Girls Gone Canon Cast - ASOIAF Episode 200 — ACOK Arya III

Episode Date: September 8, 2023

Wow, it's our 200th episode. We've just been pissing the time away. Like Arya in this chapter.  Check us out on Bluesky! https://bsky.app/profile/girlsgonecanon.bsky.social --- 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 Chloe's blog: www.liesandarborgold.com Intro by Anton Langhage

Hello and welcome to Girls Gone Canon Reads A Song Of Ice And Fire, episode 200, Aria 3, and A Clash of Kings. I am one of your hosts, Chloe. And I am another one of your hosts, Eliana. Yes, the big two hundo. Are you ready for our 200th episode? A new era. A new era, GGC.

And by that, not new. We're still on our same old bullshit. Same old bullshit. Same old are you ready? Our 200th Aswath episode is exciting. You know, I was looking back, our 100th was the Kraken's daughter, so that's kind of cool. There's some parallels there. Yeah, you've been discovering a lot of things while looking at our episodes in the past recently. You've been discovering a lot of things while looking at our episodes in the past recently.

I like you discovered that we did not start numbering our episodes until what, Jamie or so, right? Yup, our A Song of Ice and Fire episodes. We used to just release them with no A-swath number and we started episode titling them. And of course, shout out to our other different podcasts we upload. We are not only A Song of Ice and Fire, as i am sure most of you have figured out we cover things like his dark materials or sailor moon over in our magical girls gone canon uh gossip girls gone canon there are a lot of cinematic spinoffs for the girlies for us girlies so not our 200th episode ever but our 200th a song of ice and fire episode which i think we consider our flagship brand in podcasts right it's what started us off yeah it's what

brought you and me together as well so i it's just wild that we're here and as you said like we have other stuff that we're covering as well and i think that's probably part of why we started numbering it in the first place you know to differentiate between the other series that we had started doing and honestly crazy someday it's all gonna make sense i promise there's a big master plan for everything we do and how we put it out you know it's all that it's gonna be a canon it's all gonna make sense just keep listening there is in fact a chloe and eliana master plan for the pov order and no like there actually is i think i don't think that's a secret i think if you've made it this far if you've been with us these 200 episodes uh you you know this but also like i think what's fun

is sometimes people they might have just started joining us only for aria right like i think that's what's fun about the pov order sometimes people start with their favorite pov and then they'll double back to a couple of other ones and kind of choose your own adventure that is what i like about us though like that's what i like about us that's the only thing i care about no i'm just kidding that's the only thing i actually like about you and me um like about us you can make your order your podcast really knows how to boss uh yeah i think it's really fun that in the end, everyone can make their own order. You could do a couple POVs. You could do it by book.

You could do it by character. You know, we've done a lot of them now. We're past halfway. We're actually, we're past halfway. This is kind of bittersweet in a way to finally get to 200. But I think we got another couple hundred left in us. Well, actually, now that I think about it, are we, so so we're probably more than halfway we're definitely more than halfway through our povs but because we have some of our chunkiest povs towards the end like as in density most

number of chapters i'm actually like are we we must be more than halfway just like by virtue of how things work and john had so many chapters so many and you look back at some of the front characters you know we did a lot of dual chapters we've talked amongst ourselves and amongst the cast sometimes about going back to those and splitting them up you know revisiting them someday you never know we've changed we want to do everything as one this is a shorter chapter. You'll notice today this will probably be a quick one. There will be some fun banter, but I would be surprised if this goes longer than an hour today. Friends, buckle up, because it's a quickie.

Some podcasts have even been known to triple up on Aria chapters, but I refuse. I refuse. I refuse. I refuse. I refuse. Just refuse. on aria chapters but i refuse i refuse i refuse i refuse yeah again like i love aria's character and these chapters are really fun to do one-on-one not to you know talk shade about like your roommate or anything but this is a fast chapter you know it's as fast as like taking a piss oh my god maybe i mean kinda you could probably read it all like in the bathroom sit yeah no absolutely i think i

probably have i'm gonna be fucking honest i probably have done that my god i'm sure what chapters do you know that you've shit through? That's an interesting question in A Song of Ice and Fire. What, right in at home, chapters you've pooped to from Aeswaf, I would love to hear because I know I have, I just can't tell you which ones offhand. I don't remember which ones, but also like, so we don't need to go through the journey, I guess, of young Eliana used to spend a lot of time, you know, reading on the toilet. I was like, what if I read somewhere more comfortable? So I just stopped doing that. And I think that was probably during the phase in my life when I wasn't

reading things on the toilet when I first read Aswath. Oh, come on. In case you all wanted to know. You know, you get up, you have the big red rings on your ass and they're all indented. It's so uncomfortable.

You're like, ooh, I finished a quarter of a book. My body can't like be in that position for that long anymore you know like i'm no i am older than catelyn stark age now everyone i'm never going back yeah i'm older than lady stoneheart that old crone oh my god the mother the maiden the crone irl here she is wow here she is oh my god rat grandmommy yeah i mean because like she's she's never gonna get any older right catelyn stark she's dead do you still okay i'm sorry i need. I need to know and ask. I mean, obviously, we're unsure about Melisandre and her age and so forth, but let's say, for example, Beric Dondarrion, right? Been alive for a long-ish time. We're going to see Beric also in Arya's Chalmers at some point, so this is kind of on theme.

If Beric has been alive or undead for over a year, do you celebrate someone's birthday during that time in which they're undead? Do they technically gain a year, right? Like, would Beric, I don't know, go from, what is he now, like 24, 25 or something he would be? Like, does he gain that year if he is not alive but is still kind of alive if he's undead it depends on the company you keep right so barak hangs out with the brotherhood he hangs out with mommy stoneheart he hangs out with thoros and this isn't a fucking fanfic though i could see thoros presenting a cake to barak and being like congr congrats, Beric. It's your birthday. And Beric being like, Thoros, no, you know I don't do that anymore

now that I've been dead. I'm the leader of this brave group of bandits. And then Thoros is like pyromancing a little, like, birthday flame. Yeah, shaking his little booty in pyromancing, yeah. No, but you think about Jon, right? Like, the Starks, Sansa, sansa aria bran even if john comes back from the dead they're probably still likely to bake him a cake on his birthday right because the people that they are and how they celebrate and hold family near and dear which i guess is

like accidentally also the theme right of like you know being alone isolates you pushes you away from people and the type of people you're around matter where like john can maybe be rehabilitated from being an undead asshole if he's stuck around some of his family and like is given meaning to keep living but yeah it comes back to like men's lives have meaning not their deaths right so but they are so maybe his death does have meaning i mean it's like what matthew mcconaughey once said in the great film all right all right all right taste to confuse not that no l-i-v-i-n you better be living living oh i thought you were gonna go with the other one in which you know we we keep getting older and they all stay the same age and that's how we feel about the undead. Nope, not that way either.

But you know what? I like that one too. That's good job, Liana. Thank you. Did I sufficiently answer slash dodge your question enough? Yes, I think so. I think so. Good, good.

