Girls Gone Canon Cast - ASOIAF Episode 165 — ADWD Prologue, Varamyr (but also Lump and One Eye) ft. Zach of Brotherhood Without Manners

Episode Date: August 19, 2022

The final prologue until we get Winds—but winter has already come for Varamyr aka Lump aka One Eye aka shadowcat aka bear aka Loptail aka Orell's eagle aka dead. Zach, the other half of the Brotherhood Without Manners podcast, joins us to talk about this chilling chapter and how it ties into the story, especially ah-duh-wuh-duh. Where to find Zach: @Carrstark92 @MannersWithout https://www.brotherhoodwithout.com/ --- Eliana's twitter: https://twitter.com/arhythmetric Eliana's reddit account: https://www.reddit.com/user/glass_table_girl Eliana's blog: https://themanyfacedblog.wordpress.com/ Chloe's twitter: https://twitter.com/liesandarbor Chloe's blog: www.liesandarborgold.com Intro by Anton Langhage  

Hello and welcome to Girls Gone Canon, Read a Song of Ice and Fire, episode 165, A Dance with Dragons, prologue, Veramir, featuring Zach of the Brotherhood Without Manners. I am one of your hosts, Chloe. And I am another one of your hosts, Eliana. your host, Chloe. And I am another one of your hosts, Eliana. And yes, today we have gotten the other half of the Brotherhood Without Manners,

whose name does not rhyme with this episode. Hello, Zach. Thanks so much for coming to hang out with us. The smarter half, but thank you so much for having me. It is... Oh my god. Fuck, dude! My absolute pleasure to wrap things up with the prologues here because it's been a run oh yeah you've had a you've had a run going here with these we've had the runs yeah

uh what my god it feels like last episode there were some odd silences though like you guys would throw it to to someone but there was just silence on my end so uh unless you can't yeah you kept like calling to someone like a nate but i tune out every nate i hear so it's just there were long laps empty episode actually i have a i have a bone to pick with you girls because you entertained his nonsense tin foils and and allowed him to actually come up with the most decent one which he gives on your show not ours which is the leo tyrell potentially being a faceless man which was like the best one he's come up with yet and he gives it to you guys so thanks for that thanks for because he's been walking strutting around like they like my tinfoil. So, but I'm thrilled to be here.

Thank you for having me. Zach is the more logical, you know, brother of the two. He really likes his facts, his basis. If you listen to Brotherhood Without Manners, you will hear him shoot Nate down every single episode, which is fun. Every chance I get. I can't lie. It is fun. Every chance I get. I can't lie. It is fun. And I did come on,

and I feel like I did a good partisan job of splitting 50-50 the support I gave out to you both when I was on. I think you did. You were right down the middle. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you.

Because, yes, he did have some out there things, but I think that's what makes him him. That's what's neat. He also claimed Howlin' Reed was like a C-lister, and that's just... Uh-uh. Uh-uh. Well, we read him to film. We fixed that.

We fixed that. We put him in his place, but... Oh, interesting. Oh. Zach, where could everyone find you online? I think you have Twitter, and of course you guys' website. Yeah, we're all over. You can us our website which has everything is brotherhoodwithout.com

i'm on twitter at carstark92 nate will say i'm not that active on there which is actually true he's more active on the actual podcast twitter which is at manners without and then we also have patreon and an email patreon.com slash without manners in our email. Without Manners Brotherhood at Gmail, where that's where our listeners like to send us inductees because we are the Brotherhood and we are always taking new recruits. I love that. So would you say you're in your early Brotherhood stage or your late Brotherhood stage? Because I feel like there are two very different. There are two very different.

We're approaching fast the Red Wedding. We're blocking out and you would know as podcasters the red wedding is a tough one to block out do you do you cover do you cover it in bits do you do it in parts do you cover it chapter by chapter and so we're blocking that out and yeah i think the brotherhood is about to shift in tone here real soon at the end of storm when we get some new leadership. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. There are definitely some tones

of the Nega Brotherhood versus the Proto Brotherhood. Especially in this chapter. Yes, yes. Have you considered, this is just out there, covering Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood? Oh, because then you'd be like a Brotherhood Brotherhood.

Nate would love that because I'm so uneducated in anime. He's like, I'm not a nerd. No, just in anime. I'm a super nerd. Like, I'm the DM for our D&D group. I'm a super... I just... Anime I never fell into, so I'm sure Nate would love that. You could watch it

with him for the first time. Right. Oh, that's so beautiful. New patron series. I'm like 10 episodes out from finishing Avatar The Last Airbender for the first time. Oh, that's so cool. I know, I know, I know. Yeah, it's great. Hey, I didn't watch it until recently. Amazing, amazing.

And Eliana really did help promote that. Yeah. So I do think you should watch Full Metal next then. I absolutely will. Yeah. Put it on the list and make that your brother's show, because I feel like then you guys should cover it, the Full Metal Brotherhood.

The Full Metal Brotherhood Without Manners. Well, Corey may have just given us an idea. It's about brothers. It actually very much is about brothers. It's literally about brothers. Yeah. Literally. It's about brothers.

Let us market your podcast. Let us come in. I'll give you some programming ideas this is what you're gonna watch what you're gonna do content director we'll have to start crediting you most casting Eliana

Eliana what thanks so much for coming on Zach I'm so excited we're gonna bust into a little housekeeping some morning, if we were still at the Citadel. But we're not. First things first, we know what we're doing for our patron episode this month. If you are a patron at patreon.com slash girlsgonecanon in the Stranger tier, the Thunder tier, the Chestnut tier, or the Zorse tier,

the Thunder tier, the Chestnut tier, or the Zorse tier, you have access to bonus episodes every month of a different variety, of a different spice, of a different flavor. Last month, we covered A Song of Ice and Fire. Grief in A Song of Ice and Fire. It was a morbid, macabre, but kind of hysterical episode, I would say. This month, super fucking stoked to announce that we're going to be covering The Mothers of the Dragon on Mothers in Fire and Blood and Targaryen and Tangential Mothers. I'm very excited about that episode, Aliana.

In fact, I'm so glad you said yes 12 minutes ago before this episode. Well, actually, I felt like we were in sync when you said that because I was like, oh my god, I was just thinking about this. And it also makes sense, right? We were inspired by these two brothers. And mothers rhymes with brothers. And that's how we make all of our most important decisions. We'll talk about poetry a bit more this episode. MILFs without manners.

The new series from Girls Gone Piano. But what if we did? What if we did? Okay. What if we only did MILF? Anyways, so excited about that. And we have some other fun things coming this month, like our Discord brunch and happy hour for our Thunder, Tyr, and above patrons. Eliana, what's going on there this month?

It's Discord brunch and happy hour, as it is every month. And this time, it is going to be on August 28th, 2 to 4 p.m. Eastern Time, which is also, coincidentally, one of the Hot D premiere days. I think for the second episode is what that will be. Second episode. Second episode. I think we're all going to be really excited and do a little pre-hot D game in. I always like to pre-game my hot D before I have it. A little foreplay, yeah.

A little foreplay for the hottest of Ds. Yeah, I'm excited. And we're going to have another event happening right before that. Actually, this is going to be weekly. This is really big. This is like drum roll please big 8 26 friday 2 to 4 p.m we are going to have our very first official house of the dragon weekly discussion in the discord chat over in the voice chats and that's hosted by our friend and patron maddie, who, if you listen to Unleash the D,

the premiere series from Girl Gone Canon, while one girl was gone, about House of the Dragon, featuring me, your host. If you listen to that, you probably heard episode three where Maddie had some really great talk about the anarchy,

about a bunch of the influences for the Dance of the Dragons, and also a little green apologism, but we like a couple differing opinions. She made some points, some great points, honestly. So she's gonna host this weekly, every Friday. There's gonna be a discussion

on last week's episode and the following week's episode from start to finish, premiere to end. I'm so excited, so thankful and grateful to her. Thank you, Maddie, for volunteering to do this, voluntolding to do this. And, I mean mean if you're in the thunder tier and above or if you're not you better pledge and get your spot because it's gonna be fun i think there's gonna be some day drinking and shitting on otto hightower and kristin cole which is it's in my wheelhouse indeed indeed i'm

i'm excited i'm excited. I'm excited. And yeah, so that'll be on, usually on Fridays is what we're thinking. And yeah, we'll see how it goes in terms of timing. But yeah, Fridays at 2 p.m. ET. Eliana time. Eliana time. So that people from across the different factions of the world, but that would mean time zones, can see what y'all can do.

How about them hot D-ups? Ah, yes. What's going on with those? The hot D-episodes that are not a democracy. In which only Chloe and I talk. Those! We are also doing those. In fact,

we actually... Corpor corporate sellout girls okay but it seems like it was gonna be really fun and it's gonna be this one's gonna be about sisterhood maybe sister wife hood you know cause we're gonna hang out such bad news for you with what happens in this story

we're gonna do house of the dragon episodes they'll probably be out Tuesdays or Wednesdays I think the first one is really gonna dictate that so hang on to your seats follow us on all the medias I'm sure there will be tweeting or posting shit posting about when these are gonna come out

kind of excited though because I'm super excited you know we're gonna record them at least the first half of them we're gonna record together together yeah you know sisterhood like you said sister wave hug yeah exciting yeah and maybe we're going to record together together. Yeah. You know, sisterhood, like you said. Sisterhood, yeah. Very exciting. Yeah.

And maybe we'll stop recording them together in person together just in time for their breakup too, right? Oh my god! We did this. To quote George Lucas, you know, or not quote George Lucas, but whatever. It's like poetry, it rhymes. tree it rhymes and finally if you're itching for that other sweet sweet fantasy story that we talk about from time to time his dark materials it's true the rumors are true we're finishing the original trilogy of his dark materials this month next week even rather yeah i know whoa uh the amber spyglass we're looking to have our friend Haley Bowery on.

Can't wait to see her and chat with her about it and finish up The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman. I'm sure as he releases another book in the future, the near future, hopefully we will have another book to cover. However, until then, we'll let you know soon what our plan is for that extra week. That extra week of the month. I'm sure they'll have a plan. plan is for that extra week that extra week of the month i'm sure they'll have a plan and it and it makes sense it's only fitting for us to have ended up ending in august because turns out i was uh browsing and i saw on the his dark material subreddit turns out lyra's birthday might actually be in august so oh my god she's a leo like you maybe or she could be a virgo depending on if she's later half of the month but But she seems like she's more of a Leo. She could be like Leo Cusp, which would also... Anyways, very interesting.

Very interesting. We don't have time for all of this right now. But if you listen to that last episode... Maybe we will. You might have time for it. Yeah, we might have time then. Finally, the big moment. The last piece of housekeeping.

The moment that many over at our patron discord have been waiting for. And waiting for. And waiting for. We're starting a new POV this September. As we close out our prologues, it has been a winding road to get through these prologues, because go forward you must go back they say eliana i mean we really tortured some of our friends we have an entire investigative league at the discord that they have a little channel a sub channel a thread where they're just discussing who could be next they have their own spreadsheets trying to map out what the rest of the povs the end game of girl gone canon looks like were any of them right were they right i mean yes and no but first of all i want to know zach who do you think it is oh see it's not in this document incidentally yeah you don't know this is serendipitous because i i literally irl

in real life for the uninitiated j Jesus. Just caught up with you as the talks started with, you know, us podcasts talking about collabing. I have caught up from my initial from the start, the first episode you released to current. Why did you do that?

Mainly because we were having Chloe as a guest and it was a, you know, I wanted to be able to know your sort of sense of humor. Your guys is the way you approach. Yeah, right. You the way you guys approach things. And and then I actually, for some reason, enjoyed what I heard and kept listening on and on and on. And then I was hooked.

And now so the POV announcements are one of my favorite parts. And so I've been wondering about after the prologues. And I think because you had such so much fun teasing it, I've had a, a certain Lannister in mind that I've been thinking it may be, but, uh, certain Lannister in mind that I've been thinking it may be, but that was just me, because you guys did cover a

character of a same name, but a different genre. I believe it may have been a Patreon episode that was about Cersei, but the other Cersei. And so that was my, that was where I was leaning, was that maybe it was time we start getting a

little buck wild up in here and burning down some fucking towers but you know you're gonna love our discord zach i'm so excited for you you're gonna fit right in with all of the they them gays these ladies over there that are big cersei fans i'm like we have a pro Cersei. Everyone's ready to burn shit down right now. I love her. I love her. She just, she's wiling out, and I'm here for it every fucking step of the way. It's so funny you say that, because our patrons

really thought it was going one way. Even, so, Eliana wasn't in the last brunch happy hour. I did it solo, and they wore me down. They were like, I think it's this. I think it's this. And a couple of them did guess right.

And it was like, obviously right. And I, the last two brunches, even when Eliana was, before Eliana took a little leave, she also was at one where they did this to me, actually. So for three months, I would say straight. You remember, they had my ass. I was sitting there like my face. I don't turn red. I don't have enough blood supply for that. But like, I felt like I was. I was like, oh my god, am I turning pink? They really thought it was going to go one way. But then I stayed as silent as I could and really fucked with them psychologically

for the past two months and fed them different things in private conversations and public conversations. So much so that by the end of this, as of this week right now, they think it's Tyrion Lannister. They think we're doing Tyrion Lannister next. They think today, 8-14-2022, as I, under God's good eye and with my two friends, talk that we're doing Tyrion next, and we're not. We're not doing tyrian at all and i watched them break each other apart i watched them do full google sheets and i watched them change their minds all because of the things i did and did not say to them and in episodes they thought it was gonna be tyrian but eliana can you tell our friend zach here and everyone else who the next POV is

I just need to give also my take as I watch like because you also were like are you seeing this I'm like they had it they had it and then they were like they had it and then you know like let's say you know they're there they're at the end of you know let's say there's like a soccer or football game depending on what side of the

ocean you're at right they're like all the way down there they're about to score the goal, right? They're about to make it. You're not in the fucking goal, alright? You the goalie, I the goalie, neither of us are in the goal. And then they're like, what if we just turned around? And then they just turn around,

go all the way back down the field, and then they, like, fucking shoot the ball into their own net. Alright? They shoot it into their own net anyway so the next pov is bran stark it makes sense honestly everyone it makes perfect sense i mean tyrian also makes a lot of sense but i was just like jesus they had it they had it i'm sorry everyone i'm sorry i don't't mean to be mean, but I love you all so much, which is why this is so great for me to watch. I was like, what's happening?

