Girls Gone Canon Cast - ASOIAF Episode 150 — AFFC Brienne VIII & OUTRO featuring Bidonica

Episode Date: January 14, 2022

Brienne screams a final word... but her story's not done. Artist and Brienne expert Bidonica joins us to discuss Brienne's development so far and what we can expect one day for her future.  Where to find Bidonica:  All Bidonica's links on Linktree: https://linktr.ee/bidonicart  Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/bidonicart Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bidonicart/ Tumblr: http://bidonicart.tumblr.com/ ArtStation: https://elisapoggese.artstation.com/ Inprnt: https://www.inprnt.com/gallery/bidonicart/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/bidonica1  Links mentioned:  Jaime in a historically accurate hat and other characters in historical hats: https://bidonicart.tumblr.com/post/627595928968314880/slavicstarks-naomimakesart-shebsart AFFC Brienne VIII in the Major Arcana (Tarot): https://imgur.com/a/i6zQOP5  ---- 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 Ice and Fire, episode 150, Brienne 8 in A Feast for Crows, and an outro to Brienne featuring Bydonika. My name is Chloe, one of your hosts. And I am another one of your hosts, Eliana. Yes, oh my god, I didn't even realize we're at episode 150. So glad to have you here to celebrate it with us, Bidanica. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Yeah, absolutely. We're so excited to have you on for 150, the last Brienne episode.

And for those of you that don't know, not only are you like the qualified Brienne expert, in my opinion, to come on and talk about all things Brienne today today with us but you're also one of my favorite fan artists in the community uh you've made one of my favorite Liana Stark arts actually is made by you so thank you for coming on and we're gonna put some links below of some of your artwork to visit some links over to your Patreon in different places, but please tell everyone where they can find you online. Yeah, I am on Twitter as bidonica b-i-d-o-n-i-c-a one, one written as a number, because for

some reason someone took the bidonica name first. Someone from Brazil, they posted once like 10 years ago and then never used it again. So I'm stuck with the number username. And on my Twitter, there is a link tree where you can find all my other places like my Tumblr, my art Tumblr, my Patreon, which is going through a bit of a renovation my print store and anything i actually kind of lost count of all the different websites where i try to put my stuff but

twitter instagram and tumblr is where I'm the most active. I think a lot of us first found you through Twitter as well. And it's always fun to see, you know, your thoughts and reactions about Song of Ice and Fire, especially like Brianne and Jamie. And I mean, you also post some of your art there. But of course, some of these other links have that more collected. You can see it all at once.

Yeah, Twitter is great for real-time interaction and making friends quickly and so on. But as far as keeping things organized, it's not really the best. Yeah, absolutely. And it's fun to see friends that you've known, especially that have hung out in A Song of Ice and Fire Twitter, right, for so long and like see the different transformations of not just their opinions on characters and the things they like or fandoms that they like, since a lot of us have had to, you know, diversify our portfolio from just A Song of Ice and Fire. from just a song of ice and fire but uh it's also interesting to watch the transformations and seeing them actually live life outside of that too so it's been really fun making friends on a song of ice and fire twitter indeed indeed yeah well we're so excited to have you here on the podcast and before we jump into the well i don't know about fun maybe a little creepy and sad and it's kind of a creepy, sad,

scary chapter, but exciting chapter, very thrilling chapter. We'll do a little housekeeping up top. First things first, we do have a new Patreon episode coming this month for Stranger Tear and above members. This month, we're going back to the free cities. We're going to see Norvos. I'm very excited about Norvos there's not a lot to dig from but there's a good amount there's still a good amount and some good thoughts that I think we're going to have

yeah I'm excited to revisit it I know that we talked about it again a little bit in those Ario chapters and then we've only got a few more cities left after that and uh Pidonica was telling us that she has some thoughts also on Braavos. Yeah, we're gonna have authentic Braavosian

Pidonica. I mean, it sounds like a joke, but it is true. Exactly. Well, you know, you were saying that a Brazilian has your Twitter account name, and I was like, wait, isn't there a famous war between Italy and Brazil? No, I'm just kidding.

Is this it? No, I actually have relatives in Brazil. Yeah. Might be one of them. Oh. Who knows? It's not impossible. Because a lot of people from my region immigrated to Brazil.

So who knows? Interesting. This plot is interesting. It's thickening interesting this plot is interesting is thickening yeah well we'll get over to bravos eventually we will i'm excited for those i know we have some friends and patrons that are excited for bravos because it means some aria stark talk might come up you never know what's next no no well other places where you never know what's next is our discord we of course have our patreon discord that is accessible to people in the thunder tier and above to patrons in the thunder tier and above and once a month we do a happy hour slash brunch with games and giveaways and get

to know yous and we still have to determine when we will do it this january but keep an eye out for that that info will be coming to you patrons in your uh in your posts in your feed very soon so keep your eyes peeled for that thunder and above and of course we did skip out on a swath last week so that we could put out a his dark materials episode because we skipped out on that in december so we're making up for a little past time but with that in mind the last episode of this month will be a his dark materials episode here in January 2022. So keep your eyes peeled for episode 23 of His Dark Materials, the Amber Spyglass. And I guess it's that time, right?

It's that time in a POV where while we are excited to end a POV and sad, very sad to end this POV. You know I'm sad about it. I love Brienne. It's time to start anew. Eliana, we have a new POV and sad, very sad to end this POV. You know I'm sad about it. I love Brienne. It's time to start anew. Eliana, we have a new POV. We do have a new POV and many people have guessed it and it's, it's Sansa, no. It's Katla, it's Sam. We are doing Samwell Tarly as our next POV. Samwell Tarly.

Yes. And of course, we have to start Sam off well. What a crazy first chapter. An intense first chapter for Sam. So we are bringing on a good friend to do so with. We will be joined by Yolk Boy from Radio Westeros to kick off Samwell Tarly. We'll talk a lot about some of the similarities with Brienne and Sam's plots in that episode,

as well as jump into an introduction on Sam before A Storm of Swords, right? A little bit before then, when we actually meet him and even before then. So lots to look forward to in this new year. New year, new POV, new me. Same us. It's the same you. It's literally the same you it's literally the same you it's the same

me i'm sorry everyone i am not going to improve myself this year i if anything i will become worse i am going to worsen myself this year it's probably true uh good things, though. Good things in the new year. And in the last year, we got a few emails, tweets, messages of notes that we have to share. Like our friend Robin, who has sent us some photos once more of Blueberry. Blueberry the bird, if you've been following the Blueberry saga. We got some great, great little Christmas treats of blueberries. So thank you for sending those. Yes. And on one of the previous

Brienne episodes, our good friend Brian Afarce commented saying, best dog I've ever heard. Your move, Hollywood. Time to dig up that Air Bud property. And I just I just really want to say thank you, Brian, for your praise of my performance. Air air bud i'm not familiar with that ip i'm just kidding air bud it's what we do it's what we smoke up every no oh my god well that that was very kind of brian to extend that it was a good performance i don't know that i've heard better um some people are really excited that we'll be having the Jon Snow voice return. I'm not one of those people. However, I think we should have more dog.

More dog voice. It's kind of a shame because, like, you can't really do a dog voice, right, for Ghost. Because Ghost is the silent one of the wolves. But the other wolves, you could still, like, throw in a bark every now and then if you wanted. Well, you might find some dogs in sam's chapters you know we might have a few dogs yeah we'll make some we'll make some we'll just throw in random dogs it's like the pride of include more dogs include more dogs finally we had an email from our friend Teresa. I actually thought this was a really, really well-written email discussing a little bit on some of the stuff with Brienne's plot, but also with Sandor's plot. Teresa wrote, I'm loving your coverage on Our Favorite Night and

the gender discussion in contrast to UGG, Randall Tarley. Agreed. I never thought about Brienne in a trans light prior to your recent episodes, but the interpretations make so much sense. Thank you to you, Sam, and Lo for all your insight and analyses. I was listening to Lo's episode and the discussion of George's exploration of religion and feast, delving into the healing aspects instead of corruption. Make me think of Victor Hugo. Hugo explored corruption within the Institute

of Religion in Hunchback, but also the healing in faith and kindness of individuals in Les Mis. It makes me think George possibly could have created Sept and Maribald as an homage to Hugo's works, which explored religion and faith similarly. In Les Miserables, there's a character named Bishop Muriel who's kind-hearted, uses the wealth of his position to help provide for villages he serves, rides on a donkey, traveling from isolated village to village, handing out provisions and doing church duties with no care about thieves, insisting they need to be shown kindness and given a chance. There are many surface-level similarities for Meribald and Bishop Muriel, but that's not all. He meets our hardened ex-con protagonist, Jean Valjean, shunted, unwanted, starving.

He's our broken man. He offers Jean Valjean a hot meal and a place to stay, and in the middle of the night, Valjean steals Bishop Muriel's silverware. When confronted, Muriel forgives him and gives him the silverware, and thus Valjean begins his long journey to redemption, trying his best to repay kindness this way forward. In this hot take, I submit Sandor Clegane is our Valjean, and the Quiet Isle, Septim like to think he experienced something similar to the passage above in chapter seven, book one of Les Mis, staying at the Isle when Muriel takes care of Valjean. Ending up at the Quiet Isle was arguably Sandor's turning point. He hit rock bottom, and it was through kindness and mercy that he found the strength to start new. Like Sandor, Valjean sheds his old name, assumes a new identity. We don't know what Sandor is going to do with his new identity just yet, but if the assumptions are correct about the fate of the Quiet Isle and the TV show these books are based on are correct,

it might be bloodier and rockier than Valjean's. Also a fun fact, Valjean famously rescues and adopts an orphan girl and raises her as his own. In the end, he dies at peace with himself, his daughter by his side. A bittersweet ending similar to what George has been teasing us with for decades. And I think Sandor's arc could end similarly with Sandor at peace himself with maybe the girls he has loved, helped, and semi-adopted by his side. Hopefully. I love that. I think that is such a great reading.

I'm not like a huge Hugoo fan i'm not a huge uh les mis fan it's not that i don't like it i was actually like in it in middle school i played cosette who you know to be fair talking about a stark girl cosette is on a castle in a cloud in her dreams right is that the veil we just don't know. But I think that's a really great reading, especially with the work of religion and hunchback. I like that. That's a great thought. I wonder, add it to the list, Eliana, the list of questions. Yeah, I mean, these similarities are like, I think, very, very stark.

This is such a great comparison. And like you, I think everything I know from les mis right just comes from the musical and i didn't watch it numerous times i've watched it i don't know in various different performances right like maybe two or three times and yeah i mean like i i've seen people talk about ways that hunchback of notre dame elements from it might have been adapted in A Song of Ice and Fire. So seeing this one, because I haven't really seen anyone bring Bishop Muriel before. This one's pretty good. Pretty cool.

Thanks so much, Teresa, for that email. All right. Well, without further ado, we should jump into our lightning round. Our lightning round, if you're listening, is of course tying Brienne 7 to Brienne 8, everything we missed in between in A Feast for Crows, starting with Jamie 6. Jamie plans to bloodlessly take Riverrun. Cersei 9. Cersei puts the final touches on her scheming, using her pussy as an extremely powerful weapon. The princess in the tower.

Arianne seeks the truth from her father, when imprisoned in the Spear Tower. Doran tells her that they await vengeance, justice, fire, and blood. Elaine 2. The question of succession brings Littlefinger's scheming to a head. tells her that they await vengeance, justice, fire, and blood. Elaine, too. The question of succession brings Littlefinger scheming to a head. Sansa's hand in marriage for entire kingdoms. And that brings us to Feast for Crows, Brienne VIII,

the final Brienne chapter, the final moment that we have seen Brienne in 11 years or so. Sobbing. War makes monsters of us all. This is an evil dream, she thought. But if she were dreaming, why did it hurt so much? The rain had stopped falling, but all the world was wet. Her cloak felt as heavy as her mail.

The ropes that bound her wrists were soaked through, but that only made them tighter. No matter how Brienne turned her hands, she could not slip free. She did not understand who had bound her or why. She tried to ask the shadows, but they did not answer. Perhaps they did not hear her. Perhaps they were not real. Under her layers of wet wool and rusting mail her skin was flushed and feverish she wondered whether all of this was just a fever dream well with all those dreams thoughts of jamie and these no wonder the world is wet um george sure does love his fever dreams though and in a bunch of these we're going to see flashes of Brienne's past and confronting people in it.

And it does actually kind of remind me of Daenerys's dreams, right? And the hallucinations that she has in the Dothraki Sea that occurs kind of at a similar point in the book of A Dance with Dragons as this one is occurring in A Feast for Crows. in the book of A Dance with Dragons, as this one is occurring in A Feast for Crows. But I will say chronologically, Daenerys' moments happen much later based on, you know, where it happens in A Dance with Dragons, and of course, Brienne appearing in Jaime's chapter at that point. But I mean, there are some similarities, right? In the notes that both of them hit, there's a lot of that both of them grow up in fear, and they long to be understood. And of course, there's that isolation, right? The loneliness that both of them grow up in fear, and they long to be understood. And of course, there's that isolation, right? The loneliness that both of them faced growing up, and the threats that are relived in those dreams, and that they both seem to feel a lot of guilt.

It also, seeing Brienne here starting this chapter out, bound and imprisoned imprisoned it kind of feels to me a little funny it's kind of how Jaime started his chapters with Brienne yeah there's something really poetic and artful in the structure of the Brienne, Jaime, Cersei going on in A Feast for Crows often

there's a good amount of remix going on where you get those chapters in a row and knowing what we know that george wanted to kind of contrast some of danny's chapters with cersei's chapters to show the difference in rule and some of these different queens or hopeful queens of westeros or however you want to put it it does make you wonder if this chapter cersei's chapter and even danny's chapter if they wouldn't have been originally, very similarly in placement in the book as one book, right?

Because they have so many of the same themes just piled together. And even Jaime, we'll let him in too. He can come. Well, when we find her here, Brienne is laying face down on a horse, wrist bound, face swollen, cheeks sticky with blood. It's good times for all, pretty much.