But, I mean, here we are, aging our 200th Ass Off episode. Every minute I'm with you, I age, babe. Oh, exciting. Real quick, welcome to our 200th episode again. Yeah, re-welcome. Re-welcome. This month for patrons in the stranger tier and above. So if you are one of our patrons, five bucks and up at patreon.com slash girls

gone canon, you're going to get a bonus episode every single month from us. Sometimes it's on the worlds of GRRM. Sometimes it's on a movie like last month's episode, which was on the 2022 Netflix film Do Revenge. It was a blast. We had fun. Listen to it. This month is going to be a novelette from Dream Songs by George R.R. Martin. We're going to be covering Bitter Blooms, which I chose based on the name alone. And then it turns out it looks like there's a lot of shit that is a swaffy to talk about. There's a place where winter is like many years. So vibes, vibe, vibes. It's in the thousand worlds universe. It looks like. So come join us this month for that $5 and up stranger tier bonus episode on

yet another novelette from dream songs. Yeah. And that one's our 61st Patreon episode. Whoa. Right. So we, that means we've done at least 260 episodes in total since since our inception oh we've done way more than that my friend way more than that we've done like 70

dark materials yeah 70 something his dark materials episodes i want to say my god we're getting old you were talking about the gossip girls gone canon offshoot like went off honestly every time i think about it, I just get sad. I don't. Just because I'm sad about, yeah, the new Gossip Girl. And there are even some lost episodes. There are some episodes that have made it, episodes that have been lost to time. Oh, I thought you meant, I was like, I don't remember talking about Lost.

I've never even watched it. How can I talk about it? Not that Lost. Not that Lost. I was so confused. I was Lost in that moment. Not that lost. I was so confused. I was lost. Well, the bonus episodes aren't lost.

Catch them at our Patreon. And that's not all that you can get at our Patreon. That's right. If you are in the Thunder tier and above the $10 tier and above, not only do you get those bonus episodes, but you get something else, right? Eliana.

You do. You get access to our discord. but you get something else, right, Aliana? You do. You get access to our Discord, if you're in the Thunder tier and above, where we have fun channels where we discuss lots of interesting things, including, we're going to actually bring in an insight that came from one of the Discord channels here in a second,

but there's also once a month brunch slash happy hour brappy hour i don't know why i missed the h when i said happy hour just then very french of me if you will um happy happy hour it's an appetizer hour and this month september that will be on september 23rd a sat Saturday at 3pm Eastern Time. Yeah. I have a blast at brunch. Last brunch was so fun. We had a blast. We were like, we were just vibing. We were watching videos, YouTube poop, you know?

Not actual poop, just YouTube poop. We were just watching. I mean, it all started with a video of a cat, you know? As it should. It did start with a video of a cat. It ended with should it did start with a video of a cat it ended with some videos of cats but then we also went to like what we discussed theme parks and then we discussed the the rings that you know people walk in oh like human hamster wheels that's what it was and then i don't know if any of you have seen the kinds that are like human hamster wheels but way more intense

at a renaissance fair made everyone watch that yeah everyone at discord has so you're missing out you're missing out that's what you could get yeah well come join us you can have a blast with us and i don't know i look forward to this once brunch it's autumn autumn autumn always feels better i don't know oh yeah it actually will this one's brunch. It's autumn. Autumn. Autumn always feels better. I don't know. Oh yeah, it actually will be officially autumn. The 23rd, two days after the 21st of September. I'm seeing Death Cab for Cutie

on the first day of autumn. Oh really? Yeah. Where soul meets body, baby. Yeah. That's cute. Yeah, autumnal of me. Cute. Yeah, it'll be what 90 degrees can't wait wait is this the the tour where they're also postal service death cab 10 year reunion tour that one and i was like i guess it's not too late i could just invite myself over to close if it's not absolutely you should come you should come i should come. I want to have

Ben Gibbard's Miracle Sweat pouring onto me from his acoustic guitar. What the fuck? Anyways, so, yeah, and that's on my social life. Hey, we got some emails slash tweets slash notes of note.

Shout out to Kristen Call Mall Cop meme from the discord from last month's brunch check that out on our twitter or our blue sky over at girls gone canon c-a-n-o-n we got an email from our good buddy warren warren was listening to our 199th a song of ice and fire reread episode and thought he spotted some mythological symbolism of the bull and the wolf in Celtic mythology. In a lot of the tales, when raiders come to a village, it's cattle they steal, with most particularly an emphasis on the bull. So it seems fitting the gold cloaks are trying to steal the bull too. There are many references in stories of wolves or wolfhounds standing guard.

Wolfhounds is an interesting parallel for when Arya meets Sandor later, and it makes me consider the tales of an Irish hero, Cú Chulainn. There is a whole segment of Irish mythology full of stories dedicated to him, and the Ulster Cycle and the most famous being his origin story, where he arrives late to a party and slays the hosts. Oh god. The hosts hound for denying him entry. Warren notes his fake driver's license was not sufficient.

I love it. But remorseful, he takes the hound's place until its master can find and train a replacement. So it kind of comes to mind with all those who wear the hound's helm, which I know Eliana has something to talk about a little bit later. So keep your ears peeled for that. Yeah, Cullin's done a lot of things, I feel, in Irish mythology. has something to talk about a little bit later so keep your ears peeled for that yeah cacolin's done a lot of things i feel in in irish mythology and every but a lot of what i think about when i hear cacolin is so i learned about a lot of irish myths by watching this this play based on some of

them and based on like these kids who were turned into swans really dramatic um it was also maybe slightly a musical and so i just think of cacolin cacolin cacolin like in that tone in that tune and that's what i have for all of you almost like a woodpecker yeah there were other words to the song that i don't remember great parallels over here warren and yeah we're gonna talk a little bit more about the hounds and i don't know that arrives late to a party and slays the host very interesting kind of reversal there considering you know what happens to some of these wolves some of these wolves in aria's family and by that i mean her brother and mother you're like violent is never aging this is like i've been getting more violent. I feel like every episode I'm like,

let's say another hurtful thing. My God, that's my job. Please don't put me out of a job here. Jesus fucking Christ. It's just Arya seeping in. So we also got a couple more emails, but we are making our way through them.

And some of them I think will be good for next week. We have something exciting to say about next week, which we'll back to but first last last week last episode you probably heard me and chloe talk a lot about beer we have a lot more thoughts about beer that we are happy to share at some other time like for example how you i was telling chloe one time when she was drinking the mango cart beer i was like you gotta try the spicy mango cart. Very fun. But last week I was discussing how I had heard that medieval water had alcoholic content because of, you know, trying to make it potable in order to kill bacteria. But our friend Shiloh, who is a scholar in medievalism, and if you have not picked up Shiloh's book, Medievalism in Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire,

please do. Fantastic. I would say maybe even like necessary reading for the series. I mean, really contextualizing the way that George talks about, you know, or draws on elements of what we think about medieval history versus what actually is the case. But anyways, Shiloh said in our discord in response, fun fact, the medieval dirty water thing is a myth. They were drinking small ale with very little alcohol, but not because they couldn't drink the water, more because the ale was basically free calories

and people were doing a lot more manual labor now if you were in a city you wouldn't want to drink water straight out of the river which is what aria does this episode uh but otherwise they knew how to get and keep clean water what's more worrying is that like eliana spreads misinformation and i'm over here nodding along like yeah that's so true eliana exactly exactly that's so interesting i'll follow you anywhere babe follow you anywhere thank you shiloh thank you for correcting you shiloh somebody has to somebody has to we just we're out here saying shit every week to be fair what i love about the internet sometimes is you know you really can just get the right information

