Girls Gone Canon Cast - Patreon E61 — Bitterblooms

Episode Date: May 17, 2024

Now available for the public!  Chloe and Eliana read another GRRM short story from the Thousand Worlds universe: Butterbumps—wait, no, Bitterblooms. A girl lost during deepwinter gets swept away by a magical woman to journey among the stars... or does she? Don't forget to check out "Suzanne" by Leonard Cohen, the song that inspired this story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76OOON5QYr0 --- Intro by Kevin MacLeod, "Fairytale Waltz"  

Hello and welcome to Time Traveling to an episode from the past from Girls Gone Canon. I'm one of your hosts, Chloe. And I'm another one of your hosts, Eliana. And yeah, this is kind of from the past in a couple of different ways, even within this story. I mean, it is and it isn't. Yeah, it's been, what, like almost a year since we recorded this episode. And the episode you're going to hear today is a Patreon episode. A reminder that at patreon.com slash girlsgonecanon, we have tons of bonus content available for

those in the Stranger tier. That's $5 and up a month. So hours and hours of episodes to get lost into, whether it's extra A Song of Ice and Fire content, or whether it's a novella by George R.R. Martin, like the one that we're going to talk about today, or other fictional series like The Hunger Games, Ella Enchanted, it's been a while since that one, and a handful of other stories that I recommend you check out. But today is Patreon episode 61. Yeah. We hope you enjoyed this as I think one of my favorite that we've read of george's short

stories and more to come more to come yeah butter bumps no i'm just kidding it's called bitter blooms we did do a butter bumps ish episode you can't call it butter bumps it's confusing that was a different i'm gonna look up which which episode that was you're talking about our April Fool's episode yeah that was an actual episode that we did and that is Patreon episode 45 you can't confuse the people this is Butterbumps part 2 Bitterblooms by George R.R. Martin

and it follows a girl that's lost during deep winter and gets swept away by a magical woman, Morgan Le Fay, if you will, to journey amongst the stars. Or does she? You'll have to get into the episode, read the novella, and find out for yourself. I love this one. I love talking actually a lot about comics and about mythology and folklore when it comes to Morgan Le Fay. And you had some interesting stuff, I think, too, in this, if. And you had some interesting stuff, I think,

too, in this, if I remember, like some gender stuff, maybe? Probably. But I also remember you brought up some cool stuff about music, too, because this is a short story that's inspired by a song. But you know, we'll get into it. Go listen. Go listen to this and the story. It's great. Yeah, enjoy the episode. And please do check it out at patreon. It's great. Yeah, enjoy the episode, and please do check it out at patreon.com slash girlsgonecanon, where you can find some more bonus episodes.

A big thanks to patrons for releasing this today. hello everyone and welcome to patreon episode 61 butter bumps the short story by George Carver. That is not it. It's like it's not even that funny because you've said it so many times that it's actually becoming funny to me, Eliana. It's becoming very funny. That's how it works. In fact, well, there's

a lot of connections there between Butter Bumps and this short story, which is actually called Bitter Blooms, alright? Bitter Blooms, and it's that House Tyrell is about flowers that are blooming, and Butterbumps serves House Tyrell. I did it. Yeah. I think you did a very good job.

Thank you. A very good job. You got there. I did it. You got there. Yeah, I was very surprised. I had some major ADHD in trying to get it read, and I don't know what was very surprised. I had like some major ADHD in trying to get it read. And I don't know what was going on.

I think we've just been reading lots of stuff lately. But I did get it read. I started it, took a few weeks off. And then, man, I pounded those pages. Yeah. 13 of them last night, you know, 13 of them today. I actually got really into it, though. It took me a minute.

I loved the language. I loved, you know i liked it it just i i needed to kind of read it and be in the world because it's an interesting world i think it's a the language is stronger than actually some of his other short stories that we've read and i guess it's not fair to be like it's stronger than the ice dragon right because that one's written for kids so whatever but i think it's some of the Ice Dragon, right? Because that one's written for kids, so whatever. But I think it's some of his most poetic stuff, where he's really pushing the boundaries on what he usually does. And even to an extent, he doesn't do it as... He doesn't play around with the language as strongly

in, I think, A Song of Ice and Fire. Obviously, he does stuff in A Song of Ice and Fire, but he really fucking went for it in this one. Yeah, and i guess it depends how you want to read this right and what books came first i mean you think about meat house man and the language was a little more rough and cut yeah right and a song for leah too and these were you know those took place a couple years before this there's definitely a little bit of polish yeah in this story There's even a little, like, there's a couple paragraphs we are going to read today of some of the prose that is just so beautiful I can't. And some of it's a little heavy, and it's fine. I still like it, but it is a little chunkier. But it's kind of like,

I think it's like George flexing a little? Question mark? Like, I think George has, like, come into his own of his prose here, and he's owning it. He's out there, and he's like george flexing a little question mark like i think george has like come into his own of his prose here and he's owning it he's out there and he's like blue this blue that flowers and blood bitch i'm like yeah george become the man yeah that we know today you know he killed the boy he's really channeling eiffel 65 which i know came out in the 90s but it actually is one of the inspirations of this short story george drew directly from eiffel 65's hit song for this i swear to god and i swear to god you are just spreading misinformation on purpose no one's gonna believe me when i talk about the actual song influence later how could you do this it's also an anachronism it's also an anachronism just like

how george was inspired by so i i think something that also stands out about this short story compared to song for leah and meat house man and there's one more that i'm thinking of i don't know probably dying of the light like it feels a lot less like there's a relationship in this one but it feels a lot less influenced by his breakup or like whatever he was working through emotionally specifically in the meat house man in a song for leah you know yeah he got over it a little or he like was getting through it in a different way a yeah you know sadder way yeah he was like getting through it and i think maybe this one he's like taking a break maybe this one's the story that he's like not thinking about it in that way not channeling his blood into that's why it's

blue yeah this one's more mature and feels more like a grieving yeah like and being a burial almost like this is the end of the grieving this is because even like there are definitely some very sad things in this story we'll we'll be getting to that soon but they're muted they're kind of dampened and there's a lot of those themes of loss and innocence and growing up aging right coming of age yeah and it's very a swaffy there's a lot of a swaff we're gonna point out i mean some of it is so aswaffy. There's a lot of A-swaff we're going to point out. I mean, some of it is so A-swaffy. My God, some of it I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, George, we know. Absolutely. It is. And I mean, some of it, even though it's not, right, it's not a children's

story, it feels fairy story. Granted, fairy stories are not necessarily children's stories. They weren't until more recently, but we'll get into that as well but let's talk about a bit of the context of when this actually was written in and what it's about we've been kind of dancing around it just now bitter blooms is a sci-fi novelette by gurn first published back in 77 in cosmos science fiction and fantasy magazine taking place in the thousand worlds universe set on an unknown planet during the interregnum period it's about a girl sean who gets lost in the woods in deep winter she's rescued by a magical woman who takes her back to her spaceship which eliana keeps saying i'm making sexual and it turns out I was right to do so.

Yeah, I didn't realize that. You didn't know, but you were right. And we were all right. It was very sexy. Kinda. But something that's interesting is I guess there were author notes about this. George actually has some notes as well about the context and when he wrote the story. Yeah, it's an actual entry in Dream Songs and the essay bits, which I actually really like. If you haven't got Dream Songs one and two, I highly recommend it just because I actually really love the essays. I like hearing George just talk like all the time. I could listen to his interviews. I love when we get to go see him speak at signings and whatever, because I just think he's a great storyteller.

He's warm and kind and enthralling. Like you want to listen to the story. He can make anything kind of be interesting. He's a character himself. And I love these essays in Dream Songs. I highly recommend them. They feel very great. And I like his Not A Blog stuff too, speaking of like personal essays.

