Girls Gone Canon Cast - ASOIAF Episode 185 — ADWD Bran III and Outro

Episode Date: March 10, 2023

It's the last Bran chapter. This chapter is older than Bran. But what is age to a tree, that is the acorn and the oak all at once?  For a quarter year, Bran drinks of darkness and then weirwood paste, learning his powers then wedding the trees. But what about his other ties to humanity?  Links mentioned:  "Cripples, Bastards, and Broken Things" Episode on JoeMagician's Patreon — https://www.patreon.com/posts/cripples-and-23328921 (Requires membership) --- Eliana's twitter: https://twitter.com/arhythmetric Eliana's reddit account: https://www.reddit.com/user/glass_table_girl Eliana's blog: https://themanyfacedblog.wordpress.com/ Chloe's twitter: https://twitter.com/liesandarbor Chloe's blog: www.liesandarborgold.com Intro by Anton Langhage

Hello, and welcome to Girls Gone Canon Reads A Song of Ice and Fire, episode 185, Bran, 3 bran three in a dance with dragons i am one of your hosts chloe and i am another one of your hosts eliana it is the final brand chapter that has ever been released damn sad right it feels weird we've talked a little bit about how there is another chapter possibly out there that george moved from some of the very meta sources that there's a brand for that was moved to the Winds of Winter. And I strongly feel like there must have been one because of what we discussed in regards to the arc and some of the things in here where he's like, I don't know where Jojen and Mira were. And I definitely feel like that's something that should have had like a bookend on it. But this does go well with like Dani's ninth chapter in the Dawada. Even though it's much earlier.

This is only like halfway through the book. Apparently this final Bran chapter is only halfway through a Dawada. This is like the 35th chapter or something out of 73 or 72 chapters. So it's a little bit over. And this is it. is sad i that's messed up that's messed up like how could we have just been left hanging on this for so long no i'm serious from a lot to a little i guess i feel like serious but you know sometimes sometimes you've been serious i am and i'm not you know as always

schrodinger seriousness the good news for all of you listening is that we have this entire episode for you to hear whether or not this bitch is serious and it could get real in the grand scheme of like the world obviously it's not like messed up messed up but it is a little messed up personally for me a crime against me i do feel that way whoa whoa whoa so wait so let's rewind for a second because they're a crime against you too oh oh that's wifey shit so there was a time previously where you were like in shock almost you were like brand's one of your favorite povs what brand is in your top when we talk about our top POVs. And now I'm wondering, do you feel the full effect? Do you feel it now? Are you feeling it, Mr. Krabs? Mr. Krabs, I do. And like I've always said, I think Bran's chapters are really strong. I've

always found them really fun and interesting. And as we have said several times, especially towards the beginning of covering this pov still cannot believe there are people who hate the brand chapters they just feel unhatable and especially after rereading them like this feels unhatable to me i hope that through this pov others have seen the light right that others or the darkness not those others oh my god not those others i hope that some folks who listen to this podcast have seen the light on brand that maybe they didn't quite uh i think reading them in this way especially i didn't read them this way before we did this right i did it yeah as we did it as we did it you and as the

books we did this chapter so together it was like a three-way of book. And no, I feel like even this time, I fell more in love with the Bran chapters. They're so embedded with magic and familial pain, right? And that innocence of growing up. It's the same reason why we love his dark materials, right? There's a lot of that similar pain embedded with all this magic and stuff that you don't understand in some aspects.

Like eating your best friend slash sacrificing your best friend, whether you're a part of it or not. Bran was more a part of it. But yeah, there's a lot going on in Bran. And I really liked it even more. I hope those of you at home that maybe were on the fence on Bran got kind of persuaded into liking it. If you did during us,

that's awesome. That's cool. I won't brag. Yes you will. Yes you will. That much? You motherfuckers love Bran. You bitches love Bran. I know it. Y'all love Bran now so. Gorgeous, gorgeous girls love Bran chapters. Love Bran. You bitches love Bran. I know it. Y'all love Bran now. Gorgeous, gorgeous girls love Bran chapters.

Love Bran Stark. Well, we're going to talk more about loving Bran. This whole episode. I love Bran. Except sometimes we might ground him. Grounded. You're grounded, Bran. No, he's under grounded.

We're going to talk more about that throughout this entire episode. But first, we have some housekeeping to do we do okay so reminder tying into of course this episode last month's patreon episode for february was the mystery night talking about you know dunk and egg and of course blood raven who is a big part of this episode because i mean for us it's canon all right i fucking love that i love that story that was so fun to read all over again like that was different light after we got through a dance with dragons right so way different light to think of blood raven in and also house of the dragon i hate to to say it but it did influence my thinking a little and give me some new thoughts so if you haven't signed up

yeah yeah patreon.com slash girls gone canon where stranger tier patrons five dollars and up get access to bonus episodes like that every month yeah Yeah. And our March episode is TVA. It's coming. It's coming. Oh, she's a coming. She's coming. In like a lion, out like a lamb. There's more excitement coming for you.

Hold still for that. But first, if you are a Thunder Tear or above patron, or you want to become a Thunder Tear or above patron, or you want to become a Thunder tier or above patron, you can head over to that same Patreon link I said a minute ago, dot com slash girls gone canon to sign up in the $10 and above tier where you get a lifetime access to our private Discord.

We're not going to kick you out if you got to go, because of Muba. You also get access to some events, and every single month we do something called Brunch Slash Happy Hour. And it's where a bunch of us show up on voice slash video chat to just chat about what's going on, chat about fandom stuff, talk about books and shows and whatever's on. And this month is going to be March 26th. The Succession Season 4, the final season premiere.

I cry. We're gonna probably talk a lot about Succession. I'm so sorry. I cannot stop it. It's just gonna happen. Yeah, I can't believe it's already the final season. Yeah, it's gonna be a couple hours from 1pm ET to 3pm ET where we're just sitting around talking about stuff. Maybe

that. Hanging out. People be snacking, drinking, chatting, gaming, whatever you want to do. You know, just hang out, real casual. We love that. And, of course, something else that's exciting that is happening this March is we are kicking off our coverage of Sailor Moon Crystal. So the new animated series, not the OG 90s anime, which we will, of course, discuss and touch on because I mean it as the OG, right? But there's way more episodes of that.

And we are also watching Sailor Moon Crystal leading up to the Sailor Moon movie premiere in late June slash July. Yeah. And after that, who's to say? Well, it might be his dark materials time again.

We'll see. We'll see. We'll see how much progress some people have made. Fill up. And, and you. Fill it mostly. Yeah.

And, uh, if you haven't caught up we have covered His Dark Materials the entire main trilogy and some of the successor series that is a prequel slash sequel slash sandwich trilogy the Books of Dust

we've started those up so check that out on the feed if you're into that we've also covered the TV series from series 1, 2 and season three, the US show. Check that out over at our feed. And every single week, I think there's four episodes left, our friends at Patreon on the Discord for the Thunderd here and above are hosting a chat slash rewatch slash come having rewatched of

series 3 and it's going very well very sad very fun every Saturday from about 1 to 3 p.m. unless otherwise noted slash changed you could check that in the events on the discord which there are a plenty alright we know

we know why a lot of you are here let's talk about it you know you want to know i mean show me oh my god see i'm over here like you oh v you ought to know oh uh but they don't know it's really funny because i feel as if a lot of our usual, we have a little CSI crime investigative unit on discord, right? And they're all about dissecting these episodes. They're called the POV order fan club.

There's a little sub thread on our POV episode discussion server. And they dissect what our little hints are all the time when they think they hear a hint when they think we're laying it on suckers when they think we're laying it on dick they start talking about it eliana usually i enjoy hinting at povs but i gotta tell you i don't think i did a single note. Not one. I was actually thinking the same thing. Because usually I do. We didn't hint at it at all, so that's

our bad. I'm sorry, everyone. We probably should have given more hints, and we gave absolutely none. But the funniest part of that is that while we didn't give hints, it seems there were still some hints to pick up on.

I'm curious what those were. I have to revisit. I know that I've seen them and they're like, interesting, interesting. Well, I would like to take a moment to read some of them, going back to January, from January till now, and I'm going to tell you some of the top thoughts from the top minds of the

Discord. First up, a Tyrion-based suspicion came about January 23rd from Maddy, our friend, who we're going to revisit in a minute. Finally. Finally. Finally, it's coming. Maddy has something you're going to hear about this evening that is like, is it a vegetable or a dessert or an entree kind of POV, right? Like what kind of POV is it? Is it meaty? Is it full? Is it hearty? Or is it more of like a dessert, like a quickie and appetizer-y kind of base? Maddie likes to

classify it as food and I respect that. Maddie also thought in January that I was playing games with everyone, but realistically I did nothing nothing. Yeah, I don't think you did. Oh. I did nothing. I don't think we played any games with anyone this time, really. We just analyzed the way that we thought it should be analyzed. We just vibed on Bran. Daenerys was thrown out at the end of January.

Arryn was also thrown out. Arryn Greyjoy. Lots of things they thought because we were talking about ice to fire foreshadowings. They were trying to figure out how we went to fire. Lots of Arya. Everyone thought Arya or Dany. There you go. We did throw out some Arya false leads constantly. It wasn't a false lead. It just makes sense in the context

it's Bran's sister. That's true too. So I will say lots of Arya, Dany, Tyrion's coming out to play. And it's not that. It's not that. Two people kind of got it right by process of elimination because there's only like nine left, right? Until we say it tonight.

Fuck. I can't believe we've come this far. A couple people were right. It is Sansa Stark next. That is true. We are doing Sansa Stark all over again after tonight no i wish god god a drum roll i don't know eliana what kind of pomp and circumstance should we really be placing on this as we float down to the what the eight nine povs left dang We're gonna be covering another second son.

First of all, before we announce who it is, I want you to trim that down in your mind. There is a second son out there. He is sailing the seas second to the heir, the seer and heir of his own family. And as he sails on those seas

with his gilded wings on his way to go find a girl certain certain princess who was promised i mean eliana my god we're gonna cover fucking victorian grayjoy we're covering victorian grayjoy which we someone did guess i forgot how they got there but someone has guessed that and it's like interesting fascinating our friend sasa k said something along the lines of i'm excited for when you cover Victarion when people were guessing. So it wasn't necessarily fully a guess, but I'm calling it a guess because- I'm calling it a guess.

It counts. Other than that, it didn't come up till recently. People thought we could be covering Victarion. And I actually think it fits. There's a lot with Victarion and a little bit of magic on the road, right? And possibly some glamoring, possibly some skin changing even in his plot and we have a we have one guest plan so far that's going to be a great guest we can't wait to tell you but we're going to hold out on that you're going to like it yeah i promise yes i promise i'm

excited to have this guest on this person has called one of these chapters long long long ago because again no one knows when we're covering any of these. And yeah, I mean, as you said, right, Victarion makes a lot of sense as a second son following. Magic also takes place in the storyline, quite a bit of it as well. And part of it has to do with, again, those themes of like where someone falls in the family. And we'll talk a little bit more about like, what it means to be a second son in this story later on in this episode. But, yeah, Bran ends up being, like, the king. But we also made this order prior to Season 8.

Yeah, back in 2018. 2017. Really, we started this order, like, the end of 2017. I think so, yeah. 2018. Something like that. Fuck. Yeah.

Fuck. God, shit. Damn, yeah damn yeah so welcome aboard mateys we're gonna do victorian next we're gonna take it yeah we're gonna head back to the sea and what comes next is gonna be a crazy journey a quick journey right victorian's not too long it'll be a quick blip we've got a couple more quick blips maybe a long blip in there if you want some hints. We have a Wins chapter in there too, which is exciting. We haven't had a Wins chapter in a really long time. Maybe? Was it Arianne

our last one? Or no? Theon? What happened? It would have been Theon, I think. Yeah. Shit. Well, we're coming back to Tiwav soon, baby, so get your sample chapters in. We've got a partial sample chapter to talk about with Victarion.

That was a long time ago. That was at least pre-pandemic. And hey, those T-Wow sample chapters that we've already done, you can snag over at Patreon as well if you're in that stranger tier or above. And I highly suggest it because

they're fun. They're fun to analyze, knowing that we still don't have anything to guide our thoughts with. I think this might be my first time reading the Victorian sample chapters, too. Yeah, it's only partial. It's not completed, so it's gonna be maybe a quick episode,

but fun to speculate on. Yeah. It's a transcript. Exciting. Exc on. Yeah. It's a transcript. Exciting. Exciting. Yeah. Well, as promised, the email that was promised from our darling Maddie,

our darling friend Maddie, has sent us the great essay of 2023. We're going to cut through as much of it as we can, but Maddie, I want to say, sent this and admitted at the front, she admitted that she was kind of a Bran hater, but she's seen the light. She has seen the light and she understands his place in the rich tapestry that is A Song of Ice and Fire. And Maddie is here to give us a little history lesson. So I will tell you what she said. Bran isn't just a mystical avatar

of naturalistic old gods theology, he's also the son of Catelyn Tully, who once wanted to be a knight and sat in the high seat of the Starks governing a fracturing realm with internal conflict, and now he's stuck in a cave guided by Bloodraven, who isn't just the three-eyed crow, but also Westeros's second longest serving hand of the king who kept the targaryens on the throne in a period of acute crisis though she's still not a fan of the wall at the night for the uh the weeping mouth wall no the mouth is cool it's part of the themes yeah it's gross and weird and it reminds me the episode where chucky gets pregnant with the watermelon and rugrats. Anyways.