about things all you have to do is go out there and say the wrong thing. Someone's going to come back and tell you the right thing. And again, in this chapter, Arya does drink straight out of the river and it tastes like dead body. Rotting dead body. And to be fair, Shiloh says they're pretty good at getting clean water. And I mean, we live places that they're not, actually. So maybe the medieval people had it going on i mean they probably did right they didn't have pollution and the scale that we did and chemicals etc and like the stream that aria like gets water out of this chapter probably usually not full of

dead bodies usually probably pretty clean yeah it's interesting everyone it also makes me think of like when the water stops at cold moat right with uh donk and rowan only this time it's with bodies oh that's interesting because i was actually thinking about denarius's storyline right with the pale mare and the dysentery and how like uh you end up with this huge epidemic there in marine and probably across the slaver space cities in general just because it is going through the water sources so i gotta say too if you've ever played cities skylines highly recommend it if you want to lose several months of your life actually one of your good friends recommended it to me eliana and it ruined my life there was a humble bundle last summer that

was like i don't know like 15 bucks for every fucking game that comes along with it all the expansions and my god i lost months of my life but uh you get you know just like medieval what is medieval dynasty i'm having an issue where it's like pausing on launch and it's really upsetting me i don't even want to talk about it right now because i can't like get it open and i've come so far like i'm like in mid late game i'm on year seven anyways i'm really kicking ass it looks beautiful too so i took a video of my entire medieval dynasty area i'll show it to you later i'll send it to you we'll upload it on patreon uh for all to see it's special content maybe i should but pollution is like for real in City Skylines.

It's a nice model. Actually, I was talking to Stephen Adwell about this once upon a time about this because he really enjoys the game too. And there are a lot of great city planners on YouTube that actually play the game and use it as like, yeah, as like a city planning tool and to show scenarios playing out because it's that detailed. And they're coming out the second version of the game. But City Skylines, like, you know, you get pollution in the ground, you get dead people, you get all this stuff. It affects your game. You have like farms, your crops start going bad, your water goes bad, your entire like civilization just dies off. It's pretty, it's wild. Water's kind of important. And I live in a city where, you know, oftentimes we just get like an oops we spilled

vinyl chloride into the water supply that's right that happened to you that was recent that was intense yeah yeah oh to live in the riverlands as they're set aflame but you still have some water somewhere okay okay yeah interesting nodding. most wonderful fucking people on the internet we'll be joined by ara i eat zebra over on youtube you may know her from dire wolf city she's actually been on the podcast before way back during unleash the d uh the hit premiere primer series for house of the dragon season one ara joined us back then us being me for my my hit series critics areics are saying, Unleash the D, the primer hot D series, is excellent, and you should listen.

That's what they're saying. I thought we should put the critics, what they are saying in here. I'm nodding. Aura has been on here before. We've been on Aura's podcast. We've been over with the Direwolf City ladies, who are a blast.

It's so exciting to invite her into our house to talk about Aria. And, you know, it's been a really long time coming at the very front of when we started this podcast. The first few years, you know, we were constantly telling people, hey, what's your favorite chapter ever? All time favorite POV favorite chapter because we want, you know, the people to come on to be passionate about what they love. And Arya has been waiting a very long time for Arya. And Ara has been waiting a very long time for Arya.

A very long time. Yeah. And I mean, like, I just love talking about things with Ara in general. She's so smart, so fun. And she has, like, so much knowledge about medieval dynasties. Not the game. But, like, she does. And I'm like, what the fuck?

Who is this person? What are you talking talking about she knows all of these things and so you know we're going to talk a little bit about i guess not medieval dynasties next next chapter but fake medieval dynasties yeah we've joined ara to you've joined ara to discuss euphoria i came on and I special guested. And also about Righteous Gemstones, beyond a bunch of other things. Yeah, and they've had us on for so many other things. They're always fucking inviting us to do stuff. I highly recommend checking out their streams, checking out their episodes.

And yeah, I'm excited to have Aura on. Me too. I'm very excited. Look forward to that. And for now, let's hop into our lightning round for what you missed between Aria 2 and Aria 3 in A Clash of Kings. Jon 1. J.R. Mormont talks to Jon about duty, and Jon decides to keep his vows. Catelyn 1.

Rob presents peace terms to Cleos Frey Catalin and Brynden plan an alliance with Renly Baratheon lol Tyrion 2 With the ever-deteriorating state of the Night's Watch Tyrion sends a very certain asshole to the Watch to live out the rest of his life

however short it may be Hm And that brings us here to Aria 3 in A Clash Kings. The Riverlands are becoming desolate already. Aria meets a wolf while making water. They walk a narrow

and crooked path in the Riverlands, though on gentle land just two ruts in the weed and traffic's calmed. So they mostly have lost the trail of the gold cloaks. For now. Yeah, there's some fun language going on here. Like the road kind of snakes around, becomes small roads.

And there's even a line here where it says seeming to vanish entirely, only to reappear half a league farther on when they had all but given up hope. And I'm kind of like, oh, is that kind of like Arya's storyline, right? Where it seems that she's vanished from everyone's radar for a while, only to reappear probably later on. And they're all like, wow, it's Arya Stark. And I also like some of this language about how the people are more sparse now, because as we know, there was like a huge bunch of them over when they were leaving the city and it's they describe it as like the people going to king's landing is like a flood slowing to a trickle and there's something about it that really just stands out to me it's like this feeling of the language of disaster natural

disaster but obviously this is not natural this is man-made yeah that language is so great there's like this line of it being like a human flood right and it's very horrifying it it gives me that visual likeness to the others flooding over in a war or like when men are unleashed a sea of men unleashed during battle and like you just see the tide coming at you um yeah human flood a human flood i've heard i've heard also i don't know what if we'll see any mobs of this scale but that mobs like tend to actually move like a fluid like with waves and so forth so there's something about that and also i mean dead things in the water not to be a weirdo but i love visualizing like the movement of not just like actual story, but storytelling too. And like,

you can literally, if you close your eyes and think of a mob and think of tensions in the Riverlands, you can see it visually in your head of those waves that you're speaking of. So I like that. I like that a lot. Good job, George.

The wagons slow them down and they stop at least a dozen times daily to fix a stuck wheel or climb a muddy slope. They'd even gotten to a part of the road that was very much one way, and they had to wait out the other wagons. Arya can't help but be wary, looking over her shoulder, wondering when they'll be caught by the gold cloaks, and keeps her sword closer at night. They put out sentries at night when they're camped, but Arya doesn't trust the orphan boys. She can sneak past them at night so as to make water in the woods and the way that aria is unable to sleep and constantly feels like they're being followed they're chased by the gold cloaks

and on watch part of it is of course i mean joran has told them this is what is happening and a very real danger which is true as we'll see but it also makes me think a little bit of what life must have been like especially for viscerys early on when they've just been kind of exiled from Dragonstone. And then later on when they're kicked out of the house with the Red Door. I mean, like constantly feeling like you're being chased and hunted. And he's just a kid, you know, probably about Arya's age, maybe a little bit older and has to look out for someone else, not just himself. Did he have that same paranoia? Having to live like that, I think, no wonder that would

absolutely break someone. I like what you've pointed out here, especially because I feel like there are a lot of those moments where, and we've talked about this, that like, the Targaryen madness is like, a lot of times born out of necessity and survival. For some of these Targs that we've seen. Like there are events that tip them over traumatic events that, you know, maybe you don't come back from as a human, which I think is a lot of the themes that we get to work with an

