn true good point i don't think about oberyn a knight ever. Yeah. But he seems to have collected every possible title and lifestyle he can along the way, so I'm sure it was just a passing fancy.

Quentin was able to be knighted because, turns out, he was trained with spear and sword since he could walk, and he actually has been riding horses since he was six. Yeah, I thought that was a very interesting little fact they snuck on in there yeah that is the way he's different from sam for example like he's not he doesn't have a complete ineptitude for an unwillingness to take part in the the fighting realm which kind of is ultimately ends up being a problem because i'm sure if quent wasn't able to do that he might not convince himself he could tame a dragon, so that kind of sets him up to fail, almost, that he has just enough of the right resume

to screw himself over. And of course, growing up with the Ironwoods, he grew up with several of the daughters of House Ironwood. And developed a crush on one of them, the oldest one, which is an unexpected kind of parallel with Littlefinger in that regard. It's not quite the same, of course, in that the reason it became such a fuss at Riverrun

is because Peter Baelish was setting his heights so high despite being the son of the smallest of the small lords, whereas Quentin is the son of the overlord of House Ironwood, so that relationship isn't quite the same. But there is that same dynamic of the foster son developing a crush on the Lord's daughter. Yeah, and I mean, House Ironwood, as Cletus shows, would be totally fine, I guess, with him having a dalliance with one of the Ironwood daughters. daughters but also another parallel of course is that it seems that quentin maybe takes a fancy-ish to the 12 year old that's like a little finger thing to have happen to you yeah i don't know if it's like as creepy as little finger is you know i mean

it's pretty i mean some of the thoughts areline, but it works a bit with the parallel. In a way, his want for Gwyneth Ironwood is sad, but bittersweet. It's not really a want, it's more like the quote that comes up is, More recently, the youngest of Lord Ironwood's daughters had taken to following him about the castle. Which is cute. And she seems like almost like a mix of Arya and Sansa in a way. Like she's got like the Arya looks and the practicality, but her dreams seem like Sansa-ish. I agree. It's definitely weird to have Quentin think to himself,

yeah, I'll probably marry that 12-year-old. That's weird. But it's not said with like the same kind of creepiness and desire as Littlefinger. It almost seems like a pragmatic assessment of what's probably going to happen. Like, oh, she's following me around. I'm staying in the house. In a few years, she'll assessment of what's probably going to happen. Like, oh, she's following me around. I'm staying in the house and a few years she'll flower. That's probably going to be the thing. Definitely still.

Definitely still, definitely still clangs off the ear. But yeah, I agree with Chloe. It's not, I don't think it's meant as disqualifyingly creepy as it is with Littlefinger. Well, that's him being like well that's him being like that's him being like the robert though in this situation right he's like oh i'm gonna marry one of these ironwood girls and i'm gonna be an ironwood now yeah absolutely it's robert with liana syndrome start it up yep he literally thinks that i mean especially through the chapter some of just the internal thoughts that's his family That's how it's become.

So it's very much so like that. Very much so. Well, I think it also all of that has to be all of that has to be filtered through Cletus just died. So I'm sure he's thinking like kind of more differently and more desperate attached fashion to the family than maybe he generally does, because he's seeing that attachment tested and worn down and kind of ripped away from him to a certain extent so yeah i think he's definitely ironwood becomes like this oasis in his mind as he goes forward is like the place he wants to return to is the place everything's going to be all right it's a you know a locus of innocence for him in a way that nothing else really is that That's his red door. It is. Exactly.

It's his snow castle of Winterfell, basically. Mm-hmm. It's home. Also, you know, we could ask him how he feels about it, but he's dead. But is he? Is he? Is he? Was he? Why is Gamora?

I'll let you guys think on that one, but let's get ahead and chew on that folks chew on that one oh my god it sounds tender maybe crispy i don't know it depends on how long you left the sarian on um and now we need a food break oh god it does sound good crackly just skin anyways uh the long pig as they call it went in so we will move on to our what we missed our lightning round eliana kick us off all right so we got the prologue as you all know and dance opens in the actual true hour of the wolf where veramir has skin changed into the body of a wolf and he leads a small pack on a hunt killing free folk deserters.

He thinks back on killing his little brother in his youth while in his father's dogs, and then his skin changing training through Haggon and the many abominations he's committed. He tries to slip into his companion, never do that, thistle skin as he lays dying, and she escapes his control, only to return with icy blue eyes and blood frozen clinging to her skin. In Tyrion 1, Tyrion finds himself lodged in a ship's cabin making his way across the narrow sea he's drunk he's pretty messed up he just killed his dad he's crying about taisha you know

the usual he threatens a sex worker there's a mushroom metaphor he matches with with illyrio and then he finds out illyrio's plan a dragon with three heads. Not Seto Kaiba. In Daenerys I, her role in the cities of Slaver's Bay is ever a challenge, and she is presented with two corpses, the second more troubling than the first. Stalwart's shield is murdered by the Sons of the Harpy, and a sack of burnt bones is upended in the throne room.

The bones of a child. In Jon I, Jon dreams through ghost's eyes below the wall, hunting in the woods, and even feels the presence of his siblings' wolves around him. Awakened by Jaer's raven, Jon finds himself treating and giving counsel to King Stannis, who is milking the Night's Watch lands for all they are worth. Melisandre follows Jon, warning him of his foes and telling him he knows nothing. What a nice chick. Something about those redheads.

I know, right? In Bran 1, exhausted and drained, Bran, Meera, Jojen, Hodor, and Coldhands, and Summer, make it to the Three-Eyed Crow's cave. In Tyrion 2, smuggled out of Pentos by Illyrio, Tyrion makes his way to the Rhoyne, and Illyrio begins to unfold his plans for Daenerys and Young Gryff. Tyrion recounts the story of Hugor of the Hill, and tells Illyrio that he wanted to be the High Septon before he met Tysha, which is a detail I always forget about. Same.

Yeah, I did not remember that until you put together this summary. He's not very holy, you know. But, you know, that's what happens. You have your rebellious phase after you have your, like, really hardcore young Christian phase. Yeah, absolutely. You graduate from catechism once you know yeah you go to your youth camp and then you're like oh no um and that of course brings us to the merchant's man where disguised as a wine cellar servant quentin martell continues his journey to a beautiful dragon queen in Meereen. Adventure awaits! Bum-ba-da-bum!

Bum-ba-dum! Meow-meow-meow! Adventure Stink. Quentin Martell is in Volantis looking at a small ship with 60 oars called the Adventure. This stink was piss and rotting meat and night soil. This was the reek of corpse flesh and weeping sores and wounds gone bad.