I don't remember that much, but I'm just like, you know, it's about, you put things in your mouth. And that's what Bran's story is about. I'll send you a link. So, Maddie's enjoyed the topic of Bran's disability and how it relates to his social role, digging into things that, as a fandom,

sometimes she thinks we can be dismissive of, right right in our quest to find teams and ideas football football uh characters to root for brand suffers discrimination not just from characters like joffrey of the phrase but also from people we think are fucking rad in winterfell right usually subconsciously they ignore him they don't want to be burdened by him or treat him like how rob and john were treated at his age and she also likes the discussion of gender roles in the north just as much in the south how it's a deeply patriarchal society with masculinity and violence and through the tough ruggedness of melees and deep woods the

other chivalry and organized religion in the south right there there's a similarity and a difference there and she thinks that the north gets off the hook sometimes right like ned is a good guy who wants to do good things the north is better than the lannisters but a northern house tries to disinherit a woman it's the carstarks right who aren't really the best but maddie also mentions the first night still goes on in the north although alice ann kind of tried to put a put a stop to that. Unlike the south, women are subject to an inferior social position. Mage and Catelyn are on Robb's war councils, but every claimant in the War of the Five

Kings now has women on their small councils or war councils like Joffrey with Cersei or Stannis with Melisandre, and Runleigh has Lady Arwen Oakheart and Balin has Asha. None of these positions strengthen the social position of the average woman in their realm. Even King Mance Beyond the Wall puts up with the serial rapist Varamyr Sixskins and tries to win the sport of Craster. So Maddy thinks it's good to interrogate that just because something's different doesn't mean it's always better or worse. Even if it's better, it doesn't mean it doesn't do harm to people affected by misogyny and

violence, like against the women and people who failed to live to the ideal in the North and beyond the wall. Different does not mean better. As Tolstoy says in the opening of Anna Karina, all happy families are alike, but no two unhappy families are the same. What is Westeros but a collection of unhappy families? Moreover, what she wanted to write about was the Hand of the King, Lord Brendan Rivers, one of her favorite characters after having read The Mystery Knight,

and of course, the biggest part of this chapter. She gets misty-eyed when Bloodraven talks about trying to reach his family through the Weirwoods, only to fail, his words reduced to whispers on the wind. Of course, it's been discussed, but she thinks she has a contrarian position on who the brother Brynden loved was. Everyone tends to think it's Daemon, and she doesn't hate the idea it was Daemon, but she thinks this line has been overthought,

that it is more likely it was Daeron, too, the king he fought for and the brother he gave his life for. When Aegon IV's worms caught up to him, Brynden and his siblings were a serious threat to Daeron, who was implied by his father to be illegitimate, the son of Prince Aemon. A problem compounded, at least to some, by Daeron's marriage to Princess Myrja and a fact that his eldest son and heir looked Dornish and not Targaryen. Daeron could, and she thinks almost all Targaryen rulers in a position would, have had these children captured in prison and put to the sword if they tried anything against

him, but Daeron chose not to take the Blackfyres down. He chose mercy to save the children, which it's easy to forget the great bastards were indeed all children at the death of their father. Bloodraven was actually Bran's age when his dad died. Maddy thinks Brynden valued that mercy. Daeron became a father figure to him he probably never really had before. Brynden became an important figure in his brother's court, given Dark Sister, who I believe we'll be seeing seeing soon, and was always his brother's fiercest advocate. He loved and remembered and fought his line the same way the Northern Lords right now in the dance fight for the Ned. Finally, she wanted to mention a scene in the close of the chapter, the fantastic vision sequence,

which, with a little foreknowledge, you can guess what each scene is for the most part. She wants to focus on the one, though, that she hasn't really talked about in her email, which is the pregnant woman kneeling in front of the weirwood praying for a son to avenge her we don't know who this is it's slotted chronologically suggesting it's somewhere in the she-wolves of winterfell time and that she's one of the many messy succession descendants of cregan stark looking for a son to ensure her line inherits over cousins or uncles but there's a good mystical connection with alice rivers who was pregnant with prince amon's son in fire and blood slash house of the dragon we'll probably find out more he goes

down getting rid of a certain character demon dark a certain character in the end of the war and it leaves alice in charge of harrod hall afraid isolated and she could see where this would be her praying in the godswood for a son to defend her. So lots of great thoughts in there. And those are her thoughts on Bran. And one last time, would like to say that she's been enjoying these episodes a lot and is excited for the next POV, whether it's a dessert POV or a vegetable POV or even a weirwood paste POV.

I want to know what kind of, yeah, what kind of, what kind of POV is even a weirwood paste POV. I want to know what kind of, yeah, what kind of what kind of POV is Victarion? He's a meat and potatoes kind of POV. Maybe just potato. I don't know if there's like nutritional value, you know, in Victarion. There is till

there isn't, Eliana. There is till there isn't as we'll talk about this episode. But yeah, thank you so much so much maddie for putting in this effort and yeah we did get here in the end which i guess you kind of wanted us to read it with this episode anyway so whatever it's fine everything works out in the end and there's a lot to dig into here and we'll go over it and some of it we will are things that we'll touch on over the course of the episode right like i have thoughts that i actually didn't think about until i was rereading this chapter regarding brand's visions and who that scene might be at the end both chloe and i have different like

thoughts on that it's a mystery right because it's a mystery night but not not i thought that was funny regarding uh the brother that brendan loved because so i actually think that over time like i came to think it was damon i didn't think it was damon before i thought it was darren and i that felt at the time especially like on reddit when i was more active there on the subreddits that it was kind of the commonly held position that it was Darren that that Brendan loved because that's who Darren supported in the war and uh I kind of felt like Damon was kind of the contrarian position I don't know about you Chloe yeah being brought up in reddit myself and tumblr the great places that people are brought up on the internet yeah i agree in darkness that's what i talk about i thought that it was or i like read often it was darren and i

didn't necessarily always know what i thought but i definitely think it's damon the amount that blood raven goes out of his way to shut down this tourney with the least real bloodshed that he can. Like the fact that he shuts it all down. He's like, I got to shut this shit down. And just like the way he regards Damon too. And the way you realize he probably loved that bitch because he could have killed them all so much faster and more in my opinion that's interesting

yeah actually that's what tywin would have done and we talk a little bit in our patreon episode so please listen if you haven't yet about this but i feel like there's just even a part of him that realizes like that is him and his family and there's a lot of john and a lot of tyrian in some of that or even viserys too maddie mentioned in her email in some of the longer form I feel like there's a lot of that lingering in Bloodraven and that that sorrow and that loss of like knowing that it doesn't have to be red or black it doesn't have to be black and white but for the sake of the kingdom it does right like that's how people contextualize it when you're living under that rain. And in the end, erasing yourself from the history, from the narrative,

and going north beyond the wall with your fucking dedicated men. Your raven's teeth, yeah. Yeah, and going into a cave and becoming a desiccated fucking tree. That seems like a big, like, oh, that's a new place for my fate. Yeah, I don't think Blood Raven knew quite as much as he thought he knew then as he does he knows now. Yeah, and we'll talk about this more in the episode. But Blood Raven, you're talking about his story in conjunction with John's, right? And you think about it also in conjunction,

you have to think about it in conjunction with Amon's. And I think Blood Raven is someone who chooses duty over love, which the story makes you ask over and over again, which one is it? Which one's better? And I think the answer is it depends. But I also, you know, coming back to what Maddie was saying about Northern culture, I really love this call out of, you know, the North is still highly misogynistic, right? In order to, it's like less codified. But if a woman wants to inherit, Maddie calls out Mage, right? Mage is able to rule in many ways and keep that rule because she fits like those masculine standards of being very militant, right? And that's-

Exactly, exactly. Look at Alice. Look at Alice Karstark, as Maddie called out, the Karstark crisis. Like, Alice is running for her life to the night's watch yeah the night's watch has nothing for her lol except for a free folk leader that she can marry sigourn of them and then lord bolton yeah with the first night and whatever the fuck ramsay's out here doing with the women that he i guess kidnaps and has dogs chase but i thought this was really interesting the call out regarding Mance as well, because I didn't really think about that,

that Mance, you know, puts up with like Baramir Sixskins, but is it like he thinks, you know, is it a utilitarian thing or not, right? But at the same time has people like, a variety of different kinds of women, like with Harma Dog's head, Val and Della. I would just finally add that, to be fair, when the Targaryens came north,

they were like, no more First Knight. But yet, First Knight is happening behind the scenes in the north, so it's not a northern problem anymore because they joined the Seven Kingdoms, first of all. I just want to put that out there, like, blame it on management. We don't claim the Boltons. No one claims the Boltons. Who wants the Boltons? But at the same time, are they not in some ways, especially if they're skin changing and their brutality some of like that embodiment of what's supposed to be northern cultures differentiating them from southern culture

i see you just want to get rid of the northerners i get it that's clearly that's what i heard that's what i heard that is absolutely what I just said. Look, we could have a meaningful conversation about this. I hate waffles. A great email. A great essay. Maddie, I hope you publish it somewhere. Not just us.

We're not worthy. It has some great stuff I cut the fuck out because I hope others get to read it someday. So read it when Maddie posts it somewhere, please. And some of that stuff, like at the beginning regarding, you know, who Brynn is in regards to like the different aspects of his story when it comes to being with Catelyn, Bloodraven, etc. Wonderful touches on some of the things that we are absolutely going to dig into later this episode.

Yes. And Maddie's email isn't the things that we are absolutely going to dig into later this episode. Yes. And Maddie's email isn't the only email we got. We got an email from our friend Micah, who's been on the show before for chat. And this was fun. Micah emails us saying, Hello, I was listening to ACOC brand chapters today. And y'all were talking about Amira being an older sister protector to Jojen.

How she fights against the fate Jojen has predetermined for himself and she keeps the gang grounded as the hopeful anchor this is a cool layer for her character and got me thinking about a t-bow thought I heard from Sherlock Homo and Twitteros in her battle against predetermined fate and the possibility that Bloodraven could make Bran go dark do things he shouldn't what Meera is the one who kills Brendan Rivers, maybe even with Dark Sister? The sword? It's heavily theorized she will have. We're even out of revenge for what may happen to Jojen. Thoughts? Signed, Maika. I actually kind of have a thought. So in the past, we've talked about the old mercy, mercy, mercy kind of theorizing that Arya might have to put Stoneheart out right

and I do think Arya will get this sword eventually likely from Meera honestly who probably wouldn't want to wield Dark Sister but she's not trained in swordship yeah I mean she can handle it but also it's a sword that comes with a lot of baggage right that's true it's belonged to a lot of different targaryens i mean damon targaryen enough was like a drama queen and a half so it comes with a lot and it means a lot to wield that sword and i i don't necessarily think that she'll kill brendan rivers and if she does maybe it's out of mercy right maybe the ward to the cave falls and blood raven will probably die from the whites and turn sucked into the tree maybe she kills him with mercy ashea from history of westeros

got to kind of put forth some questions about if that sword in the cave that we see on the wall is dark sister and george kind of hinted winked that it is so i highly believe it's in that cave i do think she'll probably get it i do think she'll hand it off to aria i do also think that mirror reed is the sword of the morning and should have dawn instead it's a different story we don't have to talk about that right now but as a half dane um glossing that. I think it would be very interesting as a mercy kill even, right? Like that this is the man that has dictated how her brother will live and die. This is the man that has dictated how her prince will live and die. And here he is about to be consumed by wights maybe or by something else worse.

And she has a chance to free him and his eternal soul. I could see that happening i don't know if necessarily killing him out of spite i don't think that's her i could see her doing it like in a moment of passion right like i actually thought of it kind of differently not that it's a mercy kill but that she in trying to go against fate she attempts to kill blood raven right or something but it doesn't work i mean like can you even really kill him he's like what what would you do right he's yeah what what could you possibly even do and most of him is in the trees anyway so like i i thought it could be like you know she tries but

then it nothing comes of it i would hope she gets something to do i mean it's something to do but it's kind of like you know you denarius attempted to resurrect drogo right gives it a good good try and it ends up being for naught i definitely think we have some more to talk about on this in this episode especially when it comes to cannibalism and a couple other things it also made me think of it could be interesting having mira if she attempted to try to kill right or if she did succeed in killing brendan rivers like how you could juxtapose that with anyone else's first kill right for example brienne's first kill or john's of a person corinne yeah yeah i could see that okay okay i'm interested i'm interested i like the idea

shout out to sherlock homo on twitter and micah for letting us know about this one i'm really interested yeah i mean who knows one day we'll we'll find out what happens in brian's story it's anyone's game of thrones truly truly that, we're going to jump right into our lightning round, which will tell you what you missed between last episode, Bran 2 in Adowada, which we covered with Nikki and Tanya of A Thousand Eyes and One. A huge

thanks for joining us. And this episode's last chapter, Bran 3 in Adowada, the final Bran Stark published chapter as of today. Oh my god, it's like 2023. March 5th, 2023. So, for the historians.

My cups are not watered. For fucking real. Our skin is dry. It is winter. For fucking real. Yeah. Ish. It's spring kind of here. True. Tyrion 4. Tyrion Foy. Tyrion misbehaves on the Shy Maid so much that he gets banned from drinking wine.

Same. I like how you used the term misbehaves. Misbehaving. Davos 2. Davos checks out his old hangs in White Harbor before attempting to spread the good word of Stannis Baratheon. The fuck? Am I wrong? I don't think I'm wrong.

I guess. I guess not. Daenerys III. The Carthene declare war. Jon IV. Jon declines the gift of leading Winterfell from Stannis. Why am I getting all the Stannis ones? Tyrion 5.

It turns out stopping drinking was smart because Tyrion falls the fuck off the boat. Davos 3. Davos is jailed. Willa Manderly rocks. Reek 2. Theon gets a wedding gift for Ramsay. Moat Cailin.

Jon 5. Castle Black gives rations to the Free Folk. Tyrion 6. Tyr Black gives rations to the Free Folk. Tyrion VI. Tyrion dreams his father is the Drowned Lord and learns the truth-ish behind young Griff's identity. And then, of course, he is kidnapped. Daenerys IV. Daenerys is told she must marry for peace. The Lost Lord.