What's happening? It's hard playing God. It's so hard playing God with these POVs. I'm so excited to cover Bran. I love him so much. Yeah, I actually really am excited to cover brand i love it yeah i actually really am excited to cover brand we've got a couple of guests um that we're hoping uh can join us to talk about brand and you know i've been looking forward to brand for a long time sorry i'm like crying a little as i think about it it's so funny i don't know why it's the funniest thing that's happened to me in like

three months you know that's probably the funniest best thing that's happened to me in three months i really gotta shout out to our patrons our discord is something special i'm in a lot of fan areas online but those discorders of ours there's something beautiful something wonderful and i really can't wait for hot d and the remaining nine povs with them. Wow! Whoa! Nine remaining POVs. So, George, you better start your engine. We're coming for you. The news is he's about to wrap up two viewpoints. One or two viewpoints this week.

Which is super exciting. It's just like us, wrapping up a viewpoint. Could be one or two of our remaining. Oh my god, we're just like George for real. For real, for real for real for real i can't wait for t-ball bestie oh my gosh actually though it's good fucking lady stoneheart myself um that was really probably more fun for me than anyone else but it was it felt good i feel good thank you thank you both you for this journey and who had the best journey but bran stark after all you know why do you think i think i think he's gonna have a good journey in the books all right he's not gonna wow no i agree i do agree i mean

he does have such a beautiful hero's journey and i am so excited to talk about it especially because this episode is the exact opposite of that, right? Like, it's like the nega Bran. It's like if Bran goes down this path, it's the Euron journey. It's so different. And we're definitely going to talk more about Brandon in this episode. Suckers. It's Bran.

I love Bran. Like, man, I'll never forget when I told Eliana that was my like my other fave pov besides sansa that bran was up there probably asha bran cat but bran is like my second favorite pov or first like tied with sansa i don't know i love them both they're my children so i just find it such an enriching fantastical almost like not just fantastical but also there's some enriching like because it's from him and i I know George feels weak about his character. Like he feels like he doesn't write him as strongly because of the age difference, you know,

understanding that age. I still feel like there's something really innocent and magical in that way as well about it. So I think the way that Bran sees all of this magic enveloping everything that he's involved in, I think that's really beautiful. And I love the prose and everything about him.'m so excited ah thanks thanks eliana for letting me do brand next what do you mean we came up with this order like four years ago we have i know and thank you then

too but thank you then too four years ago thank you for letting me four years ago do this POV next. It's very special to me. It is a special POV, yeah. Speaking of people who are special to us, our friend Warren sent us an email slash tweet of note in anticipation of the Varamyr episode. And we are going to actually, you know, touch on some of these today. Warren said,

Obviously, we can draw comparisons or possibilities from this prologue for john going into the winds of winter but there are a couple of more thoughts that strike me too which maybe maybe this should have also tipped warren warren warren could uh let everyone bran is also facing into a bit of a change in the winds of winter and some of the things he may face are addressed here too not just warging his wolf john and aria are doing that too but the ideas george plays with of warging another human through veramir could have ramifications in bran's arc particularly with regard to hodor i get more fascinated with bran on every reread and there's a taboo of cannibalism i know i've joked before about aria indulging in cannibalism via Nymeria and some Micah mints, but obviously the potential for Bran and Jojen taste exists, but also the possibility that he may, like Varamyr, consume human flesh while warging summer.

So glad you guys are back in tandem again. The GGC episodes are a highlight of my week. Me too, Warren. Me too. Me too. It's like a sign of my week me too warren me too me too me too it's like it's like a sign time that she has to talk to me you know that's true she can't ignore me if she's active oh that's beautiful oh it is beautiful i love that it's a good time to bond with someone you love about the stuff you like right right? We get along. He's in my D&D campaign. For now, until you kill him off.

Right, exactly. Until I want to become king. Oh my god, wow. Why do you think Zach came all this way? He's loved. All this way. There's no lightning round this week because we actually are going to explore all of varimere's

history in this episode i know we've seen him in the story right up until now in ggc canon canon girls gone canon canon is that anyways the ggc machine machine i don't know i don't know but um we you know we've seen him We saw him before in some Johnny Johnny chapters. Uh, we see the effect of him on the plot so far, but now we're really getting deep within Varamyr. Not in that way, but also that way. He's, you know, he's not a nice guy. Uh, Eliana, you have a thought on Varamyr.

Oh yeah. I mean, as you all know, we have an overview, right? Of every chapter before we do it, and I wrote here, you know, he's just a guy who likes hanging out with animals. He's just a guy. He's like a zookeeper, but not at all.

Dr. Doolittle, if you will. Oh my god, he's like Eliza Thornberry. No, he's nothing like Eliza Thornberry. He doesn't even have a hot sister that's so true brother oh my god but donnie thornberry is rickon oh my god sansa is eliza thorn no she debbie is debbie's eliza no fuck anyways aria is eliza thornberry debbie is Sansa, and Eliza is Arya.

Ned is Norbert? Is Bran Darwin? Yeah! Because of the animal connection? Yes! Oh my god. Because Dottie's Rickon, I mean, and then fuck those other guys. Right, yeah, they don't matter. No one cares about Rabberjohn. They're dead

anyway. Both of them. Well. You know, Varamyr was not meant to be a POV. He got a cute little birth. He gets a lot of births in this episode. God, he's brought to life. His first kiss actually came from George R.R. Martin, right? Because originally, there's a little book called A Feast for Crows.

We talked about this last week with Nate. I hope you guys have caught up. a feast for crows a dance with dragons were married they were they were in tandem once again and they were together forged together one book but then they were broken apart sadly because of you know they didn't really fit in a book very well because they were fucking huge and also it was a way to get the book out you know to the masses to us hungry hungry motherfuckers so varimir was not a pov in that book that book had pate patey pate pate that was our pov in the prologue so there was no very mere prologue so by that math this chapter in my opinion is very fitted to the book the last few pov chapters were

very like just able to be enrichingly along all the land and learning where you are and exploring you know pate walked up the cobblestones he went from this place to this place we saw everything in the citadel so george doesn't have to explain it as much in the winds of winter you know chet let us explore a little bit there more in a place we kind of somewhat knew. We had, of course, the Dragonstone introduction where we got heaping piles of prose and environment and, you know, the ranging beyond the wall. That was great to introduce us to that environment first, but now we've come back to the Haunted Forest with Varamyr, right? And this is very fitted to a lot of these central themes that warren just

spoke about in his email um it's just a very fitted chapter right like you really don't have a lot of fat fat that you eat there's some fat that gets eaten actually there's a lot of fat that gets eaten but um you don't have a lot of it it's very lean it fits well i think it's a quick read but a very deeply ghastly read yeah and it's interesting the forward back forward back the memories and the real uh we see georgie's at a lot in different characters like ned and reek and a couple other characters that have some intense flashbacks so i'm excited to jump into this with you all so let's do it we start out with some sensory information of the night was rank with

the smell of man i know that feeling the work stops and smells a bunch of stuff like plants people and a bunch of animals also death and rotting so right off the bat the vibe check here is this could be a brand chapter when you first grab this book you could be like oh shit we're starting with some brand organ cool and then very quickly you learn that no no no no no no no very different creature here but i like what you guys were just saying about the prologue as a whole because you're a hundred percent right in the to go forward we have to go back and that's what this prologue feels like is George took the time to say let's circle back around now

we haven't been north of the wall in a prologue since Storm of Swords with the fist and so let's bring this back around and bring the others back to the forefront but not only that because I think this and this is my hot take feast is the best

book this is the best prologue i think and out of all of them the very mere one interesting because of how well it sets up the themes of this book not just and i think it gets overshadowed with everyone thinks you know john snow it's setting up the second life and that's what the Jon Snow's resurrection we know old news it's the other things that are much more interesting about it to me all the the Bran Stark like you mentioned there's some Euron imagery in here which is horrifying very much so even some Dany stuff with the to go forward we have to go back and you just said back forth back forth with him thinking about his origin story and how he wasn't he he was sort of like danny in the way he was given away and just shipped off to hagen here you go now you're under someone and there's a lot of different

allusions to all these characters and i think that's what just gets forgotten about this prologue is that george is never just making one point with a prologue it's not just the second life that's meant to be looked at here it is the fact that wargs can force things out of other animals uh force other people out of other animals and there's so much here that very little of this chapter as you said feels like fat it all feels necessary to the vibe here which is horror again again we're back to the horror vibes very quickly it's very much a horror chapter and i'm not very much i respect horror i'm it's not for me usually i'm a little bitch but like it i think horror is so much different than like a scary movie too i think there's so many different aspects of it, right?

There's the sensory of it all, all five of the senses. How are your senses being configured or changed or obstructed, right? How is it affecting you in that aspect and how you perceive the horror in the suspense? Suspense and thriller is often a big proponent you know like keeping a human being anxious and waiting that is a that's a way to really push someone to their limit emotionally so i love that idea of george coming back to this because he's such an avid horror writer and him bringing these elements of it it's kind of mastercraft of it? Like he's shown this is some of his mastery that he's able to do this. He's so good at it. Yeah.

The House of the Undying is one of his best chapters ever. And Nate and I said it on ours that the show fucked it up by not making that a horror sequence. Because of how Danny's literally being chased by something that's shuffling after her. And it gives me goosebumps to this day it's just horrifying the fist of the first men horrifying it's but it's a mastercraft of a chapter because george does this building of suspense this slow here's a man who who's about to have nothing left to lose at all in the world and throw him in the middle of a literal zombie apocalypse. And let's see how dark we can fucking get here.

Because like there ain't no M rating on this book. Like he's free to do as he wants. So and he goes buck wild with this prologue. It's kind of fun, too, when there's nothing to lose right like you he knows he can dispose of this character he knows that it's like not important what happens to veramir to any of us if that makes sense right like it's not important what happens to veramir so he can actually play with it sandbox style like fire and blood like some of these outer pieces he's created or lended his brain to um he could explore those things without repercussion in his book or heavy repercussion

like varamir's death in this story the way he writes it has such heavy implication for the plot but he could have just killed varamir in a battle at the fist or something and no one would have blinked it's not an important thing we almost think he's dead at the end of storm with john seeing him get burned out of the the eagle because john is standing right next to him varamir is told to guard john and val and john tries to go for the the horn of winter and the shadow cat gets in front of him and he's like oh shit that shadow cat's fucking hot i wish i had one and and then varamir starts grabbing his head and he's like oh fuck me this hurts and his head, and he's like, oh, fuck me, this hurts, and he falls, and Jon's like, oh, that sucks to suck, I guess. And, like, that's it.

Like, no more of Varamyr, and so you could be forgiven for thinking, yeah, no, he died there. Like, he got his brain burned out for some weird reason that we don't understand, and that's off page. And then George, I think brilliantly, saw, like, no, like, now I need, I need a character for this prologue. Let me bring him back and kill him on page, but in a useful way that tells things that I'm going to need to set up for future books or for the end of this book and beyond, especially coming right off a feast with the big broken man themes of feast. We with a literal a literal broken man from a literal broken army running they're still this is them fleeing stannis still and it's that they turned and broke and they're they're off and the desperation here rings so true that's such a great point that i

mean yeah veramir absolutely is one of the broken men that we see, especially in everything that is used to describe what broken men are like. And in regards to that horror movie aspect, obviously, you know, the chapter very much follows a lot of those elements. I don't actually watch any horror movies because I'm very soft. But, like, absolutely, the chapter ends quite horrifically. But, you know, to be like that, though, like the monster. Sure, yeah, it's the Others and the Whites. But really, because we're not getting this from Thistle's POV, the POV chapter is the monster. Varamyr is the horror monster, is the serial killer who I guess keeps serially getting killed, too.

But anyway. You're right. old two but anyway you're right and it's great coming off of you know in thinking of that same byline that the books have been split now even though they were once one if the book was still one and if this was the prologue pov instead of pate the last chapter would have been lady stoneheart right bringing kind of that idea of undead rising right back to the forefront which would have been an interesting link to have these be side by side i did read those chapters together just to kind of think about them and the worminess of it all right uh the flesh had gone pudding soft in the water and turned the color curdled milk half her hair was gone the rest turned as white

and brittle as the crones beneath her ravaged scalp her face was shredded skin and black blood where she raked herself with her nails but her eyes were the most terrible thing her eyes saw him and they hated not unlike the transformation later for him right as he sees the white that was his lover isish, you know, ish. I don't know how I want to classify that relationship. Moving on, glossing over this. This chapter is great because it's like an intro to magic, an intro to skin changing, an intro to warging, a history, 101, right?

The ethics, the traditions, or the ethics lack thereof ethics. All these things are deeply embedded into skin changing and that hunger and consumption and we get that line next of a man alone was a feeble thing big and strong with good sharp eyes but dull of ear and depth to smells which goes so well with even the overarching theme of dragons in this book in what master of dragons is like master that's like dragons are op like they're like that's an op class of having some sort of creature on your side omega fucking beasts um but quentin end of the book he's merely a man in front of those dragons right he doesn't he

stands in front of the dragon and says oh he's he's a feeble thing. He can have sharp eyes. He can have, you know, good senses. But he could not dance with dragons. And he did not clearly have very good senses. Or else he would have had the sense to not do what he did. Look, I like both Nate and Zach, but Nate would get burnt by a dragon before Zach would, I think. Fascinating. Because Zach- I'd be fucking out.

Nate would be like, ooh, this could be fun. He'd be like, oh, what if I'm the only man that ever lived against dragons? I have the drop of dragon blood. I'll do it. He would. He would. But you would be like, uh-uh, I'm not doing that shit. I would die, motherfucker.