Yeah. recommend them they feel very great and I like his not a blog stuff too speaking of like personal essays yeah and it's nice to feel close to him because I don't know he's just like a nice little he's a real person grandpa of my life you know like not just some person who turns out these stories or doesn't for 10 years I I'm just ribbing I'm sorry I'm not like actually always that I just like saying it but yeah yeah I mean I spent like seven to nine years not saying it so I'm trying it on now to see how it feels once in a while to be like George who didn't write him uh but also like he is not just a write the book bitch like that's not it guys that ain't it but it does make you remember he's more than just, you know, writing and word star. He's also like flesh and blood and a mass of cells

with a brain and a heart and a soul or whatever. Maybe a soul. I don't know. He did write The Red Wedding. Did you also tell me to watch Joe Pera Talks to You? I don't think so. Did I? I don't know. Do you watch it? No. There's something about when you carve a pumpkin, you put a bit of your soul into it and i feel like george has probably carved pumpkins

all right anyway we're getting off the rails we're getting off the rails i'm gonna read this entry from dream songs get the fucking books do it they're great they're really good actually i like the novellas i like the essence yeah i actually really like them. Yeah. In 1977, a new sci-fi magazine named Cosmos was launched, edited by David G. Hartwell. David asked me for a story and I was pleased to oblige. If Bitterblooms has a certain chill to it, that may be because it was one of the first things I wrote after moving to Debucky, Iowa, where the winters were even more brutal than those I weathered in Chicago. Over the years, I've done a number of stories inspired by songs. Bitterblooms is one of Iowa, where the winters were even more brutal than those I weathered in Chicago. Over the years I've done a number of stories inspired by songs.

Bitter Blooms is one of those as well. Anyone who can tell me the name of the song that inspired it will win absolutely nothing. We'll talk about it in a bit. I win everything. Hartwell liked the story well enough to feature it on the cover of the fourth issue of Cosmos. Unfortunately the fourth issue of Cosmos also proved to be the last issue of Cosmos. It wasn't my fault, he says. I had headed for Debucky in the spring of 1976 to take a job teaching journalism at a small Catholic women's college. Though my writing was going well, I was still not earning enough from

my fiction to support myself as a full-time writer, and the chess tournaments had all dried up. That happens. Also, I had married in 1975 and had a wife to put through college. The position at Clark College seemed the perfect answer. I would only be teaching two or three hours a day after all, for the most, that left me half of every day to write my stories. Wouldn't it? Wouldn't it?

Yes. of every day to write my stories wouldn't it wouldn't it yes we all think that about our free time and then where does it go where does it go i don't know but yeah i mean the context of that makes sense and also how he is just so influenced by these harsh winters that he's experienced and also because I was joking to you as we were reading this story, I was like, wow, George really loves winter and writing about winter for a guy who chose to live in New Mexico, notoriously not known for winter.

You know, another thing that made me laugh thinking about this since Avalon becomes a topic we will hit on for a man from New Jersey where Avalon, the city exists, which it's just like, uh, it's in Cape May. Yeah. It's off of Cape May area. It's, you know, a little beach town, but it made me laugh. It's not, it's not really that close to where George grew up, but he probably would have went there maybe. I mean, it makes sense. Cause I also was like, why is he so fixated on like these harsh winters? Like, I mean, again, I know Chicago has really bad winters. Did not know that Iowa's was like so much worse. Right. I was like why is he so fixated on like these harsh winters like i mean again i know chicago has really bad winters did not know that i was was like so much worse right i was like he's from

new jersey and like you know the mid-atlantic winters they suck but they are nothing they're nothing compared to like a the kinds of winters that he writes about and b that's experienced in i mean a lot of the other parts of the country yeah as a person who hates hates winters yes you are the sun and I am the moon yes I fucking love snow we're not except for the times that we're not yeah yeah that's true we're also just women the sun and I'm the moon yeah we're we're switches oh my god I don't know probably the the moon. Power bottom. Um, yeah, I, I think it really the story in general kind of gives you a shading on George's love of winter in his stories, I think. Yeah, maybe it's all you know, we're saying it's not him processing his like breakups or relationship. Maybe it's him like processing like, wow, I really fucking hate winter and working through that uh but well eliana you've written us a little summary and can you kick it off robbie and tell me about this book sure

yeah so it's already a pretty short story but let's shorten it a little more after the death of lane sean's lover from her clan karen house sean must survive in the woods alone. It is deep winter on their unknown planet because this is in the thousand worlds universe and vampires threaten her. During a desperate time, she sees a blue light and goes toward it, finding mysterious blue flowers around the building. She tries to tear one away to show her clan,

especially Craig, their voice Karen or clan leader, who is mean and hard on Sean. As she's attacked by a vampire she's saved by Morgan, a mysterious woman who says she is full of magic and takes her into the tear-shaped metal building. She tells Sean that she has been alive a long time and lists names of people she knew from this universe and from her own quote-unquote family. She beseeches Sean to be her lover. Sean initially refuses, but then gives in after Morgan convinces her it is gathering with all of these big screen TVs. We'll get there. Time rolls past and she finds that their building is in fact a spaceship.

She thinks it's the Ice Wagon, but known to the Karens as Morgan Hall. In the time that they had been traveling, Morgan molded Sean to her whims. They travel to different worlds that Sean sees only outside their windows until the day that Morgan returns with bitter blooms. The blue flowers she saw the day she entered the ice wagon. Sean realizes, wait, hang on, we never really left my homeworld, huh? Just change the illusions on the windows and forces Morgan to let her leave. Back at Karen Hall, Sean returns to everyone's awe, having survived an over-year-long disappearance. Craig no longer has such power over her, and in time, he dies and then new voices come and go.

Sean chooses to be a traitor, bears six kids, and has become a very respected leader. When it's offered to her, she refuses to become the voice. Another deep winter comes, and this one's very harsh, and the new voice cannot make the hard choices. Sean still has never felt happiness, and she knows what will follow during this winter, with a clan that's so large it's over 200 people and scarce resources. So she takes her supplies, makes her way back to Morgan Hall. It's cracked by time and flowers. There's Morgan Le Fay and a registration number written on the side that she never noticed before. She calls for Morgan to let her in, finds no answer, and sleeps in the snow, dreaming of Avalon. Very sad at the end interesting i think there's so many really

interesting themes in here of like living a fulfilling life and not and wants and desires and learning what things are and what's right and what's wrong and i don't know i i think there's a lot uh a lot and even in the very opening right right, that's very Hedge Knight, very Arya and Clash. We open on Sian burying someone she loved, right? Who died in the freezing cold winter from the vampires, from a wound. And there's this line, she was calmer then, more rational. She had left her grief and her shame behind with his body as she had been taught to do. Reminds me a lot of some of the stuff we're uh seeing aria

begin to do as she kind of works her way loses her path in the wilderness and literal same opening as the hedge knight absolutely yeah that's a great call and like everything that that person has given them right like thinking about that person who isn't necessarily family as family that's part of it and also the insecurity that these characters are feeling and i also noticed the usage of her having a wind wolf a little i think it was ceramic or some sort of stone or whatever which makes me think of the starks even more even more had to bring it up i'm still not sure what a wind wolf is i'm gonna be real i think it's the first iteration of dire wolves dude oh it's like that's what i mean it's an actual wolf yeah it's an actual wolf

because like she was talking about like a figurine of one later on now exactly and that's the figurine that she threatens her with the figurine that's what it was yeah i couldn't remember the ceramic or stone or what the fuck it was but yeah yeah i think that's the first dire wolf dude that's interesting isn't that cool? Yeah. Yeah. I thought that was cool. And, you know, there are, like, in CK3 or 2, I think in the north, when you control the north in Crusader Kings, in the Agot mod,

you can hire a mercenary group, like, of warriors named the Windwolves. So I'm guessing they read this story. But there's a great bit of the vampires right they're presented pretty much immediately like the others like I mean just dead on immediately the language around them coming in the night they're attracted to flame which is funny because we've been talking about that in the aria chapters lately of that little george trope of oh no flame keeps you alive but you can't have the flame going or the others will find you or people will find you and kill you vampires in this sense heat and it's interesting because

they're presented like really bad in the woods like that's the scary thing but sean gets to quote-unquote avalon the ship and morgan's there and she's terrible she's a liar but she's kind of a vampire in a way like a very different vampire and's kind of a vampire in a way, like a very different vampire. And maybe she is a vampire in a way. Who knows? But a very different kind of vampire. She's the real vampire. And all she really offered Sean was like a bandaid to her pain in life, right?