So strong that it overwhelmed the salt air and fish smell of the harbor. What an opening line. Adventure Stink. The same could be said by the end of his chapters, I'm sure. It's so subtle. What could the author possibly be signifying there really uh that the ship smells bad that's it that's all no metaphors it's it's the ship of no metaphors jurist drink water and cletus and argybald ironwood are among quentin's og companions And Cletus and Archibald Ironwood are among Quentin's OG companions. And Quentin is also like, but what if we, what about a different ship that's not adventure? When the master of adventure appears with two crewmen at his side. Strong, vile-looking men. Yeah, they are not seemly.

looking men yeah they are not seemly and then in planky town you learn about planky town which has the greatest name i it makes me think of donkey kong uh quentin was the wine merchant he was playing the role of the wine merchant but apparently that was less believable in disguise. So they change roles. Bacchanalise lies on the metal lark. Yeah, Cletus became the merchant, and Quentin became the servant. And Cleus, of course, is slain in Volantis. And Geras, Geras,

I can't even say his name, and Geras becomes the merchant. Which, dude, poor fucking Quentin, dude. He doesn't even get to be the boss like in his own scheme his lackeys have to play the boss and he has to play the lackeys he needs to believe in himself

exactly cause he knows deep down he is a lackey like he hates he says he hates lying which is definitely part of it but also like he just he flinches from being in charge cause at some level he feels like he doesn't belong there he doesn't deserve to be so yeah he's he's consigned himself to play the role of a servant eternally yeah and of course his friends as we mentioned do have a little more charisma than he does especially jira's drink water who i guess is a beb he's he's a beb he's a bed he's tall and fair with blue green eyes

and sandy hair streaked by the sun and a lean and comely body i guess jerry's drink water had a swagger to him a confidence bordering on arrogance for sure he never seemed ill at ease and even when he did not speak the language he had ways of making himself understood quentin cut a poor figure by comparison short-legged and stocky thickly built thick oh my god with hair the brown of new turned earth his forehead was too high his jaw too square his nose too broad a good honest face a girl had called it once but you should smile more smiles would never come easily for quentin martell any more than they did for his lord father as we mentioned during barriston yes jairus is a total babe but he's a total fuck boy and women should just stay away from him.

Also, he was totally a dick to Barristan about Danny and he's totally the kind of guy that would send you a dick pic unsolicited. Absolutely. He's more like Jairus' dick water. Am I right? No, you're not. He's what we like to call garbage.

Incorrect. Non-canonical. But yeah, I do love the line about Quentin not being able to smile, which feels like a direct comparison to Stannis, who's introduced by Cressen as having completely forgotten how to smile, and always standing in Robert's shadow the same way Quentin is always

standing in Drink's shadow. So again, like Stannis in that it's the classic false protagonist thing. Like the story sets them up as potentially being a main character, but they know at some level that they're not. Jairus uses his not-so-smooth Valyrian to ask how fast the adventure is. How swift is your adventure, Jairus said in a halting approximation of high Valyrian. The adventure's master recognized the accent and responded in common tongue of Westeros.

There is none swifter, honored lord. Adventure can run down the wind itself. Tell me where you wish to sail, and swiftly I shall bring you there. Which is like, hey! How swift is your adventure? There is none swifter! Not so swift, it turns out. Not so swift at the time, but by the end of the book it's pretty fast it ends pretty swiftly when it comes to it yes indeed hashtag meta

the master recognizes jeris's westerosi accent and responds to him in the common tongue adventure is swift and can run down the wind. Which, I don't know. This is a fun thing that I've been playing around with. Jairus drink water as the wine cellar. It's turning water into wine. Okay, that's the one thing that I have. That's good. Clever. I liked it.

Thank you. You're welcome. Applause, applause. Jairus then informs him that they wish to travel to Meereen, and the captain gives pause to that, informing them that there's, like, no reason, no one should be going to Meereen. There's, you're not going to get any slaves out of it, you're not going to make any profit out of it,

and there's not even, like, fighting pits, because the because the silver queen was like no we don't do that anymore which like overall marine sounds like a great place besides the whole right now it's currently a hellscape where we leave off with barry you know like it's literally just you know uh waking inferno but otherwise it sounds like a great place other than the war and the plague and stuff, it sounds pretty nice. Right. At least there's no slavery. Yeah, that's true. True.

Quote unquote. Cool animals. There's a pale mare and some dragons, I hear. And we love mares. We do like horses. True. Yeah, absolutely. Tell me, my Westerosi friend, what is there in Meereen that you should want to go there

the most beautiful woman in the world thought Quentyn my bride to be if the gods are good sometimes at night he lay awake imagining her face and form and wondering why such a woman would ever want to marry him of all the princes in the world I am Dorne he told himself

she will want dorn the gods are never good they are not good they're not it's the lies in arbor of this it's the other lies in arbor you know every time they see it other other exactly that is one way quince different from victorian though because victorian spends his whole time telling himself of course she'll want me. Just look at me. Who wouldn't want me? I'm Victarion. Whereas with Quint telling himself the whole time, yeah, I wouldn't want me either. I look

at me. I wouldn't fuck me. I wouldn't fuck me. Or Quint did. Oh, that's sad. That's such a sad thing to say. I think he's being too hard on himself. We'll get to that. I think he's being too hard on himself. He's just fine.

He might, when he comes for Dany, it might just be the worst possible timing. I think he's a little too hard on himself, too. Yeah, it's just there's no reason to roast yourself, you know? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Exactly. The world will do that for you. The dragons will do that for you. Exactly. Jarrus gives the captain

the story that they've created. He is a wine merchant in Dorne, and his family has extensive vineyards, and they're looking for a new market in Meereen. This is the cutest story, I guess. And the captain finds this ridiculous, because, I mean,

all the cities are at war out here, and it's not the time. No one wants your shitty Dorne to shred. I do, but everyone else i guess doesn't so just come over here and give them to me i'm pretty sure all you have to do is find sand or during war and you got all the wine customer you could possibly need don't they need wine more during the war you got to get drunk to distract yourself from the fact that there is a war. Yeah, much better economy in King's Landing for that stuff. There actually is. Sell them all to Cersei.

Of course, the way that the captain calls their wine shitty Dornish red says a lot. It opens up a whole other bushel of how, even in the free cities, there is racism against Dornish. Yeah, and that they've just been sent into this unfamiliar

foreign environment which really reflects poorly on Duran's planning here that obviously Duran could not have predicted that half their companions would die but he could very easily predicted that it would be difficult to actually get to Slaver's Bay given the the stirrings of war so there should have been some kind of mechanism there that quentin didn't have to join a sellsword company just to get that far yeah it's kind of a suicide mission kind of literally as it turns out that's assisted suicide sad it's dragon dragon assisted suicide a dragon like a little lab coat with glasses talking to you about your life oh. Oh, I am thinking that actually turns out.

I like the glasses. Dr. Kevorkian but a dragon, my new short story. I can't wait. Please write me into that. I don't think you want to be written into the story about dragon-assisted suicide but I'll workshop it. You say that but you must not know me. I do.

Apparently not. This is a fanfic now. While Geras smooth talks his way convincingly over this, we learn Volantis is hiring new swords. The Long Lances are already on their way to Yunkai, and the Windblown and Company of the Cat are filling their ranks to join. The Golden Company is also marching east.