I would die if I stood in front of that. Like, you know, sensible. Nate's over here like, I could write a theory about it after. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Nah, no way way no way yeah so that's my question then for uh for you two is is are we equating wargs on a side then to the similar a power of dragons or or maybe a step down but it is a one of those powerful chess pieces to

have it's a you. It's a bishop. It can move all the way across the board. And dragons warging seems to be the two fundamental magic powers that were the greensight, the warging, and the dragons that are circling each other in this dance that we're doing. And so are wargs an equal but opposite power to the dragons and it seems like that could be what this chapter is starting to also allude at is that men can't stand up to dragons and they also can't seem to stand up to wargs either if the wargs really are are after it or are hungry for it and so it seems like it could

be an equating there's something interesting and like so danny has that in innate sense that she has to separate herself from her dragons because she seems to be finding herself connecting so hard with her dragons and becoming uh more lateral to them than human beings, right? Understanding more like, why shouldn't they fucking eat everyone? Good for them. Have fun, babies. Dragons are better than people. Yeah, exactly.

You're doing amazing, sweeties. You're doing amazing. And that's the same hunger that we're seeing equated here, right? You could stay forever, a thousand years inside of your mouth that you choose. you could stay forever a thousand years inside of your mouth that you choose and even here with with the wolves and with bran and bran one i read bran one to kind of get into this feeling wise and you could stay in summer for years it's easier and it's so easy to let yourself slip in that dichotomy and that conflict between like who am i and what should i be choosing and how am i supposed to be ruling and leading that's really hard and it's like we see the starks right now actually descending into like

keeping to their wolves right as much as they can sans had never got that chance obviously aria had to reject her wolf as well in order to go you know leave and be safe and let her be safe and then go east rickens with his um bran is ever so much with his and john is even more so i would say and uh ripped to graywind but it's sad because we're seeing them cling to it and we're seeing that conflict magically kind of arise within them where danny is having to kind of intel dance shelve them and she's letting it free too and kind of uh yoloing one could say hugor hilling one could say even yolo hey hey hey hey nice nice well done thanks but you know when it comes to all the skin changing stuff we see that wargs you know specifically the the wolves that are

warred skin changed by humans wargs don't fear men, though wolves do. And so this wolf, warg, calls to his brother and sister. His brother, at the moment, only has one eye. They're going to go hunt now. And they near the prey, and then they hear swords and spears. It's a pack of humans with a wee bab, and they are dangerous because of their weapons and their fear. So the warg commands the wolf the order in which they should attack all these humans and to go for the men first, and then the humans attack,

and then so do the wolves who win and feast on the people's meat, and they savor the baby on the now pink snow. Leagues away in a one-room hut of mud and straw with a thatched roof and a smoke-hole and a floor of hard-packed earth varamir shivered and coughed and licked his lips his eyes were red his lips cracked his throat dry and parched but the taste of blood and fat filled his mouth even as his swollen belly cried for nourishment a A child's flesh, he thought, remembering Bump. Human meat. Had he sunk so low as to hunger after human meat? He could almost hear Hagin growling at him. Men may eat the flesh of beasts, and beasts the flesh of men,

but the man who eats the flesh of man is an abomination. Abomination. That had always been hagan's favorite word abomination abomination abomination to eat of human meat was abomination to made as wolf with wolf was abomination and to seize the body of another man was the worst abomination of all. Abranination? Abromination. Abomination. Obomination.

Oh, my God. Oh, wait. Hope. Hashtag hope. Oh, God. It was 08 when that happened. So it's interesting here because Varamyr thinks of the scent when we first jump in, where he's like, oh, yeah, I smell seal and wolf.

And those are human smells as well, because only and he says specifically only man stripped the skins from other beasts and wore their hides and hair. Which is real fucking hypocritical coming from someone who literally slips skins and dives in. And so then I got real deep into it because i was coming here and nate was here and i have to be better than nate so i started looking into wargs just you know in mythology and i ended up breaking down because the word warg originates from the old norse word of varir which is a wolf oh but var there it is shit oh okay okay okay damn right he went canon motherfuckers damn varir however derives from a germanic root which can be reconstructed as war gas war gas can be taken to mean either outlaw or criminal wolf, which is just real interesting in his sort of almost on-the-lamb feel

that Varamyr has here as he's fleeing through the haunted woods. But take that even deeper, and wargas can be derived from a proto-Indo-European root reconstructed as worg, which simply just means destroy. And that's what we see Varamyr doing almost his entire run is just destroying everything that he interacts with. And it makes me wonder if that's not what all wargs do is just destroy. And we especially, you know, going into the abomination and I mean, we get this quote here that we just i just read is the highlights of of this chapter and the things that hagen taught him and why an abomination is so closely tied with bran in my mind because that's the route he may be taking and it's just interesting here that work the the word broken down to its one of its roots can just mean simply destroy.

And I don't know if maybe that was in Martin's mind when he started making wargs as this sort of very powerful magical entity in his world. But maybe they're not as good as the Stark implication makes them out to be. A warg? A warg? A warg?

A warg. A warg. Sorry sorry I couldn't help it that is Eliana's first reaction I'm always like a word to a worm that's crazy that Varamyr's name is literally in that that's really crazy and I think we're definitely

seeing that like ward can go down the total bad avenue like you can go too deep and then it makes it so sad because what's the point of having this magical connection and not being able to imbue yourself into it and not be able to exercise it and use it as much and like you know great power great responsibility all that bullshit yeah very interesting and we're definitely seeing this is the dark route right this is yes bad yeah um and we're seeing bran especially in brand one we're seeing him play with that yeah that's really great and i'm glad you brought that up because i was wondering but i didn't bother looking at it i was like where does the damn very come from so perfectly done that's why we invited zach yeah to be honest i got you

facts yo i bring them when you were the name pate came from right it we we picked it because specifically nate gave his name to that right it rhymes it rhymes with pate he's pate he's nate exactly exactly uh george named it for him um knowing that we would cover this one day and so i yeah next you know coming back to how does veramere become this sort of person right who mostly destroys etc we we see his past he thinks of hagen again more his former teacher He sees Hagen as very weak and afraid of power as he remembers defeating Hagen's second life. And it was at that time that he learned the taste of human meat. Not that, you know, he'd ever eat a human as a human, but only when he's like role playing as a wolf. I love that George is like, how do I get wild in this chapter? Like, I know, let's just eat babies.

Yeah. He's like, how can I be volatile? And it is volatile. It's a little wild, Georgie. Something that's great. Of course, I was reading Bran 1, which we won't get to for a couple months. But in a couple months, you could hear us talk about Bran 1 and A Dance with Dragons. Less months than some people thought, thought actually if you think about it well it's not Tyrion Lannister next

yeah it's not sorry Zach sorry you know the Night's Watch deserters and everything even in quote this above passage it really reminds me of Bran wanted to dance with dragons like you said at the really reminds me of Bran Wanna Dance with Dragons.

Like you said at the top, Zach, any of this could be a Bran chapter. The straight up reads like one. So I'll read you a few snippets. Long leagues away, the boys stirred uneasily. Black, night splotch. They were night splotch. The dire wolf did not care.

They were meat. He was hungry. Leagues away, long leagues away, starts exactly the same as we come back to a little bit of what brand's experiencing blood flowed thick and sluggish from the slash across his throat the wolf lapped at it with his tongue licked the ragged eyeless ruin of his nose and cheeks then buried his muzzled neck and tore it open, gulping down a goblet of sweet meat. No flesh had ever tasted half as good.

A child's flesh, he thought, right? Remembering bump. Human meat. Yeah. It's not human meat, but you know, the similar, the slimmer. No, I don't know. I feel like we'd be really kind of eh. We're like less good pork. Anyway.

When Bran comes back, falling snow and feasting wolves began to dim. Warmth beat against his face, comforting as a mother's kisses. Fire, he thought. Smoke. That's interesting, right? Interesting.

That that magic reminds him of fire and smoke after he's been dining on the copper of the blood um i was thinking makes you think of blood magic oh that too mother's blood magic fire mother's kisses fire yeah rebirth death and rebirth and of course uh you know i love the his eyes were red his lips cracked his throat dry and parched even though he imbibes in another life and then there's this this little bit this one is like red flag first of all ran you're grounded you're absolutely grounded yes yes they they were his now they were pack no the boy whispered we have another pack lady's dead and maybe graywin too but somewhere there's still shaggy dog and nemeria and ghost remember ghost sorry i have to cry for a second

i'm pulling myself back together i'm in pain everything hurts i love my son this is great pulling in um i don't know i mean this passage completely matches some of a dance of dragons one for bran as well the pull between leading his new pack maybe even a bigger metaphor for leading a whole nation also versus staying human bran the boy staying with the stark family i just felt like such a pull between these two and some of what you can see that Bran's character has to kind of suffer between I could go back to my brothers and sister but I could stay in summer right now

and eat motherfuckers which also tastes delicious and it also brings up some of those cannibalism vibes I know Eliana you're going to be all over this this is your thing Eliana is actually a professional cannibalism vibes right i know eliana you're gonna be all over this this is your your thing eliana is actually a um professional cannibalism analyst analyst analyst analyst anal you know eliana does cannibalism and i wasn't sure you're gonna like tell people i'm a professional cannibal i was like that is not true that's what i thought too and i was like oh wow where is this

going what's worse professional cannibal or professional animal? Actual cannibal Shia LaBeouf. Cannibal, yeah. Army hammer? Oh my gosh. So the wolves need to eat too, is how Varamyr really justifies all of this, right? And people would die anyways, people die in the north.

And he thinks they would have perished soon in any case from exposure or starvation this way was better quicker a mercy so of course i'm brought back to stannis's village right with the cannibals going on there as people die and they're hungry they're like well may as well eat my dude over here um they resort to cannibalism they're burnt for the crime though they didn't really kill anyone. They just ate another soldier. So legally, I think they were good. But Asha, of course, suspects there are many other cannibals in the camp that haven't yet been caught. So more to come in the wind's winner.

Yeah, bad times all around for those people. And there is, I mean, there's just great language in this chapter, right? You were talking about how everything's like really tight, very meaningful. And because of that, a lot of stuff carries double meanings. Like I feel, you know, there's this line earlier where they're, they described the trees as having teeth. And I think that really sets the tone, right? That imagery gives that, again, horror movie aspect that you're talking about it from the very few horror scenes that I've ever watched. And it gives this tone of hunger and consumption to this chapter. And it also

reminds us a little bit of the faces on the weirwood trees, because that is a big part of what's going on here in the North. And we're going to see one in a bit. Varamyr repeats a mercy aloud and nears the fire wounded this will have warned him that that might happen she's a hardened spearwife his last companion uh because no one wants to be his friend the rest deserted or fell behind or went who knows where not that veramir gives a fuck he regrets not skin changing one of those people and taking one anyway afraid someone would notice that's why you have no friends and hagan's haunted him, but mostly he was afraid that he would get killed, which, that's his trauma speaking. And they had been fleeing the carnage at the Wall. Lots of talk, but mostly aimless. They'd escaped

the Watch only to die to cold, sickness, starvation, or each other. Their leaders are all dead or captured. Thistle claims and mourns. Well, except for Varamyr, whom she doesn't recognize because he's actually not that famous. Well? Without his beasts, he did not look like a great man. I was Varamyr Sixskins, who broke bread with Mance Rayder.

He had named himself Vamir when he was ten, a name fit for a lord, a name for songs, a mighty name in fearsome. Yet he had run from the crows like a frightened rabbit. The terrible Lord Veramir had gone craven, but he could not bear that she should know that. So he told the spear wife that his name was hagen afterward he wondered why that name had come to his lips of all those he might have chosen i ate his heart and drank his blood and still he haunts me oh my god i love that so much though yeah it's not like not not a though. Yeah. I really love that. It's something kind of dark, right? Like, all right, that's the person that I blame all of my life on.

So why not just put my sins upon them? I love that. Dark, very dark. And he starts to remember all the people telling them where to go with conflicting ideas, like Mother Mole leading people to the sea. And he thinks he's too weak to go with them ideas like mother mole leading people to the sea and he thinks he's too weak to go with them knows he'd never see the sea and his true death is soon he got stabbed for a squirrel skin cloak scavenged from a woman who died at the wall he'd been injured from the battle at the wall fleeing and had lost all of his stuff even the golden arm

rings he got from man's oh no he's ashamed of running but it was survival so he stole the cloak and then he was stabbed by a hiding boy the dead woman's son oh my god it's ali from game of thrones she died at the hands of other free folk the hornfoot men so we we talked earlier about how this this prologue serves to set up many, many things. This is one of my favorite setups, and it's one of the, I think, I've missed it almost every single time, is that Varamyr was stabbed by a wee little baby, and Sir Kevin's going to go the same way at the end of the book. Oh, what? And so it is a literal, you know, their lives are taken the same way, essentially.

And in an almost similar sort of vibe, because if you'll indulge me for just a second, one of you made the point that the eyes of others in whites are often referenced as stars, which we'll talk about later. But just this little blip from Storm is, talk about later but uh just just this little blip from storm is the sound was shocking ear piercing and thick with agony varamir fell writhing and the cat was screaming too and high high in the eastern sky against the wall of cloud john saw the eagle burning for a heartbeat it flamed brighter than a star wreathed in red and gold and orange its wings beating wildly at the air as if it could still fly from the pain higher and higher and higher

it flew still and so it's that very similar there's a consumption here that's occurred up up did a part of him die? One of you made the note of our friend Beric my lord Beric and that the similar many deaths that he is very mere losing a little bit of himself

each time here and at the end he's willing to do the terrible terrible thing that we see but yeah I just I really like the fact that he goes out like Kevin and just gets shanked by a kid. Don't touch my mom's shit, yo. Like Ashtray from Euphoria. Oh my God.