But by that, I mean she's very much in agony and can hear Pod fading in and out, asking, Ser, my lady, Ser, until there's only silence and she is dreaming once more. once more. The two opening paragraphs here are mostly about her feeling helpless and how there are things that are broken inside her, which is, of course, a commentary on her physical state, but also the emotional state she's in. And it almost feels like she's looking back on her journey as a whole, and it's kind of a depressing outlook. Like, she has come at this point, to this dead end, and she is seeing no way out. She feels like she has failed her mission. Yes, I love that. And I love that you called out that line. It really stood out because I mean, when you read these Brienne chapters

all together, as you said, right, you really get a sense of how depressing everything that they've been through is and that sort of cements what we've been seeing leading up to this

chapter, the things broken inside of her the the broken man starting to happen for brienne right not just something that brienne's witnessing in others but brienne really starting to feel that way too yeah well she dreams of heron hall down in the bear pit but biter is the one facing her this time he's maggot white naked fondling his cock this is a terrible dream and brianne flees from him shouting for her sword for oath keeper and no one answers them then renly comes along with nimble dick catlin shagwell pig timian corpses from the trees this is again a terrible dream and finally biter tears into her cheek and she hears herself scream jamie uh so chilling the language and just the dreaminess of the entire

chapter is so chilling and at this point it is not a dream it is a nightmare jot that one down brienne like you are not dreaming you are nightmaring you are suffering under this this is horrible it's not at all unlike Jamie's fever dream right right down to the fact that in this journey she's slowly being surrounded by trees and his dream takes place on a tree a very special tree a very special tree but also the themes in the dreams are so similar some of the horror elements like the corpses in Jamie's, it's wisps of ghosts of people, people that he somewhat betrayed due to his vows,

his vows that he somewhat betrayed and duty, right? Like overwhelming sense of duty. As Brienne keeps moving, this horrific dream turns to Renly. And she actually kind of starts to begin to conflate, we've noticed in the last few chapters, Renly and Jamie, right, in different ways of her care for them and how she feels about them. And in her dream, it's not dissimilar. I even think of Jamie's dream where you have Derry and Wendt and all these people saying, he was your king, Jamie, you swore to keep him safe. The guilt will drown her if she doesn't drown herself by the end of this chapter.

Yeah, and I think it's interesting that she kind of puts Nimble Dick, Renly, and Catelyn, who are people that she feels she failed, together with Shagwell, Pig, Timeon. I mean, she killed those guys for a good reason, so to speak, but in her mind they're kind of all on the same plane. She feels guilty for one as much as for the others, which I think really speaks of the kind of person that Brienne is at the end of the day. Another thing that struck me about this passage is how it kind of calls back to Sansa's dream in Storm of Swords, Sansa 6, when she has this weird dream about the hound that has this sort of scary slash threatening sexual imagery.

When a few episodes ago you talked with Sam about the depiction of how rape is a constant threat for Brianne and how George doesn't really always do that well. Like, you kind of see that he is a cis straight guy and he can put himself in the shoes of a person like Brianne only up to a certain point. Like, sometimes she just navigates certain situations in a way that a person socialized as a woman would not. But I think when he writes

this kind of subconscious scene, like the Sansa dream, now this dream that Brienne is having, he is able to kind of tap into that kind of fear that a woman has connected to sex as something threatening and ultimately violent you're absolutely right on both points i love the point that you made of how putting nimble dick and caitlin there like really shows how brianne feels that i mean she kind of killed them too right in a way and is responsible but also as you said that it shows how much brienne has kind of been

trying to repress those threats uh and now it's all bubbling up to the surface yeah i heavily agree there like it's it's something that i think gets touched on a lot through this chapter i know eliana you plan to touch on it too but that like you did the right thing technically brienne right like you were a righteous knight in that moment for killing those men and you did try you didn't technically trust nimble dick right which i mean why would she have as you just said like she does deal with a lot of sexual violence on the road so i don't know i it's hard because it's like she still did the right thing and she should be cautious she's been told her whole life she should be cautious right so now she's being punished for that for doing the right thing and

for being cautious and now she's having guilty horrible nightmares about it just to cherry on top it all and i do think that he he definitely shows a lot more awareness in the second half of brienne's chapters as far as like highlighting some of these things that she's experiencing and the sexual violence she's experiencing. But there is definitely a little bit of like, also then we're celebrating the knights that are still just middling, right? Like aren't doing their duty, aren't protecting the people. And it's interesting how George writes about it.

I think that he has become a lot more aware about the violence that Brienne's facing as he wrote Brienne. I think the beginning is a lot safer and not as aware wrote Brienne. I think the beginning is a lot safer and not as aware of her arc. She cries out for a maester next, waking up next

to a girl who says, we have no maester, only me. Brienne immediately remembers her mission and says, Sansa, my lady? A man laughs at her and the girl says, she can't go much farther, she'll die. The man replies, and the girl says she can't go much farther. She'll die. The man replies, one less lion, I won't weep.

Damn, dude. Rude. The past few chapters have really shown us that in death, right, as the elder brother points out, they bury everyone together. It doesn't matter who you've served. All people are equal in death and the same. But the brotherhood shows us what happens when you spend so long dehumanizing the other side and the loss of that nuance. They've likely ended up hurting way more people than Brienne ever has. And they've let everything become very black and white in this war for them. become very black and white in this war for them. And in doing so, they've ended up dehumanizing others, right, in what they think is justice. And that justice, as Thoros tells us later, has been lost in their cause. And by dehumanizing the other side, they've actually ended up

losing their own humanity. I do love the little speckles, though. Like here you have Jane Heddle still nursing her. And I don't think that it hit me as much until this read that like there still is the small bits of gray that are visibly right there right not just the broken men of the brotherhood but you have like almost hope in some of these children that are being like growing up in this environment Jane willow the orphans that like maybe they could help make a better world for themselves there and do better things but then you get to the adults the real world thoros you know monsters of us all they're fighting a losing battle well i i don't even know if they're fighting a battle i mean like that's the thing right there's gray all over it's just they don't a lot of the men of the brotherhood no longer see it they become more and more like we find out what happens to barrick yeah and barrick has was sort of a an embodiment of the things that they kept forgetting as he lost his memory they were also forgetting what they really

were about what they stood for the color seeping out of thoros's outfit is no true true him them losing that i mean he's very gray in this chapter literally physically gray like he's grayer has everything he looks older and grayer than we've seen him you know the beginning of the books we see him fat and drunk and pink pink cheapfitted and his robes fading i mean it's that it's losing that and then again yeah then you have i mean jane is taking care of brienne but as we get to the end of the chapter it doesn't matter brienne still has to stand judgment jane isn't going to shout out you know and be the aria to the sandor in the cave and one way or another damn her or save her because jane doesn't hold that power to do so well brienne thinks she hears someone praying but the words sound wrong between dreams and sleep

brienne sees her horse's tracks fill up with blood what the fuck uh lord renly dick crab and vargo are beside her and blood is running from Renly's throat. Good times all around in these dreams. There's puss from the goat's ears. We're having a great time. She asks where they're all taking her, but they won't answer her because how could they? They're dead. She wonders if that means she's dead too. You know's a it's a very logical conclusion to be honest it really feels like it you're seeing like your horse's footsteps fill up with blood puffs out of the ear of a dude that you you know made gross that one time when you bit his ear off it was actually kind of badass um more people should be talking about that. I really like this passage, though, with the rest of the dream. I love the shift. Lord Renly was ahead of her, her sweet smiling king. He was leading her horse through the trees. Brienne called out to tell him how much she loved him, but when he turned to scowl at her, she saw he was not Renly after all. Renly never scowled. He always had a smile

for me, she thought. Except cold, her king said, puzzled, and a shadow moved without a man to cast it, and her sweet lord's blood came washing through the green steel of his gorget to drench her hands. He had been a warm man, but his blood was cold as ice. This is not real, she told herself. This is another bad dream, and soon I'll wake. It's good she could kind of discern that at this point, because, like, these are some messed up dreams. I don't know, I'd be a little psychologically not feeling great, and then waking up to find out you're tied up on a horse bound.

That would suck too, though. So I don't know. At least this is more fantastical. It does remind me even more of Jaime's fever dream, right? He sees Rhaegar and he sees basically everyone and the blood, the killing the king, cutting his throat, the king you had sworn to die for. She's now hated for the same thing as Jaime when you think about it. How many times throughout the last few chapters have we encountered everyone just saying,

Oh, you killed Renly. You killed our king. Yeah. I know that this is a horrifying scene, and I don't know why, but I also kind of find some humor in it. I think it's kind of funny that she's like, I'm confused, though. Renly never scowled. Turns out it's Gendry. Gendry scowls a lot. So I find that charming.

The callback though to the cold, right? The reminder of Renly saying cold when he's like suddenly stabbed and killed. It also actually reminds me a little bit of Jon, right? Who at a similar point in A Dance with Dragons ends up being killed by his brother and only feels the cold, right? As Renly was killed by his brother.

Yeah. That I didn't even think about. I was too busy on this tragedy to think about Jon, but now that you mention it, yes. I was busy laughing about Gendry, so... The skull is also a bit of a Stanis thing,

so... If anything, Gendry also takes after his other uncle, and I don't know how this is relevant, but it's a nice detail. He has his dad's, like,

anger problems, he has Stannis' scowl problems, his other bad attitude. Wow. He has his bad attitude from his uncles. That is so interesting, right? He looks just like, yeah, Renly and Robert has their strengths, but that's interesting. I've never considered that Gendry might very much have Stannis's demeanor hmm does that make

Selyse Arya I'm just kidding that was a joke Brienne's mount stops and hands seize hold of her she doesn't recognize the faces of the men. There are 12 or more surrounding her. The girl's voice comes again and tells her to drink this, putting strong wine to her mouth. Brienne spits it out, begging for water, but the girl says it will stop the pain. Brienne doesn't want it, but she thinks about Biter. The girl calls him a real monster, and then suddenly everything comes back to her. She the hound's helm the lightning she tries to wrench out of her bindings dried blood on the hemp and asks if biter is dead the girl says gendry shoved a spear through his neck biter's dead and she pushes her to drink the wine brianne tells her between swallows that she seeks a girl of three

and ten this is not that girl brianne pieces together that she's actually Willow's sister, six years older, and asks if she has a name. This is where I went into caps lock mode in the document, because, as I said, I have been in this fandom for a long time, and I read A Feast for Crows not long after it came out, it was like 2006, and since then I have had to hear people say that Brienne is dumb and a bad detective because she can't find Sansa. First of all, she literally has nothing to work with. And scenes like this, where she is able to recognize Willow's sister just by piecing together the clues,

show that she is actually observant and a good detective, when she actually has elements to work with. So I don't know. She really is playing this game on hard modes. She has so little external help from both the people around her and from the author because really George has put her on this quest with like this little bag of items yeah she has the magic sword but that of course only comes out when it's really needed she has a bag of gold she has Tommen's paper but

at the end of the day that's not much to achieve what she is supposed to achieve so I don't know I'm feeling really defensive of her as a detective and as a

person on a quest she's good. She's just playing a really, really hard game. Yeah, I mean, like you said, she's playing on hard mode, and I do think she's leveled up throughout her journey, and as you said,

she pieces this together. She pieces together Gendry, right? She pieces together Gendry's heritage. Yeah, I mean, that took Ned a whole book to figure out. Figuring out who Gendry right she pieces together gendry's uh heritage yeah i mean that that took nad her whole book to figure out figuring out who gandry might be yeah i mean i mean she did it like very quickly right as soon as she saw him she's like wait she did it within a chapter they just got cut off because they were attacked and yet john was allowed to just be in winterfell this whole time you know i wonder if she would piece together Jon

that would be interesting speaking of piecing things together we find out Lem's task and he had a lot of clues he had to go find the mummers and the hound who as we know isn't really a hound and he fails to do that but Brienne succeeds

unfortunately she succeeds because again it happens at a very inopportune time and has led to this predicament that she is currently in. But she did succeed. Once more, it is Brienne doing other men's jobs for 87 stags to the gold dragon. You know what I'm saying? Mm-hmm. Hmm. Maybe you should have all been out there doing your jobs. Then Brienne wouldn't have to lose half her face

being the bravest knight there is. Well, the girl calls herself Jane Heddle, and Brienne begs Jane to unbind them, but she isn't allowed. Gendry says, Not until you stand before my lady to answer for your crimes. He's so moody.

He's at that age. Brienne remembers, ah yes, Lady Stoneheart, who Randall Tarly had spoken of. And Gendry says some call her that, or the silent sister, Mother Merciless, the hang woman. Yeah, this little string of like three different names

that Lady Stoneheart gets made me think of the tradition of the three-faced terrifying female archetype, like Hecate, who is this Roman goddess connected to witchcraft and necromancy, the Furies, which in the Iliad are, who is this Roman goddess connected to witchcraft and necromancy. The Furies, which in the Iliad, there's this quote that goes, The Irines that under earth take vengeance on men whosoever hath sworn a false oath. The Fates. And then the three mothers from Thomas Quincy's Suspiria de Profundis,

which is this gothic short story that were Mater Lacrimarum, Our Lady of Tears, Mater Suspiriorum, Our Lady of Sights, and Mater Tenebrarum, Our Lady of Darkness, which, to be completely honest with you, I only know thanks to the Davi Argento movies, like Suspiria. So, I mean, that's this real horror movie feel

around Lady Stoneheart. We are totally spiraling into this horror dimension that's kind of a brutal change from the more or less classic quest storyline that Brienne has had up until the previous chapter more or less I love that I think there's so much of Hecate and this and like so much other mythos of like mothers of judgment from greek mythology and i love the ideas of the theory the different theories as her is like so great we just talked a little bit about the theories recently with his dark materials and with uh the song of achilles which we recently covered so all

of this is really fresh and it feels like it really fits with the underworld vibes and you know there's even something for cat in this of like lady stoneheart being the queen of the underworld right persephone coming down uh everything in the riverlands is the harvest is dead and burnt down to the ground and she reigns in the middle of it all uh all because you know somebody hades or the phrase broke guest right right like they broke an ancient right and now she the queen of the underworld is wreaking havoc because of it and I think we've compared Persephone of course like Sansa in the past but almost in the way that people are serving Catelyn right to the fire and ice undead dead thing going on that she is representing harvest wellness faith and safety

for people and children and orphans almost like a new god for them and justice but all of it is just kind of wrong right like it's not actually representing these things anymore because everything's wrong nothing means anything anymore in the riverlands everything is over it's horrible everything's bad still a mother just merciless i i really love uh these connections that you've you've made of like hecate and the furies and and how you and chloe have said like yeah this is the riverlands have become the underworld and i mean as we know in greek mythology actually the underworld is very much so there are like a shit ton of rivers there are a lot of rivers down there some are for memory some are forgetting some you just have to cross there's just a lot

of rivers so like it makes sense for this place to be that and i didn't know anything about suspiria de profundis so thank you for sharing that. But, very cool. It's absolutely the vibe. It's a bad vibe. Apparently. To add on to the bad vibes, this is what it's like, because when Brienne closed her eyes, she saw the corpses

swaying underneath the bare brown limbs, their faces black and swollen. Suddenly, she was desperately afraid. It's not fun. Brienne asks where her squire, Podrick, was, and the others, Heil,

Septon Meribald, and Dog. Gendry and the girl exchange a look and tell her, um, it was you who killed the dog. And then the darkness swallows her up before she can think too long and hard on whether they mean the hound or the dog and she is now back at the whispers facing clarence crab who is mounted on an oryx his teeth filed to points and brienne goes to draw oath keeper but it is empty and i just want to say like regarding this scene about about

whether or not the you know the dog and who killed chloe and i almost broke up over this we had an extended discussion i was in line in the cold trying to get some rapid tests and we're having this furious back and forth you can always tell when we're having a furious back and forth if someone else is like witness because all of a sudden everything fades from around you and it's just furious typing happening on a discord screen um but yeah i don't know so the way this is worded eliana and i got into it and eliana won i will say she never gets to win so i'm going to put that out there eliana got to win because the way that this is worded is very vague they're like you killed dog they do mean the person wearing the hound's helm dog is what they mean brienne means dog because dog is very important and i'm sure eliana can agree with that it's the most important

far more important than these men so yes people they are better than people i very strongly thought that it was left vague on purpose and eliana sent me this link talking about the first edition of russian a feast for crows back in february 2007 the translation of the last two brienne chapters is actually based on an earlier draft, so you can kind of see the initial differences in the chapter. In the Russian version, Brienne 7 and 8 are one chapter. Plots like Brienne fighting Rorj and Biter, Thoros' talk with Brienne are not there. There are also some details that are not there in the current version, like the Brotherhood Without Banners plan, the monologue from A Red Wedding Survivor, and last but not least, the cliffhanger moment is a little different.