Team Griff visits the Golden Company. The Windblown Brog And his adventurers get one step closer to Dany with the Windblown The Wayward Bride At Deepwood Mott, our runaway bride is captured by Northmen after a thrilling fight Tyrion Seven, Tyrion and Jorah meet Penny The Widow at the Waterfront gives them a message for the dragon queen. Jon VI, Jon sends Alistair out to range and Melisandre predicts some of the ranger's death.

He receives the bad news about Arya's marriage. Quote unquote. Allegedly. Davos IV, at the Wolf's Den. Davos learns Wyman's true nature. Daenerys 5. With enemies surrounding them, Dany accepts she must marry for peace. Melisandre 1. Melisandre reveals some of her secrets to us. Reek 3. Roose asks a favor of Reek, introducing him to Barbary at Barotin.

Tyrion 8. Tyrion and Makoro discuss prophecy and those who seek Daenerys. Finally, we have reached the final published chapter of Bran in A Dance with Dragons as of 2023, March. Where Bran dreams, he wakes, he sleeps, and sees much and more. Much and more much and more you know all of this really just i just want everyone to know keeps me really like up brushed up on reading roman numerals that's what i want to share thank you for sharing this because same to be honest it keeps me really sharp doesn't it keep you sharp i know what it means. I felt like I improved from the beginning of that round towards the end.

Oh, you were spitting them at the end. You did great. Yeah, with these Roman numerals. I'll drink to that, said Bran with Jojen's blood in his mouth. Oh, God. We came up with the cocktail-ish ideas. We're working on cocktail ideas. Yeah, get ready. They're coming. we came up with the cocktail-ish ideas for Weirdwood Pace we'll go over them later yeah get ready they're coming

I love the way this passage at the front opens right with the moon we watch the moon throughout the entire chapter and it really reflects that passage of time through Bran's chapters we start with my god like eight there are eight

different moon references throughout the chapter to show us the position of the moon sailor moon end of march sailor moon it shows that passage of time and gives the chapter that irrequality and confusion kind of of timing the recurring shape of the moon tells us what has passed this chapter covers an entirety of like three months which is quite a cut down from what George would really want it to cover right because originally when these chapters were written it was written for a five-year gap so here you kind of feel that playful nod in the meta sense that yes it's only three months it could have been five years. I wish it was five years, motherfucker. Of those eight references,

we of course hear of the moon being a crescent, thin and sharp as the blade of the knife, followed by being fat and full, being a black hole in the sky, and then a crescent once more, then fat and full, then a crescent, then black hole, then a crescent. So each time, we realize the month has turned. we have come

back to where we are. Yeah, she said three months, it's a whole fiscal quarter. Q1 is over. Q1, it's time for Q2. Things have changed, too, for our CEO of Whispers, aka Brendan, and, uh, CEO, bitch, C-E-O-W. C-W-O, Chief Whisper Officer. C-W-O, Chief Whisper. of whispers aka brendan and uh ceo bitch ceo w c o c w o chief whisper cwo chief whisper

which makes bran of course the senior operating manager for the chief whisper operator and other chapters like melisandre's also kind of give us a hint at where Bran is now and how deep his magic is, right? Like where he's suddenly fallen into and what he's skilled at because she sees him at her fire. A face took shape within the hearth. Stannis, she thought, just for a moment. But no. These were not his features. A wooden face, corpse white.

Was this the enemy? A thousand red eyes floated in the rising flames he sees me beside him a boy with a wolf's face threw back his head and howled i love that we both just were like that's the obvious response to this yeah there's no other response to that yeah it feels a dance of dragons is great because although george copied off of famous showrunners david and dan to remove bran from an entire book which is what they did with the season because this is of course adapted off of the show these books are adapted from the show absolutely although he copied them it's actually kind of

flawless you know exactly where Bran has been and what he's been doing just from that alone from the past few chapters. You know what he's been doing? Some of it kind of reminds me a little bit of Ned's time, right? In the King's Landing.

But yeah, what Bran has been doing is sitting on a weird throne listening to whispers in the dark while ravens walk up and down his arms. I kind of like, I don't know, why don't birds walk up and down my arms? It was crawly it was great i love that lion yeah the songs of the children drift upward and the ravens speak it too their small black eyes full of secrets pecking at brand when they hear the song now the moon is fat and full rain freezes and falls brandon mirror had

made names for those who sang the song of the earth which is the true meaning of the name of the children that doesn't translate to man's tongue i really love this we've been talking a little bit in our past handfuls of episodes about you know if you don't know something how does your brain contextualize it right and that turns out is what the children of the forest means right like that's a name given to them by man given to them by people that don't know them by their true name and it doesn't translate to their language right to the language of the people that live in westeros now that name is lost to them that knowledge is lost to them as leaf keeps repeating throughout

this chapter that men forget trees remember it reminds me of doctor who and you're never going to see this so we can just cover that right now that you will never know this or see this but comes back to a little bit of something that i've mentioned before of that tardis translation point and that there's a character that their name where the character comes their name is one thing but when they go another place the people are like we don't have words for that so your name instead is this and they give her a different name so i just kind of think that's very interesting to have different names especially when you go back to that mythology right when we talk about azor ahai we talk about the prince that was promised we talk about all of these mythos

that are coming from lore in and around and across from westeros it feels prominent that they have a different name now than they would have once thousands of years ago yeah and i think part of it is i guess like literally they're just built different we will go into more of that later like literally physically they are built different like their vocal cords i guess can make this sound that we cannot it makes me think a little bit of lovecraft and like how you couldn't really say cthulhu's name which is not actually pronounced like that they say it's more pronounced like which is like i don't know how to do yeah yeah and peoples are not built to say that i don't love some of this part though right where they're like

ash and leaf and scales black knight snowy, Snowy Locks and Coals. Because I guess their names are too long for human tongues. Is it that they're too long or like we just couldn't say them? And that Leaf is the only one who speaks their tongue though. And so Leaf is the only one who gives them a name. I guess like if no one wants to interact with them, then they need a way to refer to these people. But it also, for me, it just kind of is annoying that like brandon you're like oh i'm just gonna give you a name and i'm like uh they have names yeah they have names and they like you didn't even try to like

give them a nickname at the very least you could have tried to give them a nickname off of whatever they tried to say their name whatever they said their name was to you and it would be one thing if like they chose their own like name like that to tell you it makes me think of I don't know, for example, a lot of like Asian Americans or like people who move in move here from Asia, they'll like have a name that they use, you know, maybe they'll use like a different name in like Korea or China, right? And then they have another like, more westernized name that they'll use. But I guess that's also different they're moving to a different context and assimilating the children in the forest are not trying to assimilate

into human culture but anyway i like what you've called out though because i have a friend that he goes by jay but his name is sanjay and there's a longer version of his name but he just goes by jay he just prefers going by jay but he's told me he likes Sanj. He likes to be called Sanj. I call him Sanj because he likes that, but like, it's just fucking easier because people are just like, nope, too much work. Too much work. What? What? But sometimes like the work isn't like that hard, right? Like for example, yeah, I have friends, you know, they have names, in my opinion, they're like not that hard to say, but people don't want to try my name, which I don't think is particularly very difficult. I had a teacher who was like,

I'm going to call you George. I'm like, my name's really not that difficult. I had teachers who struggled and I'm like, it's not even like, this is not like a Filipino name or anything. You're so right, Ella. Thanks for contributing. So anyways. Oh my God, the time I got called Lisa? What? What? Oh, my God. Okay, anyway. Oh, that's more over your personality, not your name. That man did not know my name at all.

Like a Lisa Simpson moment. He went through four different names, none of which were my name. It comes back to my, like, favorite. I'm not huge on The Simpsons. I like some episodes. My roommate, you know, he's very on The Simpsons. I like some episodes. My roommate, he's very into The Simpsons, but there's a great episode where Lisa Simpson is holding a graph

and it's an axis graph and it has at one end happiness and the other end intelligence. And it just has happiness you go all the way down to the bottom and intelligence all the way up to the top, right? So she's just like, I make a lot of graphs. And I think that represents you and me. like, I make a lot of graphs. And I think that represents you and me, truly.

I make a lot of graphs. Yeah. It means that you're sad if you're smart. I don't know anything about the Simpsons, except I make references to Simpson memes, which I will do later, but... Oh my god! Wow, okay.

Glossing over that, Miss Lord of the Rings wannabe as well. So, of course, we come to the last greenseer himself, who tells Bran when he was young he was named Brynden. Bran says, my great uncle's name is Brynden. And Bloodraven's like, he might have been named for me. Some still are, but not many. Men forget, and only the trees trees remember that was very self-important of you blood raven where you're like oh he might be named for i don't know i mean maybe maybe the black he doesn't have much else okay all he has is his fucking tree and his mushrooms no you're

right you're right i i should be nicer about that. You're absolutely right. Because I mean, it is possible, right? They're, Brendan's from the Riverlands. Both Brendan's are from the Riverlands. So it's possible. But in my opinion, I'm like, I don't know, seems kind of like a common name. I'm like, what if you're named for Bran? Brendan Rivers, right? Because Brendan is kind of a variant on the name Brandon. Brendan is kind of a variant on the name Brandon. That's actually so true. And now that you mentioned it, I didn't think about it, but it's kind of funny, right? Like another Brandon, another Brendan. Like he could be another one of the Brandons from history's past. Maybe that is the prerequisite.

They're like, it's your eye color. I'm like, no, it's whether you were named Brendan or Brendan. I have to think on this. Wow, what the fuck, Eliana? Damn, Damn. Leaf explains Brendan has absorbed mostly into the tree beyond his mortal span, and one day Bran will know that there is much to watch from there

too. Hooray. Later, Bran asks Jojen what the trees remember, and Jojen's like, the old gods. Food and fire restored him a little, but Jojen has been sad sullen haunted I'm glad that physically I guess

feeling a little better truth's the first man knew forgotten now in Winterfell but not in the wet wild we live closer to the green in our bogs and cronogs and we remember earth and water soil and stone oaks and elms and willows,

they were here before us all, and will still remain when we are gone. So will you, said Mira, who has a different accent from Jojen. That made Bran sad. What if I don't want to remain when you are gone? That made Bran sad. What if I don't want to remain when you are gone? He almost asked, but he swallowed the words unspoken. He was almost a man grown, and he did not want Meera to think he was some weepy babe. Maybe you could be greenseers too, he said instead.

No, Bran. Now Meera sounded sad. It is given to a few to drink of that green fountain while still in mortal flesh. To hear the whisperings of the leaves and see as the trees see, as the gods see, said Jojen. Most are not so blessed. The gods gave me only green dreams. My task was to get you here.

My part in this is done maybe or it's not give me an award honestly honestly you yeah I agree Scottish Jojen I'm rolling with the punches are they involved in BAFTA? I think

I don't understand how the British Empire works it's big and vast and overbearing is how it works is what i hear sorry my british friends yeah yes give chloe the bafta oh i guess the oscars are coming up soon so that too yeah that too oh my god 2024 oscars uh so I love this line of what if I don't want to remain when you are gone and I feel like it's one of the biggest arguments that the series

is making it feels very much like a driver for many of the adult characters in the series for example the grief of surviving the rebellion as we've discussed often with Ned, Doran John Conningtonton hell maybe it's even like balon grayjoy's story after his sons die and his youngest son is stolen from him it is quite obviously his wife's story it's what what maddie was saying earlier the emotional core of

catlin's story and it's what drives denarius in the first book to attempt to resurrect Drogo. And so much of A Song of Ice and Fire is about surviving, even when the ones you love are gone. Truly, like, what if I don't want to remain when you are gone? How do you justify surviving the deaths of your family, which is what Aemon still wrestles with, as we see in his discussion with Jon or as Bloodraven does. After all Bloodraven does talk about his family in this and Bran really has known a lot of grief already for his parents and his brothers and he grieves his brother Robb wishing that Robb were here for him to speak with in this very chapter grieving for his own body and childhood. There's a there's also what if you pervert that question a little, right? Not wanting to remain when someone is gone, but they're not dead. Talking a little

bit like breakups or something like that. For example, the paths that Littlefinger and Jorah have gone down, which again is something that George has revisited throughout his writing career. gone down, which again is something that George has revisited throughout his writing career. Those who can't move on from romantic heartbreak. And I have a million tinfoil of how the others came to be. We're going to go over a different tinfoil from this one that I'm about to pause it right now. None of which, okay, very few of which are similar to how it went down in the show. So here's one. what if someone found a new magic to try to resurrect someone that they cared for because they did not wish to remain when the one that they loved was gone whether it was romantic or or not romantic something that goes

awry kind of like in 2003 full metal alchemist for the Origin of the Homunculi, or even Dr. Freeze in Batman or something. Someone essentially trying to exert control over their object of desire, maybe also could have been another way that it goes, like in Meat House Man by George R. R. Martin. But either way, it really comes back to this idea of, I think, it is a madness because grief feels maddening. What if you don't want to remain when the people you love are gone? I love what you've said here because for me, that's Kat, right? Kat at the end of Storm, at the end of her last chapter, when she's raked her face open,

her flesh open, right? As she realizes all this horror and trauma. And even there's something in what you said, in the north men what do they do when their focus is gone and when ned's gone for example how do they how do they face that and it reminds me a lot of that one bitter line from ned that we hear in that cat chapter right of when he talks about his brother and he's like brandon wouldn't know what to do he always did it was all meant for brandon you winner fell everything he was born to be a king's hand and a father's to queens i never asked for this cup to pass to me it's that anger when you have that survivor's guilt right

like you're what's left liana died benjen left because he couldn't deal with it brandon brandon died and here you are and you're you feel nothing but plain it's a lot of what we saw in clash for brand right but now it's magnified now it's so much more magnified so i love what you're pointing to with them being almost like a homunculi kind of state like this form of anger that's manifested this pain that's manifested yeah if the whites are you know like in that that's like their origin story but i mean it comes back to and now that i think about it if it is related to that resurrection i mean in the moment when denarius attempts to resurrect drogo miri mazor essentially puts to her this same sort of question in a way or this different lens to it of look at what your life is worth when all the rest is gone.