Arius chapter. Like how long until you don't get to come back from something. Yeah. I think, you know, I like what you said there because it, it ties it back with there's there's the different ends of the spectrum right with the broken man stuff and then also some of targaryen

madness i i don't think it's like genetic i think it's just a power thing right like we see it with joffrey that's not genetic that's just power and the isolation of it can drive you mad and same with um the isolation of like war trauma or any kind of trauma like that yeah you think of like even outside of a song of ice and fire look at paul atreides right in dune for example or like other characters like that that have these high pressures put upon them since even before birth right you have a small percentage of people that are constantly facing these tensions and pressures and a large percentage of them almost always break what what could it mean what could it be at such a young age too when you think about what viscerys was i mean viscerys was an asshole and abusive. But the story, especially in Danny's last chapter,

is I think trying to get you to think of him as a human or trying to humanize him and be like, this is how someone gets to that point, you know? Mm-hmm, 100%. And I think it's a similar thing as how you and I sometimes can sympathetically look at Joffrey, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Joffrey, for his absent parents

that were there causing issues, if they had been more absent... Literally beating him almost to death, too. Yeah, if they had been more absent, and then you have the opposite of complete absent family, and at the same time, the family when he was there...

Yeah, I mean, Viserys, i don't know why we're all on the series now but he saw his uh it's all your fault really yeah it is uh yeah absolutely something in this little chapter it's funny because you went for the sad shit and i i'm just watching it and aria's like swinging from tree to tree you know uh to get out to go to the bathroom she swings from tree to tree and shimmies and then she's like above lami's head and she's thinking about it too she's like i could drop down and fuck his world up right now just really fuck with him wake his ass up she's like oh the whole camp would wake up from his yelling and wolves and joran would be mad not worth it uh really funny but also reminds me of brian right because he

loved climbing so much and uh it's cute because they're very similar as well as being close in age they're also very similar a little bit in personality there and there's even kind of this moment like where she thinks about pranking lami and it's showing she's coming to associate them as her brothers right her own family here on the road to protect her and look after her as well as she would for them uh pulling pranks on them you know like that's something very much she loves getting involved in mischief with her brothers she actually does that's true she does love mischief and yes to brand climbing things but also some people in brand storyline right who are good at other climbing running running across leaves, Mira. Yeah.

As you and I pointed out, is that impressive? I run on leaves on the ground all the time, I'm sure. I don't run often, so I don't know if I would say that, but there's also something great in these couple of chapters

at the front of Clash where we see that Arya is becoming really good at scavenging and gathering and harvesting. And unfortunately, because of Arya's size, Arya is being kind of put in the kitchen or to kitchen duty throughout these chapters, which becomes a pretty common motif for Arya as she goes to Harrenhal and works in the kitchen, or when she goes to the House of Black and White and has to do kitchen work, or the oysters, cockles, and clams, right right aria's plot really does revolve around food which is probably why you love it so much no i'm just kidding i imagine though especially in the winds of winter right as we see food scarcity rise even more aria may have to experience that but her resourcefulness hopefully can keep her alive and thriving through that right

alongside all of this training she's getting sometimes passively sometimes fully from people like sirio or some of the people in heron hall and then a feast for crows yeah and i mean she does this chapter as well right with the rabbit also hunting and i like that you've called that out because a lot of aria's storyline does revolve around death right bringing that gift of death to people but in order to bring food you're you're providing there's also very much this giving of life that's part of her story as well yeah i like that life and death yeah, Gendry has become famous in the camp. And everyone is treating him so because they're like, wow, what a badass. We don't even know why the queen wants him, but he must be a huge badass for it.

And he's like, he's supposed to be an armorer. And Master Mott told him one day that he has to go join the watch. And he would always then go off to polish his great helm it's rounded it's curved it's got bull's horns but he wouldn't wear it lemmy speculated one day that he was the traitor's bastard with and by that he means the wolf lord and ari's like uh absolutely not and in her head thinks no that's john first of all oh when boys get wanted by the queen with a warrant for arrest it's cool but when girls do it they're witches yeah right though actually being a witch is cool too no it's absolutely cool no i absolutely agree

but just interesting interesting how society works and westeros uh i love this line right that lami's like oh the traitor's bastard i bet it's the wolf lord's son and in a way the traitor being rhaegar against aries too like you're very close lami you're very close but no they're they're wrong bastard wrong bastard it's funny the both royal bastards for sure right definitely some of those r plus l equals j vibes in there yeah just a little nod a little nod yes yes they're close to the god's eye now and the king's road is absolutely fucking unsafe so they plan to go around the lake on the western shore they turn the wagons west where farmland turns to forest and the villages become farther and farther apart. I just had a thought right after you said that.

Well, I don't know. Like, first of all, I think the show was stupid in how they had John and Gendry become fast friends. And then they were like, but women hate each other when they first meet each other. But men obviously are going to become best friends and love each other because they're so uncomplicated and full of no drama anyway anyway it is interesting though that gendry waters kind of baratheon but not um comes from the same house right where the blacksmith that john very much respects and has learned a lot from used to serve and so i wonder if there's going to be something there right in the role that gentry will play uh for the stark family and well not

for the starks but you know in general in the war to come i definitely think and it's something we didn't see come to fruition in the show but i know that you know for years since we've had so many years everybody has to speculate people have kind of thought you know like valerian steel obviously is a great defense against the others obsidian and gendry might be able to figure out a way to craft some of their own or to you know he would understand in mining how to perfect the ore and use it as weapons for example and so we had a little bit of that in the show with the obsidian weaponry. But I imagine Gendry will be crucial to that for the others and the war against them. Yeah, and I don't think he needs it, but he technically does have Valyrian blood, right?

Is it necessarily Targaryen or not? Unsure. That is a speculation as to or is Baratheon being a Targaryen bastard or not, but it is Valyrian, so. Yeah, that's a good point. It's a drop of it. It really waters it down. So, unfortunately, earlier where the farmland becoming forest and villages being farther apart, as Chloe told us, that means that there is very little food and water.

Back in the city, they had loaded up carts but it's all gone now because that is what happens as you move further away from places and travel yoren would send cost and curs who had been arrested for being poachers into the woods as chloe had mentioned last time bringing a deer or quails exciting uh back to the group they're actually very tiny you don't get a lot of meat off of them. Anyways, the younger boys were sent to pick blackberries or apples from the rodent orchards. And one day, Arya even catches a rabbit. And so they stew it with mushrooms and onions. Yeah, it's really sweet. She gets a whole leg because it was her catch, right?

So she shares it with Gendry. And even the three prisoners get to have some, which is good because this is like one of their last nice nights before yeah the horror begins the horror actually though uh just coming back once more like we said last week to that great bit of you know these are men and boys who were arrested for poaching originally and because they were arrested for poaching and because king's landing has become a lazy cesspool of fucking corruption uh this is all that was available right like here you go here's the dungeon so here we are on the road and yoren is having the men who lost the choice to have you know a life because they were poaching and they were caught poaching which poaching usually is with, you know,

food generally with stock, like livestock killing, you know, animals that aren't rightfully yours, or that might even just be in the woods outside of a land where no one else is. And because, you know, in the words of Egret, you draw that line and say, this is where my house is in my land. Now you got arrested. So now he's out there doing it on the road because he has to to survive and he's being asked to please do the thing he was locked up for and lost his actual life for much like stannis does with davos right in uh the coming books having him smuggle even though stannis chopped davos's fingers off for smuggling yeah they're just trying to live and now they have to do it for other criminals.