And, very importantly, the dog thing is made specifically clear that Dog survived. Again, Eliana was right. In this version, it translates to, my companions, where are they, basically? And, they say, Septim Marabald is an honest, holy man. Podrick is just a boy. Sir Heil has never harmed you. And dog, what did you do with dog? Only then did she realize she had not heard the barking for a long time. The dog is fine and

goes on its way. So do the others. We need only you. Do you think we would harm a septon's dog asked the one-eyed man in a rusted helm who do you take us for so my question is why was it made less clear in the final edited version if not to make us think brienne killed the dog okay i don't think she would but in the heat of battle and while you're being clobbered by a giant man with sharp teeth, shit could happen, right? And that would be very tragic. So I was just really concerned the dog was dead. I thought she killed the dog, but I guess she didn't kill the dog, according to the Russian version. Yes, duh, if you will.

One of the few words I know in Russian as well as cat which is not dog I know how to say koshka so yeah and I think that stuff from the earlier version of A Feast for Crows I want to say that post was made by our friend Zionius I think

on the West Rose Forum so shout out friend Zionius, I think, on the Westeros forum, so shout out to Zionius. And yeah, I mean, I remember Chloe, you were like, dog is in danger, and I like refused. I just like refused for dog to be dead. I was like, no, dog is alive. I was very adamant.

And I do think George thought, you know, how fun and clever to make us think dog is in danger, right? And that's why it's made more ambiguous, but dog is fine. I usually say that when people say that

George is such a cruel and sadistic writer towards his characters and especially towards the readers, it's a bit overgrown. I mean, he's not that evil, but sometimes he is. I mean, this thing was totally gratuitous on his part.

Just letting us fear for that poor dog. He's a bit of a troll. It's more like what's not said. The unsaid is what he does and that gets me. George. Naughty. With his books and his writing. Wish he'd do it again.

Yeah, I was like what books? What writing? That was naughty too. That was naughty too, making us wait 11 years for next, or who knows how many years for another brand POV here's to another 11 years ladies oh my god leave me alone

happy new year everyone happy new year new year no tiwa oh my god she could not fight without her magic sword. Ser Jaime had given it to her. The thought of failing him as she had failed Lord Renly made her want to weep. My sword, please, I have to find my sword.

Sad. I'm so sad. It is, it is. This is so not nice. Why would they do this to Brienne? Why would anyone do this to Brienne? I'm really worried about her you know because they say after 24 hours that someone's gone missing they're dead

so it's been 11 years I'm worried oh my god I am actually legitimately worried for Brienne that was like we were left on a cliffhanger well someone yells out the wench wants her sword back and someone else responds well I want Cersei Lannister to suck my cock

so what I'm just going to say this is an interesting juxtaposition of topics yeah period she's Brienne wants the sword

Jaime gave her and someone else says I want Cersei Lannister to perform oral sex on me so I don't know it is interesting there's also like they don't feel like

equal things you know not equivalent things you don't think a blowjob is the same as a sword maybe i just haven't gotten to fight with a sword lately i feel like a sword's better you know right no that's true that's kind of also what i'm thinking i'm like first of all yeah i hear that those are the value has changed on those these days and And second of all, like, that is what they're equating also, the value of women basically against one another. And it's very, you know, like, I don't know,

it's just another one of those Circe bad, but not actually that bad. You know, like, bad because society also. Yeah. Brienne cries out, Jamie, again. And she says, Jamie,ie called it oath keeper please but the voices ignore her and then clarence crab steps in to take off her head another conflation with her dream uh i do like that that she's kind of putting those mythical figures from her adventures to this point into real life but also i see the annoyance i get why everyone's a little you know why lady

stoneheart and maybe and her company her ceos and coos and cfos are like we gotta be done with this chick because brianne is just yelling jamie over and over again and she doesn't know i mean she's she's pretty out of it she doesn't know completely but if jamie hadn't been petty if he would have just shut his mouth and he had never said give my regards to rob like i would have robbed way give my regards to rob away um yeah if he had just shut his mouth if he wasn't petty maybe this wouldn't have gone so poorly maybe hearing his name shouted over and over again wouldn't be as bad yeah it's a bad look not gonna lie it's a bad look for her and also with the sword the very lannister branded sword

and uh you know that's made out of the former i mean they don't know that it's made out of the former Stark ancestral sword but it's all a bad look all around and also I mean as you said right if Jaime hadn't been petty but also if I were him in that moment I don't think I could have kept myself from being petty either yeah that's okay okay that's fair

that's fair ish I'll give him one did they That's fair. That's fair. Ish. I'll give him one. Did they change the line in the show? Yes, they did. Or was it the Lannisters send their regards? They did. They did in the show.

It is just the Lannisters send their regards. But that's why it's so interesting that they changed it in this book adaptation to just make it about Jamie. It really drives home this part with Lady Stoneheart, which, again, brilliant addition by George. It does, like, it makes more sense, too, to put that kind of guilt on him for, like, he accidentally, Oop, guess I shouldn't have said that after all. I accidentally said, slaughter him in my name

and i think they're that responsibility and that guilt of you know another king slaying on your record it's easy to just put it all onto jamie and i think that that is kind of their escape here right the brotherhood especially like and lady stoneheart blaming Jane. Yeah, I'm just like, Jamie couldn't have project managed this whole thing. He definitely couldn't. I mean, him of all people, he isn't project managed. No. He's trying to gain those skills now. He can't manage.

Yeah. Yeah. He's trying. Now he is now. He can't manage. Yeah. He's trying. Now he is. Yeah. Especially in that timeline. Like, where did they think Jamie had these skills? He did not.

He didn't have the resources. Also true, he actually literally didn't. He was on the road and was dealing with the loss of his hand and an infection. A lot of things happening for Jamie at that time. And now here's brianne same situation right and she's like so she's spiraling she's spiraling to a deep dark room lying on a boat her head is in someone's lap and there's shadows all around them hooded men in mail and leather taking her across the foggy river. The fog is filled with faces. Beauty,

whispers the willows. Freak, freak, whisper the reeds. This scene is similar to, in a way, to the boat trip she and Jamie have in Storm of Swords. Actually,

the very beginning of Jamie's point of view kind of has this whole river imagery that is nice in contrast to what we have here. But I think there's kind of an intentional parallel. Then there are also other stories that have this river thing, like King Arthur being taken to Avalon or the river Styx in Greek mythology. And she is going to end up in the underworld. It might also be a funeral in the Riverlands. I don't know if she is aware that the Riverlands have their funeral this way but it's something that we have seen

in the books so again, parallels. Yeah. And she's with the people that are obsessed with fire. That hasn't clicked for her yet? Uh-oh. A river run kind of burial.'s that's a great comparison and i guess it really shows also that some of the disrespect right that they're not giving

all these bodies that are on trees no one's getting a burial yeah um yeah because they this is what they want yeah they, they're there to make statements. That's true. It is a statement. Nothing sounds like a statement like a dead body. Message. Loud and clear. Yeah. Received.

Received. I love that with King Arthur. That's really great really great just especially when we had Shiloh on with what Shiloh was saying at the very start of the POV of some of the Arthurian kind of themes and now here we are at the end of the POV

with the Arthurian themes coming back and I mean, hell, she's not in the lake but she was in the lake, Lady of the Lake Catelyn the magic sword stuff too I mean, hell, she's not in the lake, but she was in the lake. Lady of the lake. Catelyn. And the magic sword stuff, too. The magic sword.

That's great. Well, Brienne shouts for someone to stop them. And the next time they wake, Jane is feeding them onion broth. She coughs and wheezes that she must speak to Gendry, but he's gone back to his forge to keep Willow and the rest of them safe, and no one can keep them safe, they think. And then she begins to cough again, and someone says that, oh, just let her choke. Save them a rope.

Rude. Anyway, this... Gendry going back to keep the kids safe is very knightly of him. That's another character who is not officially a knight, but really has that kind of spirit in a way. And also, as Eliana said earlier in the episode, again, Brienne is basically in the same situation as Jaime after his hand loss, but

she has no one to take care of her the way she took care of Jaime. I mean, she has been kind of medicated and everything, but the way she looked after Jaime, she doesn't have anyone to be that person

for her in this situation yeah yeah that didn't hit me that didn't hit me till now that like she's alone dealing with this like even Padraic can't help usually Padraic is at least there for a little comfort but they're all separated there's no comfort and she's probably just like feverish as hell i mean i didn't connect that i was just thinking back you know he was imprisoned at the start of his chapters but you're right it is very much like when he loses his hand and infected i at that time when i brought that up i was just saying like i could not i mean that's his probably writing hand you know like how's he gonna write all these fucking letters to organize a sneak attack? And this is, like, her living face. Yeah, so

she lives with. Yeah, so this is bad times. Not only is no one taking care of her, they're about to kill her. Good times. She needs to be able to fight her way out. Yeah. Or something. Well, the man is in a yellow great cloak it is filthy and wearing the steel dog's head brian moans no you're dead i killed you and this hound laughs saying that it's

going to be him killing her but his lady would rather see her hanged then rianne looks at jane and thinks she's too young to be this hardened and she suddenly puts together wait no no bread and salt we broke bread with willow and the children they have guessed right but jane's like well you know what that just doesn't mean quite so much anymore since our lady came back from the wedding and some of the men that hanged at the river probably thought that they were guests, too. The new hound says that they wanted beds, but instead they gave them trees. Another shadow says they have tons more trees, though. They always have trees. They mount once more.

They put a leather hood with no eye holes onto Brienne, and she can taste onions in her mouth. They mean to hang me. She thinks of Jaime, Sansa, her father, Tarth. She's glad that in this hood she can hide onions in her mouth. They mean to hang me. She thinks of Jamie, Sansa, her father, Tarth. She's glad that in this hood she can hide her tears. Aww. Oh, that's so sad. We're reminded again, though, they keep talking about Brienne tasting the onions,

and this broth sounds pretty good, first of all, and now I want French onion soup. But also, it makes me think of how her story at this point right might be paralleling davos's um which is kind of going through some similar stuff at this point and maybe the dance with dragons right both of them like gendry um as you pointed out both uh brienne and davos are also kind of unlikely knights, and they're both taken captive. You know, Davos, we think that Davos is very much a captive, but turns out the whole captivity thing was like a farce, and

then they put Davos on this quest, go find Rickon, but just as Brienne here is about to be put on a task, much less noble of a task, though, and both of these quests are in service to the concept of the north remembers this is a terrible side quest that brianna's been put on yeah she hears the outlaws

talking but she can't make out their words and falls back to her dreams this time she's at even fall the sun's going down in the tall windows of her father's hall i was safe here i was safe she thinks i'm fine i'm just big sad there's just something in my eye so don't look at me she's in silk brocade a quartered gown of blue and red golden suns silver moons it would be pretty on other girls but not her she was 12 uncomfortable waiting to meet the young knight she would marry. Her bosom is small, her hands and feet too big, and her hair is sticking up. Her father promised the knight would bring her a rose, but a rose couldn't keep her safe. It was a sword she wanted.

I love that line, you know, the rose could not keep her safe, it was a sword she wanted. Thinking about safety as a sort of like expanded concept right safety for brienne wasn't just the physical safety of tarth in her home versus the very physical danger that she is in now brienne is in a lot of danger right now friends brienne was also in a lot of danger last chapter i mean all these chapters anyways so like they might have looked out of place in the dress but their father loved them and let them train with their master at arms and i feel like the rose is kind of the start of that safety disappearing the outside world and its expectations imposing itself on her and her body and the rose

represents that danger and pain it's as hurtful as this physical one that they are in now we see it with brienne even like hallucinating things calling her freak right but a sword has allowed them to transcend these boundaries and to use physical force as power and allows them to carve a place beyond their approach that all these roses can reach it's so sad because the rose has to transform into a sword to survive yeah the sword was freedom yeah it was a way out

yeah also one thing I noticed about Brienne's point of view chapters is that she is really insecure about her looks, about her social skills and her place in the world, but when she is fighting, when she is using her sword, she is totally self-assured. She is confident, she never doubts her skill and she's confident she she doesn't doubt herself and that

that's a place where she can really feel safe in a way like psychologically safe wow yeah that's such a great point um i i don't think i've noticed that but that's absolutely true and and we even see it right later on in this chapter when we have a little bit of that assuredness right where brian's like trying to look for any weapon in the cell yeah he's like maybe i can use this stone and then realizes wait no but yeah that's that's such a great point of how that language works within brian's chapters yeah i, she's competent, and she knows that. She doesn't second-guess herself when it

comes to that area of her life. So... That's really telling, I think. I mean, that's all of Brienne 7, right? That very end montage where she has Goodwin's words in her ears. They will always

underestimate you. You have to be faster. You have to bait them. You have to tire them out. She has practiced at this for as long as her father has given in to her practicing this, you know? It is great, too, because it brings to mind what, you know, once she had the support to be

who Brienne wanted to be, even enough of the support in learning what makes her feel safe and what makes her feel confident and comfortable, it kind of shows you what we could have wanted to see for Arya if she had gotten to grow up at home with her family and they weren't, you know, cruelly murdered and taken from her.