Fake news. Dead men do not care what kind of wine they drink. Haha, we get it. He's gonna die. But like, also same. Cause he's gonna die. A lot of Quentin's story is like that. Martin just saying things and then like, ellipsis and then he goes, cause he's gonna die.

Do you get it? I think that would make the story better honestly at this point. I think he should do it. I think if there was a possible thing of a George R.R. Martin commentary track which I don't know

how that would exist but if you could just somehow have him as a commentary track on his books that would be him during every Quentin chapter. Just interjecting going

because he's going to die and nothing else. That would be amazing. Someday. Like when Quentin's describing the fires in Astapor George Martin goes because he's going die and nothing else. That would be amazing. Someday. Like when Quentin's describing the fires in Astapor, George Martin goes, because he's gonna burn to death. When George finally loses all

patience with us, we'll have him do that. Sounds good. Quentin told his friends that they would only be waiting three days, and now they have way to 20. A mood. Waiting.

A mood. We all been waiting at the Atlanta airport for 20 days when we thought it was only going to be three. That's not what I was saying. They've been refused by several ships. Melantine, Treyarch's daughter, and the Mermaid's Kiss. I kind of think some of these names are really interesting and they almost foreshadow his failures to come because he's refused at first by the triarch's daughter and the mermaid's kiss and then he is refused by the dragon queen too yeah so he was refused by

yeah it's just endless rejection the triarch's daughter and refused by lord manderley i see i see what's going on here exactly exactly three treasons quentin shall know the dolphin's master also berates them for wasting his time and a member of the bold voyager laughs in his face the captain of the faun says

why should i seek out more danger by turning into slaver's bay the faun is my livelihood i will not risk her to take three mad dornishmen to the middle of war it's almost like a war zone is no place for a fun fantasy quest guys it's almost like this was a terrible idea and you should go home chose this oh who did this doran exactly it's like the eric andre bid doran martell shoots someone and looks to the camera and says why would tywin lannister do this why would daenerys targaryen kill quentin that's drink that is of course that is drink at the end that is what they're gonna spin it as damn i mean duh if all those kids and that brings us into a great quote from the chapter That is drink at the end. That is what they're going to spin it as. Damn. I mean, duh.

All those kids. And that brings us into a great quote from the chapter. Quentin had begun to think they might have done better to buy their own ship in Planky Town. That would have drawn unwanted attention. However, the spider had informers everywhere, even in the halls of Sunspear. Dorn will bleed if your purpose is discovered, his father had warned him as they watched the children frolic in the pools and fountains of the water gardens what we do is treason make no mistake trust only your companions and do your best to avoid attracting notice

they're gonna die and so are all the kids in those pools yeah they really are i think that combined with what you were saying about the faun, you're really just getting a picture of what it's going to be like in the winds of winter. There's economic downfall on top of, oh, it's winter. And just war in general. Everything's going to go to shit. Yeah, and you can see Quentin's kind of motivations being established here. One of the reasons he doesn't turn back is because he has the whole weight of Dorne on his shoulders now.

That if he fails, he's let down not just his dad, but his entire country. And he's been led to believe that he's... I mean, like Doran says to Arianne, that those children are their responsibility as well as his. That that's what it means to be part of House Martell. And so Quentin has to keep going. Which will which will of course ironically lead him to murder a bunch of children in his next chapter so yay yay yay jairus drink water charms the captain of the adventure he offers him three times what normal fare would be and it's so easy to get dudes to do stuff like he literally was like i hear you're brave captain you want to give us a ride to hell zone and he's like yeah i'll do that i'll do that and i'm like it's really that easy

it's that easy to manipulate him really jurist so quentin thinks that the cabin the captain is probably just gonna slit their throats when they're on board and take all their money which i understand that paranoia i do yeah that when you're offering three times the ferry what you're just you're just holding up a sign that says please rob me please rob me and get my corpse overboard at that point and again in like travel, they obviously did not Google before they went like what it's like there. They don't know how to haggle at all either. It's like so rough because you can. Yeah, I know, right?

Because they're already running around with that dead giveaway. Like, oh, I'm a merchant. I'm running around with all of these goods and wares. Oh, I have a foreign accent. Like, what are you doing this is not how anyone travels unless yeah you want to get robbed i mean not to like victim blame them but like come on dude exactly they're running around with like fake mustaches like you know asking where where they can find like local local haberdasheries.

They're just like the worst intelligence agents imaginable. And yeah, that's in part because they lost the smart ones. They lost Maester Kedri and they lost Cletus. And there's this great little moment when Drink is going on and on about how he doesn't know anything about Volantis, and Quentin gives him this entire list about how the city works. And he says, you would know all this if you read the books that Maester Kedri left you. Which is just basically his equivalent of whenever Hermione says, honestly, Ron, when are you going to read Hogwarts a history?

And Ron and Harry just say, never. We don't have to. You read the whole damn thing. So I like that. It's a nice little moment of nerd pet entry from Quentin. You can get this. Because one criticism to make of Quentin's chapters is he's so shell-shocked right from the beginning. You don't get much

of a sense of who he was before his life was meaningless in hell. So it's nice to get little glimpses of what he's actually like in terms of his personality when he's not just staring into space wishing he was dead. Yeah, he's got crushes. He's got books. He had a life.

He did. It's something. It's, books. He had a life. He did. It's something. It's, again, similar to Sam, where he just wants to be left alone with his books and people keep making him do stuff. I agree. It's all I want. Hashtag relatable. Same. I mean, same.

Same, dude. I mean, same. Same, dude. They return to their inn in a hathae, led by an elephant, which hathae are somewhat like Westerosi ox carts, however the one they ride in was extremely intricate and decked out, like MTV gonna pimp your hathae. They use it because it draws less attention to them,

and it keeps their cover story looking right. They're led by a dwarf elephant also and this time we don't have an ox. We don't have horses. We have an elephant. A small elephant, okay? An adorable tiny elephant. I want

twelve. I want... You can't even... No, you can't have them. Okay, well I really want to know what the you can't even was going to be. Is it you can't even take care of one tiny elephant, Emmett, let alone 12? That is pretty much what I was going to say, yes. Okay, that's entirely accurate. Well, you can't even take care of one Emmett.

How are you going to take care of an elephant? An element-phant, an emmet-phant. Okay, this is- Emmet-phant. I was trying. I tried. The driver of the Hefei is a slave of the inn keep's cousin who owns them. And I love this kind of just this little look at what some of the slaves look like.

It was easy enough to tell one from the other. The slaves were all tattooed. A mask of blue feathers, a lightning bolt that ran from jaw to brow, a coin upon the cheek, a leopard's spots, a skull, a jug. I think it's just some really interesting exposition on slaves and on kind of the culture and just putting the picture in your head. Especially because, like, we're not going to get to these chapters for a long time, but it sets the stage for when Tyrion and crew do see Volantis. And you also get the sense that Volantis is designed not to cater to tourists,

because again, Quentyn almost gets robbed and murdered, but they know a lot of people are coming through town who are not familiar maybe with the area or haven't been through, so it's designed to be able to tell one slave from the other because they want newcomers and visitors to town to know who to talk to for a given thing and know who's legit. So I think you get the sense of Volantis as kind of a hub for the region in that regard.