Oh my gosh. That's who he was. And that kid was Ashtray i thought it was ollie which hbo's child is this chloe corporate wanted me to find a difference they're the same picture they're the same picture except i actually liked ashtray and i did not like ollie i'm sorry i'm sorry it's not ollie's fault it was about the writing yeah i get that those are some interesting ideas that are going on there and really kind of i wonder how that'll if that'll come back with the dragons and stuff too that higher and higher and

but obviously the dying i mean i'm sure dying fucks with your head right george is always really about that and i'm sure i mean probably probably maybe in regards to consumption right like and back to this idea of cannibalism we have this bloodbath that's at the wall and the enemies on all sides which of course is a warning of what's to come in the winds of winter and a dream of spring with the chaos and people like breaking and running against you know enemies but that carnage after you know the factions they turn on one another with the loss of their leaders it's it's actually very much like something we've already seen happen in westeros with a clash of kings you know there was that whole war you know the war of the five kings allegedly and you know

the idea of them being doomed and everything falling apart after the guy holding it all together uh dies it's also a little bit like the splintering of the northern forces right after rob's death and them turning on one another mostly because of ruse bolton's fault whatever um or even some of the southern armies after renly's death or even we see it happen to drogo's khalasar when he dies it happens a lot this is something that is a point that's being made about leadership and you also have this explaining that the woman died not at the hands of sanis's knights nor of the night's watch and that's important right to that motif of cannibalism it was the hornfoot men allegedly kind of one of their own amongst the

free folk they're on the same side as the woman you know of the same peoples that killed this woman and so they're feeding on the does of their own now just as veramir is doing so right as he tries to take that take the cloak which by the way is also animal skin yeah very broken man like zach was saying like it really does feed into like this is yeah after you break from battle this is how people survive they're in survivor mode and realistically like he kind of made the wrong or the right choice by not going with mother mole right because the odds were not great but he died all the same right so i didn't have a better option reveramere kind of a toss-up this is actually the very first like big reference of

mother mole in the series by the way uh we're sitting here knowing all about her but this is our first read we'd go who who the fuck are you talking about we would forget all about her she becomes such a cop a topic of contention amongst the watch and john snow chapters in 7 and 13 she's very prominently featured actually. And we know that she and the Free Folk are barely surviving out east, so Jon starts to arm the Night's Watch to assist and help now that we are, you know, marrying

in the Night's Watch with the Free Folk. He plans to send further supplies and resources to help relieve them. And in a way, Mother Mole's appearance in Jon's plot plays almost a similar bookend appearance to Mirri Maz Duur in Dany's plot. Jon, a little more indirectly, right? We don't actually have her talking to Jon.

But it offers conflict in having the Night's Watch send resources to aid the Free Folk, who just so happens Jon is already kind of overextending himself in the eyes of all of his brothers when it comes to stannis and the free folk and it kind of leads to his imminent death right where miriam as door plays a role in drogo's death in some aspects but danny plays a bigger one i suppose is the the lesson that's learned is what miriam as door says the lesson is learned i think it's don't smear mud in your wound, but you know, I'm not a doctor. Seek medical treatment. Maybe. Yeah. I mean, we should learn that through the pandemic by now. We should learn a lot of things

from the pandemic. Mother Mole is also interesting because you know, Hardhome continues those horror vibes. We get that terrifying fucking letter, which is, you know, dead home, continues those horror vibes. We get that terrifying fucking letter, which is, you know, dead things in the water, dead things, like, ugh. So it's that through line again of

these poor wildlings are just fucked, no matter where they go. There is no good option, and I think that's, Chloe, you had mentioned it, of, you know, if he didn't go with Mother Mole, he still dies. There is no, no like because they're talking about going up to fens in the frost fangs and they're like why the fuck would you go there when they're all leaving anyway it's there is no option because that's where the the dead are coming from and it's it's horrible they're like let these just let these people south please like they're people just let them south thistle is a real a real

interesting little little spear wife here because where does she come from out of fucking nowhere which is pretty cool and uh i have more to say here in a bit on her but it's just it's real martin's real good in this prologue about making again knowing i think a little bit more where dance was going having to split the books he's real good about starting these threads of mother mole and and getting the hard home little tidbit out there so that that's somewhere in the reader's subconscious when you know john eventually is like oh yeah hard home we'll we'll start interacting there and you're like i've heard about that but i there was some mole hill or something i don't know it was cool and so it's it's just brilliant the way he's yeah you forget about it when it comes back up it's like oh shit

right right mother mole i heard that name before and you actually have to literally reopen your book like a nerd i love that shit we've all done it we've all done it. We've all done it. Varamyr thinks they're all doomed with Mance dead, including the watch. Everyone's out of the wall because the enemy was coming. Hagen's rough voice echoed in his head. You'll die a dozen deaths, boy, and everyone will hurt. But when your true death comes, you'll live again. The second life is simpler and sweeter, they say. Thank you.

That was inspired. I was thinking of several packs of cigarettes a day that's all I could figure out for Hagen his death is coming soon Varamio feels haha buddy his last death had been by fire inside and we get a montage of all the different

times he's died which Eliana assumes is like the trailer to the Shrek spinoff, Puss in Boots The Last Wish. Eliana, do you have more to say about that? Or was that it about that one? That's all I had to say about that trailer. I've only watched the trailer. I've not watched the movie. Sorry.

Me either. I haven't kept up with the Shrek IP. I'm not familiar with the IP. I reference Shrek a lot because it is a classic but I haven't I just haven't kept up the later ones aren't

they're not as much of a foundational piece as the original exactly two as Jamie Lannister and a fucking I need a hero like badass segment of, like, amazingness. They went big, and then track three, what happened?

Corporate sellouts. Right, right, of course. Never go to the third. You never. Exactly. That's how we ended up with Puss in Boots to Last Wish, but... Exactly. We do get an interesting tidbit here that like the immense pain of the fire, etc.

And in general, right, seems to push someone out of the body that they're skin changing, which seems important considering that's how we see Thistle end up ejecting Varamyr in a bit. Oh, that's a good point. That's a great point to kind of bring up Thistle here because George was particular about naming this particular character, I believe, because Thistle is actually a common name for a group of plants that are, they seed, they have lots of seeds. But the main thing that they're named for is they have leaves with sharp prickles. Now, these prickles can occur all over the plant, but the only point they serve is to prevent them from being eaten by herbivores or being consumed. And so Thistle is one of the few people we see to reject someone out of taking over their body.

She literally is pricking the fuck out of Varamyr when he jumps in. And this was a rabbit hole, so bear with me here. There's a whole story in Scottish kingdom lore of an army, and they were trying to attack at night, and a guard ended up stepping on a thistle and gave away his position because it fucking hurt. And from that, this whole order was established, the Scottish Order of the Thistle. And they have a motto, which is, Nemo me impune lesset, which means no one provokes me with impunity.

Or later, there is a bastardized version of that, which is no one can harm me unpunished. And that's exactly what we see at the end of this, is Varamyr suffers for trying to jump into Thistle. And it is graphic and very much so. I think George intended that to be that Thistle appears, even though Varamyr contradicts himself and says she's a badass looking spear wife. She's a tough little thing. But then he's like, oh, no, I'll take her real easy.

And it doesn't end up being an easy fight at all and i think that is inherent in the name of thistle and i just very much so like that because justice for fucking thistle amen for real though yeah she cared for this man and then he she tried to help and he doesn't deserve the help veramir deserves no rights none whatsoever now the first time veramir died was at six for his father's axe, but the fire was the worst maddening. And of course, very much Beric vibes, right? Your lord, Beric, Zach, with his many deaths,

especially after Catelyn's revival. And it brings me back to that passage that even brave men blind themselves when they're afraid to see how many times have you brought me back now? It's R'hllor who brings you back to that passage that even brave men blind themselves when they're afraid to see how many times have you brought me back now it's for lore who brings you back the lord of light i'm only his instrument how many times six and each time harder you've grown reckless is death so very sweet so good so many barrick vibes and the fire's out so veramir tries to start it again uh kind of a small prayer he gives to the nameless gods and he gets no answer of course and no fire either which really fucking sucks so veramir tries to call thistle for help we get this take on how ugly she is and his regrets at not skin changing her she's been gone a while good Good for her. Two to three days getting food. And he wonders if she saw through him.

Faramir has some abandonment issues, apparently. And this was just the latest because his mother abandoned him, crying for his brother Bump. We're going to find out why she's crying for his brother Bump, though, which also might explain why his abandonment issues are kind of weird. Just before his dad violently kicked him out again. To live with Hagen and other skin changers. Hagen taught him how to hunt, fish, butcher, survive, and how to work in skin change, though he was stronger. By that time, as Eliana has written, to give credit to the one true writer here, the artist formerly known as L lump by the presidents of the

united states of america band who's in your head went back home triumphantly his parents were dead returned to the earth get lump a therapist you know um a lot of things at this point lump is lumps wild and out. Literally. Literally wilding out. Lump. He's lump. I also think it's real interesting that Hagen. Hagen is the alternate that we get to Bloodraven. And the way

their teachings differ, because Bloodraven, as we know, will be introduced in this book, because Bran Stark was absent in Feast. And we also get we get the one of my favorite chapters of the series which is the the cycles of the moon where bran spends the entire month doing stuff and we get that passage of time by the moon and right the montage and that's where he's learning stuff and then in the very first chapter of that book we've got hagen here who some of his lessons seem a little odd a little a little weird to me but also i like that there's just a a group of

wargs that like all wildlings know how to contact and like they know their little secret hippie commune in the woods that they can just go to and be like here take our kid because he's doing stuff that's weird and like it's just an interesting like where is this group of wargs and are they like still chilling around or is this just they've all died out because that's what they do or is there still just a sect of wargs somewhere out there that's like hey we're fucking awesome and we're doing our thing it's just an interesting point that george is throwing out there that there are people who know a a set of laws or restrictions or guidelines of morality in this warging and who who laid that down is that from the children of the forest themselves or is that something that goes even right who yeah yeah they're like they're a little mini

society right there's subculture and they're kind of the outcast right in a way that it it reminds me a little of like the society that we see some of the performers the mummers have and they have their codes honestly hagen seems like a pretty decent mentor passing i mean teaches him how to hunt fish butcher survive and like again teaches lump these rules but interestingly brand's getting none of brand's not getting any of this tutelage and it's funny because the next passage it shows up it has some quotes that like this could just be a brand or a john chapter right in their advanced learning area lump you know he thinks lump didn't want to be a clot of earth.

Again, very, could have started that for a brand chapter. That he had dreamed of a day when bards would sing of his deeds and pretty girls would kiss him. When I'm grown, I'll be the king beyond the wall. Lump promised himself and eventually, you know, he becomes very mere six skins with as many animals. Men fear him. He has a snow bear, 13 feet tall, three wolves,

a shadow cat, and he sits at the right hand of Mance Rayder and says, it was Mance who brought me to this place. I shouldn't have listened. I should have slipped in my bear and torn him to pieces. Boo. Before Mance, Varamyr Sixskins had been a lord of sorts. He lived alone in a hall of moss and mud and hewn logs that had once been haggins, attended by his beasts. A dozen villages did him homage in bread and salt and cider, offering him fruit from their orchards and vegetables from their gardens. His meat he got himself. Whenever he desired a woman, he sent his shadow cat to stalk her,

and whatever girl he'd cast his eye upon would follow meekly to his bed. Some came weeping, aye, but still they came. Veramir gave them his seed, took a hank of their hair to remember them by, and sent them back. From time to time, some village hero would come with spear in hand to slay the beastling and save a sister or a lover or a daughter. he killed but he never harmed the women some he even blessed with children runts small puny things like lump and not one with the gift but at least he has the gift and i do love like the effect of power and names right because we see that with aria taking different names and monikers and faces and euron going as the crow's eye bran becoming the three-eyed crow maybe uh daenerys as khaleesi

you're embracing daenerys stormborn or any of the other titles you could possibly apply to her john as whatever targaryen name you think it might be there's also something interesting in like taking that identity and burying the tasks and the crimes that you've committed onto the an identity right like the vulture king and the vulture king 2.0 in fire and blood we see the second vulture king in the first even they're just pathetic right like they're just weak men like he said earlier weak men um but the atrocities they committed were by that badass name and under that moniker and not the actual person there's a lot of that for the winds of winter to come i feel like and speaking to the weak men he's he's talking about mance he should have torn him to pieces wouldn't the smart move if you can do it wouldn't

the smart move be to jump mance's bones and become a king like you know why why aim low and kill him why and and then you know you're you're an enemy of the fucking state. No wildling within, you know, existence is going to trust you or aid you. So why not jump Mance's bones, take a couple weeks to, like, get used to, like, the shimmy shake, and then, you know, you're the fucking king beyond the wall. What's up? And instead, his thought goes to, oh, I should have jumped into my bear who fucking hates me, BT dubs, and wants me dead so that I can rip Mance Rayder apart, which just shows his nuts. This is just like what Illuminary on the podcast said last week, if only Pate was a smarter little finger.

Oh my god. I think I tuned that one out, Chloe. I don't know. I was trying to make some lump bump drama happen here. I think I tuned that one out, Chloe. I don't know. I don't think... Don't try to make some lump-bump drama happen here. Yeah, it's a reality show at Girl Scout and Cannon, guys. Come on. No, but that's actually a great idea, though. But it's also interesting, right?