Interesting. Interesting. Glossing over the murder that's how it happened Arya is lost her mother is dead she makes an interesting she makes a cameo actually it's not a cameo

it's very much a starring role in this chapter well Brienne thinks Oathkeeper I have to find the girl i have to find his honor in this in this memory dream the betrothed walks in and she tries to greet him but blood pours out from her mouth her tongue is bitten off he has been biting her tongue in nervousness and she spits out that his feet and he mocks her calling her brian the beauty and that he's seen sows more beautiful than her and the griffins on his cloak ripple changing into lions this scene oh my god can i just say that george is great at dream logic like he just doesn't love

writing fewer dreams he is really good at that, because the way the events here aren't word-for-word flashbacks, but memories reworked to apply to her present situation. I think this is poetic cinema. And also, there's

a callback to the Red Ronnet line, when she tried to talk, she almost choked on her own tongue in Jamie 3 in A Feast for Crows earlier in this very book I love it yeah

I love that distortion of the reality seeping into the dreams but just being dramatically altered yeah that's how dreams usually actually work, if you think about it. Yeah. Like, often in media, in film or books, they are used as a way to have a flashback, but in real life they're never really a flashback. They're always something subconscious coming to the fold, You know, something that's really deeply bothering you.

Very deeply bothering you. I've had some weird ones lately. Not this weird, though. Not this weird. Jamie! She wanted to cry. Jamie, come back for me! But her tongue lay on the floor by the rose, drowned in blood.

She wakes gasping, lying on a pallet beneath sheepskins rocks above her head the only light comes from a melted candle she pushes the sheepskins off and sees her clothing and armor has been stripped she's wearing only a thin washed brown wool shift a damp poultice covers her cheek, jaw, and ear. Ugh. This is such, like, a horrible feeling. She's obviously, she's broken a little bit through the fever here, right? Finally, it's, she wakes up gasping and sweating and gross, and it's been a while. You can obviously tell there's a time gap because her clothing and armor has been stripped from her,

which does feel kind of like a violation for her, right? Like unconsciously being stripped and put into that. The poultice, obviously, and the shift are probably provided and put on by Jane Heddle, who has been kind of taking care of her. But something about her being in the washed brown wool shift, this religious kind of piece of garb, right? Very simple, brown, scratchy. We see it throughout the book and other plots pretty often. We see the sparrows wearing spun wool shifts like this and the different people in religious aspects wearing them. But also we have Cersei, Margaery in confinement, right? Under a holy aspect as well. Their finery has been stripped away, and they're put in the scratchy thin dress to remind them of their shame and their womanhood. And last chapter, we also talked about how it's not unlike Cersei's walk of shame in some aspects, right?

faces the ghostly faces haunting her nightmares during this like what Cersei sees but in a way here when she wakes she's not wearing the gown in her dreams that we just talked about right the the quartered tarth gown the blue and red the sun and moon in her dreams and at the time when the event she remembers occurred she was probably wearing that gown but her tarth colors there also have the touch of Lannister, the golden suns, the red mixed with Tarth, corded with Tarth. And in a way also the Tully colors, right? Blues and reds in the Tarth colors that are in that dress. So having it exemplified in her nightmare being torn between Lannister and Tully, and here she wakes not wearing that gown, but in a different gown, a holy nightgown in some aspects, but also a waking nightmare. She's basically woken up naked

without her mail. And she's been forced into dresses and different wear throughout this whole story, right? Bruce's feast, the bear pit, her dreams here. She's been held in captivity, almost humiliated into the parts of femininity that have betrayed her and been used against her for so long so it's such an interesting feeling of violation and at the hands of like religion right at the hands of religion such a weird gross feeling of violation and humility and at the end of this walk brienne meets someone big bad and undead right Brienne comes to Lady Stoneheart and Cersei's walk of shame is wrong punishment for a different crime right it's horrible humiliating and just violent toward her and at the very end of that walk she ends up at

the hands of the religious group getting back and finally comes and meets her big bad undead right gregor clegane so i think these just have some really great alignments as far as the end of the book and really haunting how the femininity is being treated being ripped away from brienne with dresses being forced on her uh and for cersei who's made to be completely bare yeah you brought up Lady Stoneheart right and meeting Lady Stoneheart and I want to say it was our friend Amy A who I remember long ago kind of

reminded us that when Catelyn was killed she was thrown into the river completely naked and like they just let her be naked for like three days right uh so it really goes to show in a way how clothing is kind of stripping it's stripping someone of that agency and that identity in general and especially i mean you've pointed out here like how that's

happening to a lot of like these female bodies right um cait, Cersei's, and now Brienne's. Brienne calls out, and an old man in rags sits up, rubbing his eyes, clad in an old pink and white robe, his hair long and tangled. He says they're in a cave, like rats, and asks if she's hungry, offering milk, bread, and honey. Very nice of him. This man constantly refers to the outlaws now,

though I've noticed it as dogs versus the rats, and it does, I think, a great job of emphasizing that these people who were once portrayed to us as maybe having some sort of code before, or at least were sent out on a task, right, by Ned, whom we love, who symbolizes good things,

right, is these are now the sort of broken men that Maribold warned us about, and that's really just, I think, hammered home by the repetition of broken men that marabold warned us about and that's really just i think hammered home by the repetition of that symbol of the dog and uh likening them to sandor it's interesting when you say it that way they were sent out by ned and now here's brienne who was sent out by catalan kind of the the answer to it, huh? The answer. Yeah. Yeah. All coinciding, but it has gone poorly. This is not a meet cute.

No, not a meet cute. And Brienne doesn't want food, right? She wants her clothes. She wants her sword. She wants a way out. And she feels lightheaded and she sees shadows flickering all around her on the wall like slain spirits. All of the tunnels are black as pitch. Yeah, this is the shadow on a wall moment. She is in the literal underworld

and makes me think of the shadows in Drogo's tent while Mirri Mazdur was performing her magic. Again, it's a horror movie kind of thing where we are sinking in the depths and we are beyond the veil at this point. We are entering a supernatural stage of the story. While Brienne always had this very low on magic kind of storyline. I don't think she ever had magic in her stories yeah i mean that she has randy's murder with the the shadow baby that's her big

moment with magic up until this point but after that it's very ground level. Yeah, the magic after that is like, it's just waiting to come to the next real thing. And this is like, this is very foreboding. Very foreboding. I really like what you've compared it to with Miriam Asdour's kind of plot, right? Like the shadows flickering on the wall. Very creepy. Definitely feels like she's come to like some sort of sacrifice or something that's going to happen which that would be you brianne you're the sacrifice congrats congrats it also

feels a lot like some of the language we had in aria 6 last time we were in this cave in a storm of swords right lots of shadow dancing was happening then. And it's very much also like the cave of judgment, right? The allegory of the cave from Plato, a platonic cave in the Republic. Reality is not directly perceived. We're tied down in a cave in front of a fire, unable to see ourselves or anyone else, only their shadows.

And as they dance and interact, we believe the shadows to be ourselves and the walls of the cave to be ourselves and the walls of the cave to be the world brienne's kind of like dealing with not only the spirits around her and the people around her but like her own spirit you know of who she is and who brienne wants to be and wants to choose to be is dancing all around her on these walls and she's peeling back these layers trying to get closer to to reality back to reality there goes gravity yep yep um glad you went there because it's in my head too now it's over back to reality yeah i love the points that you've both made here and and that talk about the shadows

and what you've said about Brienne's story finally really crossing that threshold into this magical realm and calling out the shadows because you tied it back to the beginning of Brienne's story and Renly said that that was a shadow too right and

there's an interesting intersection happening in Brienne's story where the magic is almost being used to highlight very explicitly. Because, I mean, Brienne's idolized stories of magic and legends, right, of these knights. And then we're finding out that, oh, it turns out actually magic makes everything worse and much less heroic. everything worse and much less heroic um maybe maybe it's that or maybe it's also this aspect of in which in a world where people have access to magic does it the temptation of how to use it um make it much more difficult to live up to heroism so i don't know kind of some interesting aspects of how that manifests in brianne's line storyline well the man in the robes asks to feel Brienne's brow,

announcing her fever has broken. He says Jane had feared that Brienne would have died if it did not. Long Jane, they call the girl. Though not so tall as Brienne. I love that. It's literally said, Duncan Eggish, it's literally said, not so tall as Brienne. Oh, oh, I see you, George. Tall enough for me, though. Definitely tall enough for me.

Tall enough for you. With two Cs. He says Jane put the poultice on her as well, that they had to cut away the flesh, that Brienne would no longer have a pretty face. The creature chewed half of it off. Brienne could not help but flinch. Every night had battle scars, Sir Goodwood had warned her when she asked him to teach her the sword. Is that what you want, child? Her old master at arms had been talking about sword cuts, though. He could have never anticipated biter's pointed teeth. Brienne asks why they're going through all this trouble when

they plan to hang her, and he gazes at his candle. He tells her he knows she fought bravely at the inn. Lem was supposed to be on patrol, but had left the crossroads goaded by the mad dog of salt pans, taking the bait. It was half a day before he realized the mummers were fainting, doubling behind them, and then Lem lost time on vengeance on Frey Knights. That is true. How could they have anticipated the point in teeth? Mm-mm.

No one expects the Spanish Inquisition of teeth. Of teeth. Yeah. Um. I really appreciate Thoros giving us this story about Lem, and I'm gonna just talk about being broken in, like, in 20 different ways.

This is my dead horse now that I shall beat. This part where Lem loses his ways, it feels really important for showing us how far the Brotherhood has strayed, and how Lem has strayed, because he almost, like, this this entire all the kids almost die

because he's been prioritizing vengeance instead of protecting them and that really shows how he's lost sight of his goals and that for some reason they are punishing brienne for doing what lem failed to do it's fucked up the values are all wrong and that failure to protect innocence and children i mean george uses it all the time as that failure to protect innocence and children, I mean, George uses it all the time as a way to show, like, this person is messed up, they want to kill kids, but that's really furthered by their insistence, not only in failing to protect the kids, but being like, you know what, Padraic, that kid, that kid's guilty, that kid should hang too, and I mean, like, what is it, right, that the king's men and the north remember

in this camp seems to me like these people many of whom are not northern they have forgotten okay this is not justice it is not knighthood it and clearly it's not protection either even so much that like there's one northerner in their campaign left and it's harwin right uh and like brienne even notes that there is a man with a northern accent in the group and that is how she contextualizes the one northern person and lem is such a great example for that broken men idealizing like into how the brotherhood has now broken up into these factions of people that are like i don't know about all that that's a little too far you guys that's a little you had me for the most part but now it's a little too far and i think it was cat three a storm of swords the guys over at noticast just discussed uh that

recently that like the north remembers isn't really used by the starks right it's used by the people surrounding them hoping to glimpse a bit of the power or safety it could afford them. But it consumes those people, like Wyman saying the North remembers, but yet having no issue with killing a normal man for Davos's escape, right? And then Wyman's possible gain, who wants to bring Rick and Stark, my baby boy that I have adopted, back into the fold for, again, his personal gains, right? Not to really honor House Stark necessarily, but, you know, basically using him to get a control on the North.

The Brotherhood's broken. The king they served was also kind of broken. The entire political structure in Westeros? Broken. All of it. All of it of broken. The entire political structure in Westeros? Broken. All of it. All of it is broken. And the Riverlands is now thrashing itself apart, and they are helping that to happen.

If not for you, only corpses might have remained at the end by the time that Lamb and his men got back. That was why Jane dressed your wounds, mayhaps. Whatever else you may have done, you wound those wounds honorably, in the best of causes. I love that. And Brienne asks what the fuck

he thinks that she did, and she asks who he is. That's a good question. What the fuck? Like, what the fuck did I do? Like, I'm waiting to find out. Poor Brienne. We were

king's men when we began, but king's men must have a king, and we have none. We were brothers, too, but now our brotherhood is broken. I don't know who we are, truth be told, nor where we might be going. I only know the road is

dark. The fires have not shown me what lies at the end. Okay, this, to me me this feels a bit like george breaking the fourth wall and kind of saying well who knows how this story is going to end of course i i'm sure he knows like in broad strokes how it is going to end, but also not all his subplots and storylines might have been planned so precisely as much as the core one. So, I don't know, I often feel like Brienne's story, as well as possibly Jaime's and Cersei's story, is one of those where it's kind of hard to see where they're going, compared to like Jon's or Daenerys's or, I don't know, even Arya and Sansa have more structured storylines, in a way.

structured storylines in a way. But for Brienne and Jaime and Cersei, etc., their stories are so intertwined with their personal development and personal stories that it's...

I don't know, they really can end up in any way as far as I'm concerned. It's not that clear cut for me I think that makes sense because I mean like you said he might know how a lot of things

end in Brod's Drokes but while some characters' stories have very much followed some of what we saw proposed in the 1993 letter it seems like Jamie and Cersei are some of the storylines that have maybe changed the most from the initial concept of them and I mean Brienne probably wasn't always initially like conceptualized as being such a big part of the story in a POV so

I think that makes sense what you said right that it's much more it's much less transparent where it's going. Yeah, I mean, Brienne especially should have reserved this with the so-so Martin, but I think I remember him saying that, that she really is one of those characters that he started writing because he needed that character in that place at that moment. And then he found out that she was interesting and that he liked writing her storyline, her point of view. And she grew along with him writing her.

So she wasn't planned all along. She's kind of a surprise baby. Oops. Oops! Oops, she's perfect. What is- yeah. Actually, though. What a wonderful surprise, though, Brienne has been. If only I could find out

where he's going. But on, like, a less metal level, I'm gonna trot out my dead horse again give it a few whacks holy shit it is dead where I bring it back every time give it a kiss of life

and then you know come back the language that Thoros here is using I think also really drives home the comparisons between like Brienne's arc and theirs to show Brienne also as a broken man. Because, I mean, Brienne was also a Kingsman to King Renly, though, as we're reminded often in this specific chapter. And while these other brothers served Renly's brother, King Robert, both the former Brotherhood and Brienne, they are very

specific in saying that they served the individual when it comes to the king, right? They're not saying that they served the entire monarchy, and that's why they no longer serve the Lannisters. And now again, right, they both are pledging and serving individuals. And there's an irony in that actually they are serving the same individual, right? in that you know the brotherhood serves lady stoneheart nate catlin and and that as we know serves as a source of conflict in this chapter you say it is dramatic you're real dramatic i don't know i don't know i'm not sure can someone confirm i think a lot of people that came across Brienne in the last few

chapters especially have viewed her as a broken man from Renly. Right? Like, oh, I forgot about Brienne the beauty. What'd you do? Are you out here just, like, slaying people? Are you broken? And she's like, no, I'm with the Lannisters. And they're like, what? You're with the Lannisters?

Kind of. It's complicated. I like, what? You're with the Lannisters? Kind of. It's complicated. I mean, Brienne belongs here with them. Brienne, welcome to the place of lost souls. Yeah. Brienne realizes he's Thoros of Myr, the red wizard who rides with the lightning lord. Well, road.