And, like, forever. Because also they're going to get to the wall and they get to go work in a penal colony until they die. Or they die before they get there. Ha ha ha ha! Anything could happen. And, yeah, I mean, that happens

this book, right, with the smuggling. So, great line there. I don't know, there's a lot of baratheon stuff like come in front of mine this chapter i guess like that makes perfect sense because there's gendry but whatever hell i mean this was the big baratheon uh win right was out here in the riverlands it was at the trident kind of between the crownlands and the riverlands where it was but this is uh this is the glory space Crownlands and the Riverlands where it was, but this is the glory space, you know, for the Tullys, for House Baratheon. This is how Gendry's dad,

who he doesn't know is his dad, won the war out here. And now Tywin's burning it down. A legacy. Yeah. I mean, Tywin doesn't care about legacy, he doesn't care about people. He only cares about his legacy, and he did a terrible job keeping it.

Legacy! Legacy. It's planting a tree. I was going for Selina, but I appreciate the Hamilton too, yeah. That legacy. It's the more important legacy to me, in my opinion. So as Chloe mentioned earlier, right, they, Arya shares some of it, this rabbit leg, which probably is also not very big, so that's very nice of her with Gendry.

Think about like, Allie's leg, it's probably as big as Allie's leg. Probably smaller. Yeah. Yeah. Honestly, probably smaller. These cats are, I don't know,anted, there are some big rabbits out there. I've seen some photos. I'm like, why is this rabbit so huge?

I want a rabbit. I think that'll be my next animal someday. Like a big ol' rabbit carried around in my hood. Yeah, there's some big ones. I don't understand. I don't know. But, yeah. No bagel for that rabbit.

What the fuck? The prisoners, you were mentioning how even they get like a little bite everyone gets a little nibble they actually thank her for it and roge laughs and says there's a hunter now lumpy face lumpy head rabbit killer hey say what you want you don't gotta hand it to the guy he might be a violent fucking crook but gotta say even he's growing fond of aa here you can tell by the nicknames everybody loves Arya I like that he remembered all the those two names too which is interesting um it's kind of interesting you know again coming back around to the hound how Rorge ends up donning the hound's helm for a bit, for just like a tiny bit there in the storyline.

And obviously his storyline intersects with Arya's. And then the next person to wear the Hound's helm is Lem-Lemon Cloak, also someone who crosses paths with Arya. And then like, obviously, as we all know, and as Chloe's very excited to discuss at one point, Arya does travel with the Hound for a bit. So it's just very interesting how all these people whose lives have touched Arya's all wear the same hat. Helm, if you want to be specific. But I like calling it a hat. No, but I love that because it is like a follow the helm and see where it goes kind of game. Yeah.

It's kind of fun. Yeah. Now it's uh hopefully over but we'll find out hopefully it'll end now it's with lem so who knows what's gonna happen george i will say there's something interesting about the bull's helm being so significant and gendry of course like you know he loves to clean it and take care of it and never wears it because like a it's an identifier but there's something interesting in him like not putting it on whereas when sandor puts on the helm it's his mask right from the world it's when the hound comes out and does some like horrible shit

because that's war and that's what the hound is it's a killer it's a machine it's this like this persona that's a machine that's there to kill and gendry doesn't put that helm on easily he only put like in the next chapter i think he puts it on right when they come back to fight uh but he doesn't generally put it on and it's like a very hard choice to put that helm back on i think that's interesting in comparison to sandor's helm and how it gets used to like do all of these treacherous, horrible things for so many different people. I think that's something we can ponder on more at some point, right? Like, how bulls and hounds are interpreted in culture. Like, to an extent, they're both animals that are,

I think, associated with being domesticated. But how they manifest, like, and what we use them for are very different, right right i guess a bull on one hand considered powerful dangerous but kind of a an animal of labor you know use them to to do farming and a hound is for hunting or for protection yeah absolutely and then especially it's interesting because that's the actual sandor right it's more like that kind of hound but for them it's more a hellhound like an attack dog is what he's kind of portrayed as which is interesting because he's the opposite that's the persona he's built for himself and yeah that's what the helm represents but gendendry and the helm, there's no, it's kind of a blank slate still.

Yeah. They arrive outside of Briarwhite, the south side of the God's Eye, and some field hands surround them in a cornfield and they're like, give me coin for what you've taken. Fair. Very fair. fair but you know generally i don't usually spend a lot of time over at westeros org or the citadel but there is some really great geography page that i'm gonna link for you guys and i recommend it that just tells you everything about geography in the riverlands and i'm really enjoying this read through of aria in fact i wish i was reading the catalan chapters too because there's so much rich geography going on in the riverlands and and I forgot about Briarwhite completely.

This is pretty much its only mention. Who knows if it'll come back, but it's just a little way town in between some of the other bigger towns, and really cool to look through that geography. And it's weird. This kind of reminds me a little bit of something in the Hunger Games in Catching Fire, where the arena in one of the hunger games is shaped like

a clock right and the god's eye is similarly it has that round shape and aria and yoren and everyone you know they are going all the way around they come across a field we'll come to where they have westerland's enemies possibly and they don't know if they're going to be attacked so they go all the way around to get to where they want to be right and they have to literally go out of their way so now they're being herded by war bit by bit they're being herded the opposite way that they intended to come making their trip take twice as long putting them into like harm's way and they're being herded by the war in a way they're all being herded like stock like livestock to heron hall right this is the way that the prisoners all get herded that way so those that make it those that

survive this just end up there because of the location on the map the location on the clock as it ticks ticks ticks they're getting moved they are getting moved right and they are being herded hunted a couple different ways and and, you know, they're going against the flow of it, too. You know, they've got a different way they have to be herded all the way up north, whereas everyone else, right, those sheep, because we'll talk about shepherds one day in this series,

or the other series that is related to this series, whatever, they're all headed to King's Landing. Rough to go upriver at this time. Literally upriver lands, I guess. Like, salmons. Salmonses. Swimming against the flow. Yeah.

Yoren gives them a few coppers, because they have some very nice scythes on them, and mentions that back in the day, the Watch was respected and feasted across the kingdoms, not harassed to pay for a wormy apple. The field hands answer roughly that it's sweet corn and better than an old black bird like you deserves they tell them to get the fuck out of their fields or they're gonna become scarecrows instead back of my day uh so it does really suck right to see how the night's watch has been has fallen so out of favor especially like from what we've seen about the night's watch in Jon's chapters, we see that it's a shadow of its

former self in glory. But we also see that a lot of the people who are in the Night's Watch, right, they legitimately care about keeping it going. Maybe some of them are, like, assholes, but, like, a lot of them do care about the longevity and duties of the Night's Watch. And some of them do care about the longevity and duties of the night's watch and some of them don't right like we'll see we'll see jano slint go there and he's he just doesn't give a fuck he's just doing whatever his weird slinty shit but you know times are hard now right even the people who and then of course you see people like chet who are trying to get the fuck out um darian who crosses aria's storyline but i mean times are hard right now and there isn't just like an abundance of supplies for all these people in the riverlands to just give away their sustenance during this war to the night's watch and like i kind of get it because they don't know like

for them there is a war and it is not the one that's up in the north as everyone's been saying as Osha's been saying the war is literally here in their villages and the Night's Watch isn't protecting them it's so far removed from their daily lives they don't understand what the Night's Watch is doing to protect them they just know that they the Night's Watch isn doing to protect them. They just know that they... The Night's Watch isn't protecting their survival. They are the only ones looking out for their survival right here, right now. And, like, I also can, like, only imagine,

you know, that a lot of the Night's Watch now, or, like, these recruits, it's filled with people like Rorge and Biter, and, like, in the defense of these people who are working in these fields, or whose own, like, sustenance that they're worried about, like, I understand not wanting to give out your food to people like Rourj and Biter, especially like from what we see about them in Brienne's chapters. They're assholes. Yeah.