Because he does, he idolizes Mance, right? It actually really reminds me of how Stannis feels about Robert to some extent and and like he wants me he he wants to be Mance but also maybe like first of all he wasn't willing to cross the taboo yet but if he were to be Mance then Mance couldn't give him the pat pat recognition that he so dearly wants from yeah yeah yeah absolutely right yep but he wants both it's an interesting tension well he does the same thing here with Jon Snow it's these better men these men who could be kings that he's like they have something I want just something though I don't want to be them I just want this little piece that they have

that direwolf that would make me more kingly Mce's king beyond the wall moniker is i think what he respects and that's where you know hey i'm three skins now i'm five skins now i'm six skins and i don't think he would have fucking voldemort did this shit up to 99 skins so i'm horror crossing across the north just to try to emulate that one title of king beyond the wall. And you know, you know, Mance is the guy. Mance is the guy. Varamyr Sixskins is a lieutenant. And so it's just interesting that it's little bits of people

in these kings, Jon Snow, Mance Rayder, that he wants to covet things from because he ain't no, he ain't shit. Varamyr ain't shit. He's got 99 skins, but a bitch ain't one. But a he ain't no he ain't shit veramir ain't shit he's got 99 skins but a bitch ain't one but a bitch ain't one but he tried to he actually tried yep he wanted the hundredth yeah a bitch was one and it was veramir at one point like he jumped into the bitch to you know yeah yeah but i like what you're saying of you know he wants to be like he wants to be like

one of these better men but he can't do it because he's not. Because he's, as you said, he's a shitty guy and he wants to be respected so badly, but he doesn't understand that to be respected, the thing that Mance and John did was they respected other people, but Varamyr doesn't respect anyone but himself. He doesn't even respect himself that much. That's so true. He does respect himself that much that's so true he does being honest so true he needs therapy and his relationship with his animals is different yeah animals are better than people too but like i mean i feel that like i see a deer dad i'm way sadder you know i didn't even know that deer yeah i'm fucking sad right we we look at john and john and coast they're like they're

buds they're best friends they're bffs the starks and they're they're wolves and him he's like yeah no this bear would literally rip my fucking throat out if it had the if i let it go it's slavery for him it's not yeah it's not a willing i don't know he does say that like dogs and wolves are a little bit easier to slip into but like summer and bran there seems to be a connectivity ghost and john there's an understanding even gray wind and rob when we had them there's this connectivity with the starks and their wolves maybe that's just wishful thinking on me because i like the starks but it does seem like there's a difference yeah right between veramir and what he's doing where it seems just

something you don't want to watch or look at or or look too closely at where in the starks you're like yeah that's cute it's they have a doggo i want a doggo i do they're cruder animals i get it you know it's like it's not as classy and neat as the Starks with their dire wolves. It is cruder. It's darker. I love that. Fear pushes him to stand and at the door he realizes that it's snow and it's buried the hut. He pushes at it and the night was white as death.

Hmm. He looks out at the snow and buried huts and the pale shadow of a weirwood armored in ice and calls for thistle yeah so again a lot of that language and imagery here of uh you know the others are coming which we know by the end of this chapter because also that happens a lot in the prologues you know it's typical so we have again that language of death being white, right? Like the night was white as death. And also these pale, that kind of sounds like the pale terrifying bodies of the others and the whites, of course. And then, as Zach pointed out earlier, right? Like the eyes being like described as two blue stars. And then you have a language here of like a thousand stars watching them

at this evening and then also the armor of the weirwoods armored in ice and i'm like oh yes just like uh just like the others there's even that dream john has where he's armored in ice against his uh against the others in his dreams and it reminds me of that and then danny has the opposite right that she's fighting those armored in ice so it's definitely imagery george has brought in a few times and also the uh the stars above the dothraki you know they do believe that everything of import needs to be done under the open sky and the stars above the view and so perhaps we aren't seeing the last of varamir he may have a part yet to play in the grander Game of Thrones. Like Lufasa looking out at the stars.

Yeah, true, true, true. I thought we were going with like, you know, the others. You should consummate your marriage in front of the others. But there's that too. A thousand eyes in one. Oh my God. voyeurism oh we can add that to things happening in this there isn't actually that much voyeurism not enough not enough according to not enough for our tastes yeah we have exhibitionist ned stark and um so a wolf howls it's the very familiar voice of one eye the oldest the biggest of the wolf pack, unlike Stalker, who's the leaner, quicker, younger one.

Or Sly, who is more cunning. And they all fear One-Eye. And I was like, oh, yes, interesting. There is someone else in this book with One-Eye. There's a few. You can meet so many people, Eliana. Actually, though, there are actually a lot of people. So it's a thing. It's a few you can meet so many people eliana actually though there there are actually a lot of people so it's a thing it's a thing when the eagle burned varamir lost his other animals

including the bear who hated him and as you called out the shadow cat screaming which actually when i thought about it made me super sad cat screaming is very sad um but varamir did keep the wolves who kept him warm sometimes at night. Interesting. Reminds me of someone else, uh, though he knows that they'll feast on his flesh over the winter and he thinks, you know, that's just right. That's just how it should be as the wolves kept me alive. So he should they, and he kind of looks forward to eating his own body again in his second life.

Like this is the meal that he's looking forward to in planning. Some Huron shit. again in his second life like this is the meal that he's looking forward to and planning some urine shit he's like interesting um i'd love to eat me for my last meal my choice is me yeah i am a whole meal baby i am a snack i'm a fucking snack appetizer hors d'oeuvre i'm all of it i'm the entree i'm the dessert dessert you can have a meal with lady hornwood um my god i love taking her out to dinner yeah exactly so i had a thought while reading this is this do we know what village this is and is there any chance that this could be the village from samwell three in a storm of swords where gilly gets backed up against the tree and they meet cold hands interesting right that would be great it's just a shitty empty village because sam searches it and there's

nothing and so it and this is where sam kills uh fights small paul as a white and and all that and yeah and gilly gets backed against the tree and i just couldn't help but thinking like there would be some symmetry in varamir dying in this little village here and the one that sam and gilly made their daring escape with cold hands from it's just real interesting because that could mean that perhaps the the eyes in the the sky the stars is actually blood raven because bloodraven is known to check in on that village with his creepy little crows and such. And so it could be that they are,

he is being watched right now a little more than he thinks. An interesting tinfoil, Zach. Nate's not the only one who can do it. You guys, come on, man. I definitely think he's watching, Nate's not the only one who can do it you guys come on man

I definitely think he's watching for sure and I mean it's the haunted forest so it could be any of this area you know none of it's really mapped very well by the Westerosi common eyes and tongue not so much we get some exposition of how dogs are easiest

to skin change almost human but wolves are harder. They can be befriended or broken, but never tamed. Wolves and women wed for life, Hagenhofen said. You take one, that's a marriage. The wolf is part of you from that day on, and you're part of him. Both of you will change. That wasn't the same voice as earlier, but you know, I'm finding myself in this. I'm finding myself.

That makes me think of Janaris a little bit. Not to bring Janaris up, but, you know, wolves and women wed for life. It makes me think of Jane's loyalty to Rob, for example. You know, I think of it in a much more uh figurative sense not just you know wolves and bitches fucking but it makes me think of what melisandre and mel one adobada said or saw sorry in the flames the flames cracked softly and in their crackling she heard the whispered name john snow his long face floated before her lined in tongues of red and orange, appearing, disappearing again, a shadow

half-seen behind a fluttering curtain. Now he was man, now a wolf, now a man again. And, to be fair, the last woman that he mated with did die. That is true. She did. She did, and, uh,

it was bad times. And bummer for all. Bummer for all. Oh, my God. He knows. Dang, you really did just crash course. You really did just crash course all our shit, huh? Better for all has had me, like, my boss has noticed me laughing at that one.

Are you okay? Yeah, no, I'm good. I'm good. Don't worry about it i was very lost i was lost looking for something to say about what a bummer whatever we were talking about bummer for all it is though and yeah absolutely though in terms of them changing one another and it is interesting skin Skin changer sex would be... Wow.

Skin changer skin changer sex. I mean, that's got to be intense. Jumping mines and... Isn't that just the end of book one of Historic Materials? I mean, also, there's a lot of that in this, right? There's a lot of demons and dust going on around here. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You were talking about generis here and it's just it's interesting because you know egret the last woman he mated with was kissed by fire as well and so it's just you know with this vision particularly it's real interesting that he's limed in tongues of red and orange and you know fire isn't usually something associated with Starks or Snows, and so it's just interesting. What could it mean? I have no idea. What could it mean, Zahat?

What could it mean? I'm curious. Welcome to my TED Talk. I'm excited to find out. In the winds of winter, hitting a shelf near you, look under your chair. Hey, he's making progress. He is.

Be happy. Everyone be happy. I am happy. I'm very happy. I'm proud of him. Great news. Not so much news, but a lesson from Hagen again. Better not to bother with other beasts,

as cats will turn on you. Prey will make you cowardly. And he's like like the other animals are kind of meh but definitely don't be a bore but apparently he's very against that uh he has like men were not meant to leave the earth spend too much time in the clouds and you'll never want to come back down again and that those who skin change birds just kind of stare at the sky so you know speaking ofys, it is interesting that those of the North, right, North in general, that like island continent, don't believe,

you know, people are meant to leave the Earth when it was just so core to Valyrian culture and society. And we have in this very book, right, the absolute joy that Daenerys feels as the earth falls away from her towards the end of the book and she's joining with Drogon when she's riding him for the first time which is a very strangely sexually charged chapter yes and yes yeah it is okay it is speaking of double meanings and language and and also again later and and then I also, you know, even think of Lena, Lena Valerian, who as she was dying, longed to fly one last time.

That's what she tried to do as she was dying. You're a cruel woman. Why have I chosen to love a hateful woman? Why? I don't know. How could you do this to me? Easily. Wow.

What the fuck? Other skin changers don't really feel the same as Hagen on this. At a gathering Lump had attended at age 10. Most were wolf brothers, but there was also Borak with the boar, Oral with the eagle, and Briar with a shadow cat, and Grisela with a goat. Where was Harma?

Varamyr wants a shadow cat, but Varamyr's stronger than all. He remembers Hagen weeping when he stole Hagen's wolf, Greyskin, shoving Hagen out to die without a second life. Damn, that's cold. Didn't matter, because the wolf was old

and joined Hagen very soon in death after. Then why the fuck did you do it? For shits and giggles. Not even joining the pat like oh hey come here grayskin like you're you're one of mine now like hey all right you're gonna die soon but like it'll be funny it's a piece of shit i hate them yeah it's not like the dragons right they keep living on but i guess maybe did the wolf paula because hagen died and it makes me think of the avatars and avatar the last airbender and how their animal companion tends to die alongside with them.

Ooh. That one hurts. I'm just saying painful things today. Actually, that one was a dragon for Avatar Roku and his dragon. Yeah, you are. You're being hurtful today. I am. I am.

today i am i am so there's this tension here that veramir feels between like his blood family and his adopted family with hagen who cared for him taught him raised him you know pretty much which i mean this is something we see throughout a lot of the books right we have veramir being a little bit like theon even though in a lot of other ways he's very much like ramsey but here he's a little bit like theon in terms of those changing identities and names, right? He's going back to, he goes back to his home village to get acceptance from his blood family to try and seek glory, only to find out that there's nothing there but blood

because they're all dead. And then he ends up betraying his adopted family, being Hagen, being the one here, whereas for Theon, it's Rob. And then also in terms of like that blood versus adopted, you're going to have that with Jon, obviously, right? Between his father Rhaegar and his daddy Ned and all of those other storylines,

as well as his other adopted family, the Watch. Jon's life is hard. He also has to like kill one of his mentor figures and then watch the other ones die. Again, his life is hard. There's a part of me that also thinks of Varamyr like, is he like a Sith, right? Isn't that a Sith rite of passage? You have to kill your master or something?

Kill the master, yep. But I wonder if this means that we'll also see Bran have a more active role in the death of Bloodraven, or does he do something inadvertently that still leads to a direct cause to Bloodraven needing to die or something, paralleling this mentorship and violence between Varamyr and Hagen? One, the Sith thing,

I really like, because it's similar to kill the boy. Killing the mentor is similar to you have to. Sometimes your mentor and that's the lesson we're taught know killing the mentor is similar to you have to sometimes your mentor and that's that's the lesson we're taught with ned stark is that ned stark is not the main character of this story he's the mentor and he needs to die so that our protagonists can continue forward and that's i mean sure even with someone as gross as veramir that needs to

happen too in a narrative sense and so yeah this read specifically i very much so was along those same lines of i think it could be brand like accidentally shunting blood raven out and realizing that like oh that's a thing i can do and now he's dead and so shit oh that's now i i you know trial you know, trial by fire, he doesn't get a second life, so there's not even a little birb in a pot that can fly out at the Night's Watch meeting and be like, ah! And so it could just be an accident, and that shows him the dangers

of Hodor, and then he's gotta constantly from there make the decision, every time I jump Hodor, I could kill him, I could shunt him out, and that could be the end of hodor and so do i want to and then brand's face with the choice do i don't i and that can be his crux of dark side is uh yeah fuck it what's hodor matter or you know the good brand stark being brand stark what if that's the only choice right what if mira hodor no Jojen will be dead by then. Deadass bitch.

But love that boy. Sorry for him. But, you know, what if it's saving Meera and Hodor? And then, of course, Hodor is still going to die for him. Yeah. I mean, I do think there's a lot of merit to the bad shows cave. I think that's the point. The point is that that cave has to come undone.

You can't, as we know from Jon and Ygritte, you can't stay in the cave. You know, I mean, that's literally the whole thing. You have to leave the fuck cave. You gotta leave the fuck cave. Right. So that's gotta come. And, you know, it leaves me really curious because George did a lot of moving around of brand chapters during dance and feast and everything. Like he moved some stuff to Tiwau, from Tiwau,

cut some things, move some things around and found it a really hard way to make it all fit, right? And flow the best ways. So you know he thought a lot about this chapter and the fact that this chapter was added, I think this chapter is meant to sow some of these thoughts for him in some aspects, especially as we get some of these visions

with the tree later. Varamyr has a lot of self-confidence in his ability to skin change that he could take anything and finally he sets his sights on thistle well not his real sights he can't see her still been two to three days hagen would consider it an abomination and mance would have cursed him for it too the price would probably be his ability to skin change, and he'd lose the wolves, but he'd be alive. He scarfs snow meltdown to still his dizziness, oh god, things are bad, and realizes how hot he feels. The snow just makes him hungrier.