And that kind of a sip of the booze that she offered Sean, of the many boozes and the meats she offered Sean, are what seduce her to this and keep her there, a band-aid to the life, a way to absorb life. You know, like, I don't know, Morgan is stealing her life away from her while she's there. I love that comparison. I didn't really think about it, but you're right. Morgan is the real vampire.

Just as you said, stealing her life, stealing Sean's identity, and kind of like an emotional vampire, you know, in a lot of ways, too. Absolutely. Yeah, like her youth, her beauty, her emotions, her, her loss of innocence, yeah, her identity. Yeah. And the strange, and we're going to talk a lot more about Morgan and Sean. But even like, that strange feel that there's some sort of time travel happening, obviously, and some sort of realm travel because that's something Morgan can do is kind of astral and realm traveling and traveling and the alien nature of the whole story. It's very interesting. Like it makes you think there's a lot to kind of conceptualize

about it, which is what I really actually like about these stupid fucking novellas, because they're so small. And he makes me think so much i'm like what the fuck george what does it mean yeah i like how each one is kind of its own little its own world right it feels like a whole world and that's the point it's called thousand worlds but like it really kind of meshes fantasy and sci-fi through that yeah and i mean like in regards to the whole like taking over sean's identity and and that emotional vampire i think that a lot of this story it's not the only aspect of the story but it is it's a story about abuse right you have that usage at the beginning which is talking about lane and that usage of father brother lover and that's kind of really unnerving

at first until you understand that it's kind of the father and the brother part are really more of a metaphorical thing. But the language of incest conjures up those ideas of abuse. And even Morgan tells Sean that Sean will be her lover, daughter and sister. And Sean, like, she just hasn't had very much life experience in terms of being exposed to different ideas and things. She's 16 years old, also lives in a very harsh area, deep winter right now, and she's really vulnerable. And part of what's made her so vulnerable compared to the others in their clan is that she was abused by Craig, their current leader. So she's kind of really distrustful of herself and her wants she doesn't know herself and her boundaries she just thinks of only lane was the one who knew anything and craig knows everything and she's like i want to steal this flower because no one's going

to believe me right she has to like prove her reality and then morgan comes along love bombs her isolates her and controls her and through her life she's able to control what reality is and ends up taking over sean and as you were talking about that vampirism like subsumes sean like is like look you look like me now isn't that great look at all these clothes and it's like very interesting also that we don't get a scene where like sean looks in the mirror you know sometimes you see those where people like look in the mirror and then in the movies and they're like oh my god um who am i this isn't me kind of like katie heron in uh mean girls when they're all like you are just like regina george now then a moment of horror but i i guess it's like unnecessary

it's more of like i think a big visual moment maybe it would have been something that they incorporated in a visual adaptation of this but i just thought it was interesting that it wasn't something that was included just kind of happens within a line even the way that the clan operates and craig's abuses as you mentioned like we recently, I want to say it might have been in the Aria chapters, but it could have been before that. It's been a while. We do a lot of these things every week, believe it or not. But we talked a little bit of about emotional incest, right? Like when Oh, it was in Sailor Moon. Funny, right? Well, I guess it's not even just emotional. She's like, she's like she's like

i'm going to kiss dad and i'm like i don't know about that well we talked about emotional incest there or covert incest which is when a parent or a caregiver kind of you know relies on the child for them to do the emotional labor and to take care of emotional needs for them instead of, you know, the opposite, which is usually the adult-child whole relationship. Yeah. So it's interesting that she leaves home where it has this incestual vibe going on that everybody, you know, makes a bajillion babies for the village and takes care of one another. Then a couple people get volunteered to get, you know, thrown out of the fucking airlock every winter because that's just how the village works but i mean that's basically the idea right and it's interesting that confusion she experiences there she then goes to morgan who provides that

loving very you know come come please let me take care of you almost a similar literally the same thing just done positively to show her look i can control you this way happily with a smile instead of like with piss and vinegar it's with honey and there's even something about the way it operates of like there's almost craster keep vibes going on in the clan right it reminds me a little bit of craster's keep of being in the deep winter and the role the roles being played and And I don't know, I thought it was really interesting. And I will say Sean's characteristics and her strength and her understanding that something is wrong. because she obviously talks about it as it being, you know, she made the mistake of believing the lies of believing all the the grand things that Morgan's giving her. And I think the reason we really don't see a moment of her kind of like looking in the mirror and becoming Morgan,

it actually reminds me of Morgan Le Fay and the Runaways, which is one of my fave iterations recent of recent of her, which we'll talk a little more about her in media later. But like her power over Nico Minoru in The Runaways and how she kind of had Nico convinced, you know, like, I can give you all the power of the world. You can look around you. All these people that say they love you are weak. Fuck them. Be with me. Da da da.

And Sean doesn't crave that power. Yeah. She doesn't want she turned down being the voice. around you all these people that say they love you are weak fuck them be with me da da da and sean doesn't crave that power yeah she doesn't want she turned down being the voice she's able to see eventually through morgan's geises because she doesn't want that right and we get the moment of her eating the meat where sean thinks in horror like wait what's going on here? And refuses to eat it. And then finally, like she says, I stopped being childish and just went back to eating it. And, you know, that's back to Acedia, back to Sloth. But she does it in order to get Morgan's love, right? Like the things that she's doing are to feel loved. And yeah, just like we see her turn down the voice, you know, going to Avalon almost feels

in some ways like, yes, Morgan seems bad and is bad and is lying to her and maybe feeding her other meat, like human meat and da da da da da. She seems bad and she is kind of bad, but also it does. And we'll come back to Melisandre. I have a lot of thoughts of her and Melisandre, actually. But it's somewhat Melisandre-ish, like in a way that it's not necessarily bad like she went there to experience another world or another life and realized it was just a lie and she came home and lived a full life and then she wanted to go back and it's almost loneliness right like there's a feeling of innate loneliness like in losing lane for sean trying to replace

her found family is what she's really trying to do like she lost the only person she thought understood her took care of her and then she found this magical person to take that place and then i don't know there's a lot of uh you know like being cast out of the garden of eden vibes to it right like when she goes back to avalon and morgan isn't there slash doesn't let her in slash whatever and she's just curled up in the snow it's very biblical it almost reminds me of his dark materials in some ways of you don't get to go back you've been cast out of quote unquote the paradise that you left yeah and i and it resembles a lot of fairy stories as well which

we'll come back to but i i i agree. I don't know that Morgan is bad. And I think, yeah, I agree. Morgan's not really bad. The things that she ends up doing aren't good, right? And they are abusive. And I know that that's actually, I think, a lot more complex. And we've all been making it out to be a lot of ways in the larger conversation about it I think it's good that people are talking about it but

um you know Morgan is she's kind of just like a big sad loser you know and she's kind of really lonely but the thing is as you said Sean's really lonely as well because no one respects her no one liked her except for Lane back at home and i kind of wonder if morgan was the same way or she just got stranded here we don't know enough about her right but i think it's very obvious that she's lonely sean's lonely and but at the end like as sean says she's just a crazy old woman which i think is also like big sad loser yeah and in a way though i i also think it and i don't know this comes to a lot of like just like you could wax poetic about the fucking ending and what it means forever and i think it's supposed to be complex right in that same way of melisandre