There's a, and this isn't obviously the time to discuss whether or not you can rehabilitate rorschach and biter i think brienne did the right thing right she did what she had to uh rip nimble dick but there is something interesting too in like these guys are protecting this land guarding the field so no one can eat for free, playing cops, basically, right in the face of the government. And it's so petty that Tywin's just going to burn it all in the next chapter anyways. Right. And that the men are basically coming along to plow the fields with fire. And it doesn't matter to them that everyone's starving.

Like all that waste. That's devastating like you know that you're gonna possibly die and you're dying protecting a field when maybe some fucking corn might save a handful of lives for a couple days and it's really not gonna do anything for you because it's all gonna be burnt tomorrow like that's where i'm like okay like because the the irony is they're all the pawns against the system you know and they don't realize it yet is the thing these guards are like i'm part of something bigger you're not you're gonna be tortured at harrenhal the same as aria is about to be tortured at harrenhal with everyone you're gonna be tortured like the other people at harrenhal you're not gonna eat your sweet corn when they come through and burn their fucking

villages and they round everybody up and take you to harrenhal where gregor clegane's gonna rule over you like just you know it's a bummer it's a bummer but they also don't know obviously like agreed they don't know they i wouldn't let a big raggedy band of men into my house either maybe but like you know yeah i mean like the scarcity of the war makes people suspicious towards one another it makes them mean and it makes them meager and this is just a preview of what people will probably be like during the upcoming long night that will last longer than an episode um the winds of winter you know it's lasted i thought you were going to talk about real life i was like yeah oh no um

what are you talking about wow aliana i thought you were going real deep i thought you were like just like in real life yeah i mean it's just a preview of what it's going to be like in winds wow which is kind of like real life to be fair the winds of winter right interesting it's real right we're living the winds of winter out every day of our lives that's why george hasn't put out the book yet oh my god me we are the winds of winter writing it real time it's here in the room with us oh i have to say though the corn sounds really good right now right like fresh beautiful harvested corn because they end up roasting it that night delicious hot but joran is really pissed and he's too angry to eat because there's this big cloud hanging over him the next

day cost races back to the column and he's like hey we're coming up on 20 to 30 men some hurt and dying some with spears and shields but only one horse the men have a yellow and black spotted tree cat on a mud brown field as their banner this is house myatt who is sworn to the westerlands very background supporting lannister house they've been around in the background but really not that important maybe we'll meet some real people they're not like really named often

I like their little sigil though with the spotted tree cat but this is where they decide to go around to avoid them adding at least two days to their trip but it's better than falling upon men who might also want to kill them. As they travel north, more and more fields as they come upon them are

guarded by men giving cold looks to them, prepped to attack anyone staying too long in their turf. At their next stop, the wind is blowing the right way, so they decide they'll risk a fire. By dawn, it burns out, but none of them slept very well anyway, and by midday they arrive to a burned village, fields desolate, houses blackened shells. There are burnt animals, blankets of carrion crows on top of them, smoke. The timber palisade in the holdfast looks strong from afar but not up close. Bodies are impaled on the stakes at the walls. Hands are drawn tight at their faces like they were guarding themselves from the flames licking at them.

Horrible. Horrifying stuff, George. Horrible. Yeah, George is into that sort of horror stuff and does not sound fun. Mm-mm. Mm-mm. Yeah, I imagine. You're in pain from being impaled and then you're being burned anyway so some distance off yorin pauses the wagon selling gendry and aria to guide the wagons yorin returns and he's got a little girl in his arms just like sailor moon in the third season of the original anime and merchant cut jack are carrying an injured woman and see this is moreover like yeah the watch is dead the vibes are dead of what the watch does but this right here they did what a true person or a true knight or a true human

should have done that they went in after the village to make sure if they could find anyone and help anyone and then if there's anything left that they could use and i like his presence a lot in this chapter even these front chapters yoren's presence is really interesting besides being like angry before this he's constantly doing something in the background he's always calm and the voice of reason he's you know sharpening his knife he's saving children He's helping people carry stuff. He's finding solutions for what the team needs to do. He's a good boss. He's a good voice of reason and a good leader in the time of this stress and tension on the road. He doesn't freak out. He doesn't react impulsively. He stays cool in the face of danger. he like stays cool in the face of danger he might be gruff and he might be kind of a prick once in a while and doesn't have like amazing social skills right but like he's i don't know he he's a really good he stands like a very good like support tower for them in this time i've noticed he's always

doing something in the background to help which i just think is great that's a that's a great call it makes sense why he's the successor to ned right when taking care of aria because as you said he's saving children he protects both gendry and aria but you need someone who has a good head like that who's ready for anything when you're constantly like traversing the entire entirety of westeros right like how do you get all the way from the night's watch and get people from wherever the fuck they are in this enormous ass country all the way back there all the time? You need someone who's resourceful and quick thinking like that. And honestly, it's a huge loss for the Night's Watch losing Yoren.

I think he would have been such an asset as well during like the wars, the wars to come. And just running things there in general. But he's just like a great protector and is, like you said, embodiment of what the Night's Watch is supposed to be. He's not just saving like the people or like the men or whatever. You know, he's here protecting little girls and this injured woman. That's what they are. They're the shield and the sword. Yeah.

A good guy. A good dude. In the darkness of humanity. In the darkness. In the darkness. Roarge and Biter laugh at the woman's injured pleading and Merch tells them to quite frankly shut the fuck up. Yoren has them fix a place for the woman in the wagon.

Hot Pie and Arya talk about how they're nervous and Hot Pie confesses to her that he's never kicked a boy to death at all. He just sold his mom's pies. Fucking knew it. Arya eventually decides to ride ahead at a distance, sick of hearing the little girl crying and the woman whispering please all over again. Please.