What is the point of your body still being there and surviving if the people that you care about, if you cannot share that grief, that joy yeah etc yeah there's a great line in doctor who that again you'll never see it really disappoints me uh in the fifth there actually it's a seventh season but it's from the fifth season group how the fuck am i supposed to get to a seventh season chloe god anyways glossing over that problem but there's just this idea of like don't be alone right like when you're alone when you're not together with humans, when you don't have that stroke of humanity, that touch, that feel of not being alone, it becomes hard and harder when you're alone.

Like, I think of Dani and what she's going through and what she will probably continue going through and, like, how alone she'll feel and how alone she felt that night with miriam as door in her shadows yeah it's chilling but or like afterwards right knowing yeah drogo's gone her child is gone her brother's dead that passage from tyrian like i know she's prideful how not how wouldn't you be how the fuck wouldn't you be she had to keep going when all the rest was gone literally everything was against her when all the odds were against her that bitch birthed dragons

yeah anyway anyway off topic i'm off topic i'm sorry it's not off topic it's on topic it's part of what the story is asking you to think about when can a man be brave when he's underground undergrounded well outside wolves are howling in the night and inside jojen is brooding mira's fretting and hodor is wandering around the tunnels of the cave with his sword and torch or wait is he wandering or is it brandon brandon stark no one must ever know the line it really does say no one must ever know and like it's in another own little italicized paragraph and this is gonna sound this up i don't know if turns out other people watch sometimes the same things in health class that i did, like the CPR video of baby, baby, are you okay? Apparently other people watch that. We were shown a video in health class of raising awareness about,

you know, child molestation slash sexual abuse. And I was like an uncle telling the child like, this will be our little secret, which, you know, kind of feels like the no one must ever know kind of thing. And I guess that is sort of the point and the comparison that George is drawing here I love that you bring that up because you brought it up back in our house of the dragon coverage with Alicent and Viserys too because Viserys in the show says a line to her like don't tell anyone though it's our little secret and it's very it's something it's control it's very, it's something. It's control. It's power. No, it's control. It's about power. It's about a game of thrones. What? Because these are based off that.

Bran has his own mini throne, a white weirwood, down in the great cavern with the sound of the running river nearby, his seat of soft gray moths covered in furs. Did you think about this? I was like, is moss, like, that comfortable to sit on? It has to be more plush than bark. That's true, that's true. Comparably speaking. Do the, like, weirwood

things snake through your bed sores? Anyway. I mean, yeah, I think that's just making it ready to poke through you know what i mean that's just weakening the skin i worry about bed sores i do i yeah no it is worrisome they're serious they can be really as a depressed person i worry about them So there's this great language here of light entered as a trespasser, unwanted and unwelcome,

and soon was gone again. Cook fires, candles, and rushes burned for a little while, then guttered out again, their brief lives at an end. And discussing the lights flickering out as brief lies, again, it harkens a bit to what I think will be central to Bran's inner conflict be central to brand's

inner conflict of whether to stay here in the cave or leave the greater good slash duty or the brief lives of the ones he loves right how much can they actually be worth compared to all that and it does the language there feels like a nod to mcbeth's speech upon hearing that lady mcbeth has killed herself especially with the language about candles and then brief in it, where he goes basically, you know, in all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle. That's it.

Just feels like a reference. I really like that you brought the Scottish play into this to match my Scottish Jojen. Oh, yeah, that's right. there was something about the language about light and how lights being spent which immediately makes me think of the way Melisandre talks about light and shadow in her chapter and also kind of makes me think about John Milton he has a poem called when I consider how my light is spent and it's basically about his blindness because in his early 40s he starts to go blind and it's his response to loss of sight there's a couple lines in it like when

i consider how my light is spent ere half my days in this dark world and wide and that one talent which is death to hide lodged with me useless though my soul more bent. And it just goes on to basically him losing his sight when he's barely halfway through life, right? Like when he's barely there. And it reminds me a little bit of Bran's disability in the light of this in the light of this. Wow. Wow. Yeah, it reminds me a little bit

of Bran's disability and how, you know, this is what he's given up. This is what he is. This is what he's come to. And I love it compared here with this line from the Scottish this is what he's come to and i love it compared here with this line from the scottish play just the talk of light and how brief it is it really is fleeting yeah i didn't know that about john milton that is yeah great comparison early 40s lost it so brandt's teacher gives him some lessons here of never fear the darkness brandt the lords of words are accompanied by a faint rustling of wood and leaf, a slight twisting of his head.

The strongest trees are rooted in dark places of the earth. Darkness will be your cloak, your shield, your mother's milk. Darkness will make you strong. Okay, Edgelord Rivers. Bane? Big Bane energy? Eliana would like us to say. You would think darkness is your ally. I was molded by it.

Born in it, I didn't see the light until I was a man. That's literally this passage. I'm sorry. It's, you know, I don't did you have you been watching harley quinn no oh harley quinn animated show no it's it's a fucking bomb.com you gotta watch it it's gritty violent dark wonderful but bane is wonderful in it and clay face is another favorite great voice actors great stuff you gotta watch it but thank you yes yes yes darkness that's what that is this this passage the idea of darkness being one strength despite the long night being from the others is pretty interesting especially with that language and the idea of darkness being your cloak, your shield, really brings to mind how the Night's Watch wears black cloaks and is considered also a shield.

As opposed to fighting darkness with its opposite light, which is, I think, the obvious assumption. Maybe they're saying like fight fire with fire, right? But darkness with darkness. I don't know. I don't know if that's what he's trying to say here, but really interesting. Comes back to that play from Melisandre on what the light does versus the dark,

the god of darkness, the god of shadows versus the god of light. And kind of that balance, right, of life, of, like, light can't exist without a shadow and shadow can't exist without light to cast that shadow ice and fire you know like equal equivalent

exchange Eliana whoa Bran had mastered slipping to summer's skin by now and was able to start skin changing ravens Bloodraven had a lesson on this one as well. A wild stallion will buck and kick when a man tries to mount him and try to bite the hand that slips the bit between his teeth.

Or, in the words of Trent Reznor, bite the hand that feeds. I thought the same thing. A horse that is known one rider will accept another. Young or old, these birds have all been ridden. Choose one now and fly. I want to ride a bird. Car! So, there are just so many clues in these chapters, this foreshadowing, etc.

Like this and the Varamyr chapter all, like, going up to that supposed threefold reveal about Hodor and the time travel. Yeah. Especially just the dreaminess of this chapter and the in and out of, is Bran dreaming? Is he not? Time is passing. Time is unpassing. We just don't know. There's something going on. Yeah. Soon, Bran

transforms from a boy looking at a raven into a raven looking at a boy. And the river grows louder. The torch is brighter. The smell's thicker. His voice is a boy. And the river grows louder, the torch is brighter, the smell's thicker. His voice is a scream. Caw! And his first flight ends

when he crashes into a wall. Forced right back into his body, the bird's okay. Just putting that out there, that's important to me. Personally, like, nothing's worse than a bird hitting a fucking window.

Like, I will go nurse that bird. Dude, it hurts me. Don't live. They just don't make it. Child me learned that lesson the hard way in a restaurant you can't fall in love with them because of that it's hard it's hard they're birds i took that bird home and it died i don't have time to unpack this with you but we should sometime because i'm worried that this says a lot about you anyway so bran tries again soon but he realizes i am worried he realizes he's not alone that a girl was in the raven not just him and blood raven says it's a woman who once sang the

song of earth long dead but part of her remains like part of him would someday remain in summer if he died a shadow on the soul okay but like so this is a question that has plagued me for years. How fucking old are these birds? Okay. Ravens live like 10 to 15 years. If these are the singers who are dead long, long ago, or maybe he just means like they, the singer died 10 to 15 years ago, because clearly a couple of them still exist. But I'm also like, are some of these birds from, I don't know, 300 years ago? Maybe. I think these birds might be experiencing that Tuck Everlasting lifestyle offered by the greenseers, right? That like, because their souls are one, they're extending that lifespan.

I think that's something to think about. I've been wondering if that's possible. It is kind of, not that I'm thinking about it. A part of you will remain in summer, right? Because of that close bond. And makes me think a little bit of um shiny shiny shiny john no i was thinking of kyber and saying that oh in in the citadel right someone's perfume lingering on a cushion i'm not going magical with this i'm going emotional and yeah the idea like footsteps in the sand yeah part of you it stays on this planet you know like maybe if you don't live on like in a literal sense in someone but like you live on in their memories yeah i've got that i'm collecting a lot of dead exes these days

i'm at two could be three any day now we never know oh i hope not i hope not too but you know just keeping you all informed yeah three would be a lot right people are gonna start asking yeah you're gonna shit fuck oh my god i moved i don't even live by these x's anymore dude i moved anyway wow clear my name clear chloe's name what the fuck but yeah like as somebody getting a couple x's like that dead x's it's sad it's like there's something to it of like i'm re-watching the magicians right now i don't know if you've all listening at home if you folks have watched the magicians or read the books the books are very different from the show but they're both enjoyable i've really enjoyed both so far i'm on the second book there's less musical numbers in the books i assume yeah much fewer but with that

in mind i highly recommend reading both the book and then watching the show like they're great but the show is much more fun and there are a lot of really great sci-fi concepts slash fantasy concepts mixed in there that kind of come back to this and it makes me think a little bit of that. Yeah, I really like the show. I still have yet to read the books. I intend to one day, but... The shadow on the soul bit, you know, like your shade. Yeah, yeah. What happens

when John comes back with no shade? Yeah, that or like, you know, when again, that grief, you know, people keeping X person alive through their memory yeah not gonna spoil like net it would have been a big spoiler yeah or a song for leah literally though we'll come back to that we will the singers had taught the first men to send messages by raven the birds back in the day would show up and speak the words that were the message kind of like the rabbits in

fillery right if you're a magician's fan it's actually that's literally what this is but only trees remember and men forget and now they write messages on parchment and tie them to the bird's foot who have never shared their skin they have no personal connection to the bird bran remembers old nan telling them this once but rob laughing and being like it's not true he wishes rob was there now of all his siblings he could teach them to fly all of them they could be ravens and live in lewin's rookery but yeah it's adorable it's two stupid dogs remember that show two stupid dogs i didn't that sweet yeah isn't that sweet but it's wrong because that was a very silly dream that a little boy would have because these days while he can't

tell the difference between dreams and waking whatever's and of course he would try to wake himself some days but sleeping and waking became one and the same. Lessons became dreams. Dreams are lessons. Things happen at once or they don't happen at all. He's living in a very confusing world. We have this passage of, Only one man in a thousand is born a skin changer. Lord Brynden said one day after Bran had learned to fly. And only one

skin-changer in a thousand can be a greenseer. I thought the greenseers were the wizards of the children. The singers, I mean. In a sense, those who call the children of the forest have eyes as golden as the sun, but once in a great while one is born among them with eyes as red as blood or green as the moss on a tree in the heart of the forest. By these signs do the gods mark those they have chosen to receive the gift. The chosen ones are not robust. And their quick years upon the earth are few, for every song must have its balance. But once inside the wood they linger long indeed. A thousand eyes, a hundred skins.

Wisdom deep as the roots of the ancient green trees green says thank you Chloe thank you she's going for it I went all in on that yeah all in all in and I have thoughts now too thank you

so my controversial opinion is I don't think one out of a thousand is that small of a percentage of people or like that small of a number i mean maybe it is and i just don't have like any sense of scope or reality but to put it into context of our own world of all the people in the world the the census number or whatever the estimate I have is from 2021. If one person out of every thousand people that were alive in 2021, right, there were 7.88 billion people or something in 2021. So by this number, 7,880,000 people would have been skin changers and not, not green seers, but skin changers. And honestly, I think that is a pretty big population of people. I think that is the,

the population of New York is, I don't know, 8,992,908, which is significantly higher, but like, it's almost to the population of New York, right? Or most of the way of the population to New York, which is sure, like, in the grand scheme of things in the world, maybe that's not that many people, but it is almost equivalent to the biggest city in the United States is all i'm saying as a man that was like raised across the delaware right like looking out at the river and knowing there are big cities all around him in jersey city and like all these places he could go not just new york it's interesting to think of in that george doesn't not have a scope of people living in a big city that's all i'm saying like i definitely think he thought about that it feels like a lot and then i love that this passage mentions that

it's not just those with the moss green eyes that have suffered that that gray water fever you know like like jojen who's got those mossy green eyes but also the red eyed because we have ghost of high heart and storm of swords with Arya right that's kind of giving some singer vibes yeah so so we can really see how that manifests with like Jojen and yeah the ghost of high heart I do think it's interesting that if Bran is supposed to be a greenseer, though, and also, I mean, even Bloodraven, right? He had red eyes. And that Bran's eye color is blue. And I think Euron's other eye, right, is blue, the one that everyone can see. Smiling eye. Yeah, his smiling eye is blue. That is obviously a color associated with the others. That is obviously a color associated with the others.

Even better, it's the inverse of the weirwood coloring, which goes to the coloring of the black and blue trees over it with the carthene, right? With the undying, with those trees that make... Shade of the evening. Shade of the evening. Acid. Acid. Yeah, it is.

It is. You know, here we are with Bloodraven and his shrooms, and... We're gonna watch Speed Racer yet. Just talking. Oh my god. Bran asks Jojen to translate, because he doesn't quite understand, and Jojen's like, Bran, do you fucking like books? And then we get a passage.