that we'll talk about like that we don't get morgan's pov we only get sean's pov on what's happening yeah and that is interesting and i do think part of that did inspire him when writing melisandre i swear because there's a lot of like for example there's something bigger at play right in the time travel and weirdness going on and the alien shit of like the thousand worlds and i haven't read all of them so i can't fucking comment on them i've read a handful now by virtue by virtue of like us covering this like already like three of the stories at least that we've done are thousand worlds but i don't have the great understanding of how they all fit in yet i've actually also read like one of the other ones that we haven't read together yet i've read the glass flower too but we'll talk about that um

i don't think they all fit in yeah but there's a lot of crossover things and that's the thing is i feel like i need a bigger context before i you know wax poetic on themes of life and shit but i think there's something really complex in that theme of like what does living a fulfilled life mean does it mean having six to nine kids and having a happy village taking care of you? Will that make you happy? It's different for every person. It's not a one size fits all thing. Life, right? Like that Sean goes back to Avalon and goes back to wanting the fantasy and wanting the lies at the end after having lived a fulfilled life is very interesting to me and being exiled

from that opportunity of getting that slice of, I mean, even if not Eden, like even more forbidden, you know, because it's taboo almost, I don't know. But it's interesting. It's very interesting. In regards to the Melisandre stuff, I think some of, you know, we'll come back to the ending in a second. But some of the stuff that makes it feel most Melisandre is like just that strong use of color and I just love this line it's towards the beginning of the short story but it was blue all blue hazy shifting blue a pale blue dancing dancing like the ghost light that had flickered on the sky a soft blue like the little flower the impossible blossom by the river bank a cold blue like the eyes of the ice wagon's black driver.

Like Lane's lips when she last kissed them. Blue, blue, and it moved and would not be still. Everything was blurred, unreal. There was only blue. For a long time, only blue. Then music. But it was blurred music. Blue music somehow.

Strange and high and fleeting. Very sad, lonely. A bit erotic. It was a lullaby like old tessenia used to sing when sean was very little before tessenia grew weak and sick and craig put her out to die fuck you craig um but apparently that's a good thing because sean's all like the new voice can't make the hard decisions whereas craig could i don't fucking know anyway well it's winterfowl style like it's like the north it's you know you have to save your others it's sacrificial in the way of saving everyone else yeah or like as you were saying craster right

i feel like some folks would have been like we're gonna try to we're gonna try to keep them make it work anyways and he goes it had been so long since sean had heard such a song all the music she knew was craig on his harp and reese on her guitar she found herself relaxing floating all her limbs turned to water lazy water though it was deep winter and she knew she should be ice yeah i think like that's the i think those are like some of the best lines in this whole short story where it all like turns and you were talking about this coming of age stuff. And I think blue becomes this color that's associated with ignorance or naivete, but also death. And it becomes this color that I think, interestingly, because it is winter, right?

It's a color that's associated with childhood and refusing to grow, stagnation. And therefore, again, like by refusing to grow, you stay in one place and that's the death and blue you know somehow though blue and the flower together flowers are obviously associated with springtime which is usually youth so there's something really interesting that it's inverting that you know versus wisdom which is harsh and that's that's part of winter as you get older yeah the use of blue naturally yes red red terrible red um but no yeah lovely blue even the use of warmth against the cold because i have been there where you suddenly get that feeling that the cold is warm and you're like oh that's fucked up it's fucking cold you're like how did that happen how is it feeling this way

yeah and even after this like it's very erotic right like there's all this like crazy erotic language of hands touching her and her suddenly remembering home and feeling her clothes stripped from her body and that she's drowning in the blue choking screaming until a cup is pressed to her lips uh which total house of the undying vibes george i see you just went back to this chapter and you were like what should i lift for this one he recycles a lot of stuff yeah because the taste right of the cup it's tea she realizes but at first she's like it's the taste of all these things of warmth and this and then the taste of things i don't understand it was tea heavily influenced by music, you know,

the music happening and the eroticism and the dancing, very House of the Undying, very shadows dancing across the wall. And I want to come back to our original little mystery of what the song that inspired this was, right? You'll Win Nothing because George posted about it on his Not A Blog in 2016. i did not go looking right away i wanted to see if i could guess it so i wrote down like two or three guesses i did not come close close personally because of this i was like tangled up in blue by bob dylan i don't fucking know george i was like what song i told you it was blue by eiffel 65 i'm not even listening to you or dignifying that with a response.

So it's not Tangled Up in Blue, but the song he was influenced by for this story was Suzanne by Leonard Cohen and also served as a little bit of an inspo for Melisandre. The lyrics for this song partially appeared in the 1966 book by Leonard Cohen of poems, Parasites of Heaven. Fitting, fitting for this one here in the mists of Avalon.

So the lyrics are, welcome to my poetry slam. Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river. You can hear the boats go by. You can spend the night beside her. And you know that she's half crazy, but that's why you want to be there. And she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China. And just when you mean to tell her that you have no love to give her, then she gets you on her wavelength. And she lets the river answer that you've always been her lover,

and you want to travel with her, and you want to travel blind. And then you know that she will trust you, for you've touched her perfect body with your mind. And Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water, and he spent a long time watching from his lonely wooden tower. touched her perfect body with your mind. And Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water, and he spent a long time watching from his lonely wooden tower. And when he knew for certain only drowning men could see him, he said all men will be sailors then until the sea shall free them. But he himself was broken long before the sky would open. Forsaken, almost human, he sank beneath your wisdom like a stone. And you want to travel

with him and you want to travel blind, and then you think maybe you'll trust him for he's touched your perfect body with his mind. Now Suzanne takes your hand and she leads you to the river, she's wearing rags and feathers from Salvation Army counters, and the sun pours down like honey on our lady of the harbor, and she shows you where to look among the garbage and the flowers. There are heroes in the seaweed. There are children in the morning. They are leaning out for love, and they will lean that way forever while Suzanne holds the mirror.

And you want to travel with her, and you want to travel blind, and then you know that you can trust her, for she's touched your perfect body with her mind. And that is the song that inspired him in this story. I see it. Yeah, I see it. I see the vision. I see the vision entirely.

In fact, I listened to it a couple times today. I was jamming. We'll link it. You should listen to everyone. We will link it all. I'll throw the link in. Yeah, it's about you were talking about how it's erotic. It's very like seductive.

Yeah. You know, kind of what the song is about about but like with the half crazy and also the the juxtaposition of like wonder but also these very mundane things right because when you are reading the story right you're reading it through sean's perspective and you understand that like these things seem like magic to her remarkable but then i'm like i know that woman just used electricity. I've seen electricity before. Sleight of hand. That's all it was. Yeah.

Sleight of hand and big screen TVs. From a different world. That's all it is. We can just all go to Best Buy and live the same experience as fucking Morgan Hall. Go tell them, I'm interested. I'm interested. Can you show me what it would look like on all these screens same fucking deal yeah i could make his commission for the week come on exactly geek squad uh but the the seduction part i mean like you can it's kind of funny right

because the name of their clan is is karen house right um and it's the title that morgan keeps using for for sean like karen child and using it as a descriptor and i was like what what the fuck is this so i i think it like the name karen means beloved or pure c-a-r-N. But I think, I'm thinking it probably shares a root with the Spanish words like cariño, which is a term of affection with similar connotations to like darling or cariñoso for affectionate. Or like there's the Italian word cara, meaning beloved or dear.

So I think it's probably got some sort of roots like that. I saw there was also some Germanic roots and I almost want to say I saw like some Eastern Slovenian. So I think a lot of people have similar root words for that one. And I also I found a couple other things. Of course, Karen Hall rhymes with. Karen Hall. Oh, yeah.