He smiles ruefully, calling himself the pink pretender, a bad priest and worse wizard. Beric is dead, he says, and a grimmer shadow leads them. Brienne's like, the hound? And he's like, no, that was a fever dream. And he's like, how long since you last ate? She realizes food could be good, so she asks for some. He leaves to go get it, and she finds herself alone prowling

for a weapon she finds only rocks and she finds one with a nice fit but remembers shagwell's demise and she drops it when thoros returns he brings her bread cheese stew sadly declaring the milk had soured and the honey is gone yeah so again once more, George driving home that idea of brokenness, and this time with the usage of the language of milk and honey, which is often associated with ideas of a promised land, right? The land of milk and honey. But the dream has spoiled,

all the sweetness is gone, and George, I think, does great using these cultural allusions to signify the further deterioration of the brotherhood from, you know, the land of milk and honey to the underworld yeah that gave me some big vibes when i read this uh and piggybacking on that there are many areas of israel that are actually like super fertile and produce fruits and vegetables and the area north of of present day Israel is Mesopotamia, right?

Which was the fertile Crescent. It was fertile and Crescent shaped makes me think of Brienne as well. Cause you know, motherhood as Brienne, Brienne is the mother delivering safety and justice and protection, the fertile Crescent. And it was so fertile because of all the rivers there, right?

And here we are in the riverlands i love it but donica's pointed out lots of rivers in london yeah i love it well we have a line here i mean because again we are a food podcast this is uh more of a food critique than it is a uh a review of it. More than it is food porn, which usually we like to call out. The stew was cold and greasy, the bread hard, the cheese harder. Brienne had never eaten anything half so good. That's a mood.

That's a mood. It is two stars on Yelp. Two stars. Yeah, but not one. Because it's good enough, I guess. Good enough to eat. She asks about her companions again.

The septon was sent freely. The others are here awaiting judgment. The dog went with the septon. We already talked about that. She frowns, asking, why did they take Podrick? He's just a boy. Thoreau says, the boy called himself a squire. And she tries to play it off. She's like, you know how boys are at that age. They brag.

And he says, no, Podrick admitted to being Tyrion's squire and to killing. A boy, she said again. Have pity. But Thoreau says kindness, mercy, and forgiveness might be found in the Seven kingdoms if you look but not in this cave she asks what about justice what about justice um what about justice honestly the rian chapters though in general like the language in these chapters they're they are full of bangers i will have to say like this is a cave not a temple fantastic love it great imagery, like, for that concept presented in previous chapters, right? That in the right light, the sword could be a magic sword. In this light, she could be a beauty, right? But that magic is stripped away. The faith is stripped away. It's not a temple. It's a fucking cave. And there goes the romanticism and the hope. temple it's a fucking cave and there goes the romanticism and the hope well to continue that idea we have thoros going i don't i feel like i've read this aloud on this podcast before and i don't

remember when but i i remember doing it i don't know when um eliana does not remember. I remember justice. It had a pleasant taste. Justice was what we were about when Beric led us. Or so we told ourselves. We were kingsmen, knights, and heroes. But some knights are dark and full of terror, my lady. War makes monsters of us all. So Brienne asks,

Are you saying that they're monsters? And Thoros says no, they're human. Some of the brothers were good men at the start. Some, less good. Thoros' kindness, it's sad. It's very sad. His kindness is apparent to Brienne in this chapter, but his sadness is also

apparent. What happened when something you believe in, right, like R'hllor or Robert ends up being true or false? We watch Melisandre grapple with a lot of this, right, in her belief in R'hllor and her belief also in a Baratheon in Stannis. And I think it's going to become a bigger obstacle

for her, not dissimilar to Thoros in the future with all of those dead motherfuckers around her, right? She's going to have a lot of this same conundrum, I would say. But Thoros didn't really have faith in himself that he could bring Catelyn back right Beric did it instead and Beric died and he probably feels immense guilt about that you could also feel just such a good glimpse of emotion off of him in this chapter is he remembering his past failures hurting for his friend's final breath gone to create well i mean society created this monster but creating a monster i mean probably they were like they were homies they went on this entire thing together right and even had some good times in king's landing together but i feel like we're seeing thoros also

here i mean in what you're saying right is this what he's thinking about and he feels like an echo of septon marabald. And I mean, and it's kind of fun, right? Because Thoros is a priest, but of a different faith, right? As opposed to the Septon. But we see him mulling over some of those same questions that are raised by Maribald and the elder brother on the Quiet Isle. And whereas those men were broken long, long ago, and have since then taken time and work to heal their own wounds and have dedicated their lives now to helping others thoros is in the middle of that like process of this is bad it's definitely a feeling of like what have we done

and may some higher power fucking forgive us someday for it, you know? Yeah. I do love this line that he says, Though there are those who say it does not matter how a man begins, but only how he ends, I suppose it is the same for women. out to me because I wonder if it's kind of a commentary on how your legacy is eventually

the important thing. You might have fucked up earlier in your life but if you leave a legacy that is positive, that evens things out I don't know, I just think that George is pretty interested in this kind of

historical perspective. He likes to think of how people are remembered in history, in songs, etc. I would love for A Dream of Spring to end with a chapter set a few generations after the current one showing us how our heroes and villains have been remembered because that really is a theme that keeps coming back that's such a great

point it would be interesting if they ended with a time skip but yeah absolutely that is very much i think this line is very important for that and you know you were saying about a dream of spring the last book presumably in this series and i i will say you know it does not matter how a man begins but only how the story ends if you will uh i'm joking uh i'm not being salty about the books. I will say, it's funny that he does include this line though, right, of what Thoros is saying. And it feels to an extent also

like a counter argument to another line in the companion book to this one, men's lives have meaning, not their deaths. Always flipping Always flipping and flopping back and forth. Yeah, I mean, I guess it's good that we have different perspectives on this. Like, there's much to think about. But really, it's really something that he plays with a lot i mean he literally wrote two different books of in-universe histories so yeah that's so true um that that is also in and of itself a great example of what you were saying right he's fascinated by this idea of how people are perceived later and not to bring the bad show back into it but like

that's why i think some of the ending that the show chose for brienne who knows if that will be the real end for brienne but that ending with brienne in the white book is i think so beautiful just in that of like writing a history down even if it's a history that maybe some of the septons and maesters wouldn't have written down and writing the honesty of it and being somebody that witnessed that uh whether or not someone did redeem or not redeem themselves but like i i think that that was a really a nice ending of her as the head of the king's guard and whatever new era and writing that down in the white book for jam. But I think that there is something important in Brienne's character and legacy

and in charting a new path, especially when we consider characters like Jean-Claude Dark that was Alisand's personal guard or other... I mean, knights everywhere that defy the norms, I think is something really great that they should have more of in Westeros. They should hire more, personally, in my opinion, if I ran Westeros. I don't.

But I think there should be more of Brienne. And Brienne seems very, like, when it comes to history, seems appreciative of preserving that. Preserving, you know, rights. Preserving different, like, ceremonial things of being a knight where there are some things Jamie himself would tell her in a heartbeat if he was here that's stupid that's the stupidest thing knights have ever done I don't know why we have to do that stupid thing Sandor I'll talk about a bit but he talks about that in Arya 6 right like the ribbons on the sword stupid stupid stuff but even Brienne likes to preserve history and preserve

some of those things so i think storytelling in brienne's story and like legacy is a very important facet absolutely well thoros says that their chit chat is over though because his lady has returned from fair market and is ready to judge Brienne. I will not be afraid, she told herself. But it was too late for that. I will not let them see my fear. She promised herself instead. There were four of them, hard men with haggard faces clad in mail. Fear is the mind killer, Brienne.

It is that it sounds like it it does sound like that I will not be afraid I want to now compile every time a character has said that and just be like oh they're about to do it fear cuts deeper than swords

yeah that is also totally fear is the mind killer mantra fear cuts deeper than swords, more Arya and Brienne. More Arya that Brienne enjoyed the last food that they're like to eat and she realizes, oh he's the new hound he grins, his teeth are awful in a different way though, they're not filed his hair is brown bearded and brawny

Brienne remembers killing the second hound Rorge, and says Lem stole the helm off of his corpse Thoros is really disappointed in him, but Lem says it's good his corpse. Thoros is really disappointed in him, but Lem says, It's good steel! And Thoros says,

Nothing was good of Sandor Clegane nor Rorge, so why would he show the world their faces? The sight of it will make my foes afraid. The sight of it makes me afraid. Close your eyes, then. There's something to be said about the hound coming up repeatedly in Brienne's story. Like her, he is not a knight and a descendant of Dunk. I mean, we are talking about Sandor Clegane here.

Like him, Sandor is disfigured on the side of his face. And it's interesting that she sees him at the Quiet Isle but doesn't know it's him. And here, at her lowest point, she's confronted with a fake version of him, with his outer shell that he abandoned. And again, in her trip into the underworld, she sees the shadow on a wall version of things. And the hound's helm is almost like a cursed artifact that gets passed along and turns men into monsters. a broader metaphor of what people can turn into when they go into war and are implicitly allowed to indulge in violence, like the One Ring in Lord of the Rings, but it's much more ground level. It grants you a power that is anonymity and therefore impunity, and also the power of inflicting fear on people. But

it can also corrupt you, which explains Thor's aversion to it. In a way, quote-unquote, the Hound is the first stage of the Broken Man, or maybe it's ultimate evolution. Yeah.

It's like, that's really great. The artifact part of it, it has so much symbolism being handed around like that's really great the artifact part of it it has so much symbolism being handed around like that and it's become definitely like the ring for power and as you said that at the end i started also thinking about oath keeper right uh being a cursed artifact for brienne because it's a magic sword that gives brienne everything gives Brienne the confidence safety protection strength people wonder and awe after it but also here it's a artifact of doom right like it has helped to doom her by stinking of lions yeah and i feel for sandor because everyone wants to kill the hound persona now for something right we have jamie uh meeting with bonifer hasty and talking about the best way to get it over with

to kill for for glory for power seeking the biggest man to get rid of the threat the best man for the job and throughout the story whether they're seeking Sandor, the brave companion, or here seeking someone new, a new old brother possibly taking it. And if Lem Lemoncloak keeps on wearing this helm, we'll talk a little bit about the helm, I think, today of where it's landing. What atrocities do we think we'll see him commit? You know, I imagine the Red Wedding 2.0 would be a great time for Lem to wear that helm since Arya and the Hound were unable to get in

to the very first Red Wedding, right? That would be very interesting if Arya came back to Westeros in time for that Red Wedding 2.0 and was there and did get to go and there was another Hound there. And it makes you wonder how the hound's helm could truly corrupt for lem who okay by most accounts it's really richard lawnmouth personally i subscribe that it's

richard lawnmouth thank you lady gwynn for your great theory on that moons ago uh but if it's really richard lawnmouth who was a squire of Rhaegar's and an old drinking buddy for Robert and a stormlander so his family is sworn to Robert likely should be choosing that side of the war uh he's kind of the perfect person for the helm right these dueling loyalties follow Rhaegar but you're a Stormlander. Be loyal to Robert. It's very interesting. The Knight of Skulls and Kisses, indeed. It could be Richard Lonmouth.

You never know. Yeah, it's very interesting how that keeps getting passed around. Lem. Lem is someone who has not taken lemons and turned them into lemonade. He's just soured as time has gone on. to lemonade he's just uh sourdust time has gone on and somehow somehow this lemon has turned into a dog um and chloe's like where is eliana going with this uh but but i love what you're saying right about the symbol and the trappings of power that come along with it the story is very much going in that way i feel like the the sword Blackfire, if that should pop up, might be another

one of those too. Keeps getting passed, feels pretty cursed. Look at their family! Cursed! Brienne is brought forward, weak, wounded, naked beneath a woolen shift. I will argue that most people are naked beneath their clothes.

March through the twisted passage to a cavern full of outlaws and a fire pit in the center of it all. And they call her a whore repeatedly, assuming her relationship to Jaime has to be sexual. And like you guys

said before, there are so many parallels with Cersei's work of shame because there's this element of sexual humiliation to her punishment that we don't really see with male characters except

Tyrion like back in the day and yeah it's a thing that keeps coming up. Yeah, when we look at, like, Sandor going through this same kind of trial, he went through a trial by fire and another, like, a religious humiliation for him, right? Very targeted. Hey, actually, I will say, we don't see anyone else being put to trial by fire right now.

So maybe that was also targeted against Sandor. Felt very cruel, okay? Felt very cruel to make by fire right now. So maybe that was also targeted against Sandor. Felt very cruel. Okay, it felt very cruel to make him fight with fire. But that said, like, Sandor, they didn't dress him down for that fight. You know, they didn't take the things that protected him, the mail, the chain mail that he is so used to wearing on his body. Like, they didn't take that away from him. They didn't make him fight in a

brown woolen shift uh and now they're taking brienne for judgment and like not being able to have her sword not being able to have her armor not being able to wear the clothes that she is used to wearing that deprivation of that like that does feel similar know, it might not be stripping her down to skin, but it is. It's a great point you've pointed out of like, like many of the other people in Westeros and the people that Brienne encounters, they have no idea how to make sense of Brienne's body and the role that Brienne has decided to carve out

for themselves. And that failing to understand that, right? Just like when brienne before was trying to find a ship people just assume like oh brienne must be a sex worker but here they're calling brienne a whore as you said right um because of that element of sexual humiliation they are taking away brienne's armor and power as as you've both pointed out and objectifying her and wielding brienne's sex against them and there's a sort of irony in that and to to point out like the person that they serve now right is uh a woman lady stoneheart um and it's very you know girl boss gaslight gatekeep because

like just because they are serving lady stoneheart clearly has not made them any more gender egalitarian. If what they're doing is reducing Brienne's role solely to Brienne's association with Jaime. There's a lot of it too. Like men are made to battle each other in armor for judgment. Women are made to be pious and full of humility in their judgment. Even reminds me of how like Cersei wasn't going to get to have her battle. You know, like if Jaime doesn't come back, she's fucked. She can't have her battle by the men fighting for her.

She has to try a different horse. It's interesting. Very interesting on the gender roles and how Westeros judges them and how it's still come back to this camp. I would have thought they would have been full-blown feminists by now in the Brotherhood, but suits me.

How could Lady Stoneheart have done this? Oh my god. I didn't vote for her. So, there are other women there, though. Clearly, you know, as we said, not necessarily better off for it. Even a few children. Brienne can make out Long Jane Heddle in the crowd. A trestle table had been set up across the cave in a cleft in the rock.

Behind it sat a woman, only grey, cloaked and hooded. In her hands was a crown, a bronze circlet ringed by iron swords. She was studying it, her fingers stroking the blades, as if to test their sharpness. Her eyes glimmered under her hood.