Yeah, but it also gives you a sense of that normalized cruelty which is of course bolstered by people being like oh why do you want to go to marine it's not like there are any slaves so it shows how volantis despite some of the other you know stands in big contrast to bravos oh yeah yeah it's it's the exact opposite of bravos for sure quentin thinks on all the people that he's lost along the journey there was mr kedry who said there were five slaves for every free man in philantis though he had not lived long enough to verify his estimate damn he had perished on the morning the corsairs swarmed aboard the meadowlark. Quentin lost two other friends that same day,

William Wells with his freckles and his crooked teeth, fearless with a lance, and Cletus Ironwood, handsome despite his lazy eye, always randy, always laughing. Cletus had been Quentin's dearest friend for half his life, a brother in all but blood. Give your bride a kiss for me, Cletus had whispered to him just before he died. Totally, Robert. Yeah, is this it? Yeah, that's like, Robert would be like, say that and then go, best line ever, and then die. Yeah, pretty much.

Oh my god, what if that's what Liana said to Ned on her on her talking about give cat a kiss for me you promised me ned damn it was not supposed to end like that for them this will be a tale to tell our grandchildren cletus had declared the day they set out from his father's castle which i do love i know we're not including the rest of the quote but after that it gets talked about that they're like well you know maybe like to tell prostitutes because you know we don't have girlfriends or wives any of us or kids to have grandchildren with not with god but you know and then cletus says the very robert-like line of well if you want grandkids, you gotta start lifting skirts.

Ha ha ha ha. I added the ha ha ha, but I think it's assumed. I think it was implied, yeah. But yeah, I love how melodramatic that last line from Cletus is. But as melodramatic as it is, it works in terms of, again,

setting up Quent's motivation because now he can't turn back because if he does, then his best friend died for nothing. He has to fulfill that promise and give Dany a kiss, not even because he wants to for any really romantic interest in his own right, but because he's got his best friend's ghost, much like Ned with Lyanna, kind of hovering over him the whole time.

And of course, Maester Kedri's death hurts him the most. Maester Kedri was fluent in local languages, and he had spent half his life learning about the nine free cities. Maester Kedri dies, two of his companions die. It's the first signs of his mission failing, but still, he must carry on. He has enough guilt now weighing on his shoulders that's propelling him along. It's a sunk cost fallacy that Quentin has already invested a lot into this, and he thinks if he doesn't succeed that investment was for nothing which is not logically the case if he breaks it down Cletus is going to be dead either way and he should go home and save what lives he can

but you know we don't always think perfectly logically about this kind of stuff when our best friend's death is involved so he gets that mindset where I have to keep going otherwise I'm a complete failure and my best friend hates me from beyond the grave. Again, fun times. It's a fun storyline, guys. We're having fun. This is fun. This is what fun feels like. There's also, of course,

along with that sunk cost fallacy, there's that Ned aspect to it, right, where Ned suddenly feels like oh my gosh i gotta carry out my dead sister's wishes and for him cletus is like his brother i've got to carry out my dead brother cletus's wishes or how maybe robert is saying to ned like oh put my son or my heir on the throne and it's like uh okay I gotta do this thing for you now

it's like Duran with his siblings it's the exact same thing driving Quentin's dad which is why he sent Quentin out on his quest in the first place you gotta make good by your dead siblings you gotta make good by your ghosts even though as Ellaria will say really the living matter more and the dead are going to be dead no matter what you do. That's true.

I think the moral of the story is have no friends, love no one, and nothing bad will ever happen to you. Yeah, trust no bitches. Exactly. That's the lesson Stannis has taken away. If I don't have feelings feelings i can't get hurt and i can just be mad by myself forever and everything will be fine perfectly fine yeah that's exactly what happens too it's hard to disagree along with recounting the loss of his party quentin thinks once more of the difficulties in getting to westeros Along with no one to speak the languages fluently, none of them can sail a ship.

I just have this image of like, this has happened to George R. R. Martin. I'm sure this has happened to George R. R. Martin during like a D&D campaign or something like, oh, this is great. Our party has a bard, we have a wizard, we have a ranger, a fighter, we have a barbarian,

we have like one of everything, right? All these different classes. So we have we have a barbarian we have like one of everything right all all all these different classes so we have someone for each of our situations and oh fuck we fucked up all of our people with like charisma and wisdom stats died we are idiots we should have roll either rolled better or we should have like thought about thought this through and not just depended on like one or two people that's i think where george is drawing inspiration for this yeah totally like i was compared to rpgs earlier i think that's definitely the framework martin's working with uh stephen atwell over at race for the iron throne

compared it to what if uh right after the fellowship of the Ring set out Gandalf and Aragorn and all the smart ones were killed in a complete random encounter with orcs permanently like a week into the quest and you're left with just hobbits to carry on and get things done. That's basically what's happening here. The cutest of hobbits though, the sweetest

the goodest boys of hobbits besides Jairus. Fuck Jairus. Yeah, oh my god. True. Jairus is like if Mary and Pippin were complete assholes instead of just rambunctious scamps. And one person. Jairus is like if a fucking Nazgul was actually part of the party, okay? That's how

I feel about Jairus. I agree. Jairus is two hobbits standing on each other's shoulders. That's what he is. If you pull his cloak away, it's just two hobbits. Oh my god. Don't insult the hobbits standing on each other's shoulders. That's what he is. If you pull his cloak away, it's just two hobbits. Oh my god. Don't insult the hobbits like that. Christ. Most hobbits aren't that mean. Yeah.

The sack full of bagginses. Where's he? The Smeagol. Oh man, exactly. Yeah. Because like, despite everything that's happened, despite like, oh, three, two of our friends have died. Also our maester. Quentin suddenly, like, not suddenly, despite, like, oh, three, two of our friends have died, also our maester, Quentin suddenly,

like, not suddenly, but he, like, realizes that Jairus still isn't taking anything seriously. He's like, this is all a game to him, despite the losses, and, I mean, A, this is because Jairus is the worst, but also it shows us that, like, Quentin is more grounded

than Jairus, even though Quentin's not incredibly grounded himself because he's still living his life as like, I'm the hero. This is the story. And he doesn't realize that, Oh, maybe the stakes also include him.

I don't know, but. It's the equivalent of Sansa trying to tell Arya, you're such a child. I'm being reasonable and practical by wanting to go have lemon cakes with the queen. Even though Sansa is, of course, herself locked up in her own kind of dreams and naivete. It's just a different version from Arya's, and I think it's the same thing here. Quent and Drink are naive, and they're shallow in different ways. Quentin weighs the Demon Road as too slow for their travel, fearing Tywin Lannister's knives on the way.