I mean, that's kind of interesting. Karen Hall. That one was a fun one. I got to throw that one out. I also thought about the spelling how it's closer to car than kar and also kind of reminds me of kirin you know the ferryman between death and life yeah like kirin's hall of people that then go out and die every fucking great winter you know I don't know there's something there with the death in life but also there's the tempest there's karina the nymph who's an attendant to the goddess venus which made

me think about morgan a little bit i don't know but i definitely had some thoughts yeah that name karina might also come from the same thing yeah being beloved etc with the goddess venus yes so yeah i mean like that she's using it to mean like darling child right it reminds me like the way people like say you know Habibi and stuff was the way that she was saying it which also means like beloved or something like that it kind of makes me think of Arya too of you know

like Syrio constantly being like Arya my child and even you know or the Dany prophecy like bride of fire daughter of death i just think constantly of like the the prophetic kind of bride of fire yeah yeah mother of dragons the language being used there is interesting it's similar to what george does with prophecy

which is funny because of course morgan lefay is associated often with prophecy she is she is and your favorite thing we can get into prophecy i like prophecy when it works well right like i think prophecy i love the house of the undying ones like those ones i think are great like those are good the ghost of high heart ones are good i just think um the as i've discussed i think the maggie the frog ones like i'm not about it but melisandre's are cool. I like the one about what's up with Sienna seeing a man wreathed in the crown of fire. What's that about? I mean, we know what it's about.

The matter. Anyway. So, yeah, like, there's a lot of elements of it that feel very magical. And, like, some of it is a little magic and some of it is just technology. But a lot of the structure of the story feels very much like a fairy story a fairy um within a fairy story and it's a lot like those stories you're talking about the garden of eden stuff but it's also very similar to there's a lot of them where someone like leaves their homeland for a long time only to return after an even longer amount of time like hundreds of years time is

distorted and finds that that the world's changed or gone and they were only they thought they were only gone for like i don't know five years or some shit and i think um one of the ones you know i've been talking about some irish legends lately one of them is this character named ashan whose name is not spelled the way that you would think um marrying the fairy woman neve which is also really not spelled the way you would think and visiting tirnanog and it's where the twadadanin live they're kind of seen to an extent as like also these fairy-esque fey-esque people they're very long-lived they're predecessors of the aoshi which are who are descended from the twadadanin and like the roots of like the legend of Dadanen, and, like, the roots of, like, the legend

of the Ao Shi have similar roots with, like, the Si, Sin, also spelling, spelling with these, like, you know, European cultures, I, they use the letters, I think, I know, but I don't get it, but George has said explicitly that the way that we think about the others in the song of ice and fire uh they should actually be have this sort of otherworldly beauty beauty and the other world is actually like a thing to an extent as well in in a lot of celtic like myths and not necessarily like that the others are sith and we'll get back to that but anyways so o'shawn o'shawn's story he marries the fairy woman knee visits chernanogue starts a family and he's like i really want to go see my family again can i like

go do that she's like sure you can take this fucking horse and go there but do not get off the horse do not touch the land or else you cannot come back here and then he goes and like he helps like this man that he sees and ends up falling off the horse because of it and lo and behold he could never fucking go back to chernanogue toog to his wife, who's long lived, and his family, and also like all of the people that he loved were gone because it's been a bazillion years and he didn't know. Anyways, O'Shawn and Sean, very similar sounding names, but again, O'Shawn, not spelled the way you would think. And yeah, the story is kind of like that, you know, the fairy stories of people who are lured in

and then the people who seduce them to stay without really eating anything or using fairy food right though it turns out like morgan says i think the food is what keeps us young she doesn't really know and i'm like what are they eating we don't know but you also even have the aspect of a story within it there's another fairy story that's told to all of them by tsenya about morgan hall um children which also kind of interestingly because we keep thinking like are they is it people are we eating people and i'm like morgan hall what if oregon oh my god oh my god well maybe i i mean maybe we don't know right because they also are they just not eating anything are they just not eating anything i'm sure i know we'll talk more about morgan lefay's stuff in a bit but again

like the fey and the fate really fits the structure of those stories and like only other instead of returning to find that everything else is gone sean finds that her home is a bit changed but most of all the one who's actually changed is herself right by what she feels has been a long time she feels it's been eons it's time in this other world that is really really distorted and then the rest of the course of her life she like lives all of it we do it really fast and like two and a half pages considering how much time we've spent like with her trying to survive and being in the spaceship and when she tries to return to the other world she finds that the way is closed or gone and again that follows the pattern of these legends and fairy stories like again the legend

of ushan can't return to tierna no you cannot the way to the fairy world is gone like the they've like moved the opening or like the magic just isn't there anymore right and i will say like in regards to the sid and the others there are the the seed are seen as people of the fairy mounds that's part of what the name i guess means as well as having a connotation of lasting or long life might be part of the the name and it really comes back to this idea of ice preserves and makes me think of like i think that the others we haven't gotten much of like them as a people yet within a song of ice and fire but i think we're going to see them be less

less of the way that they're portrayed in in game of thrones and more of like this very seductive culture we're going to see people who seem like really worldly otherworldly even and and beautiful and and it's something that people kind of wanted to join yeah i think the uh the other world parts of it absolutely like how seductive and icy and that shows through of like the original intent and i love what you've pulled out of folklore here especially because originally i was thinking when i read it when I read the pages since I split my read on this into two different nights that may or may not have been recently listen at least I remembered to read the whole thing this time I don't want to fucking hear it not like meat house man where I thought it was over after four pages, or two pages.

And you're like, that story makes sense. And you know what, I finished it and it still did. So it still made sense. I want to hear the analysis of the four page story. The analysis is what existed in the doc. If you just go look at like the review and the edit, look at the edit history back then. But I was thinking of the underworld, right? Originally of your eating and drinking of the food. I was like, oh, underworld.

Another piece of folklore I want to bring up is the Snow Queen, which again, we've talked about some of these concepts with fairy folklore and with the secret Commonwealth of the Fae and other creatures in lore with our His Dark Materials episodes, right? We've talked a lot about that. If you haven't read His Dark Materials and you want to read them, we highly recommend it. Come by. We actually keep them spoiler free and do a few chapters at a time, starting with the Golden Compass slash Northern Lights. If you start there, you can listen to a few chapters and not listen to the end until you've, you know, finished the books where the

spoilers are and you can get through it. It's very fun. But we talk a little bit about some of this and the Snow Queen we've brought up before as well. It's a Hans Christian Andersen tale. And there's definitely bits of this that reflect on there's a pod in there that reflect on Morgan Le Fay, who's kind of the snow queen in this and so long story short a little girl and little boy are bffs kai and gerda of they are playing and a piece of a mirror gets into kai's heart and eye turns out it's like a magical mirror he becomes cruel and mean and aggressive and he no longer really likes gerda and doesn't want to play with her. And when winter comes, he likes snow, only snow. And he's obsessed with it.

He goes out to play in the market square and he's on a sleigh and he's playing. And the sleigh, somebody starts driving his sleigh that he's riding on. And he looks up and it's the snow queen. And she kisses him to numb him from the cold and to make him forget all about gerda and his family and they fly into the clouds into her magical palace her snow palace and garden and gerda his little friend comes to find her eventually there's a lot of shenanigans that happen she gets there and she like the original version she like prays which like causes some angels to appear it's kind of i'm like all right come on give me the better version, she like prays, which like causes some angels to appear. It's kind of I'm like, all right, come on, give me the better version.

Hans, what's going on? But I'm like praying you're going to pray some angels up to fix this situation. I don't know. But no wonder C.S. Lewis wove it into his shit. Of course, fucker. So she goes up to Kai and she kisses him and she cries warm tears, which help get the splinter of ice out of his eye, etc., etc. But the Snow Queen is like, she doesn't really stop them from leaving in the end. Like, they go home and everything comes okay, but they don't, like, the Snow Queen isn't really evil.