This is a famous passage right like this feels faint yeah this feels there's some some stuff riding on this a reader lives a thousand lives before he dies said jojen the man who never reads lives only one the singers of the forest had no books, no ink, no parchment, no written language. Instead, they had the trees and the weirwoods above all. When they died, they went into the wood, into leaf and limb and root. And the trees remembered all their songs and spells, their histories and prayers, everything they knew about this world. Maesters will tell you the Weirwoods

are sacred to the old gods. The singers believe they are the old gods. When singers die, they become part of that godhood. Yo, some Dune shit. Some fuckin' Oh, that's like Grishka, but also Grishka shit, though. Like, also Grishka.

No, big, big song for Leia energy, but also fucking worm emperor lito too anyways but glossing over that when did you come out because i'm like the grishka is probably inspired by it or oh absolutely absolutely um my god this would have been children of dune yeah 69 so this would have been perfect timing i mean this is there's a lot of that like if you look at star wars the ancient jedi texts are actually referencing dune and george absolutely was too in some ways i mean bran really is leto too i mean it was a pretty big deal yeah that uh that story yeah so bran is afraid of this thinking that it means that

they will kill him and mira tells jojen to stop scaring bran and jojen is like bran's not the one who needs to be afraid and jojen i'm like jojen the subtext is it's me i'm in danger i'm the one who should be afraid i'm like someone be afraid for jojen there's a part of me that has a worry and i don't think this is actually happening but coming back to this and coming back to the idea of illusions and glamour and every place that they take in Bloodraven

and Bran's plot we talked a couple weeks ago about the walking dead and that concept of being cannibalized while you're still alive right I want to come back to that there's an episode of the magician season 3 I think it's episode 6 7 where, where it might be seven, eight. Now that I say it, I've been watching a lot of Magicians on my rewatch, like really a lot.

But the fairies are being cannibalized for their magic, right? And there's kind of a glamour being put on them. So the humans, A, they can't see fairies unless you've made a deal with fairies. put on them so the humans a they can't see fairies unless you've made a deal with fairies and b you can't see them being cannibalized and turned into basically magic snortable dust like cocaine style magic when your magic is gone but it does make you wonder like is jojen already being cannibalized and we don't know because of a glamour over him blood raven's very experienced in glamours and suddenly as we go through this chapter, they're gone. I don't know if it's yet, but I don't, I'm not saying that he wouldn't be while still alive,

because you have Lady Hornwood, right? Who survived for a bit with the self-cannibalization. So I do think, or even, again, Vargo Hote for a little bit too. So I do think, like, I'm not, I don't think live cannibalization is out of the picture. I don't think that's off the table. Literally or figuratively. Ugh! Eliana!

Ella Enchanted, you watch your tone. And I guess there is kind of a live cannibalization now or something though with with brand and hodor in a way as we're discussing it great way to put it the whole reader lives a thousand lives thing that jojen's talking about that applies even to the ones that you don't want to read or dislike because brand right before that passage talks about how he really likes the fighting stories but doesn't like the kissing ones which is what Sansa likes and those ones kind of gross him out or something but I think that the two kinds of stories are entangled right the fighting ones are action their valor their heroism but the kissing ones are all about the dark heart or like the the emotions that drive

that action Rhaegar and Lyanna and Robert has a sting to it because of that, right? Like, they are all they're in this little love triangle of the rebellion and all of the hot cook shit happening around them. I love that. That's important. What I'm trying to say is David and Dan really liked fighting

stories and could have benefited from not just fighting stories. Ugh. They could have fucked. They could have benefited from fucking not just writing stories anyway they could have fucked they could have fucked no there was too much fucking that was also where meaningless fucking yeah that's true that's true that's true a swap i feel like it's full of like meaningful fucking there's some meaningful fucking a boot summer is prowling the wood outside where the ward on the mouth of the cave holds strong and the dead remain

outside buried in snow while they remain alive within there's a moment where a snow bear crushes through the brush and summer in his pack falls on it gorging on rotten moving meat lots to think about there. Rotten meat.

Inside, mushrooms grow beneath the hill and blind white fish in the Black River. They have cheese and milk from the goats the singers keep, and even oats, barley corn, dried fruit. They eat blood stew every day. Every day. Thickened with barley, onions, and chunks of meat jojen is like it's squirrel meat and mira's like it's rat meat and i'm like it's jojen meat really you're all wrong you're all wrong yeah no one knows what it is what if it's it could be the the other singers i don't know i my favorite part is like brandy like

i he doesn't care he's like he likes the meat nonetheless he's like i don't care where the meat's from he doesn't say it aloud and he's just like the stewing makes it so tender i'm like yeah i mean brand's been in summer enough he's like whatever maybe it is jojen's leg maybe it is he literally does not care where it's coming from let's do it it's good though but i do not eat it as i eat it as like pork which i guess is not that different allegedly feels suspicious though feels suspicious can't look back bob can't turn back bob it's suspicious because brand's like i don't care where that meat came from sir he's losing a lot in this chapter. A lot of his little humanity. His baby humanity.

So the caves are vast, they're silent, they're home to the bones of thousands of singers. Leaf tells them not to wander, saying that the river is swift, black, and flows down to a sunless sea. The passages reach out to become bottomless pits and shafts to the center of the earth,

and even the children haven't explored them all, and they've been here for thousands of years. I find these tunnels so fascinating. It makes me stop and think, especially in the light of the tunnels we just went through in A Storm of Swords with Tywin's death right at the end of Storm, beginning of Feast, and the tunnels that went to him and it makes me think what about these tunnels the singers say they haven't had time to explore all of them there's a bajillion of them is it gendel's tunnels gendel and gorn right and then do these tunnels possibly reach out farther since no one's been through them do they go to like winterfell night fort other collapsed places and then i have to call out that of course george uses that phrase

a sunless sea which is more than likely referencing the poem kublai khan by samuel taylor coleridge and the beginning of this poem begins he says in xanadanadu did Kublai Khan a stately pleasure-domed decree, Where elf the sacred river ran through caverns measureless to man, Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground with walls and towers were girdled round, And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree, and here were forests ancient as the hills enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

He wrote this strange poem, slightly hallucinatory, after he woke up from an opium-influenced dream, big mood, in 1797, and he's writing about the landscape surrounding the emperor of China Kubla Khan's summer palace called Xanadu. He describes it as a place of beauty, pleasure, and violence and talks about how all of these things intertwine, how they all get to exist at once and it very much reminds me of this history of the children of the forest being built on this violence and now many bones of dreamers are littering this cave and it should have kind of helped them to great prosperity right they all gave their lives to dream to join with the trees and be able to build their society in a stronger way but instead it kind of killed them all and stifled them all and the children have lived underground this whole time,

servicing another man, Brendan Rivers, or even some prior to him. So very interesting, very sad and interesting to think about that pleasure palace, that sunless sea. You're absolutely right. It is a reference to that. And I love the way that you've woven that into what George is doing here. And yeah, the bones and the lost prosperity. I don't know, China's... there's a lot of money in some of the areas. So just in that, I guess, poem, that palace.

But you're talking about also how far the... I think they go as far as Essos, right? With the Efekevron stuff going on. The Wyverns. Yeah. Yeah, I think some of those tunnels, I was thinking like some of those, you don't want to go down them because there's going to be like a Wyvern or something. The heart runs deep. Not great.

Yeah. The children are small compared to men. And they say like a wolf is smaller than a dire wolf their eyes are big their skin dappled nut brown with large ears and they had only three fingers and a thumb with sharp black claws instead of nails and saying in a language that bran doesn't know there's something about this in the physicality of the the singers that reminds me a little bit of Sisterton actually and that rumor of like the webbed fingers and shit it makes

think of evolution throughout Westeros and comes back to the idea of like some with the red eyes the albino look and the red eyes show that they are dreamers they are seers right when you go back to like those like Ghost of High Heart and those with that red eye like

brendan but here i'm like oh interesting they have three fingers and a thumb and then when you look at people at sisterton for example that have that webbed look to their hands or whether it's a rumor or not like could they be coming from them who knows i think there's much of the evolution of westeros we don't actually know of who lived here and who came from who. Yeah, absolutely. Squishers. Squishers, man, every day. The rest of the

singers had gone into the earth, the stones, the trees, the giants, the lions, the unicorns, the mammoths, all down to but a few hundred each. The direwolves might outlast them, but their time will come too, Leaf says. No! What the fuck?

Leaf just confirmed Summer dies. I'm cutting the series. Cry bitch. In the world that men have made, there's no room for them, or us. She seemed sad when she said it, and that made Bran sad as well. It was only later he thought

men would not be sad men would be wroth men would hate and swear a bloody vengeance the singers sing sad songs where men would fight and kill so that feels like a double entendre now that i think about it not just like the singers being the children of the forest right singing sad songs where men would fight and kill as we find out the true nature of a lot of these songs, right? From the past. Yes. There's something in this, and I haven't parsed it out. I don't think we can with what George has given us.

That feels, I think, really... There's something in this that feels like it might be a key to the origin of the others in regards to the men would not be sad men would be wroth men would hate and swear a bloody vengeance and it really makes me think of robert frost's poem fire and ice which we have probably read 20 times on this fucking podcast already but we can do it again some say the world will end in fire some say in ice from what i've tasted of desire i hold with those who favor fire but if it had to perish twice maybe like a white i think i know enough of hate to say that for destruction ice is also great

and would suffice so i think that there is something there that is being communicated to us about how the others came to be. I like what you're bringing up here, because especially, you know, the voice of the poem says, ice preserves, fire consumes, right? And that tasting of desire burns, it burns through you. And one of the inspirations for that poem was dante's inferno right showing hell written to that 14th century and how we survive it and how we how we let it suffice for us i like that duality i love the duality being brought in eliana yeah pip yeah something about does hate keep you alive that That's a sad thing to think. I mean, like Ellaria says, like, what can this fucking skull do for me?

Can it hold me at night? Can it kiss me? Can it say, like, you know, like, don't worry, your bills are fucking paid. That's not what she said, but I know it's what she thought. She got a lot of kids. She does have a lot of kids. By Oberyn. So, you know, I get that like does it there's that antithesis of like does that battle of ice and fire really make up for all of it in

the end when you could have stayed out of it and had your family and died think of penelope think of fucking um odysseus right like you could have been fucking at home, fucking me, having kids with me, having a life, but you had to go off. You just fucking had to adventure Davos. I mean, Odysseus. Fuck her. Go home to her. Go home to Maria. Literally, he could go home at any time.

You could go home, Davos. Go home. Odysseus had an excuse, you know. Kind of. Ish. Ish. Mira and jim want to see the river despite leaf's warnings about its danger and bran wants to come but it turns out the path is not made for him right it's not made for him and hodor to be traveling through his one he wants to shout he wants to cry but instead he says nothing because he is almost a man grown. Once they're gone, he follows them and Hodor all the same.

Hodor doesn't fight him like he used to, and instead, he curls up when Bran tries to reach for him. So sad. This is the passage that people point to most, and especially when talking about how Hodor's reaction mirrors someone experiencing sexual abuse. But I will also say the language of where Hodor goes to hide and how Bran cannot find him and it's so deep inside him or something. it's interesting following so closely behind Leaf saying here that there are areas of the caves and tunnels they've never explored or been able to find kind of likening the

psyche to the mysterious tunnels of a planet. Of a world. And respecting it in some ways. The planet itself. The people and their culture. Shit. Even just this one person. Yeah.

Bran promises to give Hodor control back eventually, that he only needs it for a bit to be strong, and he follows them, grinning along, unsuspecting. At one point, Jojen can't make it back up the rope, so Hodor, quote-unquote, hauls him up, grunting with each of his poles. Yeah, Summer had dug up a black severed arm also with meat to fill his body. And I mean,

this is what you were saying, right, about the live cannibals. They're technically dead, right? But the bones and these arms still move as Summer eats them, right? He cracks the bones for marrow and that's when it finally stops moving. And Bran eats with Summer in the pack. And then as a raven, he flies with the murder, watching

for foes. When he's Hodor, he explores the caves, finding bones and shafts plunging into the earth and giant bat skeletons. Sometimes actual giant bats, I think. Yeah, like alive giant bats hanging from the ceiling. I think that's cool. I like bats.

Brr, brr, brr, brr, brr. Oh, that's Lord Bolton as a vampire. Bolt on. Bolt on. Bolt on. One of the rooms is actually full of enthroned singers who look dead, but one of them opens their eyes and is like... And the eyes follow him and his torch. One even looks like he's trying to speak. Danger.

Danger. Red flag. This is like a very red eye flag yeah it's very alien-esque right like he's passing weirwood embryos basically like embryos and cocoons that are holding singers in them actual like people that had powers and now they're reduced to nothing they're a desiccated to nothing they're a desiccated stoned artifact just laying within trees this isn't um this isn't like a cool thing this is like a test lab this is a sci-fi horror flick this is actually really just brand's house of the undying is what this entire chapter is this chapter is his house of the undying like when danny goes to the house of the undying looking for wizards right and that's what brand thought he was going to find too he wanted a

wizard but comes upon folks that look rich and wondrous but then the glamour fades and in daenerys's chapter in a clash of kings we get that great passage that through the indigo murk and here we have the gray mist instead she could make out the wizened features of the undying one to her right, an old, old man wrinkled and hairless. His flesh was a ripe violet blue, his lip and nails bluer still, so dark they almost were black. Even the whites of his eyes were blue. They stared, unseeing at the ancient woman on the opposite side of the table, whose gown of pale silk had rotted on her body. One withered breast was left bare in the carthene manner to show a pointed blue nipple, hard as leather. Move over, Kim Possible.