And as we pointed out in our Barristan the Winds of Winter episode, there is this element of time and delayed news that creates great dramatic irony when it comes to the SOC chapters, like Barristan not knowing that Joffrey is dead or Quentin not knowing that Tywin Lannister has been killed. Exactly. not knowing that Tywin Lannister has been killed. Exactly. Regarding Tywin, and I'm going to just quote Taylor Swift's Look What You Made Me Do. And, you know, Quentin and his friends, they're fearing Tywin Lannister's eyes, but it's all like, I'm sorry, the old Tywin can't come to the phone right now. Why?

Oh, because he's dead. I'm really proud of this moment. That sounds like a drunk voicemail Cersei would leave. Oh my god, it does. That's how the song works. That's exactly what it's like in the song. Drunk Cersei voicemails. That's all I want now.

Oh my god. That's the new podcast, guys. Look what you made me do is a cersei song think about it it's such a cersei song it's also uh there's a video if you haven't watched it you have to check it out but it's aria and sanza and it's to that song and it's with little finger for the plot from season seven and like it's better than it's better than the actual plot of season seven so i think you sent me that. Yes, probably.

I sent it to everyone last night. I made my mom watch it. It's pretty glorious. I recommend. Quentin thinks of why, despite how much of a hassle this journey is, he can't turn tail. Crawl back to Sunspear defeated with my tail between my legs? His father's disappointment would be more than quentin could bear and the scorn of the sand snakes would be withering

doran martell had put the fate of dorn into his hands so he could not fail him not whilst life remained wow womp womp not whilst life remained about. And then it didn't. About that. As we've mentioned before, Emmett here has written a seven-part essay series called Men's... Nerd. Who would do such a thing? Men's Lives Have Meaning. And Emmett, you talk about this meta-commentary that A Song of Ice and Fire is making on storytelling and this idea of who is a hero in the story and who isn't.

But I'm just going to throw out an idea, kind of based on this quote. Is the story passing judgment on Quentin and maybe the idea of what a hero is in terms of their values and goals, that price of heroism? the idea of like what a hero is in terms of their values and goals that price of heroism like for azura high the price was nisa nisa and like that price is real high and it's a terrible really messed up price that uh lucifer means lightbringer it points out lml whom you've had on your cast a few times like i don't know john danny and, since I brought up Sam earlier, like, they're facing their own worst fears in a lot of different ways. They are doing the hardest things that they can do for who they are. And they also have really valiant goals, like peace or saving the world. Whereas, I don't know, perhaps the story is telling, Quentin, like, you weren't made of the same stuff.

Like, your life might have had meaning, but you didn't aspire to heroism and like that's okay but you can't half ass it if you wanted to like go home and just chill at home you should like chill at home like Quentin lost his friends and like adventure sucks and his journey is really hard and stuff but he isn't actually facing his worst fear which is in fact disappointing his father whereas if you contrast that with Sam like he's going to go do the thing that's in fact disappointing his father whereas if you contrast that with sam like he's going to go do the thing that's going to disappoint his father most and have to face his abusive father which is like becoming a maester like that's the hardest thing that sam can do for his character and while he's going somewhere relatively safe he's confronting that demon

and going somewhere very dangerous emotionally whereas quentin is in some ways running from it he's not facing his dad and you know his goals are getting back to that cushy life and not feeling his dad like as you pointed out that quentin points out to danny like oh let me let me show you like these nice ass gardens back home and she's like oh we do not honey we do not want the same things. And so in a strange twist, facing dragons might not be the most difficult or emotional and maybe narrative choice that Quentin could have made personally. And so this story maybe told him that, if you thought you were a hero, then this is what you got to pay.

This is the price of being a hero. It's a thought. Absolutely. I think there's a commentary running through Quentin's storyline that the hero's journey as it's captured in songs and universe and in, you know, the copies of Joseph Campbell in terms of fiction, that it doesn't prepare the reader or the hero to deal with failure. Not just obstacles, not just things you got to get around or rise above, but utter abject failure. That Quentin has not been prepared to deal with it,

and that if he was able to deal with it, he'd be able to go back to a life that's actually better than being a hero. I mean, so much of what this story is about is that the day-to-day logistics of being a hero on an adventure quest is terrible, that you lose companions and you get new ones and they're horrible, murderous people, but you don't feel good about lying to them either. And it's just, you know, Quentin wanting to go home at a certain point kind of reveals that that's not the cowardly choice, that that would actually be, like you're saying, the brave choice, that, you know, embracing the life you actually want to live and the life you could be good at even if it's not something that gets you mentioned in the history books that's the that's the courageous thing to do and that's that's

further ultimately for the greater good you could it's not an exact comparison but maester Amon giving up the crown to have a kind of the simple life of serving as a maester and serving in the Night's Watch that he was able to make that choice and well I don't think Quentin is ambitious or greedy in the way of someone like Littlefinger, he doesn't have the true steel, I guess is what I'm saying. He doesn't have the kind of moral core of a lot of the more prominent characters who make mistakes but have a guiding compass.

And Quentin kind of realizes throughout his chapters, I think, that he doesn't and that he's kind of unmoored yeah quentin didn't do this in mind with he was going to be a great king that's not what he wanted he thinks whole time and how he wants to go home and kiss an ironwood girl and spend time with his friends and even starts thinking about maybe i want the water gardens you know to see all those kids just fucking playing and not burning and not dying horribly or anything and i don't know i also advise there's a piece that uh emmett port quentin here wrote about young griff and how his story is kind of crafted as the made to be meant to be prince which i think the meant to be prince and meant to be hero stories definitely have some value and parallels and a little crossover the young griff and the the quentin

stories absolutely are conversing with one another i just yeah manufactured at the same time in the books you know they come up i mean maybe quentin's making some of the same mistakes as Doran oh yeah I think so for sure time is a wheel exactly we're all just with the Tyrion line about you know puppets dancing on the strings of the people who came before us and I think of right after Davos rescues Edric Storm right before he confronts Stannis about it

he thinks to himself that if he survives he's going to go home to Maria and raise the kids they have left and think no more of kings which feels very much to me similar to quentin's desire to go home and just you know yeah you can almost hear the corny guitar playing in the background when he's talking about just marrying a girl and settling down and raising kids it's very cheesy but it works in context with how horrific his adventure has gotten that you know the the life that it might have seemed corny or obvious to him as has now become the only thing he's holding on to like he wants a hall to die in and men to bury me barriston rejects that romantically but that's actually

what quentin ends up wanting and of course we get a lot of characterization of quentin by contrasting him with his companions but we actually finally get a little chance to get to know him uh there's a line about sex workers that really shows us that girls make him anxious when they're down at the port and of course there's that line above that we talked about where the sand snakes would be withering to him and that he's just not comfortable with women and I'm sure that Arianne and the sand snakes bullied him and teased him mercilessly as a kid and i'm sure that's probably what stems almost all of these insecurities yeah looking at the sand snakes especially there there's i could see them teasing quentin pretty mercilessly um it's not that hard yeah again especially given that divide in the family

i would not be surprised i definitely yeah i definitely agree and think that's a role in there when quentin was being fostered at house ironwood he had a crush on enos ironwood for a while back when he was being fostered and she also has a great name with a very unique spelling until she was married off and he also had was like kind of into maybe the ironwood twins a little too and one of them gave him a kiss but he actually doesn't know which one it was which is hilarious tragic and sounds like the start of like a harem anime but and you know even though as prince of dorn you know he could take one as a paramour but he decides himself he comes up with all of these reasons why no they can't be a one of my paramours

we don't see what any of them are so i assume he's just like making things up for himself as like what no absolutely not me me have a paramour which is a complete contrast to arianne who's like oh yes everyone right now oh yes all my paramours yeah yeah more more she puts the more or they put the more exactly i don't yeah like get it it's very sex positive exactly get it girl but also you know get it boy get it Quentin everybody get go get it but don't get it Dorn you should be fucking but like wait for Gwyneth