Like, she was just lonely. She was just keeping Kai there because she was lonely too, right? And they never go back to the palace and I don't think they try to. But it's interesting because he had everything he could want in this ice palace, but it was also not an environment he could survive in forever without the Snow Queen's magic, which I feel a little bit of here with Morgan and Sean too. Quite obviously, Sean can't live like this without her magicing her all the time. It's not the life for her at this time yeah i mean it's not even like the magic right like shawn has to be a willing participant interestingly right in order for the illusion for the magic to still stay magic and

you were talking about the like what you called out about the food in the underworld right the eating of the food keeps you from leaving because morgan kind of keeps her from leaving this place but yeah with the snow queen absolutely and um you know just in case you all weren't aware hans christian anderson's story has actually a lot of roots in and draws inspiration from the 2010s movie frozen oh my god which i think all of you are familiar with i'm so sick of you i'm so sick of your shit i can't stand for this misinformation and this propaganda that you keep giving on our podcast what is this shit you are in peak form today aliata i swear thank you but yeah so that's actually where Hans Christian Andersen and George

got inspiration for this story from Frozen. So thank you. Thank you, Elsa. Let it go. Let it rip. All right, I'm going to ask you to let it go. And my first thought there after asking you to let it go is

let's focus it on Morgan Le Fay. You know, I want to talk about her because I have a lot to talk about. A lot. Yeah, I think you know much more about her than I do. I have like a very surface level idea of she's an Arthurian legend and the Morgan is like a tied name, but I don't have it much deeper than that. I think like, you know, we have an morgan lefay in general throughout culture and i think it's really ironic that this this morgan allegedly there's an irony in that morgan lefay is seen as a figure in legends who is powerful and magical because she has worked really hard to get

that knowledge she's someone who knows a lot that's where her power comes from. The sort of like arcane knowledge in a way, or not arcane, whatever. I might be using that word wrong. But this quote unquote Morgan is someone who's like really ignorant. She only kind of knows how to operate her ship on the most basic level in the same way that I know how to like drive a car, right? Like I don't know how the car fucking works. A lot of people know that. I'm just not one of them.

But it's kind of the way that like technology today, right? Our smartphones, our computers. Some people argue that we're essentially at a level where it's like magic because the way to operate it is very unknown to most, like how it actually works. Morgan doesn't even know why, how to fix her ship. She doesn't, which is probably why she's fucking stranded here. She doesn't know why she lives so long. And she's like, I don't know. It's probably the food. And it's like, oh my God, she doesn't know anything. She has no wisdom.

She has like these stories from people she knew who were actually smart. All she has are illusions. And she kind of even has these illusions to herself. And as you said, right, she's kind of this really sad person. She's lonely and isolated, though, in that tower and ship because she's afraid to go out there because she's afraid that if she does, she's going to die like everyone else. And she lives in this fairy world rather than trying to integrate with the rest of the planet.

There's like a lot of people on this planet at certain times and so in essence she ends up with this really really long life right an extended many many lifetimes yet none of it is truly fully lived she's a half-lived person i have to say that like it's not so bad i mean that's what i do to my roommate, right? I'm like, no, no, let's not go outside. Let's watch movies on the wall with our projectors. So I'm like, is it that bad? Maybe Morgan had the right. No, I'm just kidding. You talk to a lot of people, though.

I know you do. I'm one of them. Are you? No, you are. I am here. Yeah, there's something very Melisandre-like going on there for me. The idea that she has her smoke and mirrors and she knows how to run technology that people think is magic, but it's really not. It's literal smoke and mirrors.

It's a car. Yeah, it's literal smoke and mirrors. Yeah. Inside and outside of her spaceship. And even, like, the, she doesn't know why she's alive and doesn't even really understand, like, how her power, quote-unquote, her magic, her god, is working. Right? Like, she just, like, once in a while gets a vision and is like, thank you.

Oh, that was such a good one. You guys, I wish you could have seen Chloe's like enactment and face of that, like really sold the thank you. Praise it. Oh man, it was good. Yeah, it's interesting. It's like she doesn't, we don't learn that Morgan has her own religion, but her religion are these illusions and the magic she's able to somewhat do.

Yeah, that's actually a great point. It's funny because something in the Thousand Worlds stuff actually, so throughout this specific short story, they keep saying that Morgan House or like those people are liars. The people who live in Morgan House are liars. And we think that it means literally they're just full of lies, which is true, as we found out. But they say, you know you know family named liar but apparently there's a human culture within like the thousand worlds universe called liars and i'm just going to read aloud uh what's in the fandom wiki uh about it and it says a widespread secret religion whose followers believe that there is no god no afterlife and no inherent meaning to existence

however they also believe that life should be treasured and happiness is a good that should be pursued because the depressing truth of existence is counterproductive to achieving this goal. Liars endeavor to cultivate beautiful fabrications instead. Among these fabrications are faiths, political movements, and high ideals which are designed to improve upon history and mythology in order to increase the beauty of the world.

Now, I don't know that I've seen any of this shit from this Morgan other than like into beauty and stuff, but I just thought it was interesting. No idea if there's a tie or not with that culture because I haven't read any of the stories. I think that has the flyers. Yeah, I'll be curious when we get to those what it means. What does it mean? i i think it probably has a little tie or a nod in there maybe i don't know um let's let's talk more about morgan lefay though yeah outside of the thousand worlds i want to give us kind of like a timeline of an understanding of the character because there's something really interesting with morgan herself in like all of culture and media in george's writing here of her and in comics and in honestly in a rise to relevancy and the way she's perceived through time because she comes from kind

of a vast background of folklore using her as a character whether it's celtic mythology there's a lot of celtic mythology apparently that she stems out of and the roots of morgan right coming back to the fairy world she's actually perceived in a lot of these iterations as half fae so your thoughts are absolutely on point eliana great job pat yourself on the back so linked off into morrigan of irish, the Phantom Queen, battle, prophecy, that's her. Linked to the Merry Morgans in Breton folklore, sirens who lure sailors to their doom. Interesting. Yeah, I thought that one was interesting, because I can see that.

Huh. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, we're going to talk about here something that I kind of consider like the Magdalene effect. So, buckle up. about here is something that I kind of consider like the Magdalene effect. So buckle up. Dea Metrona, divine mother goddess of Gaul. Modrone, a divine figure in Welsh mythos connected to King Arthur. And 1150, Joffrey of Monmouth's Vita Merlini, the Morgan of the Vita or the life of Merlin. So throughout all of these couple of different kind of portrayals of her and put them together and you get Morgan Le Fay, otherworldly, symbolizing kind of death and

prophecy, but also creation, also creativity and creation. And it's kind of important that her powers aren't just dark magic. They're also healing. That's actually kind of the root in the 1100s. We see her more as a healer more chased more innocent and in the 1200s there's kind of this big change in literature where she is being seen as petty or scorned or vengeful and it's something that i think happens a lot from flatlining the character across time across stories and across different folklore. And it's something that we actually see happen to, I almost said a Shara Dane, same character, Mary Magdalene in the Bible. Because in some of the early stories in the Bible and the earliest iterations that got passed around of scripture, there are several Marys.

And over time, Christianity as a whole has come to flatliner into several of these marys um there are like three to five different marys not just one not just two there are many more and mary magdalene tends to get scooped up as all of them uh so there's no understanding which which is which but it's like obviously from the different stories it's very unlikely she was able to be here able to be here able to be here etc so it's a whole thing uh but because of that popular name yeah absolutely like it was the pate of their time every other man i mean how many fucking children do you know that have marie is a middle name like a lot but i assume they're all named after all those other

marries but it's like you know yeah but after religious figures also it was a very common name and still is um so that kind of effect happened in morgan lefay too and in melori's le mort de arthur she's arthur's half-sister an adversary to him and gives arthur dane i mean arthur king arthur's sword excalibur, to her lover Akelon, who tries to use it against him. Failing, she throws Arthur's scabbard into the lake, which removes all the protections that Arthur had. And in some of the alternate versions, when he's on his deathbed, she takes him to Avelon and says, I can heal you if you stay here forever with me. So there you go. Some obvious little parallels there to Sean. But but now she's there's a really weird

back and forth and you know if you listen to our episode with joe buckley on the swore sworn sword we came clean about our merlin stand-up and that we love merlin the show uh if you consider merlin for example and a lot of other things it's really interesting that if you take that timeline of her like starting as an innocent and chaste healer with magical powers of healing, and then being contorted to be jealous and petty as time went on and vengeful, that she's here to be evil and to steal everyone's rights and I don't know, whatever their sorts, or then you look at how it's come back around because over the last like 20 to 30 years there's been a huge range of media that's been like oh here's evil morgan lefay but gotcha she's not actually evil so i thought that was kind of an interesting cycle for her that now in media and how we perceive