Please. Yeah, hot pie. It was a facade. An act, right? Masculinity is nothing but a charade. He just needed to fit in and didn't want to be injured in front of the other men. Yeah, you're showing instead of that kind of masculinity positive masculinity. just needed to fit in and didn't want to be injured in front of uh other the other men yeah you're showing instead of like that that kind of masculinity positive masculinity as you were

talking about a few few chapters ago it's real it exists it's real it dies this book but it's real all you men out there craving positive masculinity go get it you go get it guys boys go save a little girl and a woman in the middle of war that's positive no i'm joking but that is not how you demonstrate masculinity oh my god eliana out here spreading misinformation and toxic masculinity by accident uh so girls gone. Girls Gone Canon, the best place to get a Song of Ice and Fire misinformation or Sailor Moon misinformation, too. Or real life

lesson misinformation. Please don't take lessons from us, my fucking god. Please do not. Um, Arya thinks of a story old Nan once told her, which seems kind of familiar to me, where a man is imprisoned in a dark castle by evil giants the man escapes but he immediately is set upon by the

others and eated um makes me think of a bunch of things right in our world that's some jack of the giant beanstalk kind of behavior but it kind of reminds me of aria escaping harrenhal right if you very vaguely have gregor Clegane being the giant. Or the prophecy of the giant being slayed at Winterfell comes to mind here of Littlefinger in a weird twist, especially since Harrenhal. I used to really love the theory, and it's been so long. It was such a great fleshed out theory that Littlefinger would try to take Sansa to Harrenhal, since technically it's his seat, to do a big wedding and wed her to Harry the Heir, and that's where everything would go down. There would be

a big ol' blitz and a big battle, because everyone would know very loudly that he has Sansa Stark, and she's marrying the Eyrie, and then a big war, and whatever. It's very flashy, but I used to think it was a really interesting theory. So it makes me think of that, maybe. I don't know that it actually connects. Also makes me think of the umbers right those giants

big uh big out of the frying pan into the fire vibes yeah it's pretty much what it is but i guess cold yeah yeah yeah or um i guess is it about don't know, it's the story in general, right? Turns out it's not about the Dark Castle and the evil giants in this war. It's about the others, but maybe something else too. Who knows? So Arya knows how the guy in this story must have felt. Arya, just like us, sympathizing with the characters in the story. The one armed woman, though, dies at the fall of evening. They dig her a grave on a hillside beneath a

weeping willow, and Arya can almost hear the whispers of, please, please, please, when the wind blows. Yeah, it's creepy! It's kind of a creepy little motif, and... Yeah. We get the woman's whispers like a resounding motif for her,

not unlike Jaime gets his little moonboy for all I know and the thrum of the arrow for tyrian but she gets the please please please whispers and it's interesting there's a lot of uh a lot of sound in this chapter the wolves howling the whispers on the wind aria truly is living in a ghost story as it's happening and she's about to go to heron hall where it gets even ghostier that That's a good point. There's a lot of senses in this chapter like the sounds, the taste of

dead bodies in the water. A lot going on. And now that you've really called this out regarding the please, please, please and the horror of it, I think part of the horror comes from your imagination trying to fill in what is she saying please about as she's missing

this arm right unless she's just so i guess the term is ptsd or shell shocked or something you know like i guess and then like the term changed but you know what was it about was she like saying please trying to protect something asking for mercy from the soldiers not to hurt her, not to hurt someone else, not to take her arm or like whatever. Or is it like mercy from someone else, right? Not necessarily soldiers, anyone. And then it also makes you think of like the please, please, that begging, right? Like then of other people asking for a different kind of gift of mercy from Arya and Braavos. Yeah, I love that. That is the horror of it, right? That we don't know. Like, I imagine it's probably something from begging for mercy or protecting someone when all of this went down, but we don't know. And it's horrible. And it's war. Yeah, there's another death below another tree also, right? Like, last chapter that you kind of came back to and mentioned last week. And coming back to some of that, I didn't really think about it until now,

but the Weeping Willow and this woman's blood, not unlike Luin, right? When Luin dies at the Weirwood, yeah. Luin! And the tree in the last chapter that they buried him under similar with that as well right that you're burying them so that they're closer to nature closer to ground their blood flows into that grass and into everything that the world creates right and it's something that reminds me very much like the children of the forest like aria throwing the acorns on the tree kind of feels like it could be reminiscent of children of the forest in a way of a ritual we would see them do you know when

they bury someone um but that maybe not necessarily that the trees are connected but maybe all trees are right because all trees are like life and they are connected to the actual earth i don't know interesting and it brings back like bran thinking of leaf and seeing her and thinking of aria immediately but yeah that is interesting that leaf reminds him of aria and all of these things and stature and behavior about yeah is she not gonna get taller do we does he like not realize that theoretically aria will get taller one day i mean he's like seven so true i couldn't think that far ahead when i was seven so

i don't know that i think that far ahead even now honestly so there's no fire that night supper was a handful of radishes and a cup of dry beans and water from a brook and again it tastes funny and lami's like that's the taste of the bodies rotting upstream delicious think of all the protein no i'm joking aria drinks too much water interestingly just to fill her stomach with something and she sleeps and wakes with her bladder bursting in the pitch black she works to head toward the woods but is stopped by hot pie who's on the watch and tells her she can't go into the woods due to the danger of wolves that he heard out there and that joran wouldn't like them wandering too far aria wastes her chances and then decides to be

nice she's like for true wolves i didn't hear them and pretends to sleep in her blanket again she waits a little and then sneaks off to the other side of the woods hot pie was right turns out but anyways drinking too much water right before bed aria rookie mistake and i'm a person who frequently makes this mistake all of the time and has to wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and let me just tell you waking up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom is no joke like it's your bladder yelling at you so like this girl if she's got to go she's got to fucking go and that's one thing is like we're gotta go, she's gotta fucking go. And that's one thing is, like, we're resilient. If you gotta fucking go, you'll figure it out. You'll lie to Hot Pie, you know?

Yeah. You gotta go. Yeah. God. She squats to do her business and then sees eyes gleaming in the wood. Two, four, eight, twelve. A whole pack of them. One of them came padding out from under the trees

he stared at her and bared his teeth and all she could think was how stupid she'd been and how hot pie would gloat when they found her half-eaten body the next morning but the wolf turned and raced back into the darkness and quick as that the eyes were gone. Ooh. Yeah. Ooh. Ooh. So, honestly amazing that Arya only continues to pee and does not shit herself in that moment instead. And that wolf is running away. It's like, ooh, I'm going to go tell this hot goss to Nymeria.

Be like, I saw your human. I saw your girl. I saw your girl. She's just out there peeing! Nymeria probably sent them. Nymeria was like, can you go check on my girl? Nymeria was like, that's my girl. Peeing out there in the woods. That's her. Love her.

So, trembling, Arya returns to camp to Yoren, who is in the wagon working at a sword. She tells him that she saw the wolves in the wood and that they scared her he's surprised that saying that i thought your kind was fond of wolves and she's like uh yeah she tells him about nymeria who was a dire wolf and that she had to scare her off with rocks or be killed by the queen i get it's kind of like funny in a joke like haha you like wolves right because your dire wolf symbol they're not the

same thing first of all second of all does anyone like wolves when they're being stared down by wolves and third of all i guess there's like also something to say in there like you know the show kind of oobified we have the good guys starks and the bad guy targs or bad guy lannisters whatever but you know the point of the dire wolves is they can be not gentle, they can be violent when roused. Wolves also like are not domesticated animals. So if a little girl comes and stands in front of a one, she probably has a right to be freaking out. Like you said, incredible she didn't shit herself. So many people don't shit themselves in this book that we should all be like, praising them because there are some scary sitches. But makes me wonder because he says it

like with a familiarity like, oh, I thought your kind was fond of wolves. Makes me think he must have had some cute interactions with Benjen in the past at the watch. And it makes me wonder if Benjen has any affinity with wolves or warging kind of ability that he doesn't know about i don't know if he would necessarily have like as strong of skin changing as the kids like it seems like there was something prompted by them finding the dire wolves that woke it up but i wouldn't be surprised if what you're saying like maybe he does have you know a way with them because why is he missing what's so special about benjen something's happening also during the rebellion right that he's like goes in immediately obviously i think he knew about