Using a weirwood branch as a crutch, he heads to other huts to scavenge for more food. I thought this was like an interesting bit of characterization, right? We have Varamyr skin changing all these other very powerful animals like bears cats and wolves to give himself the feeling of power to feel like a hunter or predator now that i think about it that's probably because uh his family didn't like him for being super weak and sickly and they all loved bump for not uh for being a chad and um two-year-old chad but veramir the way that all of the humans kind of are to the others is is just prey right we see that he as a human he's not a hunter very much at all

he's a scavenger he's a parasite and he just sort of piggybacks on the bodies of all these other creatures and the power of other humans like he does it to thistle but he also especially does it as we see with mance's authority whenever he thinks of his own like importance he's like i was pffs with mance and i was like were you were you though yeah like mance's girlfriend doesn't even know your name like relax so it's like that that vardemar guy yeah get him to do it And she's way more important than Mance, first of all. Oh, yeah. Furthermore, Zach, I mean, you know, furthermore, that's not who's important. Mance isn't important.

It's important to impress the wifey, to impress the waifu. Dala. Yeah, Dala. Absolutely. Yeah. I thought it's also interesting because you brought up cannibalism earlier, and that's, I know, quick jump, but that's what Varamyr is from the beginning,

and that's what, you know, we see Stannis' army, we see the wildlings becoming, is these cannibals, that makes them almost like a version of the Others themselves. They are turning on and consuming themselves and each other and varamir switch it's like a fucking switch where he switches into predator mode he's like thistle yup i'm gonna i should have jumped into her when i could and now we're seeing like a serial killer planning his this is my out this is what i'm doing and it's almost more insidious than the others because

the others you expect it from you see them and you're like well i'm fucking dead because they're literal ice and made of you know darkness with veramir she's trying to help him it's that human to human connection and then he jumps into her which is so much more terrifying than the others, which are just this external force that you can see. But he's going to try to reanimate her body with his consciousness inside, which is almost the exact same fucking thing that the others do to the bodies they come across. And he's literally embodying it. And it's just disturbing. This end here, this run up to the end, just steadily Martin starts amplifying it. And it's just disturbing. This end here, this run up to the end just steadily Martin starts amplifying it.

And it's intense. It's good. Good stuff. Dark. Great times for all. Not a bummer. Not a bummer. The crutch snaps and Varamyr's legs buckle and he just lays

there, you know know bleeding uh kind of like that snow patrol song but not at all um and the snow's slowly burying him so we have we have this line of they say you feel warm near the end warm and sleepy it would be good to feel warm again though it made him sad to think that he would never see the green lands the warm lands beyond the wall that man used to sing about the world beyond the wall is not for our kind hagen used to say the free folk fear skin changers but they honor us as well south of the wall the kneelers hunt us down and butcher us like pigs interesting interesting and um some of that language there right like that's that's him that's his a dream of spring but also very much just because I think about this a lot and we'll talk about it a little.

It's the desire for paradise is Eden. It's gone. He's dying. Yeah, there's no happiness, no garden for you. That's for sure. more of some of the warnings he gave him as a mentor, but also how he showed him what else the world offered by going to Eastwatch and trading amber and pelts for wine, salt, and the copper kettle. Eastwatch had better goods because it's by the sea, and the brothers trust Hagen there.

There, Varamyr started dreaming of going south. Yes, that dream of spring, of prosperity. Varamyr could feel the snowflakes melting on his brow this is not so bad as burning let me sleep and never wait let me begin my second life wow uh snowflakes melting when's the last time you thought about that robin john right we're all thinking about robin john right he's one of john's brothers he's so close to john john loves veramir so much oh my god but it does make you think of those like bittersweet you know goodbyes yeah not only that look we've attributed how many things to hamlet in a song of ice and fire by now i know it's a

common it's easy right so of course it's very sleep perchance to dream, right? Very much so suicide. Hey, there's the rub. What? For in what sleep of death, what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us pause. There's the respect that makes calamity of so long life. But it also reminds me of another poet, Samuel Daniel, an English poet and historian

who wrote a sonnet care charmer sleep son of the sable knight and one of the verses in it is never let rising sun approve you liars to add more grief to aggravate my sorrow still let me sleep embracing clouds in vain and never wake to feel the day's disdain which made me think a lot of those fights in the clouds with the warging and skin changing of the birds, right? Let me sleep embracing clouds in vain. And the great sleep where you'll surely embrace a lot of clouds in the great sleep. The big one. The great war.

And the sleepers. The dreamers. The sleepers that were awakened in Bran's early days. Don't wake the sleepers. Yeah, that's's early days don't wake the sleepers yeah that's real good yeah I like that yeah absolutely there's that language does feel very reminiscent of

Hamlet and his dream at least you know and like when Daenerys has similar lines is for her she does not want to dream she's in that much pain whereas for Varamyr he longs to continue on and a lot of this chapter especially towards the end also reminds me of another poem Fire and Ice by Robert Frost which we're not going to read aloud because it's really short and we've read it many times before. Also Google. The chapter starts with hate and hunger

coiling in Varamyr's belly, right? Hunger, not just literally. I mean, he is pretty hungry, but he's also just a very covetous person. He longs for power and recognition, as we said, the kind that he sees in Mance. And that's because he's like, he's a greedy son of a bitch and he wants, right?

We see that a lot in this story, especially from when they want, they want. Varamyr is someone who's very ruled by that desire. And also, he's also very ruled by hate, right? I mean, the chapter makes it clear that he hates a lot of things. He's a very hateful person. Hate, hate rhymes with hate. And he's hateful because he desires, right?

These things are very tied together for him. It's a cycle. he desires, right? These things are very tied together for him. It's a cycle. And besides the death of, you know, Bump leading to Varamyr's own first death, the other death that this chapter is so focused on is that one of fire. We keep coming back to Aurel and the eagle because, I mean, he desired the eagle and he desired that power and took it from Aurel. And then one aspect of his world ends there, right? from what he's tasted of desire he holds with those who favor fire and then after oral he inherits more hate hate of john snow and it's within that hate and desire that veramere does finally end up

with his true death uh by seeking to steal thistle's body and then of course her reanimated white self sees him and probably hates him because i mean she fucking should uh if it can feel anything we don't really know it's the death of it's that ice death though the world ending in ice i love that it's there's and fire and ice is like you could tell ge George was into that. You know, I hear. He's explicitly said so. If we're doing poets, I wasn't gonna, but I did. Ted Hughes is a pretty prolific poet, and he has one called Thistles straight up. Ooh. I'm not gonna, I have a different one here that I'm gonna pull an excerpt from.

Read Thistles, everyone listening to this, please, because it describes the Others reanimation, and I'm pretty sure that Martin intended that, that Ted Hughes is a big inspiration for this chapter in particular, because Thistles originally appeared in a 1967 publication called Wadwo. Wadwo was a collection of poems by Ted Hughes, and a Wadwo is technically a wild hybrid folkloric creature that is part human and part forest. It specifically challenges our sense of where beings start and end, which sounds awful like the children of the forest to me. But there is also a Wadwo, there is a poem that the book is titled for, and I'm going to read just a little bit from it. It says, What am I, nosing here, turning leaves over, following a faint stain on the air to the river's edge? I enter water. Who am I to split the grassy grain of water? Looking upward, I see the bed of the river above me, upside down, very clear. Hmm. They seem separate from the ground and not rooted, but dropped out of nothing casually.

I have no threads fastening me to anything. I can go anywhere. I seem to have been given the freedom of this place. Then what am I? It goes on further, but to me, the Wadwo is not only does it sort of represent the children of the forest in the part human, part forest, but it's describing warging. It's describing this sense of etherealness, of oneness with the land around, with the roots and the trees and the reeds in the river. Have I seen these reeds before? Maybe.

Maybe they're familiar to me. Maybe not. Hey! Wrong reeds, wrong reeds. Wrong reeds, wrong reeds. Further north, further north. And so it's just, it's very much so, I believe, that Ted Hughes inspired this chapter,

or at least parts of it, especially with the poem Thistle, which very much so has, it's much more colorful language, but it's very much so about redemption and resurrection, which is super interesting. So go read Thistles and Woodwell, which is W-O-D-W-O for the spelling, because it's a weird one. That's great. I love that. I love the idea. And the leaving your body, right? We talk a little bit about this over at His Dark Materials podcasting. But there's something really interesting of like, being able to achieve this enlightenment, this higher form of yourself and having to like leave your body and push away yourself, your physical self. And I think that's kind of like a point of meditation, for example. You know, you want to be able to like leave your fucking body. That's literally the point is like just like vibe on that plane, that astral plane.

So I love that poem. Yeah. Varamyr starts to consider which wolf he should live within. Not the female. He picks the large male, One-Eye, who sometimes mounts Sly. Hagen's lessons ring again that in your second life, memories fade and you become more of the animal. Varamyr experienced it once when he took Aurel's eagle and shoved a raging Aurel out, inheriting Aurel's hate for Jon Snow. He's jealous, again, of Jon's direwolf, saying that it was a second life, worthy of a king.

King! Snow! Ned. And believes he was capable of stealing ghosts with Jon, still untrained in fighting his skin-changing nature, rather than embracing and glorying in it. I have to say, good luck on that one.

I want to see that one happen. Try it. Try it out. Let's see what happens. Mind-fighting pitch. Yeah. Come the fuck at me, 4D chess. I love that George is connecting these thoughts specifically with Jon, right? Second life worthy of a king who, you know, dies in this book, so if you have any question

of where the fuck Jon is after all these years, I think we know where he is, I think. He's in second life. He's playing second life. He warged into Ned's pigeon. Oh, Ned's pigeon. Ned's pigeon. He warged into Ned's pigeon. Oh, Ned's pigeon. Ned's pigeon. He warged into that one. He pushed Ned Stark

out and killed him. It was awful. You know, George was asked once if who was it? There was warping into birds from Mormont. And he said, that's an interesting theory. So you never know.

You never know. But second second life worthy of a king okay george we see you snow snow net you know we kind of get to watch bran tousle with all this for the rest of a dubuduh a dance with dragons then we get to see Jon tousle with this with his actual death. His actual death. Real death. For real, for real death. It was a for real, for real death. Yeah, it really was. The bitch died. I was there, you were there.

For the watch. Bummer for all. Except for his friends. He sent them all away like a Ned Stark asshole that he is. God. Don't be alone. You know, speaking of Bran, right?

I love that now that we know because the show told us. This is a little bit misleading, right? It has multiple meanings, you know? It's got layers like an onion and Shrek, you know, Shrek, a classic literature. This isn't just about a second life worthy of a king when it comes to Jon and that Targaryen.

It's also about Bran and Summer. And Bran being a king, too. I mean, Bran died, right? He fell. And he died, and then he flew again. That is true coming back to some of the Sith mentorship you guys were chatting on earlier which is an actual analysis field

of Aesop the Sith analysis though like it really is it's like because we're seeing this is pretty much you know a mini portrait of what Euron probably went through when Bloodraven didn't choose him this is the opposite like what if you were evil and you were chosen this feels like damn damp hair

a little like a sort of pushovery I I was a you know a kind of meek nobody and could have gone either way and instead of being like my scary older brother I ended up more of a pushover like Varamyr. But I got super damp hair vibes from this chapter the entire time. Interesting. Yes. We'll get to it, but I feel that same way. There's a lot of that in this chapter. And also with the bad show and Bran being king, I always, like, and that's why I never took issue with that, with the whole way it was done, because it was pretty ridiculous. But it was always obvious to me that George was the gardener and that that was subject to change. So I immediately was like, they misread this.

They didn't get this part right. Because I don't think it's that Bran is king of that. I think Bran is a king in a different way. I don't think the title of king is going to mean the same at the end of the books as it does at the start of the books and i i think that was just a misread on the show among any many other things was a misread among the showrunners of the point that my where george was like yeah brand will be king at the end and they were like oh okay so he ends up on the iron thronerone doing nothing, not even warging.

And clearly that's not the way it's going to go in the books. And so for me, we're getting all this imagery of Varamyr being like, oh, a second life worthy of a king. And Mance Rayder I have this weird, like, appreciation, respect for, but also thought I should have killed him. appreciation respect for but also thought i should have killed him and it's this i think it's clear that bran is going to be more important than just sitting on the iron throne making law and order there's a there's a power to bran that in no way shape or form is just going to you know end up moot and kind of like it doesn't. Bran being king is going to have huge implications, regardless of what that means. If he's still using his power while he's a king, that's one of the most powerful kings that's ever existed.

If he's warging into the werewood net, he can see any enemy or any threat. And so it's just really interesting. I don't think it's going to go the left field, we're doing it to shock people way of the show. I think it'll be much more of a either there's no one left or it's a i need to do this to continue things focusing for the living and being the bigger narrative rather than just a i'm king now here's why i came all this way

yeah well and that was obviously so silly and i mean you know it has to be a real ending when they take the character that's going to be king out of the plot for a whole entire year yeah just like okay there's your step number one i do think he'll be probably if you know this all goes to plan the books are not you know set in stone george could change his mind at any moment i doubt that he will uh yeah but i i think that you know there can be a balance between the two and we're seeing like how much can you especially in this chapter how much can you imbibe in these mystic arts without playing god what what's the line to play god and how can you use your powers for good to benefit all people without using them selfishly.

And that's a very fine line. Being walked in Varamyr, you know, gathering food. Thistle's out gathering food. He's not. Right now, he's literally only gathering food because he's about to die because she hasn't come back in time. And, you know, eating when you're in another form doesn't stop, you know, the real hunger, as we know. So he's so far gone, he's like, I guess I better go fucking scavenge now, which he would never do. He wants to go the easy route. Absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah, I think there's something there about, you know, not just is how to use power for good but is it going to be how do we refrain from using power as well right abusing it yeah as opposed to using or abusing it and you know and veramir is a great example of how to not use it right i mean jaharis landed with his dragon in many fucking places to give a very quiet, not so quiet because it's a dragon, threat, right? Like that's still, you know, that's a use of his power and somewhat an abuse to keep people afraid and keep them in line. It worked out well for his reign and he coupled it in a golden way, right?

He didn't do it in a way that he's like, well, I'll kill all of you like Maegor would have. But Jaehaerys did still land on his dragon and step off and say, Hello, townspeople. Who's here to slight me? I mean... It was about the implications, yeah. Yeah, it's the implications of power. It is.