her in pop culture she's actually like people write stories forgiving her for the behavior that was put upon her back in the 1200s so i don't know very interesting kind of a cool journey and now that we have that covered i actually want to talk about something really weird and it's my theory this is i i don't know maybe it's a tinfoil theory but i actually think i have some pretty strong arguments here george reawakened after marvel comics reawakened but george like reawakened the pop media cultural draw for morgan lefay because she was so hot in the 70s as a character for media so back in the 50s marvel had a series of comics black knight where they

introduced morgan lefay in marvel comics now, you know George is a huge Marvel fan. That's his thing. Would love to write into him. He's been reading comics forever. So no doubt he grew up on Black Knight that had Morgan Le Fay in it. Black Knight is, it was, you know, she was kind of a guest character. She wasn't a big character, but she's perceived as having powers and half fairy, half little sister, immortal sister immortal master the mystical arts

astral projecting to different realms different places you know she was able to do that she actually inspires the plot for kang later the conqueror king the conqueror to come back and take over camelot in the comics so she's very inspirational but so in the 50s we get a little bit of her she doesn't come back to the marvel world until the later 70s so this came out 77 right in 1978 we get dr strange featuring jessica walter if you haven't ever seen this movie i do recommend it it's a little cheesy it's 78 you know but it jessica walter is mor Le Fay. Okay. Right from the start, you can understand this goes into the lore of George being a boob man. I want to make sure everyone keeps that in mind. And this is going to progress through this timeline.

So stay plugged in here. So 1978, Doctor Strange featuring Jessica Walter as Morgan Le Fay comes out one year after this was published in Cosmos. 1981, Excalibur with Helen Mirren, as Morgan Le Fay comes out. Okay. Stay with me. Very interesting. She becomes very prominent. Mists of Avalon comes out in 1982, where we have Morgan Le Fay as a Celtic priestess against the onslaught of Christianity. And then, and then 1978, she comes back also in comics. She was gone until 1978, comes back and gets a huge comic run as like a big sorceress for Marvel. I mean, she's in Spider-Woman. She gets a visit from Victor Von Doom, who becomes her general, her like knight in help for her getting his mother's soul from hell and iron

man defeats her in 1981 in iron man number 150 it's a very big like battle and she ends up escaping to another realm so very interesting very very interesting and you know i think george was definitely inspired by the marvel edition of her a little bit in the 50s and obviously through actual literature that has come out many many many centuries before and if we could time travel the way that you would like to with all of your anachronistic comments and jokes today aliana no those were those were true i would say that george was very inspired by the 2010s edition of the runaways with elizabeth hurley's tits again he's a boob man yes no that's true i think morgan lefay actually maybe from the runaways with elizabeth hurley's tits again he's a boob man yes no that's true i think morgan lefay actually maybe from the runaways went back in time with her powers

and like a period elizabeth hurley specifically appeared to him maybe or all the iterations at once like the comic one some spider verse shit right like they're all george hear us out he's like is this a canon event no no it's got canon event um uh interesting also a little ditty from this time period i was talking to my roommate about this you know kennedy jfk's whole team they used to call them kennedy's court did you know this after arthur's court yeah kennedy's round table um I thought that was very funny because we know that George has a lot of that Kennedy influence in his work and his politics but yeah Morgan Le Fay definitely as we talked about kind of a Melisandre like

character and almost like a blood raving character right like through time not bad not good just reacting and doing things uh to try to save the realms or not yeah i mean i guess like what her her motivations change with whoever's telling the story about her and there's even like from back that back that there are different motivations as i scrawl on the stone tablet yeah yeah she's she's a character who i think was kind of maligned by what christianity being like oh witchcraft is bad but merlin does depends on the tale i guess sometimes merlin gets the same treatment so as you said mary magdalene figure and they're like yeah not only is witchcraft bad women are bad and they are though they actually are we're bad we're very bad but i think like he's absolutely as you

said like he's inspired by all that stuff he has so many things that he pulls from in regards to arthurian legend not just in a song of ice and fire but in these other short stories even within the thousand worlds like even within the thousand worlds universe and that like there is a whole place called avalon and he did have a series i don't actually know if the avalon series that he started was part of thousand worlds and it's actually a series that he never finished to much to the chagrin of one of my former maester monthly co-hosts sam who is always like oh god it's it was a sign it was a tale of what was to come but anyways yeah love that breakdown and you know in regards to like

how women are perceived i do think it's really interesting that the world of bitter blooms it just doesn't seem very gendered within their clans. The roles within the clan, at the very least, aren't very gendered. It seems as though it's normalized for any gender to hold, A, the highest station of voice, and to basically hold any profession. You can be a hunter, you can be a traitor, you can be whatever the fuck you want, as long as you're useful, I guess. And all of the names are gender neutral, it seems. Like Sean, I think is a name that a lot of us

tend to associate with people who are signed male at birth, but it isn't only. And also Lane was the name of her lover who seems like Lane was a man. And when Sean gives birth to a daughter, she's like, I'm going to call her Lane. So they all like, all the names can be used by anyone they pay respect we actually never know the gender of morgan's lover sean the first sean

not this one yeah and like the communal aspect means that people who are assigned female at birth the entire clan seems to kind of share these child-rearing responsibilities with the community. There's no marriage, as far as we can tell, and the roots of, you know, the way that marriage was used to ejectify women and as men's property. They're not relegating people who are assigned female at birth as to the household. And you end up with, like, these really blurred familial lines lines as we see with the like father, brother, lover shit. And also versus what happens at gathering, right? Where they're like, we got to bring some new DNA and come on everyone. That's why we're all here at gathering.

And because of that, there's actually, it seems like no shaming of sex for consenting adults, nor shaming of children born extramaritally because there is no marriage, right? It's only like, don't touch the kids. You fucking weirdo. Sean not being allowed to participate in gathering because she had not yet blood and it's also like interesting because in some stories within the thousand worlds universe you have societies like high kavalaan when the resources become like super scarce within their society, like thousands of years ago, their society highly swerves towards an extremist, patriarchal, and misogynistic culture. And that sticks, and they even erase that it might have actually had some matriarchal roots within that society, versus here, where they've developed a much more kind of egalitarian one except for the part where some people are sent out to die yeah i uh i didn't really think about it in some of those

ways and it's interesting because it does have a lot of those blurred lines like it reminds me of how they've written jim holden's family in a way um and how he talks about montana and home in the expanse yeah Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's probably a commune. It's basically a commune. Except every now and then people are sent out to die in the winter. Well, and we see a little bit of that in some of the other stories, right? Like, we'll talk in a minute here about some of these thousand world inspo's.