Ironwood she's only 12 I know she has a crush on you but you know chill it also makes me think that like Quentin was all like oh my forehead's too high my jaw's too square but I'm like is this another one of those like Sam effects where like Sam's

like oh no I'm so big and things are so hard for me but like things are getting easier for him physically but it's just internally ingrained and maybe he's not as physically unattractive as they make him out to be and even if he's like not a 10 out of 10 he has this beautiful like heart of gold that makes up for not being like muscled like a maiden's fantasy and he's just the kind of boy that you want to bake

pastries for you know you want to just go home and like cuddle he's he's the boy you want to cuddle with and and bang you know not jairus nobody wants jairus jairus is like a you don't want that boy in your house okay don't take no and like think of what a good big spoon quentin martell probably is he can be little spoon too i'm not gonna judge yeah he's a switch yeah when he comes to spooning you know we can switch off with spooning yeah absolutely it's 2018 feminism yeah and dorn you know yeah it's dorn dorn spoons both ways this is true any commentary i meant do you have anything to add now would you spoon with quentin just thinking of the sam line where he says to

the other recruits in the night's watch yard i'm sorry i don't mean to be i don't mean to be like i am i feel like that's that's again the sentiment coming from quentin here he's just like i don't i'm sorry i'll just go i'll just leave same i feel you quentin and sam i feel you quentin gives himself a pep talk about how danny's totally gonna want to marry him but it's like he's all i don't know i don't know what she wants how am i gonna convince her to marry me i don't have any ponies i don't know anything about her it's like t he's all, I don't know. I don't know what she wants. How am I going to convince her to marry me? I don't have any ponies. I don't know anything about her. It's like Tinder on hard mode.

Bring her a small elephant. A small emitphant. Oh, yes. If you showed up with a pack of elephants, that would probably win a lady's heart. Yeah. Worked for Aladdin. I'd be impressed. Oh, that's true.

It did. Pretty sure that's true it did pretty sure that's exactly what happened in aladdin i will be accepting no further questions quentin thinks himself slaves are everywhere as numerous as roaches scurrying about their master's business and i maybe this is probably george writing it but if it is quentin's interiority step one to getting the girl that is danny you know the one who's getting rid of all the slavery try not comparing the slaves to roaches and maybe it'll be good just throwing that out there yeah maybe maybe not use nazi language to describe the slave that's probably a good move i'm sure he desperately covered up our

tongue no no roaches like with weed. I'm cool, Danny, I swear it. Oh my God. Poor Quentin gets out. You know, blunts, he'd say. He's like, oh yeah, puff the magic dragon. You're into that, right? That sure was a song from the 60s, he says,

as everyone just quietly turns to Wengos. No, no, no, no, stop. That's not what it's about, Quentin. That's not what we do. Shave Paige is whispering, that's not what we do. That's not what Marine is about. We do get a good amount of exposition

on the page about Volantis, but thankfully we brought an expert in Volantis on the podcast today. Yeah. You don't have to give us all your paid content. Just give us like, I don't know, not paid content. Yeah, Volantis is just super sleazy. Like I love the line Quentin used describes it rich and ripe and rotted like a warm, wet

kiss. It's just gross. Like you can feel like the sweat on your neck and it's like it's too crowded and everyone's trying to rip you off which fits his quest like that he's feeling cynical about everything and everyone's dying around him like it fits that it's not doesn't feel like a disney kingdom or something it it's it feels like a very dangerous place that he doesn't understand uh and he yeah talks about just like spreading over the river and the sun's too bright and yeah I love that little detail that you mentioned about like they they just happen to meet someone who you know

oh my cousin owns this uh owns this cart in this inn you know pay me double what it's worth like everyone's just kind of working together to screw them over so yeah I like that aspect of the setting and that kind of continues later in Quentin's storyline when the Windblown, he joins them under false pretenses, but then later it's revealed that the Windblown stiffed them on the pay anyway. So everyone's just screwing everyone else over all the time. That's just Volantis to the core. Is it New York? Is Volantis New York? It's like cliche 70s people selling watches selling watches in trench coats, New York.

Just a city full of assholes. That would have been the best job for me, honestly. Selling watches in a trench coat. You guys want a deal? Classic seedy Times Square black market person. That fits. Because this is now New York, we've decided there is busking. Like, oh wow, look at this show that

Quentin has found of one dwarf on a dog and another dwarf on our pig and oh my god, is that our friends? Um, Penny and Pretty are my friends. You can keep Tyrion and Jorah. You can just keep them. Oh, they're, yeah.

Do I have to? Yes. I don't want them. Why not just go get Lothar Brun? He's right there. Agreed. He's always just sitting there. I mean, yeah, you keep Tyrion and Jorah and like, let's bring back Grote. Let's bring back Oppo.

Grote! I am Grote! I am Grote! I am Groot. He would say it all the time and Penny would be like, OMG, stop. Stop saying that. We're around people. Well, and it's crazy to think of that eventually from when he sees them here, we do know that Penny does get to Marine after this. Yeah, so it wouldn't have been like the worst they joke about like oh

jurors is all like do we do you want to watch this dwarf show and quentin's like uh no we got places to be i'm trying to get shit done so i know like quentin's like my hands are covered with my best friend's blood. No, I do not want to watch the show. No, thank you. Like, do you really think I want to go to the show tonight? No, I do not. I'm in no mood for a concert. It's also kind of a characterization thing, right?

Because the last person that we saw who was really into a dwarf show was Joffrey. True, good point. Jairus is the worst Jiras is the worst. He is the worst. So does that mean that Jiras is Joffrey? Yeah. A Nazgul? Yeah. You got the J sound. I think we found ourselves a truth.