Move it over, She-Go-Girl. I mean, perhaps it's showing us, like, the singers to an, from the outside, you can see who they are and what they want, but there's also a side of them that seems darker that we might not have gotten yet, right? Like, their whole idea of a weapon gone rogue, enthroning your kind in wood to be hollow and live their lives stupefied, right? Desiccated. They are a still-life tribute on the curb they're a tree themselves is that a way to live is that really your species as the singers living and and succeeding man is that a way to live it doesn't feel like a way to live it feels like a negative thing leaving your kind like that desiccated in these tree

thrones it's kind of like the matrix right like yeah is that even as you said is that is that living and no no it's not i don't think it is and i think rereading the brand chapters that's really starting to come through this is at what cost is this power? And then also you were saying how it's, these are like the embryos for the trees. And I was like, yeah, later on when they're like, this is the Weirwood scene, I was like, is it because the seeds are people? And it's like when Leif tells him, she's like, oh yeah, yeah, things are fine.

And it's like, this right here screams things are not fine. This is not what you do when you are the successor of a war. This is not what you do. Right. Things do not seem fine. There's only one dude left, and all the rest are here crumbling into powder. It's what makes me think he has to leave the cave, right? Because of this.

Like, he has to leave that cave because it's not how things progress. It's not how things get better. You can't enact any sort of change from in that cave. You can imbibe, as we talked about with A Thousand Eyes and One last week, you can imbibe in all the knowledge all you want. You can get wet to all the knowledge, but you can't leave the cave if you have that knowledge. I like how you've been stressing you have to leave the cave and i think about how earlier brendan was saying this is your mother's milk i'm gonna get freudian for a second you know you have to leave the cave you have to leave you have to leave the womb right you have to leave leave that safety yeah you'll be safe yeah you'll live for fucking ever

but as you said birds gotta fly the nest the nest. Is that living? Yeah. Oh, wait, but actually literally birds. Literally birds. Literally. Bran the Little Raven. Oh, little birds. Something's happening. So deep, deep in his weirwood throne, Lord Brynden is ghastly.

He's made of twisted wood, old bone, rotted wool, and his red eye burns like the last coal in a dead fire. Which is very H.P. Lovecraftian there with that red eye burning like the last coal in a dead fire. I love it. He frightens Bran. Okay, it is actually

now that you say it out loud. He frightens Bran, who prefers to see him when the torches are out, letting him pretend it's the crow and not Brynden. One day that will be him, he thinks with dread. He's already broken and now he has to lose the rest. So true, Bran.

It is scary to think that the idea of you could lose the rest of your body or self. Can't imagine anyone else who might be going through that fear right now. Lord Brynden drew life from the tree, Leaf told them. He did not eat. He did not drink.

He slept. He dreamed. He watched. I was going to be a knight, Bran remembered. I used to run and climb and fight. It seemed a thousand years ago what was he now brand the broken boy brandon of house stark prince of a lost kingdom lord of a burned castle heir to ruins he had hoped to find a wizard to fix his legs but that had been a stupid child's dream. And now, he's too old

for all those fancies. Is the lord of a burned castle King's the Red Key? He'll be lord of that burned castle too. Oh, shit. Heir to ruins. Or, like, it reminds me of Summer Hall, so yeah, that makes sense.

Fuck. Um, I don't know. I didn't think about that till you read it aloud just then i don't know i'm so glad i inspire you you do you really do we've discussed this a little already i think that george felt he had to keep obviously some of what he had wanted for brand's story when he thought that time would move faster within west rose right he thought that time would progress faster the characters would be, right? He thought that time would progress faster, the characters would be older by a certain point in the story than they were

and his solution for that was, oh, they're not the age I want them to be, I'll do a five-year gap. It turns out that also did not work out. It turns out that also did not work for him. So in that context, I think that Bran constantly thinking he's too old for things or

he's almost a man grown a lot of that language i'm guessing is an artifact of those previous drafts or ideas because it makes a lot more sense when you consider that after a five-year gap slash if time had gone as fast as george had wanted uh brin would be about like i don't know between 13 to 15 like 14 or 15 i guess with the five-year gap and that is almost a man grown within westerosi society not nine years old and that makes a lot more sense i think it affects his character now better with that in mind like the fact that knowing that he's nine ten years old works out and I love that he gives it this like three to five month span to let him be forward so he's closer to what 10 11 that he was before but there's something about Bran's character that works a lot better as young

and maybe death of the author here but like I know george doesn't love writing brand he feels maybe a little awkward or displaced about it like because it can be harder to write because it's brand and he's a baby boy but i think it works great i think it like i like it it works but i still do think it would have been better at like i think that there is something about that age whereas some of these dilemmas put forth are really really interesting for 14 i think you can't have it all yeah you already have starks doing that i can't even have the six books so i really can't have yeah listen this is like eight meta conversations that we can't have but just know like i just feel like in brand's role in time and age of the family it works whether he meant it or not. I think a lot of, for the Stark family in general, a lot of their storylines work better if you think of them as five years older.

Like Arya's mercy chapters, those work better when she's like 16. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe not. I just don't think, I don't know. Sansa's got some very smooth lines of I'll be all the spice you want. I could believe that of an 18-year-old girl. I don't actually know. I don't think I could believe that of anyone would be that smooth in that moment, but good for her. But I don't believe a 13-year-old would be. I'm a 30-year-old girl and I still can't do things right, so do with that what you will.

A thousand eyes, a hundred skins, wisdom deep as the roots of ancient trees. That was as good as being a knight. Almost as good, anyway. But outside, the world goes on. Inside, Jojen becomes more sullen and solitary, and Mira, in turn, becomes distressed. Jojen had taken a climbing to the cave's mouth wrapped in furs watching the forest outside. Big sad. He's like, is today the day?

He wants to go home. Mira told Bran. He will not even try and fight his fate. He says the green dreams do not lie. He's being brave, said Bran. The only time a man can be brave is when he is afraid. His father had told him once, long ago on the day they found the direwolf pups in the summer snows. Feels significant.

It does feel significant. Meera, though, calls what Jojen is feeling and doing stupid and not brave. And she's like, I thought that finding the three-eyed crow would help. But now she wonders, why did we even come? I love that similarity there, right? Like Bran thought that he would get new legs. And Meera thought if we just held out and got there, we could get new Jojen. Yeah, it's like a shittier Wizard of Oz.

Yeah. Like we said last time, or two times ago, it's Wizard of Oz. Yeah. If only we had a brain. Well, we have a Bran. Not good enough. He wants to comfort Meera, who cries. Missing a vowel.

Oh my god. And Bran wants to hold Meera, but realizes then he would need to pull himself along the ground. It would be slow going and he probably thinks it'd be embarrassing for him he doesn't say that in there but he probably does he thinks to comfort her then instead with hodor but the thought makes him feel strange and anyway she bolts away from the fire into the darkness to be alone eventually after another crescent moon lord brinton says it's time for the next step. Bran must go beyond skin-changing and see through the trees. A singer pads forward.

This is the one that they call Snowy Locks with a weirwood bowl carved with faces. This sounds like a cool bowl. A white paste, thick and heavy, with dark red veins running through it. He asks what it is and she says it's a paste of weirwood seeds. Suspicious, but something makes him feel ill as the veins look like blood and he asks if this will make him a green seer but brendan says that your blood makes you a green seer your blood i don't know anyways this will only help awaken the gifts and wed you to the tree this is such a sad little passage for him thinking oh my wedding great and it reminds me

though a little bit the language of being wed to the tree reminds you of the valyrian wedding right using blood magic or blood in the ceremony and that this bowl and as he drinks it as we'll talk about it clatters to the floor because he gets so into it so a little bit of that like fiendish behavior and it makes me think a lot of danny in the house of the undying right with that line of like bride of fire i like what you're saying here with the whole like wedding thing being kind of this ritual or tied to things we we see it a lot right people feeling like they're wed to this duty they're to i don't know the watch or their acts to things like that yes it's also

really sad because this comes after him feeling strange about wanting to hold mira and when brand is like i guess this is like me wedding the trees sure he he thinks well who else will want to wed me who else will will wed me and again i think, again, this is why I like thinking of Bran then in that five-year gap as 14 to 15, because it's him wanting to feel desirable. I think that's absolutely an understandable feeling. It's a very human feeling, and it's something that comes up a lot, especially during during puberty it also ties the story a little bit to sansa who's our next pov thinking that no one would ever love her and that people will only ever want to marry her for her claim i like that you've brought that in because there's a

certain air to that for him like people will only want him for his power for what defines him and for sansa it's the same thing right like that's become what defines her and it doesn't stop him because he has to go in on this acorn paste acorn paste and it's bitter he almost pukes it up but by the third bite it changes it transforms and i love the line we get about how it transforms why had he thought it was bitter it tasted of honey of new fallen snow of pepper and cinnamon and the last kiss his mother ever gave him the empty bowl slipped from his fingers and clattered on the cavern floor oh got, got a little into it there, Brad. I've never eaten anything so good that I dropped the dish.

Honestly, this description is better than the time that George wrote that the shade of the evening tastes like Drogo's seed. It's an improvement, right? Because it is an actual comparison, though. And I think there's a point to it. I think the point is that it tastes and becomes your memories right it combines with your blood with your memory your heart with who you are like leaf is about to say when he tries to go into the tree you saw at her because your heart wanted to but that's what's in his

heart and that's his truest heart and the same with Danny right like Drogo seed to her was like the closest she'd felt to home in a while the closest to safety she'd felt in a while even if it meant giving up a part of herself and here he's giving up a part of himself for that feeling too and there's that line in the house the undying when she swallowed it it seemed to come to life within her she could feel tendrils spreading through her chest like fingers of fire coiling around her heart. And on her tongue was a taste like honey and anise and cream. Like mother's milk and drogo seed. Like red meat and hot blood and molten gold.

It was all the tastes she had ever known. And none of them. And then, the glass was empty. I love that, what you're saying about memory. The molten gold very interesting because like not everything a part of me was good yeah everything it's everything a part of you the good and the bad yeah maybe that's why the that's where the bitter taste came from i think it's true taste has to be bitter right but then the second taste is like it changes and then the third shape the

third taste it seems to transform bully i'm wondering if i think that my blood tastes bitter more just copper anyway i think it tastes fine my blood not yours i don't know yours i hate the taste of my blood interesting i would be such a reluctant vampire so bran asks what happens next and leaf says the trees will teach him the trees remember way to shirk your dude no i'm joking uh the singers extinguish the torches and the three-eyed crow directs him to slip his skin but this time into the roots into the roots he thought into the weirwood become the tree my favorite line in anything become the tree big milo energy for an instant he could see the cavern in its black mantle hear the river rushing by below then all at once he was back home again

he sees his father at the heart tree cleaning ice eddard looks up and says, who's there? Frightened, Bran pulls away, and it all disappears and leaves. He tells them what he saw. Winterfell, my father, still alive, he's still alive! Leif says, he's gone, don't seek to call him back. But Bloodraven says he saw what he wished to see. His heart yearns for home for his father a man must know how to look before he can hope to see blood raven says ah people see what they want to see i got it powers a shadow on a wall i get it what stood out to me was leaf saying to him he is gone boy do not

seek to call him back from death because leaf didn't say you couldn't do it and as we know it is very possible with things like the kiss of life from reloric magic and she didn't say you can't call him back from death it feels kind of more like a warning like not to do it like do not seek to come back from death because it could work equivalent exchange girl equivalent exchange yeah she's like please do not try the last time someone did that we had this problem we've all watched fma she says yeah pretty much um also the lesson about looking and seeing right and being able to look before you can hope to see reminds me of aria's earlier lessons with serio forel that's great i love that and I also love it's very reminiscent of Storm when she says could you bring back a man who's lost

his head after learning they couldn't but I think that the others could cause you got this arm moving on it's own careful what you wish for right there's a great passage

between Bran and Bloodraven, and I love this. It is heartbreaking. Time is different for a tree than for a man. Sun and soil and water, these are the things that we would understand.

It's not days and years and centuries. For men, time is a river. We are trapped in its flow, hurtling from past to present, always in the same direction. The lives of trees are different. They root and grow and die in one place, and that river does not move them. The oak is the acorn, the acorn is the oak, and the weirwood. A thousand human years are a moment to a weirwood, and through such gates you and I may gaze into the past. But he heard me. He heard a whisper on the wind, a rustling amongst the leaves. You cannot speak to him. Try as you might. I know.

I have my own ghosts, Bran. A brother that I loved. A brother that I hated. A woman I desired. Through the trees I see them still, but no word of mine has ever reached them. The past remains the past. We can learn from it, but we cannot change it. I'm sad.