But, you know, I felt like there was some of Robin Lea going on in there. I felt like there was a little bit of... There was even a little bit of Meat House Man in the way of the flesh and the vampires and some of the meat. It's not 100%, but I can feel some of it. If I'm building a map in my mind, it could all happen in a galaxy. I can see a map yeah of these things happening and being not so far away and still together even there's like loosely i don't know some idea of

like these planets are close together these aren't like for example high kavalan is like part of the fringe planets but yeah i that's true like i think the world of a song for leah a lot of it is actually i mean it's kind of communal in a way too they're all like oh look this person joined the blob let's get the blob i forgot what it was called the blob okay the blob the the skein yeah whatever something like that it is yeah i'm forgetting and not just that but like being the voice and choosing not to be the voice feels like the opposite of leah's choice right? Like Leah chose to become part of them and becoming part of her commune in the way that she chose to become them,

where here you have her directly choosing, no, I don't want to become that. Yeah, like you get to choose what your role is within this society unless you really wanted to be voice, in which case you got to prove yourself if you want to be hokage okay naruto um and sometimes they're good ones and sometimes they're bad ones yeah and yeah uh but yeah i mean it is part of the thousand worlds like universe and like a couple of the characters that morgan claims are part of her family that she mentions they are part of like the overall thousand worlds lore like lamia balis

and deirdre though lamia is more of like mentioned we i i have not seen like anything that indicates their stories that actually show lamia but lamia lends his name to crin lamia a city in the on warlord the planet for dying of the light and then the bracelet she's given with glowing stones the stones are called glowstone it's not a very special name um from haika valaan and then the bracelet she's given with glowing stones the stones are called glowstone it's not a very special name um from high kavala and like the bracelet though interestingly i'm wondering if the bracelet she's given is this kind of armlet that people give to one another in high kavala and like and you give it to your tain or bethane which are both kind of signifiers of partner but the station of like whether your partner is like kind of closest ever to your soul or breeding wife basically uh is highly gendered because it's an extremist

patriarchal society i just want to add there is something there with the beth and it reminded me of the book of beth and having the girl named beth that uh had written the book in this yeah the girl yeah beth and like so i thought in this yeah the girl yeah Beth and like so I thought that was interesting and also I don't know if that was Morgan being like you're my partner but also Morgan just might not know anything apparently um and then the vampires in this according to a note again within the wiki I would not have thought of it the vampires might have actually on this world might be a leftover from when the Hrongen slavers were, like, enslaved a bunch of, I guess, different, they were a hive mind, enslaved a bunch of different races. And so this might be actually one of the Githyanki or the Dactyloids, but I haven't read any of those Thousand World stories yet, so I can't tell you much more than that.

thousand world stories yet so i can't tell you much more than that yeah there were a lot like when she displays the the planets to sean on the the mirror thingies outside of the ship they're a bunch of thousand world planets right there's high cavalon there's jameson's world haha um there's riannon which i also think was an inspiration as a song by the way um yeah yeah literally inspired by the song. Oh my God. There's I, Emeril, Old Poseidon. So she shows several of the thousand world planets to her as well, which is kind of cool. I haven't read all of them yet, but I recognized a couple of them.

I have not read The Stone City. I've read The Glass Flower. Both of them have a reference here. Bitter blooms are brought up in The Stone City. A man who's a native of emir which is where morgan tells us and sean that morgan originates from emir brings them up and then clarionimus uh which is her brother she says one of her brothers he's i'm like is that even true right who knows she's of the family liar maybe he is too but he's in the glass flower which is the

last published of the Thousand Worlds, chronologically speaking, in order of when George did. And so, Chloronymous is the man who was once flesh and he becomes a cyborg, which is interesting. And I actually, we should read this one, maybe. We'll see. But in 91, George started writing another novel called Avalon, as you mentioned, didn't finish it. But Glass Flower was narrated in an audiobook by Claudia Black.

So for all of my Farscape fans out there, hey, everybody listening who likes Farscape, the other four people in the world, Claudia Black, Aaron's son, actually narrates the audiobook for Glass Flower. So I do recommend it. But yeah, there's actually a little bit that I'm starting to catch. So I am, to our points earlier, I'm starting to catch up. I got to read the rest of them. Yeah, like I think I only know of some regions, like again, the fringe. I heard that maybe the world of Avalon is part of a place called the Jambles. And I only know that because

the word Jambles stuck in my head. It just because i like the way it sounds idea like uh it's jambled it's jamboree i am in jambles right now i am in jambles so fun stuff yeah i really like this one in the the depth and the scope i actually am kind of into it now i'm like oh man there's so much that connects yeah there is and i mean i guess let's let's talk about like how it ends right some of the ending actually in vibe reminds me a little of the vibe of dying of the light they're completely different endings this one than dying of the light but it has that sort of like open-endedness and sort of a in a way with this fate of that character but at the end of this story sean leaves the clan because there's another deep winter a long winter and sean knows what it means for their very large clan especially because their voice is not very decisive um just like me and all the talk about

sean being suspicious of the meat that mor Morgan keeps it feels a little like the the meat she keeps being like what is this meat I'm being offered and I'm like the way she walks out kind of reminds me of in a song of ice and fire the men who would like are going to go hunting in the winter to kind of for the benefit of the house but also they don't say it explicitly in the story but they just are like sean knows what's going to come and i'm like oh okay so karen house is about to face cannibalism yeah it's interesting because there are even those vibes of aria in the house of black and white going on or danny in the house of undying and i love like i said earlier i really love that bit when sean was like then i just stopped

being childish and got over and ate it which it's weird because it almost reminds me, and this is like a far pull, but Sansa in a Game of Thrones when she was ignoring kind of those obvious hints of abuse and control with like Joffrey and Cersei because it feels better to be needed and wanted and loved than it does to not, you know? Like I think that's one of the other big themes. Like of course she's going to keep eating the questionable meat because like why wouldn't she like she wants to be loved and eating it gets her love from morgan so i thought that was really interesting like of that little cycle of abuse that coming back to that conversation of that cycle of abuse perpetuating with that and yeah i i agree i actually thought it reminded me a lot of her relationship with

little finger right and how he's like yes these are my gifts to you poisoned gifts the eerie hairy the air and i don't know yeah i i don't want to remember literal little finger lines but it actually reminds me a lot of that and i mean you're talking about aria and stuff and even like bran they're like eat this thing and he's like i don't know what this is it looks like blood interesting womp throw it back throw it back yum yum delicious i hate the taste of blood i keep trying it at hot pot and i keep like liking it but not it's very weird i i just don't even like it when i get a cut on my lips it's the worst i don't know i don't know yeah i'm uh i'm now i'm itching for another one it's time yeah i actually am i think maybe maybe we should do one of the ones that take place on avalon yeah because i'm now very curious yeah absolutely i don't know which ones

those are we're gonna find out. We're gonna find out. And you're gonna find out with us, everyone. Well, that's it for this month's episode. We actually have ideas for our October Patreon episode. Should we just tell them? Are you in?

Oh yeah, I'm in. It's time. I'm in. Yes yes it's half for me in a twisted nice way so yes let's do it eliana gave it to him oh give it to him it's your title you came up with this this is eliana's baby and i inspired it a little but yeah it's called the house went away or house that went away um it's about house went that's the joke yeah we are called The House Went Away or House That Went Away. It's about House Went. That's the joke. Yeah, we are going to talk about House Went in A Song of Ice and Fire next month.

It's time. I think there's so much to talk about. We're going to chat history, lore, theories, my CK3 game. We're going to talk about all of it. So I want you to buckle up and be there in October. Thank you for subscribing to us and for

of course sponsoring these episodes i hope that you enjoyed i hope you guys enjoyed this story because i actually did and i keep finding myself so pleasantly surprised that i love a george short story they haven't disappointed me yet i don't know why we're like surprised right actually now that i think about the theme of this one is kind of similar to the themes of the ice dragon yes anyways yeah you can't go back you can't go back but we're gonna we're gonna go back go back to george's older works eventually eventually yeah it's probably sooner than we all think let's be real but first we're going to talk about house went away it's house and maybe chloe could you share some screenshots of your ck3 yeah is it ck2 ck3 ck3 we're on ck3 we're on ck3 oh okay yes i will uh i will send some screenshots over to include

in a post for you guys and hope you enjoy and hey if you are not in the thunder tier and it's time for you to give an upgrade get get in now. I hear there's some cool treats going out to the fans later this year. And you get to see all that stuff in our miscellaneous video games channel on Discord. Yes, you'll be very lucky to see me shitpost about CK3.

Maybe I'll even stream it sometime. Who knows? Who knows? Hooray. But she will definitely regale us with tales about it. Yeah. In next month's episode. Next month. Yeah, so we will see you next month,

and hopefully we'll see you next week for Arya in A Clash of Kings as we keep getting on through, if you're listening to this in real time in 2023. Indeed. Well, goodbye. See you next time. You know know the butter bombs actually also make sense if this is inspired by a song and butter bombs sing songs goodbye goodbye