The J sound. He's pretty with blonde hair. He's coldly tall. Just saying. Joff parallels. I think that's... Yeah, I think that's an intentional thing. Barristan thinks he's a dick. He is a dick. I would say at least the bit that he's comely is very intentional of

you know, like, all that glitters is not gold. Mm-hmm. Oh yeah, I mean, young Griff has the same setup there for sure, so I agree. They then go to the merchant's house where they see the windblown and they have this really

hot and cold join the army conscription scene with like with songs they have songs who does anyone want to try and sing this song Emmett I think you're gonna have to yeah you have to do it it's you

exactly to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan uh yeah we are the windblown blow us east to Slaver's Bay we'll kill the Butcher King and fuck the Dragon Queen who wrote this? you can do it Oompa Loompa style I know right there's no meter

there's no meter it's just horrid. I know, but I like it. Yeah, all of a sudden it's like there's like giant Uncle Sam posters, but like his teeth are covered in blood and he's punching people to death. That's the windblown. Yeah, it's a little rough.

They're a charming bunch. They're a little rough, dude. A little rough around the edges. It's like that scene in... I was thinking across the universe. Across the universe. Remember that scene? Yeah, yeah, yeah. With the... I was thinking across the universe. Across the universe? Remember that scene? Yeah, yeah, yeah. With the...

During I Want You. Yes, yes. So heavy, heavy. Exactly. What were you thinking, Emmett? The Windblown are like if the Bloody Mummers were competent. That's what the Windblown are. If the Bloody Mummers weren't just such a joke.

That's true. And were able to function as an institution, that's who they are. They're just as horrible, but the Tattered Prince actually seems to know what he's doing, which makes him considerably more frightening than Vargo Hote. That's true. But yeah, not songwriters. They need better bards. Better bards for the Windblown 2018.

Apparently this entire story just needs better bards all of quentin's storyline that's the lesson that's it that's that's the lesson yeah we're not even going to do the rest of this pov series because that's yeah we're done the takeaway the podcast it's just going to be anyway here's wonderwall by the windblown anyway here's the windblown oh my gosh anyway here's the windblown quentin tells argivald that they've found the smuggler that's going to take them to Meereen, but he seems super shady, so, like, if you have other options... Archibald says, we should just take the Demon Road, man. Like, what's so bad?

It's just called the Demon Road. How bad can it be? I want someone to say, no, the name is very misleading. It's not really a road. And if Daenerys is dead before we reach her, Quentyn said, we must have a ship, even if it is adventure. Jiras laughed. You must be more desperate for Daenerys than I knew if you'd endure that stench for months on end. After three days, I'd be begging

them to murder me. No, my prince, I pray you, not adventure. Not adventure! Drink no! Three days, which is exactly what it took for him to die before, you know, he was resurrected. Yeah, that's not

some of the bluntest Jesus stuff Martin ever brought into it. I love it. Oh yeah, I love the foreshadowing. I love it. Yeah, there's not some of the bluntest Jesus stuff Martin ever brought into it. I love it. Oh, yeah, I love the foreshadowing. I love it. Yeah, there's some other brutal foreshadowing when the Windblown are making their sales pitch. And they're saying, come on, you and go come die in battle. Do you want to die a bed? Which, of course, is exactly where Quentin will die because he goes with them.

Yeah, he gets his juices all over her bed. Oh, my God. Delicious Quint juices. It pairs well with Jojen paste. Like a drizzling of one and a reduction of the other, we could get like a vinaigrette going. Yeah, it's kind of like a Quentin Jojen meze board or like a, you know. Oh my god. If there's gonna be food porn, it should at least be horrifying.

It's true. Sounds delicious. If there's gonna be food porn, it should at least be horrifying. Sounds delicious. Jeris Drinkwater is like, oh, but everyone, I have a great idea. It's not honorable, though. And they have shitty frat songs, because of course Jeris Drinkwater is the one who says, we're gonna get to Meereen by joining this shitty fraternity.

That's him. I know, right? That's Jairus. I mean, to be fair, they're lucky that they did when they did. Yeah, that's true. So that's the first chapter. That's it. That is the Merchant's Man,

and it tends to be discussed, and this goes for the rest of Quentin's storyline, it tends to be discussed and this goes for the rest of Quentin's storyline it tends to be discussed as deconstruction of like fairy tale-ish fantasy which is very obvious with of course the naming of the ship Adventure Quentin talking like you know this was not supposed to happen to them well you know where that's supposed to come from it comes from him reading stories and he knows what's supposed to happen so that that's all very clear, and that's great stuff, and I think it pays off really well, as you mentioned earlier, when it comes up again in the Dragon Tamer.

But something I don't see discussed as much is Quentin's story as a war story. It's kind of subtext in this chapter. It becomes much more prominent when you get to the Windblown, and he's actually fighting in a war, and he's joined the Windblown as mercenaries, and that becomes kind of the focus of the the imagery and the horror but it's it's under the surface here too and i think you can martin has talked a lot about his you know anti-war politics in particular his uh illuminating kind of perspective on vietnam when he was younger and i think you can definitely see the influence of vietnam war both first-hand

accounts from american soldiers and fictionalized accounts of the influence of Vietnam War, both first-hand accounts from American soldiers and fictionalized accounts of the experience of American soldiers in that war on Quentin's storyline. Like, even in this chapter, it does feel kind of like a diary of an American GI in Hanoi. Like, they've gone to this eastern city that they don't understand, they're just totally without leadership, or they don't know who to trust, how to operate. So of course, they're easy marks, and there are people trying to take advantage of them. Just like in a war, classic war story, especially a non-war story, everything immediately goes wrong, and you start losing people. You start losing your leaders.

You fall in with nasty crowd. You do horrible things to innocent people. This, of course, You fall in with nasty crowd. You do horrible things to innocent people. This, of course, happened again and again with American GIs in Vietnam. And, you know, this is what the broken man speech looks like in execution, not just description as we got from Septimereble. This is what it really looks like to live this process. And you get that kind of same sense that you do in Nam's stories that the government and your parents, which are one in the same in Quentin's case,

have teamed up to send you into hell to kill or be killed. And there's no backup plan for when things go wrong. Yeah, I never really thought about it that way with the war story. It's just not something that I think about geared like that, which is, I mean, not to i i've given myself a lot of credit because i finally i'm starting to understand a lot more of the war stories but kind of like what eliana and i said during our baristan episode usually the battle stories aren't really what get us you know it's usually the political intrigue or you know up the drama but with

quentin you don't really see a lot of those overarching thematics you don't always uh you don't always compare it to a war story but it very much is one it's the aspect of the war stories that I find compelling in that uh for some reason I watched Black Hawk Down at 11 years old don't at me I don't know why that happened nice um actually I do know how that happened that's a story story. That's a Patriot only. No, it's not. It's just not for this podcast right now. And it's that. It's also feels like now that you've likened to it and contextualized it as this war story together with that idea of the loss of innocence and the loss of the idea of adventure it also

reminds me a little bit of if you've ever read world war one poetry and how at the turn of the century people had this idea of what war was and war was a completely different thing because the machines were different before World War I. And there was all this romantic ideas of heroism behind it. And then they're like, oh, this sucks. They're like trenches. This is the worst thing I've ever experienced. And this is shitty. And everyone's just sick.