reygar and liana when it was going on uh and maybe he knows more about some of the the other things surrounding that mystery as well but obviously he felt so fucking guilty after all of it that he like threw himself at the watch which makes me wonder why he felt that guilty in the whole rlj equation like where is the guilt a hundred percent stemming from did you know something you didn't tell anyone which i think is probably possible so you were a prepubescent kid yeah don't be so hard on yourself how could you tell your 14 year old sister don't run away with that man i mean like you can tell her that but she's a 14 year old girl who unfortunately is i guess being groomed by this man but also is gonna do whatever the fuck she

wants because she's a teenage girl and you only had so much power as a child exactly it's just guilt it's fucking survivor's guilt it's horrible um but they did all die and i do think to that extent like you're saying i think they all have the gene it's just it's awakened in the stark kids you know so i think they all like i think most of the starks probably have the gene at least i think like so george has mentioned it as being like this miraculous thing it's like not science with genes so right no no but i mean i i look at it more as a genome like that like the starks all probably have magic in their bloodline that there's a possibility but it's awakened or the gene is like activated like someone flipped

a switch and the stark kids have it because that dire wolf was in the world i don't know uh also i love that she knows that this wolf she's looking at is a not namiria because she would know and b also that she knows it's a boy wolf which i'm thinking she's probably knowing that from her connection to namiria that she somehow is recognizing these wolves and who they are each of them like how would you fucking know from looking at this wolf in the dark that it's a boy wolf yeah especially like you said in the dark i'd be like i don't i don't fucking know this wolf sex and i wonder if that wolf knows who because of that connection like i think the wolf knows who she is because he also didn't eat her like why did that wolf just not eat her and it just was

like all right you're good and to your point i think it's because the wolf knows numeria and knows there's some sort of connection between them. He knows that the hot goss is going to be even tastier. Wait till I tell the boss. Yeah. Wait till she gets a load of this. The drama. So tasty.

We have an exchange with Yoren and Arya. I bet if she'd been in the city she wouldn't have let them cut off father's head. Orphan boys got no fathers. Or did you forget that? Sourleaf had turned his spit red, so it looked like his mouth was bleeding. Yoren tells Arya that we only need to fear the wolves who wear man skin. Again, coming back to skin changing like you were, like, I feel like it's interesting because there's a double entendre

there. He's a man of the Night's Watch, so it definitely could be about skin changers to some extent, right? I don't think he's talking about that in that moment, north of the wall, but that the Night's Watch had been fighting, you know, amongst those free folk. But also, I mean, Arya is a skin changer. But Euron's definitely talking about, you know, people with wolfish spirits, right? Those kinds of people who just devour other people, I think, on a spiritual level is what he's talking about. It really hammers home why that book would have once upon a time been called A Time for Wolves. Yeah, it could be about the Starks, but it definitely feels like it's about the wars that are going on, right? And how people are just kind of ravaging each other and to your point yeah beware men in wolves

clothing or men in wolf skin you know that's a very common you know people that come very pliant and you know subtle like a lamb and then truly they are the wolf. I can see that now. Yeah. Yeah. Like the hungry wolf. Oh my god. Arya says that she wishes she was home. And Euron says, maybe you would have been safer in the city where I found you. She says that she

doesn't care. She just wants to go home. Arya, you wouldn't have been safer at home. I've read the 1993 letter. You would have been forced to flee anyway so we close this chapter with been bringing men to the wall for close on

30 years froth shown on Yoren's lips like bubbles of blood all that time I only lost three old man died of a fever city boy got a snake bit, taken a shit, and one fool tried to kill me in my sleep, got a red smile for his trouble. He drew the dirk across his throat to show her.

Three and thirty years. He spat out the old sour leaf. A ship now. Might have been wiser. No chance of finding more men on the way, but still. Clever man, he'd go by ship, but me? Thirty years I've been taking this king's road. He's sheathed his jerk. Go to sleep, boy. Hear me? She did try, yet as she lay under her thin blanket, she could hear the wolves howling.

And another sound, fainter, no more than a whisper on the wind that might have been screams yeah night is dark and full of terrors indeed devastating the entire end of that species like three and thirty years i've only ever lost three in thirty years i've been making this trip up and down up and down he's only ever lost three men total and now he's about to lose many including himself wow shit never mind not good for him yeah bad for him and bad for him bummer for all really on this trip truly truly a bummer for all and that line bubbles of blood frothing you know at his mouth they're frothing like an omen a warning at his lips i mean he's already dead i get it george the foreshadowing is there very sad actually

that he's already dead i don't know i am sad about papa joran he's he's a good guy like as you pointed out in this chapter he does all these great things but it's hard to go up against those terrors in the night right like the night is dark and full of terrors all these nights not not not the time of day i mean you know not when the sky is dark but like all these people and that that last line about no more than a whisper on the wind that might have been screams comes back to what you were saying earlier right about how that please please please becomes a motif right it's both a whisper and a scream of people reacting to what's happening in the this war and all those horrors

it's burning after him it's coming for him yeah just because papa yoran tried to protect some kids give them and maybe it's not like a real chance but another another life, I guess. But it's a short, not so sweet chapter, really, though, about the things that war takes from people and how it transforms them into those wolves, those broken men. And, you know, the kind of people like Yoren who keep humanity and hope alive in the middle of it, trying to save little babies. And that's it, right?

Like, he really, that's, he's trying so hard to save people and that's what does them in. Because Gendry and Arya, he's not willing to give up Gendry. And unfortunately, the capital has more money, better swords, better armor, more men. Better horses, faster horses. More men they can fucking enslave into their lifestyle, really, I mean. Oh, that too. really, I mean. They've seduced them into the luxury and the glint of the shining

armor, and the dark side of that armor is the fucking slaying and torturing they do across the Riverlands. Yeah. Well, I'm thoroughly fucking depressed. Next week, we're gonna return

with our good friend Ara from Direwolf City I eat zebra on YouTube check her out watch some of her videos and some of Direwolf City's stuff we're gonna have a round to talk about Yoren's last chapter and all of the devastating shit to come and that'll be sad but at least you know I think

yes depressing chapters but what's not so depressing is having Ara there with us it'll be light you know i think yes depressing chapters but what's not so depressing is having ara there with us it'll be like you know we'll keep it light since we have a friend but it'll be fun but we will what's great is we will we always keep it light you know i mean like even when someone's dying you'll be like haha that's so sad that they're fucked up and dying their whole family's dead lol anyway we really do take people on an emotional roller coaster huh in these chapters now that i think about like no but truly in general we do go like yeah that was really messed up and then

we're like sad and crying and then like five minutes later we're like ah yeah two moments later i'm like anyway blaze it two moments we're like, but what about Ned's thighs? What about Ned's thighs? What about Ned's thighs? I am going to dream about those dad thighs for the next couple of minutes, you know, everyone. But thanks for listening. You should go take a look for us on social media, which Eliana is going to tell you where that is before our patrons tell you a little bit more about the perks of being a patron you can check out our social media where Chloe posts fantastic memes

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Eliana. We'll be back next week. Thinking about them with eyes. Like a whisper or a screen. A whisper to a screen was what I was thinking like the song whisper to a scream yeah goodbye goodbye