It's like sad. It's actually sad, though. It's big sad for Bloodraven and his siblings that he's in love with all several of them he loves and is in love with yeah he's like oh you have Targaryen blood oh I love you

oh I love you except for the one that he hates but he loves him too it's a secret that's a secret for me like people are like who is it that he loves that he hates and i'm like it doesn't matter he loves all of them like he says he hates bitter steel no bitch he loves him too like he loves bitter steel that's why he hates him he loves bitter steel he loves

him yeah i can see that like like tyrian and tywin's relationship and I think that there's something there of what you're saying right they're the same he and his billions of bastard siblings that's kind of the point I think like long ago I spoke with Joe Magician, our friend Matt

about this episode that was called Bastards, Cripplesles and broken things on his patreon um it was his first patreon episode you should go subscribe to matt's patreon uh joe magician and check out the episode because i thought this was like a really great conversation and in it we were discussing how we realized how almost all of the povs in a song of ice and fire are people who don't hold you know the entirety of power in westerosi society like many of them are disenfranchised in some way whether that's disability for

bran and tyrian or being a second son or a bastard or we see it with like a lot of the women i think as well and there's a lot of that yearning for acceptance from a broken society yearning for personhood in general and blood raven his story especially during the time in which he was within west rose walking around and known as blood raven and not as a three-eyed crow he's been fighting he was fighting a war against bastards right against second sons people who societally are just like him or like John and I kind of wonder is that the through line for his storyline is that the war that he is continuing today like imagine the three-eyed crow Bloodraven it's not just yeah sure the

Blackfrires are returning, but is that still, like, the war that he's fighting as he goes against the Others? Maybe that's another, this is my other tinfoil, right? Not that tinfoil-y, on the origin of the Others. Like, being some sort of second son, some bastard, someone who has denied power or approval or recognition by society. And, you know, Bloodravenven still fighting the exact same war today but he

he's someone who stays alive at his post because he's upholding his duty right he defends the way that things are the status quo of the world instead of choosing love choosing to try and make things different not that you know being not that the black fire is winning would have been like some great like societal equitable revolution but you know right it wouldn't have changed a ton if we're going to be quite honest right like it would have just been another blonde haired little fucker but but i i think that's part of it right like he's very much stuck in his old ways and stuck in his original duty and he's not personally willing to evolve, which makes Bran coming upon him so interesting, in my opinion,

that Bran is a different mind. Even the way that they're described in Melisandre's vision of them and her sight of them, that he's a thousand red eyes, but Bran is a wolf's head howling at the night, a boy and his wolf going, howl, which is so different from blood raven and his mission right like a very different energy in my opinion that is it is pretty different from a wooden face that looks like a corpse it's very alive yeah yeah blood raven says once he has mastered his gifts bran may see his father again but that many men live their lives

trapped in an eternal present. Certain moths live their lives in a day, yet, you know, that must seem as long as our decades and years. An oak might live 300 years, a redwood 3,000, but a weirwood, undisturbed and not poisoned, thank you very much,

lives forever. Past, present, and future are one to a weirwood whoa yeah being a tree seems very exciting i i also become the tree yeah become the tree i also kind of think that what blood raven's saying here isn't true about people living their lives trapped in an eternal present i think that the story kind of seems to argue that there are people who don't live in an eternal present and that's their detriment and i think that's the case for someone like blood raven right because as you were saying earlier is that really living like what's the point of seeing and being able to live in the past or glean the future if you can't enjoy

the life that you have like is is living apart from everyone with mushrooms on his body and face, truly living. And again, Ned's still in the story. He lives with one foot in the past, but he's healing slowly. Takes a lot of time. He has a lot of trauma. Doran Martell, not

moving forward and healing. He's still very much living in the past and thinking of the future. He's not living in the present. He's still very much living in the past and thinking of the future. He's not living in the present. He's sending his family, his loved ones, far away to, like, go mastermind some plot in the future instead of enjoying this time that he has on this mortal plane with them now.

John Connington's just gripping Rhaegar's memory instead of learning to move forward with, I don't know, Miles Toyd or... Not him because I think he's dead. Yep of learning to move forward with, I don't know, Miles Toyn or not, not him because I think he's dead. Yep. Instead of moving forward with someone else, go finding some other nice man to be happy with. And Essos, Robert Baratheon, very big example of man stuck living in the past. Littlefinger lives in the past and the future that he's plotting for he's not living in the present he's not that man has not learned to move on i'm just like you know a power to live beyond your lifespan to see across time but what is the price of that power what is the price of power in

general in the story it's loneliness like amen says right what is all of that love without the people you love and want to be next to you for it? What is honor compared to the touch? Yeah, that too. But I think it's obvious, right? Like Bran has to come at it from a different angle, which is so interesting to this story that like he has to be a different version of this. He doesn't have the time or the likelihood to remain in that kind of world where he's sad about his undead zombie mom or his stark

dad like his siblings are like barely clinging on there's a zombie war he's going to have a little different to deal with like blood raven absolutely went there knowing he was helpless and knowing he could affect nothing and then he was found all this power realized he could affect everything but it was too late too late and now bran is sitting in a position much different right that like he actually could affect something he could something, and we'll find out if he does. He probably will, but yeah. Not yet. Who knows what and how. He probably already has.

Thanks. Honestly, true. Learned a timeline. Learned a timeline. He says Bran's sight will not be limited to the carved weirwoods, but in time Bran might see beyond them. But now Bloodraven's tired. They finish for the day. Hodor carries Bran to his chamber. Leif leads them with a torch. He had hoped to tell Jojen and Meera what he saw, but their room, a rock in an alcove, is empty. Hodor lights a fire and

covers Bran in furs. Bran tries desperately to stay awake for his friends, but before he knows it, he closes his eyes, and his trip finally begins. So we start off with visions with Eddard Stark. Somehow he was back at Winterfell again, in the godswood looking down upon his father. Lord Eddard seemed much younger this time. His hair was brown, with no hint of grey in it. His head bowed. Let them grow up as close as brothers, with only love between them, he prayed, and let my lady wife find it in her heart to forgive. Father! Bran's voice was a whisper in the wind, a rustle in the leaves. Father! It's me! It's Bran! It's Brandon! Eddard Stark lifted his head and looked long at

the weirwood frowning, but he did not speak. He cannot see me, Bran realized, despairing. Ugh! Ugh! So sad. Ugh. It's really sad. Let her find it in her heart to forgive,

Eliotto. Currently, that is what she is known for, having a heart that does not forgive. They named her for that shit. You did this, bitch. But also, Brand, being like, it's me, it's Brand, it's Brandon.

God, it's so sad. The veil between them is too thick there's this great line where brand's eyes are full of tears but then he's like wait is it my eyes or is it the weirwoods eyes and would the weirwoods weep if i weep yeah probably probably buddy yeah when you read that a lot it made me think of what was the last chapter of the other chapter where it's like tears were streaming from hodor's eyes or something like that or hodor was crying yeah and then he gets kicked out yeah man and there's there's a lot to discuss there like quite obviously we are a pro rlj podcast like we already If you're listening to this podcast, you probably already know that we believe in

Rhaegar, Lyanna is Jon. And there's something in there that's just so obvious of that pain that he just brought Jon home. Yeah. And Rob's already been born, and his wife hates him, and he feels it,

but he can't betray Lyanna. And it's painful, and it gets worse and if to confirm our feelings on that, to confirm the RLJ feelings you get from that scene, what comes next? So next Eddard dissolves into a new vision

which is, now two children danced across the godswood, hooting at one another as they dueled with broken branches the girl was the older and taller of the two. Arya! Bran thought eagerly as he watched her leap up onto a rock and cut at the boy. But that couldn't be right. If the girl was Arya, the boy was Bran himself, and he had never worn his hair so long. And Arya never beat me playing swords the way that girl is beating him. She slashed the boy across his thigh so hard that his leg went out from under him

and he fell into the pool and began to splash and shout. You be quiet, stupid, the girl said, tossing her own branch aside. It's just water. Do you want old Nan to hear and run and tell father? She knelt and pulled her brother from the pool, but before she got him out again, the two of them were gone. Stupid.

I feel like you could channel, speaking of Rugrats, some Angelica Pickles in there. I want you to know that I'm sure that she's a part of my history. As far as white women in history have gone, Angelica Pickles. Oh my god. Yeah.

Cynthia, she's a really cool dancer. For more on Cynthia, listen to her historic materials episodes. Rugrats episode coming soon. There's something about the water and this could be coming from someone

who's really just waiting for a book. Okay, I'd like to just preface any of my thoughts of this podcast ever with that. I'm waiting for a book. But the water feels a lot more interesting now that we have that look at the Black River in the caves and that the water at the Godswood is described similarly, right? Like a different blacker pool of water than the other pool's water at Winterfell. And that falling, I don't know, the idea of like falling into a bottomless pit.

Black cold water, the unknown. You know, like the water in the well at the Nightfort being described similarly and kind of could give a different context to Benjim being like, don't hit me with that fucking water, woman. Jesus. Yeah. I don't know, it's like holy water oh it is water i don't know water seems interesting something going on as you said

with the with the river rivers waters all bathroom names dead things in it oh that's true there are it's related it's also related to ice, but actually. Yeah. Yeah. So the glimpses come faster than we have this one. Coming back to this from earlier in that email, a woman heavy with child emerged naked and dripping from the black pool, knelt before the tree and begged the old gods for a son who would avenge her.

I kind of think this was, I don't know. So there's something happening with the trajectory of the tree, that it's getting smaller as time gets smaller, right? As time goes backwards. So this puts it kind of in a precarious position between Liana and Benjen and between possibly Old Nan and

Hodor and Donk, the Lunk, so his relative, so his relative. So I don't know, there's something to it that to me feels like it has to be in a certain amount of time, so maybe it could be Melantha Blackwood, specifically the wife of Willem Stark. Can you tell us more about Melantha Blackwood? This comes like second fold off of your idea, but let me tell you about Melantha Blackwood before you come to it, That Willem Stark, right?

So old Nan comes to Winterfell to be Willem's first dead wife, Leon's son, Brandon's wet nurse. And Brandon dies at age three. Willem marries Melantha Blackwood. They have two kids, Edwell and Jocelyn. And then Raymond Redbeard goes over the wall. Willem marches with Harmon Umber on Long Lake. He's killed, beheaded then Raymond Redbeard goes over the wall. Willem marches with Harmund Umber on Long Lake. He's killed, beheaded by Raymond Redbeard, and later, his younger brother

Ardos avenges him by killing Raymond. The timeline's kind of weird for it, right? So I feel like there could be something of this that fits to some other lore in the North. Hmm. Interesting. I don't know much about them. That's about all there is to know. Well, here's my idea, of which there's also very not much about them.

But I only had this idea when I was reading that scene and this reread. I was like, maybe it's that Stark girl that Bael the Bard impregnated. We do have the language that it is a lord stark which says it would have been after the conquest we don't really know when it would have happened who fucking knows and i kind of wonder is she like praying for a son who could avenge her right but perhaps the old gods have a taste for irony kind of like those greek fates those old greek prophecies coming back to you know oedipus and all those things there's a lot of cannibalism that greek stuff too

and the bastard then becomes right eventually at some point he becomes the new lord stark but there's no mention of like did she kill her own father to do that or did she like have her son do that right that's kind of a mystery But what ends up happening is through an ironic twist, this son, Bail the Bard's son, ends up killing him, right? He ends up killing instead the man who impregnated his mother and left her alone to like, I don't know, hide out in the crypts while she eventually gives birth. And then, you know, eventually he ends up dying allegedly perhaps by a bolton for the story implies it could have been because he was accursed as a kinslayer despite it all and so it would tie into a lot of that northern taboo i love this pulled in because

i feel like it speaks for so many other things in the story right like it speaks to the bolton backstory that we start to get for Ramsay and his dad and what happened there and the first night being kind of betrayed. And then it also kind of speaks of Jon and his possible future romantic stuff as well, right? Like, as being

a possible kinslayer, who knows? But also, I feel like maybe so my problem is the timing, but when Ygritte tells him the tale she tells Jon the tale and speaks of it like there's a king's road involved so to me that says it's after Jaehaerys right because there's a king's road and again who knows and of course the lie of it like which it's a big RLJ fucking parallel. Like, that's the other part of it is it's obviously supposed to be like, ah, Rhaegar, Lyanna, Jon and fake baby and but baby real, you know, like shit like that.

Like, there's a lot of that, I feel like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Obviously, it's supposed to be giving some foreshadowing for Jon's situation. But also, I feel like the situation could be because that woman's husband dies and she wants to avenge him because he's killed by the king beyond the wall. And who knows? It could be very Bail the Bard-y. Like, it makes me think, like, maybe Bail the Bard was their story because we don't have a lot on the Starks. Realistically, we need the She-Wolves of Winterfell. Please, George.

My God. My children are dying. They're so hungry. My children. They're so hungry. because we don't have a lot on the Starks. Realistically, we need the She-Wolves of Winterfell. Please, George, my god. My children are dying. They're so hungry. My children, they're so hungry. The crops are not flourishing. Not watered. Not watered. Not flourishing, yeah.

I don't know. The plot feels almost akin to that, though. Akin? There's something there. Akin! There's something there about the king beyond the wall coming over, and then maybe, possibly, you know, maybe there's a... And then, I the wall coming over and then maybe possibly you know maybe there's a and then i don't know i don't know i don't know i just it could be both is what

i'm saying it could be all of it yeah i don't know i had that random thought i was like i never think about the bail the bard story but that came to my mind i literally like don't think about that story very much yeah i agree that it probably is bail the the Bard, and I think that Bail the Bard is a lot more than just Bail the Bard. I think it's like other stories in history. Others think this. You're not the only. Yeah, there's hundreds

of you. Oh, good. Thank God. Thank God. Those people probably thought it through better than I did. There are essays, Eliana. There are essays. I should go look them up. That's what I'm saying, I don't think about this story. Next scene is a brown-haired girl slender as a spear

who stood on the tips of her toes to kiss the lips of a young knight as tall as Hodor. Old Nan slash Tancel. I mean, this is Tancel Truthers Unite right here in this line. I agree, it has to be because if she only has to stand on her like the tips of her toes to kiss not too tall for him yeah like a normal

size woman wouldn't be able to reach him just on her tippy toes yeah not normal average average sorry sold like I don't gavel down sold I don't really feel that's it yeah i just don't feel a need to argue with it it kind of makes you think that old nan as tan sal is real real but either way one way or another it's old nan young nan nana nana what if it what if well i guess he would have known that it's been like oh it's the same girl never mind because i was like what if it's what if it's my nana because she's like that man left me to go join the Kingsguard. I would be mad. I would be mad.

And then came Hodor. So then we also have a dark eyed youth, pale and fierce, sliced three branches off the weirwood and shaped them into arrows. This one is Brandon Snow, Torrin's brother. Right? Like, I'm like 900% sure. A lot of people have speculated on this. We have that line in the

World of Ice and Fire. Torrin's scouts had seen the ruins of Harrenhal where slow, red fires still burned beneath the rubble. The king in the north heard many accounts of the field of fire. He knew the same fate might await him if he tried forcing a crossing of the river.