You know what? I'm going to quote a wise woman from a great TV show that they made books about. Power is power. Oh my gosh. I wasn't sure if you were gonna go to selena meyer or not to be honest oh i could have i mean was that not selena meyer was that not selena meyer look veramir has an existential crisis he stares at the weirwood and he's like wow all the bad things i've done they can see it all and you know all the taboos i've broken like eating human

flesh hunting humans and he says out loud that was the beast not me that was the gift you gave me the tree does not respond because trees don't fucking talk he dreamt an old dream of a hovel by the sea three dogs whispering three dogs whimpering a woman's tears this could be the tower of joy bump she weeps for bump but she never wept for me i'm just three dogs whimpering you know i'm weeping a woman's tears an old dream it does read the same as ned there exactly yes and and the broken leg the crutch oh there you go whoa if ned had gone beyond the wall instead of you know yeah uh actually died i think it's interesting that he says the trees don't respond i think the wherewood crutch snapping under your buddy is all the yeah yeah that's a sign right like they're

literally not supporting it. Literally. Literally not. And, like, because, you know, Osha says to Bran that it's the wind, the wind through the trees is the old gods speaking. And so, like, they're all, you know, especially in the haunted fucking forest, they're all around you. You're crutch broke. You're fucked, Varamyr. Like, you're just not reading the signs here.

It just makes me think of Theon because, you know, he's still worth redeeming. Bran talking to Theon through the trees and whispering his name. Theon! Real tears, real tears. No one talking to Varamyr. No, yeah, fuck Varamyr.

Lump was born premature and sickly. No one thought he'd make it, refusing to name him till he was four. Not two, four. And by then, Lump had stuck. It was in his head. His sister had named him when he was in his mother's belly. But little baby Bump had been born on time, strong. Yet died at two years old when Lump was six.

Some Ramsay hours here. The woods witch tells their mother he's with the gods now, taking him down into the earth, into the trees. The gods are all around us, in the rocks and streams, in the birds and beasts. Your Bump has gone to join him. He'll be the world and all that's in it. That, of course, rocked Lump to the core, who was like, fuck, Bump can see everything I do do even because he's dead and he feels all this guilt that he can't run away from including oh yeah all the dogs that were blamed for bump's death which his father executed each one several blows very horrible

very awful i can't even this is worse than fucking marlin it was terrible this is fucking terrible this is a real sin you see what i mean eliana that i thought that george killed dog in brienne's chapters like you all can't be mad at me for being so naive to think that because george loves killing animals and it's gotta stop we gotta stop this man yeah we almost babies and dogs yeah that's true also babies one chapter babies and dogs this man needs to be ended we have to get to him and tell him he can't write more i'm just kidding he can do whatever god stop please stop don't manifest this stop that so the last dog lump tries to skin change him but it was too late and tries to plead but dogs don't

talk so the dog whines and lump screamed when the axe hit the dog and i'm screaming too and his father drags him into the woods and thinks he's about to be executed but instead gets given to Hagen which I have to say kind of has some vibes of Agot with Ned taking them to see the execution and being like this is growing up bitches

watch the death now you're a man congrats but it was like this some Clegane hours with the dogs or some Bolton hours I'm going to kill the dogs in front of you and now you're a man um congrats but it was like this you know some some clegane hours with the dogs or some bolton hours like i'm gonna kill the dogs in front of you and now you're a man damn yeah there's no bravery in this one now he's a man but not still a boy and doing a terrible job of it uh yeah so this fever dream it's very mere reliving his childhood drama because again,

uh, get lump into therapy. We could have avoided so much actually, even as a child, family therapy for everyone. Um, and, and, you know, the trauma though here is kind of self-inflicted. He kind of did that when he killed his own brother beneath the weirwood tree, which we should now be reminded of another tree because we talk about the Bible a lot on this podcast, the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden. But I see more parallels with the story of Adam and Eve's children, Cain and Abel. And we're going to go over this because maybe not everyone knows what happens in the book of Genesis, right? Because Adam and Eve, they have these two sons. Maybe they have

more kids. Depends on which scholar you're talking to. The kids are Cain and Abel. Cain is the older brother. He's a farmer. And Abel is the younger. He's a shepherd. Both of them give offerings to God and Abel's seems to be preferred by God. And in his jealousy, Cain kills his brother Abel. And some stories, you know, they'll tell you that this is the first murder. And God is later like, hey, Cain, where's your brother? And Cain thinks he's being very slick because he's like am i my brother's keeper and is kind of like lying to god even though i'm like this is the same dude who kicked your parents out of like their home and is supposed to be omniscient so he kind of already knew i don't know what you thought you were doing

and then god says to him listen your brother's blood cries out to me from the soil and so cursed shall you be by the soil that gaped with its mouth to take your brother's blood cries out to me from the soil and so cursed shall you be by the soil that gaped with its mouth to take your brother's blood from your hand if you till the soil it will no longer give you strength a restless wanderer shall you be on the earth which kind of sounds a little bit like the language of when bump was taken down into the earth and lump kind of like cane ends up becoming a wanderer north of the wall never returns to his family because they all died and cain also tells god whoa hang on there if i'm a wanderer i think i'm a little bit vulnerable and so god's like okay i will put a

mark on you that says that no one shall harm you anyone who harms you um or kills you will be punished sevenfold which reminds me a little of that saying that you told us about that thistle army zach of no one can harm me unpunished i thought that was uh really interesting when you said that and so now here we are with veramir still wandering and who doesn't quite die at the hands of anyone else really not anyone living at least and so like veramir is just living and living and living going on after each death wandering in his second life and i cannot take the phrase second life seriously i'm sorry and anyway i'm not i'm not but i'm'm just like, what is, I can't, I can't, like, every time I say it, like, my mind jumps there, and I'm like, oh my god.

So, anyway, it's a story, right? Like, Cain and Abel, some think it might be about farmer versus hunter-gatherer societies, but regardless of whether, you know, the first murder here, as it's portrayed, speaks to that idea of rejection and jealousy and abandonment and family and loneliness and belonging. And there are all these really ugly human emotions that are about that heart in conflict with itself. That's really what's at the core of A Song of Ice and Fire. And I think we really see those shine in this book, specifically when it comes to Theon, but also especially Tyrion, right? And even Jon, who is killed by his brothers, you know, if you will. an abomination actually turns out right from the start not because he is a skin changer but he broke one of the biggest taboos in all of the different planetosi societies not just of skin changing but of kin slaying and that ties very near to the rest of the story yeah it's really interesting

because that could fit for stannis too of the first and and that's sort of where we're at right now is directly caused by stannis and stannis is trying to till that fucking earth, man, wherever he can. And it ain't giving him shit anymore. So it 100% is a theme going throughout and hanging heavy over not just Varamyr, but a lot of our POVs. But especially here, I think George wanted to call a little more attention to that. Because like you said, paradise is what Varamyr wants. And what's funny is that paradise for him is fucking Craster's Keep. It's some small little hamlet where he is king and he can have women come to his bed when he wants them. Otherwise people are going to provide him because he can't do it himself

with food and drink and pay him homage because he likes being, he's got a fucking ego for some reason. And so, yeah, it's just very similar to, we're getting this story from every level. Stannis the king who's willing to kill his brother, spill that blood, and as soon as he does, shit is so fucked up for Stannis for the rest of the book. And sucks to suck, suck my guy learn a lesson all the way down to the baseborn with varamir where we're getting the you also killed your brother and you thought it wasn't you know it's wildlings why should it matter they were probably gonna die anyway as he's saying about the babe that he killed at the start of this chapter to begin with they it was probably a mercy to kill his brother

because they're wildlings and they have it hard. When it's a life, you let the life live and try to do it the best it can. No one should be playing this god of choosing who lives and dies. And that, you know, I don't know if you guys know, but Martin doesn't think war is good. And so...

What? What? Yeah, I know, I know. I know. I'm coming with a big bombshell taste. He crushed course the whole thing. Damn. You've listened to this podcast before. I never stepped the fuck out of that, Zach.

A time or two. A time or two. I think he's better at these references than we are. Are you looking for a job? Because I'm really tired all the time. Don't you dare. I've been waiting to fire someone. No one's been

wiling out, though. Any moment now. Get ready. Get ready. There's a lot in this. The dogs kind of remind me of Reek chapters. They're good dogs. They're my friends he says oh god cersei's paranoia of tyrian following her and ending everything she loves is kind of here as

well and of course like zach said earlier the relationship really reminds me of erin's abuse at euron's hands as well uh and a shout out to the Discord because a few of them were theorizing Aaron might be next. And I didn't, you know, really go into detail with them or chat with them further, but it does make me think about it, especially with the Winds of Winter chapter.

We're going to someday cover the Forsaken. Spoiler for that, really small spoiler, close your ears if you don't want to be spoiled for the Forsaken. But the warlocks being fed to the last alive one right and aaron being tied up on the prow and uh remembering all of these abuses he suffered

and of course the shade of the evening the fucked upness of it all and the magic of it all it's uh it's dark and very much like this chapter george is really in his dark era you know with these wow indeed the dark era a dance of darkness oh my god oh i like that actually it's kind of a dancer anime isn't that like that sad movie yeah so varamir wakes to thistle telling him to get up because the whites are on the way he's covered by snow his hand frozen to the ground. A bit of skin comes off when he tears it. He's realized it's now or never, right? He's almost done.

He summoned all the strength still in him, leapt out of his own skin and forced himself inside her. Thistle arched her back and screamed. He hears abomination, but he can't help the voices himself, Thistle, Hagen, or Zack even. Thistle resists, like his old shadow cat did, and the bear. She's shouting, get out, get out! Out, monster. Her body is flailing as she sucks in air.

Varamyr revels in her younger strength before she bites off her own tongue. The pain forcing him out, she's raising her eyes to his face, clawing his eyes out, then spits out their tongue. Ah, the language, my god. It's a loaded scene, right? Like, this is, I guess, the climax of the chapter, if you will. It's where the action really happens, And it comes right on the heels of the reveal of what he did to his brother. It all comes together and shows you this is how he treats people. And the way that the language is used here, I think, kind of telegraphs to us how we

should feel about Bran skin changing Hodor. I mean, we already know it's pretty, pretty fucked up and horrific by the way that Hodor reacts. But earlier in the chapter, we see Varamyr think about how he should have just skin changed someone else back when all the free folk were together. And, and then he gets the idea to skin change Thistle. And there's the language of, you know, he thinks of her as she's just some ugly spearwife. Varamyr told, Varamyr told him, I am a great man. I am Varamyr, the war, the skin changer. It is not right that she should live and I should die. And I'm like, I don't know that I think it is right. But also the language that he thinks in his head about her is like, this old woman, where are you? Like when she doesn't come back immediately. And it reminds us, you know, he's like this old woman and that

he sees her as a woman beneath him, right? like we see the way that he treats all the other women when he's like in the shadow cat he thinks of her as basically equivalent to the beasts that he's skin changing and not at all like a person and then we have finally you know after all he does think veramir could take any beast he wanted, bend them to his will, make their flesh his own, dog or wolf, bear or badger, thistle, he thought. And in this, Varamyr is quite similar to our previous two prologues with Pate and Chet, and that's very explicitly so. You got like this three for three thing going on here, right? He tries to skin change thistle, and the text the the way that it's phrased feels very intentional it's he forced himself inside of her and this was fighting back get out get out and then her arching her back and screaming in pain it's the language of rape the forcing himself inside of her it's that language of what rape

is when it comes to that dehumanization and the objectification and using someone else's body just to satiate your own desires of using them just as a body or a vessel or seeing them as such and we see that viramir tries to erase thistle's personhood seeing only himself inside of her and seeing himself as her and it starts splitting as it becomes like their body right first it's his eyes and his tongue but really we realize this all is having this lady stoneheart moment of like or catlin moment of clawing out her own eyes um it's her eyes not his and finally she ejects him from her body by biting off their tongue. And unfortunately, what it does, like this, this act of raping her mind as she loses her tongue, he's silencing her by raping her.

And I do want to emphasize that I am not the first person to liken Bran's skin changing of Hodor to sexual assault because several other people who are smarter than me have seen that earlier than I and have called it out. But this passage does tell us that we should be seeing skin changing in a person in the same lens as rape because of those aspects of forcing your will onto someone else and erasing theirs. And then you also have that idea of consuming identity, another form of cannibalism, if you will, which kind of makes it pointed when Vera Miryr tells Thistle, oh, I'm Hagen, right? In a way, that's almost like skin changing.