And this is lame. And everyone's dying also. Totally. And you can see it. I love the World War I connection, like the crosses on the Flanders fields and that kind of sorrow about losing that older romantic image of war for the more kind of modern industrial machine.

And obviously, Martin was writing A Dance with Dragons in the wake of the American invasion and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, which I think you can see influencing his writing on A Dance with Dragons in a number of ways. But in terms of here, it's that kind of anger and hopelessness of getting stuck in a quagmire that there's no way out of. Martin has compared, I think he's explicitly compared the dragons to nuclear weapons before

in terms of how they're handled, or the WMDs just in general. And so you can see Quentin's story is a story about a younger generation being sacrificed to the bomb and to the century of American wars and kind of everything that goes with it. I think you can see that informing it in the background, not as explicitly as something like the broken man speech, but I think it's there in the background as a subtext. And for me, that's part of what makes the uh duran is secretly an 11th dimensional chess master who has a whole other plan underneath this plan he's going to

reveal on it like that's i those plans irritate me for a number of reasons but this is one of the reasons why because so many of those theories are built on the assumption that it can't just be that the plan is bad it's not narratively satisfying if Duran's plan is just stupid. Well, look at Nam, look at Iraq. Sometimes the plan really is just stupid, and it gets your kid killed before, you know, after he kills other kids. And that can certainly be kind of overly grimdark or blunt in execution, and I think that's a fair critique of Quentin's storyline. But I the overall point you can see it clearly already in this chapter is that it's a story about what you do when the strategy fails and when you're stuck in a corner and I think I sincerely hope that Martin does not have a haha master plan reveal underneath this because I think that would cheapen a lot of what's

going on here and I don't think it's possible for him to have a master reveal because this was his master reveal. You know, I mean, I think people are craving that more, you know, they want the more they want another plan. They're like, Oh,

he's going to, Doran's going to do something, but this is it. It's too little, too late. Doran's revenge has come too little, too late. And we are watching the effects of that across the pages.

We're watching Ariane in her plots and her schemes not exactly succeed we're seeing quentin on this that he uh doesn't obviously succeed in the end uh not to roast him but yeah as i mean as you said it half-assing it and he doesn't end up he gets none of the things he wants. His kids die. Everybody's gonna die. I'm gonna die. You're gonna die.

Everyone dies leaving him all alone. All he has are just the rotten oranges and dead kids in the garden. Even by the standards of the first three books, Feast and Dance are really mean in a way where I love them. I love them the most, but I get that putting people off,

even for a pretty dark series. There's a kind of mean-spiritedness to some of the stuff that happens with the Martells that I can understand not everyone is into. Yeah. I mean, and Doran has, that's the difficulty of it right Doran has good somewhat good intentions the problem is yeah like

Quentin he half asses it and he just wants to stay at home at the water gardens but then he feels again beholden to those dead siblings and having to see this thing through true i mean quentin himself really never thinks about uh ilia and her children that's really which is an interesting like just how he thinks doesn't think of arianne which is interesting

that for as important as it is to duran, and deservedly so, it's an indication that not everything is the Barakans and the Blackwoods. Like, not everything necessarily persists generation by generation unless you force it to. And it's, on one hand, it's really sad that Quentyn never actually thinks about the ostensible reason for all this. But it's also kind of like, oh, so there could have been peace. Like, Quentyn and Arianne don't necessarily hate the Lannisters like you could have actually worked this out but now you can't and that makes it a little worse right when Quentin dies because it's not for that intergenerational drama and I don't necessarily know that that would make it more

noble but he's just trying to do it because he wants dad to pat him on the back and this absolutely happens there are in fact i guess military families or families where pete the children are sort of pushed into being or feel that they have to join the military in order to live up to parents standards is that a two-pointed thing to say i don't know but no i think that's perfectly fair um again if you think about quent being drafted i think that puts kind of a different angle on his story than than it would otherwise and i think there is definitely some connection there do you see if quentin is being drafted yeah in a way he's being drafted

especially to fight someone else's war it's not his war that's a good point that's a good point yeah this is his father's war not his he was born he was born in 282 like probably just as robert's rebellion was kicking off which is kind of interesting that he's being asked to resolve the tensions from that but by very but by definition he can't remember any of it even arianne has a vague memory of holding uh rainis but quent doesn't even have that it's all abstract to him this is all the story i also think that's interesting with the martels that like arianne and quentin are older they're not just young 13 year olds that we meet and it plays into that idea of like the younger kids like Bran and Nassanza and Arya and you know them inheriting the world basically and how some of

the characters that we get like Aryan and Quentin obviously are not going to inherit the world yeah that's interesting them and Tyrion are kind of in between generate generally geez I can't speak in terms of generations of the characters in their late teens, mid-twenties, they seem to be in a somewhat different position than the characters like John and Danny and the younger Starklings. There's also, because Quentin hasn't grown up at Sunspear and in the Water Gardens along with the other Martells, you also end up is he frozen again uh you also end up with a difference in motivation from the other martels like even though this isn't the war the same war that the sand snakes and arianne grew up in it has become their war

because they were there for when oberyn was a part of their lives and Oberyn has just died so they now also have that motivation for vengeance that wouldn't be motivating Quentyn going back to what you said about how this isn't Quentyn's war There's also a lot of things that are at play here because Quentin grew up with the Ironwoods and he's been across the Narrow Sea. So as you said, he doesn't feel any personal motivation for it because he wasn't born during that time.

And I don't think it's just because Arianne held Rhaenys. It's because she grew up together with the Sand Snakes with Oberyn Martell being a large part of her life. So before this war might not have been personal for her, but the death of Oberyn

has created a more personal connection and desire for vengeance amongst the younger generation in Dorne and you can feel that tension rising in Dorne now because a lot of the Dornish are upset that Dorne Martell has not been taking action whereas Quentin has been so far removed from all of that oh yeah I think that's a great

point absolutely yeah I think honestly I think that more than covers it we honestly this is going to be a very short point of view we only only have a couple of weeks to go over this. So we'll be done with Quentin before you can say, oh. Oh, got him. Got him. Emmett, tell us again where we can find you on the Internet. You can find me at Poor Quentin on Twitter or at poorquentin.tumblr.com or as part of the not a cast podcast at not a cast asoiaf on twitter our email is not a cast aso asoiaf at gmail.com you can find us on podbean soundcloud and itunes or patreon.com not a cast

asoiaf excellent thank you again for coming on with us. And of course, as usual, you can find us on Podbean, on Acast, on Stitcher, on iTunes, and on Google Play. And you can also send us an email at girlsgonecanon at gmail.com.

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thank you for having me on and I've been Eliana also known as glass table girl on the maester monthly podcast or on the song of ice and Fire subreddit. And I've been Chloe. You can find me on Twitter and Tumblr as at Liza and Arbor,

and you can also find me at Drunk A Song of Ice and Fire History. Thanks so much, you guys. Tune in next week for our next Quentin episode.