Grey was the colour of the Silent Sisters, the handmaidens of the stranger. Grant felt a sheerer, clambered spine. Stoneheart. Shivers. Very creepy. Lots of shivers happening. Honestly, so much of the imagery around Stoneheart

actually reminds me a lot of Frankenstein. And some of the beauty of Frankenstein is not like, the monster is not scary that's not the point right like so much of horror in general is that the monster isn't the point it's the the circumstances surrounding the monster that is the scary part and this passage makes me think that from Frankenstein why did I not die more miserable than man ever was before. Why did I not sink into forgetfulness and rest? Death snatches away many blooming children, the only hopes of their doting parents.

How many brides and youthful lovers have been one day in the bloom of health and hope, and the next prey for worms in the decay of the tomb? what materials was i made that i could thus resist so many shocks which like the turning of the wheel continually renewed the torture but i was doomed to live and she is stoneheart is doomed to live right now you know half a half life is it as good as a full life i don't think so probably not. Definitely not when everything's falling off of you and can't speak. Did you ever see that movie with Audrey Plaza where she's a zombie? I don't remember what it's called. Life After Beth. Life After Beth. It's really funny. I did not.

life after Beth life after Beth it's really funny she's a zombie long story short this isn't a spoiler really I mean it's the whole movie is that she's a zombie she doesn't unbecome a zombie but parts of her are definitely starting to fall off at certain points and I'm just like damn must be rough being a fire white must be rough Stoneheart wakes up she's got to pop an eyeball back in yes absolutely um and i guess thoros here right is feeling some guilt like did i do this and as we're seeing right that frankenstein that monstrous thing everyone the one-eyed man and big man deliver brienne and as bidonica pointed out calling her the Kingslayer's whore, saying if they had a stag for each time that Brienne had called his

name, they'd also be as rich as the Lannisters. And yeah, I agree, you know, it does look bad. Looks real bad for you, Brienne, right now. But I do think that Jaime was Brienne's white knight, right? He saved them from the mummers and at Harrenhal, and not even by fighting.

So it's an interesting, like, way that that white knight thing went, right? Brienne saved them through his wits and also authority, which is interestingly very land-clever of Jaime. And Jaime is, again, the maiden patron of this quest but yeah the optics are bad optics not good nope they say there's a stink of lion around her and a younger outlaw with the northern accent steps forward oath keeper in his hand saying this proves it he slides it out putting it in front of stoneheart who has eyes only for the golden lion pommel with ruby eyes thoros provides the parchment with the king's seal pretty damning evidence they're all like oh this trial's over brienne tries to defend

herself she's like we're just friends uh brienne tries to defend herself saying sir jamie swore an oath to lady catalan but Lem says that was before his friends slit her throat. We all know about the Kingslayer and his oaths. Okay, but you don't, first of all, because you have not been reading these books. Anyways. Yes.

So true. She explains she was to protect Lady Sansa and Arya, take them them somewhere safe but no one will listen the sword says she's a liar and even has the imp squire with her lord tarly's household knight is there i told you get rid of him you would have been better off speaking of tarly's household knight he isn't looking great right now he He is looking swell, as in swell in the face. He looks like shit and he almost falls.

He gets shoved forward, but Podrick helps steady him. Good boy. Can we talk about how Podrick's instinct is to help, even in this situation? Like, I can't. He is too good for this world. Poor Padraic. I'm going to need Padraic to start helping himself.

You know? Because I'm like, Padraic, don't help others right now, sweetie. You need to go. You need to run. Get out of there. I know, right? It is so sweet and so good. And you know what?

I think Lady Stoneheart would agree that he is too good for this world. And that's why she's trying to kill him oh my god you're cruel you're cruel mistress eliana so is she so is she paderick apologizes to brienne who says he has nothing to be sorry for and brienne says they we've done nothing wrong pod and heil were innocent but being a lion isn't innocent and the brotherhood won't accept that they say tarly's hanged a score of hours past time we strung up some of his i'm over here like i'm interested in your newsletter just for reasons just for reasons

what's gonna happen Heil tells Brienne you should have wed me before now you're doomed to die a maid and me a poor man she pleads for them to let her companions go but the woman in grey makes no answer I'm just thinking

here of how Brienne pleading let them go right it is unsuccessful and it answer. I'm just thinking here of how Brienne pleading, let them go, right? It is unsuccessful and it reminds me also of Catelyn pleading, let him go in regards to, you know, her son, Rob. But I kind of wonder, I probably am.

Dungeon. 100 years. But I wonder if Lady Stoneheart fancies herself like better than walder fray because like she gives a choice allegedly kind of that sort of almost kind of permits escape uh versus the complete lack of it that the stories were shown at the twins when catherine was like let him go and the bar is low kind of of a choice. It's kind of a choice. Allegedly. Finally, the hangwoman wheezes something out. The language of the damned, Brienne thinks.

She asks the name of the blade and Brienne says, Oathkeeper. Stoneheart hisses, speaking again, calls it Oathbreaker and names it False Friend, like Brienne. No, no, no, no. You have it all mixed up ma'am Ma'am ma'am you have it mixed up

Real mixed up I swear I love You've got books to prove it You've got books ma'am I swear I promise You have it all mixed up It's probably because of her brain.

I mean, things are probably scrambled for Lady Stoneheart right now. I think we just need to take a deep breath, take a beat, figure it out. We could talk this out is what I'm saying. I love how significant Oathkeeper is finally in this chapter. When we started the chapters at the very front, right? She won't take it out because it's that special but now desperately could use oath keeper desperately wish i could take out oath keeper right now and i love that it kind of is also significant to like resemble knighthood

in some aspects but also completely ruins knighthood in other aspects because of the Lannister name being cursed upon it and when we think and talk about Sandor Clegane I do it very often but when we think and talk about Sandor Clegane um he has that same stain right coming from the Westerlyns his family being sworn to the Lannisters in debt to the Lannisters for having, you know, saved them the one time. So he doesn't really have as much of a choice either. He has a very complex kind of dichotomy of interests in his life. And he says when he's in the cave in Arya 6, a knight's a sword with a horse, the rest, the vows, the sacred oils and ladies favors. They are silk ribbons tied around the sword. vows, the sacred oils, and ladies' favors.

They are silk ribbons tied around the sword. Maybe the sword's prettier with ribbons hanging off it, but it will kill you just as dead. Well, bugger your ribbons, shove your swords up your arses. I'm the same as you. The only difference is I don't lie about what I am. So kill me, but don't call me a murderer while you stand there telling each other that your shit don't stink, you hear me? That's kind of the same exact predicament, like Sandor being called for trial in Arya 6

for his many crimes against humanity. You know, a couple of them are crimes against humanity, but taking him there for that trial is just as ridiculous as this trial with Brienne and her mates. She's shown up with Oathkeeper, parchment that's sealed with wax, her own ribbons on her journey, and they see that and they immediately condemn it. Now she has the same scars as Sandor to relive this exact scene out with. Eliana, I know earlier you mentioned, you know, obviously they, how could she know oath keeper is made of ice but it makes you wonder if now that lady stoneheart is closer with the dead the undead the underworld if she does know right if magic is connected in those ways maybe she does recognize it maybe she can feel

that sword yeah i mean probably knows the shape of jam Jamie's sword right so oh wow well I mean it's possible right because Ned when Ned was being beheaded he warged into the pigeon and then he warged into ice so it's entirely possible that Catelyn can feel it

actually it's skin changing um are pigeons not wolves? pigeons are wolves to me it. Actually, it's skin-changing. Are pigeons not wolves? Pigeons are wolves to me. Ferocious. Actually, some pigeons are ferocious. The northman asks Brienne how she could have

forgotten that she once swore an oath and was sworn into the lady's service. And it all clicks for Brienne. But she's dead, Brienne says. Death and gas right, mother long Jane had all. They don't mean so much as they used to, neither one. Oh my god, this is the horror movie moment, for real. Lady Stoneheart lowered her hood and unwound the grey wool scarf from her face. Her hair was dry and brittle, white as bone. Her brow was muddled green and grey, spotted with the brown blooms of the quay.

The flesh of her face clung in ragged strips from her eyes down to her jaw. Some of the ribs were crusted with dried blood, but others gazed open to reveal the skull beneath. Her face, Brienne thought. Her face was so strong and handsome, her skin so smooth and soft. Lady Catelyn? Tears filled her eyes. They said, they said that you were dead. And Thoros says that she is. The Freys murdered her, and Harwind had begged him to give

her the kiss of life, but it had been too long, so Beric did it instead, and the flame of life passed from him to her, and she rose. I love how on the nose it is. And she rose. What a line.

Obviously very, uh, very, like, biblical. And just, and she rose. And very, uh, Frankenstein-y. We gotta love Frankenstein's monster. You know, gotta throw it in there. Brienne is begging too, right? She's like, I never betrayed you. I swear it by the seven, by my sword.

But words are wind, Stoneheart says to Harwin. And now Brienne must prove her faith with Oathkeeper. She wants her son alive, or the men who killed him, dead,' said the big man. "'She wants to feed the crows like they did at the Red Wedding. "'Frays and Boltons, I will give her those, as many as she likes. "'All she asks from you is Jamie Lannister.' "'Jamie,' the name was a knife twisting in her belly. "'Lady Catalin, I—'

"'You do not understand. Jamie, he saved me from being raped when the bloody mummers took us, and later he came back for me. He leapt into the bear pit empty-handed. I swear to you, he's not the man he was. He sent me after Sansa to keep her safe. He could not have had a part in the Red Wedding. Lady Catalin's fingers dug deep into her throat, and the words came rattling out, choked and broken. A stream as cold as ice, the Northman said. She says you must choose. Take the sword and slay the Kingslayer, or be hanged for a betrayer. The sword or the noose, she says.

Choose, she says. Choose. I mean, she's right. He was too incompetent to have a role in the Red Wedding. But also, that choose, she says, choose. It really comes back to that iconic line last chapter. No chance and no choice. And I mean, it's not a real choice, really.

That's not a choice, yeah. Yep. Well, Brienne remembers her dream. Waiting in her father's hall, her tongue bitten off, Brienne says that they will not choose, and Stoneheart commands them to be hanged. They bind Brienne's wrists and seek out a crooked willow, hanging a new saw on her neck.

Podrick and Hyle are being given neighboring elms. How exciting! Everyone stays together. Hyle shouts that he'll kill Jaime, but the new hound cuffs him, telling him to shut up. It's interesting that she keeps, Brienne keeps calling him hound in her speech, even though

now she knows it isn't really him. It's like the person exists, having a life of its own. That is really interesting. You're right. Brienne never really shakes that. Yeah, it's very much like what you said, right?

There's something very uncanny here going on with the passing of the Hound identity in Helm. I really also like how, as they are trotting Brienne and friends out to be hanged, Brienne calls out that there are many trees to choose from after being told to choose right and it again really drives home that illusion of choice in all of this yeah you at least get to choose your death uh it's like a

choose your own adventure we have America. No, I'm just kidding. There's also even something in that with that choice that they come to a willow tree to hang her on. Just like Willow, Jane's sister, which had she not stayed to save Willow and save the other children from being murdered and raped. And here she is and she's going to be hanged on a willow tree. Yeah, ungrateful. Horrible. And she does try to barter. She says her

father will ransom Podrick. Tarth is the sapphire isle. Send my bones to Evenfall, and then you can have whatever you want. Yeah, I'm just going to say this is jamie's impact because yeah from him she has learned to lie to save someone else's ass she could never have thought of something like that in back in a storm of sorts and also i hate to say this but there's a line here that always makes me chuckle, even if everything around it is miserable.

That is, do you mean to hang her, Lam, or do you figure to talk the bitch to death? And I don't know, I just find it hilarious in a pretty dark way. Yeah, all the brotherhood are really gruff and gritty. yeah all the brotherhood are like really gruff and like gritty yeah so i want to talk about jamie's impact for sure there because she definitely learned the golden goose like daddy's golden goose lie and it it is sad though because we've been talking a lot about how we get so little of selwyn right we only see a little bit of him here and there in her pov here and she doesn't actually think this but i know from the previous chapters tonally it has crossed her mind somewhat just like aria thought about catalan would my father actually ransom me would he want me back i think that's

going to be a big question uh on her mind during all this like i don't know i think he would but i'm just saying for brienne brienne probably is wondering if he would yeah you don't invest all that time making sure that your daughter can learn to sword fight and you know really not literally caring yeah really caring about them yeah i hope he better take her back. I don't know. I don't know if we're going to ever see Tarth. I think maybe. Maybe for a little.

I think we'll see Selwyn. I hope so. I think Selwyn seems like he was probably a pretty decent dad. Shit, maybe he's going to go on to Aegon's side and then it's like a whole other bag of drama. Oh no! I didn't think about that ever actually but that could be a whole new set of drama for Brienne. Sorry. I'm so

sorry for what I've said. Oh my god. What if he's like really nice, right? Which he probably is and like then he dies. Okay well that's also cruel. Well speaking of things that people want the new hound says to brianne i want my wife and daughter back can your father give me that if not he can get buggered the boy will rot beside you wolves will gnaw your bones okay richard settle down settle down dick different dick um the the language is a

little similar to um alaria right yeah a little bit next thing back can you give me that it's also not dissimilar from sandor right yeah like the gruff speaking is actually pretty similar to what Sandor would say in this position, so maybe he really is truly the new hound. Wow. True. Well, we have this passage. Podrick never lifted his eyes, not even when his feet were jerked up off the ground.

If this is another dream, it is time for me to awaken. If this is real, it is time for me to die. All she is real. It is time for me to die. All she could see was Podrick, the noose around his thin neck, his legs twitching. Her mouth opened. Pod was kicking. Choking. Dying.

Bran sucked the air in desperately, even as the rope was strangling her. Nothing had ever hurt so much. She screamed a word a word a word I'm gonna just ruin things okay but we need it we need some kind of

balance to this. My comment here is kind of tangential, but the pod was kicking, choking, dying. It reminded me of when Theon is watching Smiler burn at the end of Clash of Kings Theon VI. And now I don't remember the exact quote from Theon. But it's pretty similar the kind of wording. But unlike Theon, Brienne is offered a way out of her situation.

Even if it's a shitty way out. Yeah. At that time Theon was too out of it. This is not... Like you said, there's a way out here. Yeah. The one thing I can say is Brienne's gonna survive this, this exact sitch. We know this from A Dance with Dragons, Adabada.