He becomes Hagen. And it stands out in a book where it's implied that Tyrion rapes at least one woman, likely two. After all, Tyrion's chapter does follow this one immediately. And it's probably why our patrons thought that the Tyrion chapters follow this prologue, but they were wrong! And the one in which Theon and Jane are repeatedly assaulted and Theon is forced to take on a different identity, right? That his identity then becomes consumed by Ramsay's and Ramsay's re reek specifically he's forced to take on that identity and i will

also recommend seeing a lot of this in the context of martin's short story meat house man which uh the setting is a world in which dead bodies are reanimated for different purposes especially for use uh in terms of labor or pleasure that's a great way to look at it i didn't even i didn't read the next tyrian chapter you know since we're not covering i at it. I didn't even, I didn't read the next Tyrion chapter, you know, since we're not covering Tyrion next. I didn't think about it. I just know it's a Tyrion chapter. I was just,

I just saw it said Tyrion. Yeah, that makes sense. That's, that's the next Tyrion chapter. That's, uh, yeah,

I mean, it's true. We literally see it in this chapter that it's kind of fucked up. So, there's that. There's a really beautiful passage i love the way this passage is written zach would you do us the honors in recanting this of course i would the white world turned and fell away for a moment it was as if he were inside the weirwood gazing out through carved red eyes as a dying man twitched feebly on the ground and a mad woman danced blind and bloody underneath the moon

weeping red tears and ripping at her clothes then both were gone and he was rising melting his spirit born on some cold wind he was in the snow and in the clouds. He was a sparrow, a squirrel, an oak. A horned owl flew silently between his trees, hunting a hare. Varamyr was inside the owl, inside the hare, inside the trees. Deep below the frozen ground, earthworms burrowed blindly in the dark, and he was them as well. I am the wood and everything that's in it, he thought, exulting. A hundred ravens took to the air, cawing as they felt him pass. A great elk trumpeted, unsettling the children clinging to his back. A sleeping direwolf raised his head to snarl at empty air. Before their hearts could beat again, he passed on, searching for his

own, for one eye, sly and stalker, for his pack. His wolves would save him, he told himself. That was his last thought as a man. True death came suddenly. He felt a shock of cold as if he'd been plunged into the icy waters of a frozen lake. Then he found himself rushing over moonlit snows with his packmates close behind him. This passage is fucking wild! This passage is

like, this is literally first of all, this is just a brand chapter. Again, this is, wow! Some wolf dreamy stuff, and then oh my god, that line, I am the wood and everything that's in it, he thought exulting. Has there ever been a more stark sentence

to be said in this series? How could this be from Faramir and not Bran or a Jon? The Lorax. The Lorax. Oh my God. He's dying. And as he dies, he's in the weirwood.net he's literally thrown in the weirwood and it makes me wonder do all things go into whatever this huge network of magic is when you die like is this just your soul dissipating in the air uh thistle had returned

to him she had him by the shoulders and was shaking him shouting in his face he could smell her breath and feel the warmth of it upon cheeks gone numb with cold that's basically just a brand chapter with mira i think there's a huge point that's kind of populating in this that you have to choose yourself over your companions to go down the road varamir did of ruin brand seems like he will probably do the opposite right like he will probably suffer to get there but he will realize that he has to not choose himself over his companions and it doesn't mean it'll be an easy time to get there and then even that line a dying man twitched feebly on the ground and a mad woman danced

blind and bloody underneath the moon weeping red tears and ripping at her clothes now we know that's thistle right who he just helped blind back and forth in their battle however is this not jingle bell and cat or even the phrase she just hanged like this is literally just the language of jingle bell and cat coming off of the red wedding yes weeping red tears and ripping at her clothes so awful poor jingle bell the saddest sound of all ah sad sad sad that's true yeah i and it's like what you were saying earlier right about like imagine if this had been if this had been the prologue right you get it right on the heels of that storm epilogue yeah it's also a great we're creating our own

horror is what veramir is doing here this'll wouldn't be nearly as terrifying when she sees him if he didn't try to fucking jump her bones and she had get make her claw at her eyes and everything and it's the same thing for the others we are the wildlings and the night's watch and the southern armies are all warring and no one can get their shit together and they are creating this army of the dead they're fueling it because they can't and so this is just an isolated small version of we're creating the horror in the world that is literally going to consume us all and no one can get their shit together from an individual basis all the way up to the kings and queens that are playing their games and the thistle just arching

her back and then clawing at her eyes it's so sad but it's so horrible at the same time and the end of this chapter is just nah nah so good it really is i i wonder if you stay in the weird with that right like if you don't go into a second life it sounds fun sounds great good times it's like the spider verse it's also interesting that there's no you don't have to think it that it just happened to him you know like because he was he was like oh this hurts ow ow ow and then true death came on him and he was in it it wasn't like i gotta jump now again it just happened and so yeah like the waiting room right like john snow someone untrained uneducated as varamir said isn't going to have to do anything to start his second life it should he should just whoop go right into right

into that little goat. It's just like a spawn room when you play video games after you die. It's a save point. You're going to respawn right over here and then hopefully you have a Melisandre who can put your wargness back into your likeness

that is in a nice cell. But not this time for Varamyr. There's no... He's out of lives huh? This is, uh, there's no... He's out of lives. That motherfucker is game over. He's in one eye now, going to the hill's crest, looking at the village,

and remembers Thistle, what he did to her, and he feels grief and immense guilt. Frost is taking the weirwood now, and the village is full with whites, some in brown, some in all black, some naked,

all with pale flesh. The wolves know these aren't men or prey. The things below moved but did not live. One by one they raised their heads toward the three wolves on the hill. The last to look was the thing that had been thistle. She wore wool and fur and leather, and over that she wore a coat of hoarfrost that crackled when she moved and glistened in the moonlight. Pale pink icicles hung from her fingertips, ten long knives of frozen blood, and in the pits where her eyes had been, a pale blue light was flickering, lending her coarse features an eerie beauty they had never known in life she sees me justice for thistle justice for thistle i feel so bad for her how

to turn your girlfriend into the night queen 101. Wow. Also, the passage of time here is something that just struck me while you read this. Yeah. Same. She turned and she's now covered in hoarfrost since she died. So he makes the death feel like it was just like half an hour ago. But as he's warged into the wolf, he spent so much time within it. Right. And he's lost himself in that.

So he doesn't know how much time it's been. And all of a sudden he comes upon a village and she's joined up with the other whites wow and she's already covered in frost and tarned that's fast i uh overall i think this chapter lays so many of those foundational bricks for bran and euron especially duking it out later in their brain waves it feels like and also that path for john and ghost connection and how it's going to save his life absolutely absolutely it's a banger of a chapter that i i really didn't appreciate i think until uh until this read and i have a new tinfoil i have a new tinfoil now um i tweeted about it but let's go over it this is my last this is my last um monologue for this

episode um in case you missed it you know this chapter is really focused on bodies we get this whole thing where you know again veramir has like all these warm fuzzies he's like oh i'm so excited about being a wolf and eating my own body and there's also like a lot of attention given to the pain that his body feels so like the chapter is just very very very conscious at all times of varimir's body and so it's really interesting that it gets called out that thistle rises as a white but then again now we have the passage of time so now i don't actually know because i didn't catch that passage of time anymore so maybe like fuck my theory but to go into it more though where is veramir's body right

it's supposed to be right there but we don't really know what happens to it and i mean let's be real right watching your own body get reanimated by some other force without i mean it would have made for some good horror writing maybe but i again don't watch horror movies so i don't really know but it is the potential. I can read horror. I can read horror. I can, like, see it as a comic. I can't watch it. I can't watch it.

We're soft, you know? And it has the potential to be fitting for, like, Varamyr, right? For his sin of trying to steal Thistle's body for him to witness that happening. And yet, it doesn't in this chapter as far as we know and then you have like john's first brush with the whites in a game of thrones showing us that they retain their memories and so maybe they like keep some of their spirit or soul in there and maybe like that memory or that spirit of soul being left in the body is necessary for the whitification of a body so obviously like i mean we see clearly skin changing is very useful in

like very many offensive use cases uh but could it be that the children of the forest and the first men also use skin changing as a defensive method to prevent the others from turning them into whites that could be used then to hurt their fellow humans loved ones like was that in a way their own like sort of last sacrifice that they get to choose for themselves what happens to their spirit, uh, rather than, like, imposed on another or, like, so they, you know, do they choose to lose that direct access to this, like, glorious afterlife and then they eventually, like, lose themselves in this animal and they do it for the greater good, but also it's an escape right like

that way they don't have to experience the fate of being brought back and remembering if there's any sort of consciousness in there and knowing that your body is being used which in the context of what veramir does to thistle really makes you think about how terrible you know as you were saying earlier zach right how terrible what the others are doing is yeah but now i don't know because of the time the time thing that i didn't now I don't know because of the time thing that I didn't notice. I don't know. Well, I think to that point,

I think that more shows Varamyr, I think that goes to your theory that his eyes are only for Thistle because that's what he fears. Himself being resurrected,

he doesn't really care. He's excited to fucking eat his corpse. Thistle is scary. He fears her now because he created that fear in himself. being resurrected he doesn't really care he's excited to fucking eat his corpse thistle is scary he fears her now because he created that fear in himself his own body you know veramir was a piece of shit he didn't like veramir the man he didn't like fucking uh dumb eric i mean bump i mean lump whichever one leave dumb eric out of this and so i think it absolutely is you know we fixate on what we fear and him even though he clearly is losing veramir very quickly over this passage of time

something about thistle it's that oh what is this one he may have even already forgotten that veramir's body is dead there in the snow it's just the memory of Thistle now is the thing that he recalls because she was the last body he was in. And so I think it lends more to your theory that he only has eyes for Thistle because he's losing himself. And the only memory he has now is that, hey, I once tried to literally mind rape that woman. And like, hey, if that's woman and like hey if that's you know if that's not something you remember then I don't know what the fuck is cause it's pretty awful

yeah I mean he does kind of remember it cause when he sees her he like feels guilt right right exactly and so I right guilt or like just like damn I didn't get her yeah that's a very interesting human emotion. But I like what you're saying of he fears her because he made her like that.

It makes me think of your monster, Bran. Right. I don't know what that fucking means. The phrase created that terrible, terrible ghoul of a woman with the fucking rakes in her eyes. ghoul of a woman with the fucking rakes in her eyes i mean that's thistle is obviously an allegory to stoneheart but just in a much smaller scale that people are being violated on so many different levels where people are creating enemies it's literally cersei you know you you in squashing one enemy you create five more they're they're it, it's this never ending game and no one wants to learn from history. Chloe, I think you were the one who said how to, how to create the next Night Queen.

Like, we're not learning from history here, people. Like, these things have happened and no one wants to fucking listen. And so now we've just got this perpetual cycle of let's creating more, let's keep creating more dead, more terror, the fist of the first men, perfect example of that, just feeding fodder to this army of these are the men that are supposed to be fighting that army, and now they are fighting for that army, and it's this, it's this war machine that you just keep cycling through, and it doesn't matter, king, queen, noble, pe noble peasant or bastard born you're affected in the wheel if you live anywhere in this shitty continent that is westeros at the moment

we are going to break the wheel uh-oh he said it he said it best i have nothing to say because zach said everything that was in my brain for the last like day about it that's insane did you just like hijack those thoughts was that skin changing how did that happen whoa I have nothing to say because Zach said everything that was in my brain for the last day about it. That's insane. Did you just hijack those thoughts? Was that skin changing? How did that happen? Whoa. Whoa.

I've been fucking skin changed on my own podcast. Holy shit. I've been fired. And where was that? I am Varamyr. Wow. Zach, Zach. It rhymes with Varamyr. It doesn't.

You have to remember your name. It's like, but maybe have you considered that Zachary might rhyme with Varamir? Like last episode when I said Varamir. Which I left in for posterity. I don't know. I just forgot the R when I said it. No, it doesn't

though. Not really. Zachary? Varamir? Not really. That't not really zachary varamey not really that's not really that's pretty weak well that's about all the time we have for tonight zach it was a blast having you on any last thoughts about the chapter today um i was thrilled that you guys had me on one when nate and i because you guys you tossed it to us you let us decide which brother wanted to and you know kind of feel it out what we were thinking as far as chapters and we had a good long discussion about it of Pate versus Varamyr and you know how do you fucking choose between the two best prologues that there are you got the as you said the Alaris chapter last chapter or

you've got this one but this one is much more akin to what interests me about a swath which is the more mystical there there's elements of the eldritch apocalypse that's looming the warging that's constantly going on the skin changing with the starks and and the kingdom with john snow bran and and the stark lineage of having king's blood and the north of the wall which is one of the most interesting places we can be especially like now as shit is really hitting the fan at hard home and and with stannis being stannis in the north and having his wife and children diddy bopping between different castles on the wall it's a real popping place to be than the north and so i love this chapter i love like i said i think

feast is the best book i think this is the best prologue just because of martin comes out swinging he comes out hot and he's like hey this is what dance is gonna be and it's gonna be a miserable fucking time but it's gonna be like really beautiful language and it's going to be a miserable fucking time, but it's going to be like really beautiful language. And there's going to be some cool like descriptors to tell you the terrible things that are happening to the characters you love. And I'm here for it. So thank you so much for having me. It was so much fun. It was a blast.

Anytime. You are absolutely welcome back. Maybe in a Tyrion POV someday. Who knows? Who's going to say? He can sub in for one of us. You can just be him. He has me down.

He had all of the catchphrases down. I'm good. I can take a vacation. I don't have a Jon Snow voice, though. Oh, that's a deal breaker. I know, I know. You can make your own. It's fine. Yeah, that's true. He doesn't want it it I don't want it

well you can find the Brotherhood Without Manners over at BrotherhoodWithout.com is that true? am I making that a good? awesome BrotherhoodWithout.com MannersWithout on Twitter you can find Zach on Twitter as well we'll have those links all below.

And then I guess us, Eliana. Who are we? Well, you can always find us on, not on Second Life, but on social media. I'm sorry. You can find us on social media on Twitter at GirlsCon canon c-a-n-o-n where we will you know update y'all with uh what we're doing and when it comes to hot d quite different from you know this cold chapter or of course you can send us an email at girls gone canon at gmail.com if you have any thoughts yeah and you can subscribe to us over on a podcast

streaming platform near you some of those podcast streaming platforms are indeed apple slash itunes google play acasp stitcher audible you name it i heart radio we're on a bunch of them yeah we are we are we are also on patreon you can find us on patreon.com slash girls gone canon and uh if you are in the five dollar tier and above the tier and above you will get access to bonus episodes yes like this coming month's mother mothers of dragons i don't know what's going on. I don't know why I can't speak. Mothers of dragons.

The mothers of dragons. Mothers from fire and blood. I thought it was mothers of the dragon. Fuck, it's mother of the dragon. Motherfucker dragon. Motherfucker dragon. There's a hot D, a mother, and a dragon. Fuck.

Oh, milfs of the dragon. You can check us out in milfs of the dragon coming to you to a patreon episode near you and of course brunch august 28th 2 to 4 p.m e t eliana time that will be a blast we can't wait to see you if you're in the thunder tier and above or to our weekly hot d discussions hosted by our friend maddie as always i've been one of your hosts that cannot speak today chloe i have been another one of your hosts aliana um what if we called them like hot discussions but anyways thank you so much to our other other host who is doing it better than we can right now. My God. Zach, for joining us. Thank you.

We'll be back with Bran, right? Bran. In our second life? Whoa. Whoa. Whoa, our second life. Oh, my God. Goodbye.

Thank you. Goodbye.