Rob, you should have listened to that. Some of his lords' bannermen urged him to attack all the same, insisting northern valor would carry the city. Others urged him to fall back to Moat Cailin and make your stand there on northern soil. The king's bastard brother, Brandon Snow, offered to cross the Trident alone under cover of darkness to slay the dragons whilst they slept. Brandon Snow. I would say that's him.

I love that. I like that idea. Very interesting. Whatever he's doing with these weirwood, you know, people's theories of weirwood and dragons. And what might come back because of them? Some Euron shit, maybe? We don't know, but something's gonna happen to those dragons. I'm yeah i think we should be we should be worried

viserion looking at you bum bum bum so the tree itself was shrinking growing smaller with each vision whilst the lesser trees dwindled into saplings and vanished only to be replaced by other trees that would dwindle and vanish in their turn. And then we have this passage of, And now the Lord's brand glimpsed were tall and hard, stern men in fur and chain mail, some wore faces he remembered from the statues in the crypts. These are some high-quality statues that are still like that. But they were gone before he could put a name to them.

Then as he watched watched a bearded man forced a captive down onto his knees before the heart tree a white-haired woman stepped toward them through a drift of dark red leaves a bronze sickle in her hand no said brand no don't but they could not hear him no more than his father had the woman grabbed the captive by the hair hooked the sickle round his throat and slashed through the mist of centuries the broken boy could only watch as the man's feet drummed against the earth but as his life flowed out of him in a red tide brandon stark could taste the blood i love love that. So metal. So metal that he's tasting the blood through the vision.

And there's even that line there, they could not hear him no more than his father had. And it's kind of this double entendre, right? Because it comes back to that beginning where his father is, you know, taking the life of that deserter and the no the sacrifice that Bran is seeing there at the Weirwood is a different sacrifice but it comes back to that double entendre of just like no if only his father had heard him whether it was in

a Game of Thrones Bran one or now I also I really love I't know, I think there's something really dark here happening. There's that link to his question. If I cry, does the weirwood cry? Here, he tastes blood. Tasting that blood and realizing he can personify these actions through the tree, that if the weirwood cries, he cries. If it eats blood blood he eats blood just like him skin changing into birds or into hodor or even as he wargs into summer and tastes blood if the weirwood absorbs

that blood he absorbs that blood it puts kind of this like i don't know almost gamer style multiplier on tasting the blood because if that blood supercharges his powers and Bran is constantly drinking that blood second hand or first hand how do you not just go catatonic with these powers right like no wonder people are desiccated down wrapped in the trees that there are dreamers trapped within these trees because they're sitting around doing heavy fucking like narcotics all day the blood is continuously supercharging the trees because they're sitting around doing heavy fucking like narcotics all day the blood is continuously supercharging the user till they're catatonic and turn to almost stone and there's almost that proof in the pudding kind of feeling that bran being able to taste blood

from generations ago and generations forward and generations now and that he realizes he's the one crying and the Weirwood is crying they are one, much like he's one with Summer, it almost makes you think, yes, he can change time, future, past, or affect things, right? Like you brought up, Leaf doesn't say they can't bring Ned back, just they shouldn't bring Ned back. In that Bran is the tree.

He feels what the tree feels. If that tree got cut down, Bran would probably feel that. That blood soaking into the tree, Bran tastes. Bran cries. The tree cries. Eddard almost hears him at first. And later we see this happening in Proven Again with Theon's chapters, right? Where Bran is watching him sadly.

Bran, the tree murmured. They know. the gods know, they saw what I did. And for one strange moment, it seemed as if it were Bran's face carved into the pale trunk of the weirwood, staring down at Theon with eyes red and wise and sad. Bran's ghost, he thought. But that was madness. Why would Bran want to haunt him? If time happens all at once for the Weirwoods, and Bran is in the Weirwood making himself kind of like Weirwood kin, it's safe to assume Bran can affect change across time. I agree. Absolutely. He can. And we said I hadn't really thought about that before of like, when someone cuts down a Weirwood tree, yeah. Everyone like feels that pain. Like no wonder, you know, that's so horrible. Like, and, and the burning of the weirwood trees, right.

When you're burning one, like imagine that people are just experiencing that pain and we're talking about like the experience of like those hallucinogens and like what, what these people are feeling every time there's all that blood, right? And if that's like happening a little bit constantly and you can constantly taste it, etc. Like, you know, you compare that with the not constant consumption of the shade of the evening.

Look at what that's doing to those warlocks, right? Like that's what's happening, I guess, on a different way or level to the singers who are all tied up in the Spearwood network. But it was, yeah, I agree. It was him.

And that's him with, with Theon. Right. And there's, there's also that line, right. Where Eddard immediately in the first book hears, and he says to Catelyn,

when she comes along, he says, where are the children? Yeah. Cause I because i looked back i was like is this that moment but it's not that moment it was a different moment but because you know we don't hear him calling out who's there for that so i guess this is a different beheading yeah i thought it was so interesting you know what you were saying of like how bran at that time he has to steal himself and he doesn't say no don't right he has to power through watching it but now like we see same as with the elk and then again here

don't kill him yeah he's saying no don't and he doesn't want to watch these people be killed and be beheaded right he sees it so viscerally in what it means now to kill someone like that and could you do it could you sacrificeally and what it means now to, to kill someone like that. And could you do it? Could you sacrifice someone?

And for what power? And knowing what he was running from, like he knows now he's like, I see what this guy was running from. Yeah, that's true. Actually, now that he knows that,

oh, well actually Gerard was telling the truth when he deserted. Does that change it? We talked earlier about like the, the moon and changing, and you're talking here about the eating of the weirwoods and stuff. And I really love the poetry of the moon as fat and full, which is again, that language of consumption. And then when it becomes a crescent, thin and sharp as the blade of a knife to show the passage

of time, it comes back around here here it all is coming up to this moment of that sickle at the end of the chapter and the feeding of the tree there is the crescent moon of the the crescent of the blade there is the fat and full as the blood soaks into the roots that's so gross i love it fatty i get well he's not eating the fat right that might actually be more delicious than eating just the blood but true true so Bran as a future and maybe like superpowered king you you brought in I love that you brought in this Theon quote because I think part of what like you know well I'll come back to that so part of what i think that the show gets wrong about how slash why bran leaves the cave which you were talking about earlier of bran has to leave the

cave which he has to leave the cave i guess the show made it more of an action sequence of like you know bran has to leave the cage because oh no he touched the knight's king or sorry the knight king and and that's how the knight king knows where he is. He can find him and it breaks the magic and they're forced out of the cave now because he can enter and find them with the wights. My god, it's so stupid. Stop saying it out loud. It really

hurts me that you just said this out loud. It's just because he ate the apple, dude. He ate the apple with the knowledge. That's why. That's all. He ate the forbidden fucking fruit. The forbidden fruit is Jojen. It's people's. He's been eating it for a while, honestly.

And I think it's more powerful. I just think it's more powerful to have Bran have to leave the cave because he makes a choice. You know, it's related to something like some whatever forces him to have to leave has to do with something about the people he cares about whether it's because of the people here in the cave

that he cares about or it's his family outside of it in a way like mirroring Jon's story with like love being the death of duty yes yes that's a great way to look at it because like no matter what he's giving something up by being this king yeah whether in the tree or not i agree absolutely again like a lot of people over time have discussed and including the you know some of our patrons currently in the discord as well, like Steve, are talking about, you know, what does it mean for Bran to be a superpowered king?

And how his abilities cause him to perceive the world differently and therefore be apart from others. And so I love that you brought in this Theon quote, right? Because he's like, why would Bran haunt me? But it's a moment of weakness for Theon. Bran saying Theon doesn't, it almost doesn't feel like he's haunting him, in my opinion. I interpret it as him being like, Theon, and him trying to reach out and comfort him. Like, yeah, like, what have you fucking gone through? Like, seeing him be like, holy shit, that's Theon.

And, you know, the more I think about it, like, I don't think that Bran will be so apart from others because he's so all-knowing that he can't relate to others in that way like i think it's the opposite i think it's kind of like leah in a song for leah right she's the greatest talent so much more powerful than everyone and she's apart from everyone else because no one can relate to her in the way that she can truly feel and understand everything that everyone else does. And it's that loneliness of never feeling truly understood. Bran can provide that for other people. He can provide the understanding for other people, but no one can do that for him. And I think that's a universal fear that everyone

shares, right? Not being truly seen or understood but george of course turns it up to 11 one of my favorite lines to a time traveler from their ex-fellow time traveler was don't be alone when you're alone when you're isolated you stop understanding how to empathize with one another you stop understanding how to see things from their angle and see what they could possibly have been through and see their lives and how it affects them and for brand to your point he's seeing all of it all at once all of the time now is probably going to be his life moving forward and there's a point that i think maybe david and dan got right that like there's only so much you can process which is somewhat human mind

right like that but I think they absolutely got it wrong to your earlier points that it's not just you become empty it's you become overwhelmed with how do I fix it how do I help how do I get us out of this rut that we've stuck ourself in

this broken wheel so to speak not to bring Daenerys back into it from the show but this broken wheel like how do I how do we get the wheel to move for everyone for absolutely everyone and for me it's hard because I see where the idea of the CCTV police state can come from for a king Bran sure but I also see where it could be good i see where he wants to repay the littles in tenfold i see where he listens to northern politics and realizes oh these people that live here hate everybody that lives here because of just the way it is and what if that was different for them what if they didn't right like understanding those

prejudices ingrained in old blood and new blood alike across the country and what each party needs to forgive one another and understanding that I mean I think there's so much good that Bran could still enact in these books so much good to come and I think that loneliness is the scary part right like what part of Bran is he going to give away in all of this right like what part of bran the boy disappears because he has become a servant for the realm uh maybe a servant into a throne with a or a throne into him we don't know as we see blood raven but i personally do not think that bran will stay in the cave. I think leaving the cave, as we've discussed, is important for his arc.

It's important that he chooses to leave, that he says we have to leave. That's so important to say I have taken the knowledge from the cave, but if I stay in the cave, it will drown me all the same like it drowned Bloodraven, like it drowned all these thousands of bones of dreamers before me.

And that's the first step. And after that, Bloodraven like it drowned all these thousands of bones of dreamers before me and that's the first step and after that Bloodraven says you won't walk but you'll fly but those steps are more important than any steps taken in Westeros yeah absolutely that's how I feel about Bran Stark thank you thank you for coming to my TED talk yeah I mean I agree with everything you said right how does his duty versus love story look mm-hmm how does it how does it i can't believe it's over i literally i literally i'm like how does it look didn't we just start him didn't we just start brian i honestly these flew by these were they're such exciting chapters like i think this is literally one of the best written chapters in the whole series it's a beautiful chapter it's an absolute beautiful chapter he does he's doing a lot

in this chapter he did a lot in these books in feast and dance especially and i don't know that he necessarily gets the love he deserves on it i mean he's got millions of dollars so what that's love that's true that's true jk jk it's that's just power and loneliness financial power and loneliness i'm so glad that you all came on this journey to talk about brand stark with us it's been really fun starting with the game of thrones and going up till now we will return with victorian our other second son, to talk about him, his life, his dreams, his goals, next episode. I will promise to take it more seriously, I swear.

I think you took it pretty seriously. I just could not. So I burst out laughing. It's really hard to. It's really hard. But I'm going to. I'm going to take it seriously. And, yeah, I can't wait to return with

victorian and then the rest i think we need i think we need the levity that comes with the victorian chapters after this yeah no more of this whole uh we'd love to have you for dinner kind of thing oh my god a break from that a break from that yeah he's more like we're worshiping two gods at once look at me brilliant theological i'm smarter than the rest yeah the world's best middle manager victorian grayjoy oh my god well thank you everyone for tuning in for i mean for tuning in for bran i hope that you all liked it. I loved it. It was great.

I loved it. Oh, you loved it. Interesting. Thank you for sharing your love of Bran with me, Chloe. Anytime. Anytime. And I'm sure that if you're missing my love for Bran, you can probably find it over at our social media.

That's right. You can. You can. You can. You can always find us on Twitter at twitter.com slash girlsgoncanon. That's C-A-N-O-N. Or if you have thoughts or essays, you can send them to us at girlsgoncanon at gmail.com. We welcome those essays and cannot wait to read them with glowing reviews. Perfect pairing. But until then, make sure you're already subscribed to us on your favorite podcast feed, whether that is iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Acast, iHeartRadio, Amazon, Audible, Pandora. You name it, we're there.

Somewhere that we definitely always are is on patreon.com slash girls gone canon, where patrons in the $5 tier and up get bonus episodes every month. So if you did not get your fill of Bloodraven talk this episode, you can check out our coverage of The Mystery Knight from February. And if you are interested in being a Thunder tier

and above patron, where there are a handful of perks for you over at the Patreon dashboard, check it out. You can get access to our monthly brunch slash happy hour event. This month is taking place on March 26th, 1 to 3 p.m. 2023. That's Eastern Time. And yeah, weekly His Dark Materials rewatches for Series 3, finishing up now the last four episodes. We would love for you to come aboard. That's on Saturdays from 1 to 3 p.m. Eastern, hosted by our friends and patrons.

As always, I have been one of your hosts, Chloe. And I have been another one of your hosts, Eliana. As always, I have adopted Bran Stark. As always, past, hosts, Eliana. As always, I have adopted Bran Stark. As always, past, present, and future. My God. The hosts. Everywhere, all at once.

I have thoughts about that in regards to this, and I was like, I can't spoil the fucking movie for everyone. It's not, it hasn't been out that long. I don't know if all of you

have watched it, though. If you haven't, you you should i think it could be a patreon episode eliana it could be a patreon episode interesting we'll see interesting thought stay tuned for more goodbye goodbye