I don't know, but I think Brienne's gonna put that hound's helm on, is how I'm feeling right now at some point in the Winds of Winter. I got a feeling this is gonna, she's gonna survive this somehow. They're gonna escape somehow. And she's gonna have to go put that helm on because I don't know how else

she's gonna fucking get out of it. Double life. This is some rough, it's not good poor pod how are you gonna save everybody brienne that's really interesting the idea that we'll wear the helm i like that um gonna give it a good name a good name we can come back to that yeah in a bit i don't know i guess instead of the hound we can call it what the doggo yeah the dog i was gonna say i don't know the the peccanese the chow chow the chihuahua the pug um i i will say i really like this double entendre there's this double entendre of nothing had ever hurt so much uh and obviously the literal meaning

of it is brianne trying to inhale with her broken ribs um remember even like the coughing hurts a lot and obviously the rope is making it a lot more difficult a lot more difficult a lot more painful but i think it also probably hurts like the other thing that like nothing had ever hurt so much is Brienne is knowing that she has to betray she's imperiling Jaime in order to save Podrick so that's part of what is that deep pain

yeah truly the ultimate anime cliffhanger like murder your lover or yeah fight your way out I mean george knows what he's doing we just all need to declare that right now that motherfucker knows what he's doing oh sorry brianne you have to murder the only man you could possibly really truly love um the other thing speaking of that man he was in the room during this but the other thing that i got from that passage was kind of reminiscent of ned's death especially in that she's surveying podrick looking at the

children here the child here and thinking of the child and ned's death in you know thinking of the 12 13 year old child joffrey in some aspects that he was dying for but also there are kind of some big shades of Brandon and Rickard's death here right the more that she moves it hurts for Brienne to save everyone this is kind of set up almost exactly as Brandon and Rickard's death that

Jaime had to witness that was so horrific and Aerys you know it's interesting to think of Ares obsessed with fire, obsessed with pyromancy and letting that happen and kind of coyfully playing with like, I mean, he's coyly playing with that idea of like, oh, you can either die, pick one thing or the other, choose, choose. That's what Catelyn is doing here. That's what Lady Stoneheart is doing. And that's who Catelyn has now become and transformed into

there's a great poetry there too to what you called out of the similarities between how Brandon and Rickard died because Jamie brings up that story specifically to Catelyn so it wouldn't surprise me if Stoneheart chose this for that purpose

not for that purpose completely but Stoneheart has cruelty in her veins Lady Stoneheart George Lucas it's like poetry it rhymes oh my god no the thing I want to say is that now it looks obvious to us because we had Adabada in the meanwhile.

But back in the day, before Dance with Dragons came out, we really weren't sure whether Brienne was surviving. I went back and dug up some live journal posts we had in our Jamie and Brianne community, like, back in 2011, something like that. And we had this reread

of A Feast for Crows centered on Jamie's and Brianne's point of views and also some of Cersei's and when commenting this chapter we really were discussing A. what she

was going to say, what words she screamed and anyway if she was going to just disappear like Theon who also ended his run in A Clash of Kings and then was never heard from for a few years. So, I mean, back at that time,

it was a really powerful cliffhanger. Wow, thank you. Thank you for digging back and going back to your live journal roots for this and also thank you for reminding us of the proper pronunciation of Adowada both of

that's thank you so much I'm just really I don't know I feel really touched by that the live journal thing I don't know why I love it I do love it and it's crazy because like discourse is a wheel right like we've all seen over the last like decade lots of different discourse in the Asaga Vice Empire fandom but it almost always comes back around in a circle right of like feelings and emotions so

it's great to see what right after it happened and until Adobada came out where people were and Adobada is like also it's the the shortest little glimpse of Brienne right like you're like what wait what oh my god that's Brienne blink and you'll miss it that that was Brienne you know I remember I think my first read through I had to reread that chapter right away because I was like, wait. What? They're not with Sansa Stark and the Hound? I was very confused until I was like, oh, it's Brienne, and Brienne's lying to him. Cool. Cool.

Yeah. Oh yeah, it's like you said earlier, right? Brienne's learned to lie, and unfortunately, while here it's used to try and save Pod, it's a later turn to using that new skill she learned from Jaime against Jaime. Maybe.

Maybe. That's terrible. Thankfully, since it's been you know, 11 years since we've last seen Brienne in published books we do know what the word that was yelled is, right? The word that was yelled was sword. In a So Spake Martin, George confirmed at a convention the word Brienne screamed was sword. Lady Stoneheart gave Brienne the choice of either swearing her sword to Lady Stoneheart or being hanged, saying sword or noose. And as Brienne is being hanged,

she screamed sword. The questions move on for some time, but a girl then asked, what about Podrick Payne? He was getting hanged with Brienne. And George confirmed Brienne made the decision to swear her sword to Stoneheart in order to save the innocent Podrick Payne. So definitely some good Ned vibes there. i will also comment that all the people that submitted this so spake martin said hung which shows they're not true a song of ice and fire fans i'm just kidding that was a joke they're not tapestries okay god they're just hung don't talk about hung podrick's too young for that um, who do you think this is? David and Dan? Yeah, what is this, a TV show?

I will say, now that we have confirmation and we know for sure that the word is sword, it really makes a lot of sense in the way that the chapter is structured. First of all, there's that fun aspect where sword and word spelled very much the same. Right. And in some ways that,

that kind of works on a metal level, but also throughout the chapter, right. Brienne keeps asking, where is my sword? And asking from everyone, where's my sword? Oathkeeper was called.

Everything is about the sword. So it makes sense that it ends with being about the sword. Yeah. The magic sword. Well, about the sword yeah the magic sword well as we close out that chapter that puts us at our outro for brienne's arc as a whole character as a whole and we do have a last lightning round uh two last lightning rounds if you will so we're going to cover what we missed from a feast for crows to a dance with dragons at the end of the book here. Cersei 10. Cersei gets out played by the High Sparrow

and sends a plea for help to her twin brother. Jaime 7. Jaime succeeds in his mission at Riverrun with minimal bloodshed and rejects said plea for help from Cersei. Samwell 5. Sam arrives at Oldtown, getting some pretty cryptic

magic talk from Marwyn, and meets some people who may not be who they say they are, like Aleras and Pate. Hmm. And that brings us to all of A Dance with Dragons, but specifically... Jaime I,

a Dovera. Jaime rides thetree with young Hoster, who tells him his familial tale of two families that absolutely hate each other. He is intercepted by a heavily bandaged Brienne of Tarth who claims Jamie must come help her save. Sansa Stark from Sandor Clegane. Hmm, interesting. Cersei I and II. Now a prisoner of the faith, Cersei's plans have fallen to shambles around her she's stripped naked and must do a walk of penance before all of

king's landing but her newest kingsguard member awaits her and so does vengeance epilogue good old kevin lannister has been ruling westeros with a very solid but maybe not iron fist since his niece's downfall. As winter comes to King's Landing, Kevin is met by Varys, who does not like Kevin's middle management. Also, Pycelle's dead. Also, can I just say, Kevin sucks. Kevin is so middling. Yeah, but especially in this one point of view we get from him

he's so creepy towards Cersei and that really I was kind of yeah Kevin is okay he's not as bad as Tywin but after

I read this point of view of his I was like oh my god fuck that guy yeah I mean like the bar is low right if you're just comparing him to Tywin like everyone's better so like yeah I think a lot of people think he's better than Tywin or like good because the bar is so low it kind of sucks because it's like, sometimes these really mediocre characters like Kevin, who you're like, you're better than Tywin, but you're also still kind of really shitty and upholding Westerosi values for people like Tywin. Like that makes them almost worse.

Almost worse. Yeah. Well, let's talk a little bit here as we close out about the outro for brienne here where brienne's plot is going to go overall right uh we know jamie is in her future from a dance with dragons and i personally think they're gonna find a loophole out of stoneheart right they're gonna either escape i think they might they could run away from their duty together. You know, duty for booty

kind of thing going on. I could see Brienne skirting her honor and skirting this vow for a little bit. And them being just outlaws in the Riverlands together for a hot second. Their plots are definitely going to intertwine.

Duty versus honor. Booty versus honor. These are all just thoughts I'm having about together for a hot second their plots are definitely going to intertwine duty versus honor booty versus honor these are all just thoughts i'm having about what could be happening with them in tiwau okay and now i am pretty sure that there is going to be some kind of acknowledgement of the romantic nature of their relationship because they have been written too much like that they have all the romcom thing going on during ASOS so

I don't think that's accidental even though again bringing up my experience as an old fan and an old person in general. People back in the day, before the show, because as much as I'm not happy with how many things were handled by the show, it confirmed that there was a romance between Jamie and Brianenne but before then people

really argued that no they're just friends or they're not even friends they just had these chapters together and now they're on their own and that's an insane take to me

but some readers really read their arc like that, with no romantic vibe whatsoever. But I honestly think that George totally intentionally wrote them as potential romantic items. I also sadly don't believe they're going to have a happy ever after. Earlier I said that their storylines are a bit more up in the air compared to other characters, but I'm pretty sure that Jamie isn't going to survive the series. He will probably have a better ending than the show, like, better constructed.

I'm not sure how he is going to die, but certainly not because the ceiling falls on his head. Also, I think that, unlike in the show, George is probably going to do something with

the two halves of ice being reunited because magic is coming back etc and even if Brienne and Jamie are in the low magic part of the books they might be more involved in it going forward like everyone is going to have more magic coming their way so and that might end up being one of the most literal parts of Jaime's woodwork dream. Like when he has this vision of him and Brienne with their, she has the fire sword. She lights the way and everything.

Although hopefully they won't be wielding their magic swords while naked sword she lights the way and everything although hopefully they won't be wielding their magic swords while naked in winter I mean how are they gonna keep warm yeah I mean that's another anime trope they're just going to have to

like huddle together naked yeah yeah like huddled together naked yeah we've already been there George is aware of the animetrope so I mean he wrote this

I don't think this is our fault he wrote all of this it's in these books we've seen it I will say in Jamie 3 A Storm of Sw brienne and jamie have sex with their swords so it's like yeah we were all there we were all there how could people reject this how could they i do want to say the one thing i really i've wondered like will they maybe even reforge ice right it makes me curious i don't know if they will. Now I used to wonder if they would reforge ice together, like, all the time. I used to be like, that has to be it. That

has to be the ticket. And now my question is like, do the two swords separate being separate, represent the Stark legacies separated between the North and the South? I've been thinking about that often. And Jaime and brienne being different parts of that stark legacy in some aspects it's interesting those swords are so important being like between the two it's kind of funny that uh people i feel like it's just so heavily written there right like you said like there's clearly a romantic tension in the relationship there's the sword sex they're naked around each other a lot in like the oh how awkward oh no i'm naked in the same like that's a trope too that's a rom-com trope or like they dream of each other naked in like a very like positive manner again rom-com tropes

and and i mean like i i i like the rivals to lovers like trope i'm very into that but um i can understand like people you know and I used to question this too until like the show. I can understand being unsure if their romance will be allowed to bloom into anything else. Right. Because I'm like, how much does George want to hurt me and withhold like any sort of like anything sort of coming to fruition between that like if they're going to just be like a strange like looking at each other longingly from afar but i i'm hoping that there is like some sort of like you know more explicit like romance in that and there probably will be it's just that you know instead the pain will be that being like after destroyed yeah that's the

point he found he could leverage more pain if he did make it romantic and that's why it's romantic because there's going to be pain later yeah he knows what he's about okay yeah i just like don't think we're allowed that much happiness i've never thought that it would like really like unfortunately like be something that like works out and it was just like a matter of how is this gonna play out as you said like it's all muddy to an extent when it comes to jamie and brienne's futures but what about the start girls right for brienne i think that's gonna be such a big plot point that'll be hit brienneenne serving Sansa, we already have Jean-Claude Dark and good queen Alysanne in Fire and Blood and in the history books that kind

of feels like a nod to what we might see for Sansa and Brienne. But I also think there's kind of like to an extent going to have to be this rejection of protection from Sansa and Arya. They both already are kind of doing that, right? Like Littlefinger has his hooks seemingly slipped into Sansa and she's going to be rejecting probably any mentor that comes her way from now on for a little bit. That girl needs some space. And Arya, I don't see Arya accepting Brienne as a protector for her. So where do you two think that those plots will merge? Do you think it'll just merge in the north? They'll go there? Or will they see him on the road? Maybe Brienne in the Riverlands with Jaime meeting Arya?

I think it would be interesting if their storylines intersected with the Arya along with the Stoneheart stuff, right? Like all there, all drama, all the time. Yeah, I too think that if there's going to be a stoneheart resolution involving brianne and jamie there's going to be aria as well because there's no way that kathleen stark's story ends without her children somehow involved.

I know George loves misery and everything, but he also loves a good... I mean, it's still a narrative. It has to make thematic sense. And I don't think that Catelyn is going to go without ever seeing her children again. Even because it's going to be sadder if she dies, like really dies, knowing that it was her revenge. Everything was for nothing because her children were actually alive. Yeah. I don't know know i'm just putting this out there well and i don't think she can rest without some of that right like that's part of the whole

emotional zombie aspect and i mean i think everyone kind of has heard my takes on what i think is going to happen there i think aria will probably be the one to give her mercy aria's plot has been revolving around learning mercy and learning where the heart is. I think I personally think that Jaime and Brienne might be around the corner when all this is happening. But I think that they're going to be busy doing things that adults do. Maybe we'll just leave it at that. You know, playing capture the flag in a bed. I think they're going to be busy doing the deed while aria's doing that deed you know i i really i could see that happening i think um it would be

better if you know they could be there cheering around maybe with some foam fingers saying you go aria but maybe not that could be traumatizing too i i don't know. I think Arya has to come back to the Riverlands. I don't think Sansa's going back to the Riverlands right now. I think Sansa's next move is north. There's no time for that. You know, I think she's got some crap in the veil she's got to figure out first. And then I think she's going north,

probably by way of White Harbor. I think Arya's going to land back in the Riverlands when she does someday so i'd be interested to see her meet up with them and maybe they go north maybe sandor jumps in you know maybe we just get all of all of our uh dunk and all of our dunk ancestors and descendants and such happening so you mean gregor cluane too? Yeah, bring Gregor in there. Hey, you know, why do you think Jamie likes Brienne? Because Rowan is probably,

you know... Yeah. It's cousin-loving, baby! Well, that's an upgrade from his sister, so maybe in his next life he can fall in love with someone he isn't related to

yeah, not as closely just keep degrading it each time each life a third cousin, twice removed beyond the Stark girls I hope that Brienne one day meets the Mormonts and maybe some of the Free Folk spearwives

because I mean, it would be really great. I think for Brienne to see people who aren't, you know, cis men getting to be in this warrior role and being like, so I'm not a freak, you know, like I,

other people also have been able to like live in this role. So I just like hope for some more of that internal like resolution and peace for Brienne agree even Asha I would like her to be able to meet Ash a great joy yeah yeah yeah Asha would be interesting because she also She also, in theory, doesn't have a place for a person like her in her society because the Ironborn society is so chauvinistic and sexist and everything. But she still carved this position for herself that is pretty... I mean, she has her whole crew she has people who follow her as a leader she isn't a solitary agent like ryan and i think that would be an

eye-opening moment ryan to have but who knows if they're ever gonna meet she's really insecure asha is you know really insecure about like who she is as a woman so i wonder if there's anything that they could like come to terms together on so their gender expression and expressing just some of the values that they were raised with versus what society wants them to have imparted on them together i don't know if we'll ever get their interactions but that could be a good interaction i think so and like i you know asha is in a similar position to brianne of being kind of left right as the only child of their respective fathers and you know while i think brianne's story is very much feeling like they were a failure as both a son and daughter. I think Asha, I mean, Balon Greyjoy was very clear of like,

you have been an excellent son and daughter to me. You have been a wonderful heir. I love you so much. Very affirming. And it's like, let's just throw out all the societal rules Asha inherits. And then everyone was like, we're not doing that, Balon. So. Could be interesting.

Yeah. Let's get to the heart of it. Brienne and Lady Stoneheart. Oh my god. Okay, so my pandemic activity that I picked up

since I was already baking is tarot. I started to study tarot and the history behind it and so on. And it occurred to me that Brienne has

some thematic resonance with the cardinal virtue of fortitude. Like in the medieval slash Renaissance Christian philosophy, there were four cardinal virtues that were fortitude, justice, temperance, and prudence. And fortitude is usually represented as a woman in armor

which is generally this Roman style plate breastplate and a helm with like feathers and so on so that also calls back to Brienne or and I'm not gonna say anything

a maiden taming a lion, which is also the inspiration for the tarot card strength. At the end of the Feast for Crows, Brienne is the hanged man of tarot, which, if you aren't familiar with it, is a blonde man that is hanged by one foot upside down. In the Marseille tarot, which is kind of the traditional tarot, that arcana is at number 12 between 11, that is strength, the maiden with the

lion, and 13, the nameless arcana, aka death. In the Rider-ite standard, which is the one you are maybe more familiar with, at 11 stands justice instead of strength. It's interesting that in late medieval slash early modern Italy, which is where the traditional tarot iconography originated, traitors were hanged by the foot, like in the Arcana. On the other hand, hanging as the archetypal punishment for traitors goes back to Judas Iscariot. So it's interesting to see Brienne placed in this position either between her true self, the Arcana of Strength, and death, or between justice and death, which in this case can be seen as two faces of Lady Stoneheart. Adding to this, a traditional interpretation of the hangman in a reading

is that the querent is going to have to make a sacrifice in order to attain a greater good. Another common meaning is a blockage, a stasis, a moment where you're forced to wait and can't act, which is ironically fitting for a cliffhanger that went on for several years. God damn it. Also, I'm the first to be kind of fed up with the hero's journey, but Brienne is having one, in broad strokes, and we can place her cult adventure at the moment she leaves Tarth to follow Renly, and then she gets her supernatural aid in the form of Oathkeeper. Along the way she meets helpers like Pod, Dick Crabbe and even Hyle, if he responds. Mentors like Septim Maribold and the Elder Brother. Going back, Kathleen was also some sort of mentor to her, but at that point, I don't

think George had already thought of Brienne's individual arc. And now we are in the cave slash ordeal part of the story. are in the cave slash ordeal part of the story, the heroes' lowest points, where they have to face their fears and embark on a deep transformation and overcome the hardest challenges. In the words of Carl Gustav Jung, the hero's main feat is to overcome darkness, it is only the long hoped for and expected triumph of consciousness over the unconscious. In this chapter, Brienne spends most of the time having fever dreams that force her to face her conscious and subconscious fears. When she wakes up, she is still in a nightmare world. Basically, George pretty much left her deep in the literal and metaphorical pits of hell,

and the next step for her would be to climb back outside to see the stars again. I love that. I love that. That is really interesting, how much all the stuff that's in Tarot correlates to what you're saying about Brienne's story. And as you said, especially waiting several years. But the maiden and the lion, very interesting. right about Brienne's story and as you said especially waiting several years but like the

maiden and the lion very interesting and all those ideas of hanging that are associated with it absolutely agree of yeah I mean Brienne is definitely in like a hero's journey and I love the way that you've really charted that out here with uh i mean you know the the people coming together and i think you're right we are very much in like the darkness of brienne's story this is the part right something was she felt the things inside of her breaking as you called out earlier and i love how you've also tied that in with the i mean as you said right the subconscious fears are coming forward here in the underworld in this nightmare realm and it does feel like like this is the darkest right like she feels like she's being forged through all these chapters just the immense pressure that's being put on her and something I really like that George is doing with any POV is starting them in the middle of their hero's journey, right? Like, we don't get

a start on Davos. We don't get a start on Ned, right? When we meet Ned, he's already past his time. He's already, his hero's journey has started. It is at the end. And I like the way George backflushes us with Brienne in that same way, right? Call to adventure is skipped. We see some of the supernatural forces. And we're reintroduced to those forces in with Catelyn both times. We pass the threshold guardian, and then we get to the mentor, helper, and temptation. For most heroes, these are separate things. But for Brienne, they're the same thing.

They're one thing. The mentor, the helper, and the temptation is all Jaime. All of it is Jaime. It is all Jaime. Goddammit. Surprise Jaime art in the dot. Yeah, it's all Jamie. In Brienne 8.

Sorry, for context, everyone, Bedonica's put this Jamie fan art saying sup in the dot. And he is like in a historically accurate hat and hoodie.

If you want, I can put the link to the post in the document because this is from a Tumblr thread we had where we had this kind of round robin with fan arts and we drew the characters with historically accurate paths. It's wonderful. My friend Amwellia, you have probably seen her, like, Roosevelt on art has done some incredible ones in that thread. Amazing.

So I'm going to share that later. Please do share that link with us. I love Amwellia's art. I love the Northern art. It's been so good. Yeah, she's on a roll. She's putting out a lot of great stuff lately. So throughout Brienne 8,

Brienne has reached this next big step of their journey, which is Revelation, the Abyss, death, rebirth. Next would come transformation, atonement, and a return to the known. In a lot of ways, I know George isn't really following a point-to-point, 100% hero's journey arc for all these characters. I mean, what, Bran? Bran is probably the closest to a hero's arc that's almost on point that we see from point A to point B happening. It's usually a loose framework for him to subvert, so I don't

think Brienne's endgame is necessarily taking her to the known, home, to Tarth. But I do feel like it's creating a new ending for the heroes instead of that known journey, right? Like Brienne returning home might not be in the cards. The last chapters have kind of made me think that actually, maybe not permanently. But Brienne has a journey and a drive to make that journey and like a duty to honor not only others, but also themselves in the process. And it makes me think that maybe the end of the hero's arc might just be a little different, a little creative for Brienne I think you know like the elixir like the the powerful thing that Brienne probably will emerge from hopefully it's a it's a sense of self-love and acceptance that's what I hope for um but obviously you know yeah Brienne's

got that anyways and soon there will be even more dead everywhere even more lane of the dead across all of Westeros but we'll figure that out one day in the winds of winter that's a long night thing night's been long indeed you know talking more about like Brienne's arc

in general right I think it's fascinating that and part of it is as Venonica said you know George didn't really think that he was gonna dig into this character until he was like i really like this character and all of brienne's chapters though are in this one book right the whole arc is really following the point that they become a broken man themselves and you know tying into like i think stoneheart plays a big part in that breaking right catlin also being a broken man um as well and besides the part where you know the whole betraying jamie

to save podrick that's that's part of the brokenness too like you're breaking your morals and that's something that we see in a lot of our heroes in this book right they're betraying the people they love in order to save innocence and brian's following that we see in a lot of our heroes in this book, right? They're betraying the people they love in order to save innocents. And Brienne's following that pattern. Ned resigning, right, to prevent the assassination on Daenerys, slash betraying Robert's trust briefly to save Cersei's kids. And that obviously blows up in his face. And also, right, like you've pointed out, Chloe, right, in previous episodes, and you

touched on it a little bit here, Davos likely betraying his own king, Stannis, in order to save Rickon, an innocent. Jon betrays Ygritte's cause to save people beyond the Wall, and then also kind of betrays Sam and Gilly, if you will, to presumably save Mance's child. But another thing that's in line with the whole broken man arc that Brienne seems to be on, I wonder if besides the Jaime stuff, as you were saying, what will Brienne do that does require, as you said, transformation and atonement? I think we will probably see some of that brokenness manifest, and you were talking about Brienne likely donning the Hound's helm. the hound's helm and i think that'll be a way to signify like brienne is here at that point of their arc and journey um and i kind of wonder will anything that brienne does really require

atonement what would it be that creates that atonement it's probably going to be as we've been discussing serving the starks or who knows i don't know it's something to consider um another another part that very much plays into brienne's story and that darker edge of it is that especially comes forward here with the stoneheart stuff is vengeance right like before brienne was even the pov right at the start of brienne's storyline from the beginning all the way back into Clash of Kings in their conversations with Lady Stark. Brienne is introduced very much through the lens of vengeance, right? Catelyn's

thinking of vengeance for her family, and Brienne discusses it in terms of, don't hold me back, alright? If I see Stannis, don't hold me back! Yet, Brienne seems to hardly ever think of Stannis at all in her chapters even though she does think of renly and mourn him and yet this final chapter i think again it brings vengeance

back to the forefront of brienne's storyline so i kind of wonder and this is something i think you've talked about a little bit before chloe but um will brienne accept the lore of vengeance? Take the bait of vengeance against Stannis as part of that Broken Man arc, or will Brienne reject it, seeing what vengeance has led to in the storyline of Lady Stoneheart, seeing vengeance turning Brienne into a pawn? It can go a couple of different ways. I don't know if Brienne does kill stannis but to entertain the thought briefly it would make brienne a kingslayer just like jamie i mean also everyone in the realm also already thinks that brienne is a kingslayer so it doesn't really matter the reputation's there anyways because of the redley thing though it didn't really happen um and brienne also swore no vows to stannis uh

anyway but i will say it is interesting that Brienne, throughout their storyline, though, and including also with Jaime, right, continues to just pledge to serve individuals. Never, like, chooses to protect, like, the throne or a monarchical line. Always swearing to a single person. Kind of Hedge Knight-y, if you will. And it's a sort of loophole that I think allows Brienne to mostly preserve their honor and shows how Brienne is breaking these kinds of systems, not just in terms of gender roles, but overall. Yeah, I think that's

a very good point. Following from that, I also thought she never articulated that, but at thought she never articulated that. But at the end of the day, what's Brienne's stake in a system that never had a place for someone like her? So she can only trust individuals who believe in her in some capacity and think she is valid. Of course, like with Renly, it was very surface level.

valid. Of course, like with Renly, it was very surface level. With Catelyn, she had more of Catelyn understood her better. She came to her from a place of empathy. And then there's Jaime, who sees her as some sort of equal, dare I say, he eventually realizes that she is as capable as any knight, and he recognizes that. So she trusts these people who trust her back. Yeah. That's a great question, though.

What is the stake for Brienne in a system that has never had a place for someone like them? And then it, like, it really reinforces, especially in the echo of seeing the orphans, right, at the inn. Like, it reinforces the idea of Brienne being a part of helping to overhaul that system, however that overhaul someday takes place, and if it's successful or not. But, like, to be able to carve out for themselves a place that they can be themselves that's something that i feel like is so like sticks out so much in her arc now from her first chapter to her eighth chapter and something i really hope that we see expanded on in the winds of winter and in a dream of spring that

brienne gets the chance because like i just i can't see a world where Brienne is overtaken by vengeance you know no not like completely their heart is so pure I just can't do it I can't do it Brienne's so good I mean when a giant evil man who could tear off her body and face was standing in front of her threatening to kill her and everyone around her in horrific ways you know brienne did what no one else would do and stood up and said come at me then let's fucking go not a lot of characters can do that in this story confidently and just like you know risk themselves sacrifice themselves so i think that brianne will prevail between vengeance and justice and will hopefully be a part of re-establishing what justice actually means to westeros absolutely yeah that brianne gets that chance and choice yes chance yes choice my god stop yes chance give us choice yes i hate myself oh man so we needed that all

right what a time to be alive but what a time to be undead also what a time to be undead the winds of winter man brienne. Brienne's last published chapter. How we feeling Brienne fans? How are us three feeling? A lot. I got another 11 years left in me on this. Let's go.

I'm serious here. I'm pretty zen about it. Like I'm serious here. I'm pretty zen about it. Like, I'm not going to... I think I already overcame that stage of, like, oh my god, when is the next book going to come out? It will come out when it comes out. I mean, I'm going to read other stuff in the meantime. Hallelujah, sister. Hallelujah,

sister. Hallelujah. You know, I mean, I'm past the grieving. I grieved already. I grieved for the book. I don't know where I am. I'm lost. If I look back, I'm lost. And with that, you'll be looking back next week when we return

with Samwell's first chapter in A Storm of Swords with Yolkboy. Yes. Bedonica, please, one more time, tell everyone where they can find you besides the link tree and the links that will be in the description. Make sure you click there so you can go stalker on the internet, but not stalker. Don't stalker. Appropriately follow on the internet, but not stalker. Don't stalker. Okay. Appropriately follow on the internet. My main social accounts are bidonica1 on Twitter, bidonica and bidonicart on Tumblr, and bidonicart on Instagram. That's where my pictures are.

Yes, please take a look at them because they are wonderful and they will get you through the very long night, whether it is an 11 year night, whether it's a few months, whether it's a few weeks, could be next week. You never know. You never know. And we will also link the thread

of Bidonica's Jamie in an accurate hat. Yes, yes. Yeah. Thanks up. Thank you for giving me this chance to, like, pick my mind and butcher some lines from A Feast for Crows. The book I reread most frequently from A Song of Ice andows the book I re-read most frequently from A Song of Ice and Fire

yes same thank you for having me and yeah I mean as Chloe said we'll be back next week and if you want to keep up with us or Bidonica you can find

all of us on social media. If you want to find Girls Gone Canon and keep track of when new episodes come out, you can find us at Girls Gone Canon, C-A-N-O-N, on Twitter. Or if you have any thoughts about this episode or anything else, if you would like to send us bird pictures, you can at

girlsgonecanon at gmail.com. Yes. If you haven't already, make sure you're subscribed to us over on a podcast streaming platform. We are on a lot of them. You can find us at Spotify, which now has the option to review brand new option. Please give us five stars and a review. If you have the time or over at Podbean,

where we're hosted iTunes, Google play, Amazon podcasts, I heart radio, Stitcher, Acast. There's a bunch more. You can find us there too. Yes. And of course, you can always find us on Patreon at patreon.com slash girlsgoncanon.

Patrons in the $5 tier and above, of course, get bonus episodes each month. And in the Thunder tier and above, also get access to our Discord. As always, thanks for listening. We'll be back with Yokoi from Radio Westeros next week for Sam 1. I have been one of your hosts, Chloe. And I have been another one of your hosts, Eliana.

See you next week. Goodbye, everyone. Goodbye, Brienne. Goodbye, Pitanica. Ciao. Goodnight, Moon. goodbye Petonica ciao goodnight moon