Girls Gone Canon Cast - ASOIAF Episode 188 — ADWD The Iron Suitor featuring Aziz of History of Westeros

Episode Date: April 7, 2023

No punless man may sit the GGC-stone Chair... which is why Aziz of History of Westeros is helping us dive into the mind and history of the Iron Suitor himself, Victarion. Along with helping us unravel the mysteries of both Vic's mind and these new sights in the Known World, Aziz joins us for important, magical moments like, "Monkey shit rained down around them all, splat splat splat."   Where to find Aziz: History of Westeros YouTube channel — https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiYwENpLDO4gyB4dBrMYrjQ HoW website — https://www.historyofwesteros.com/ HoW Twitter account — https://twitter.com/WesterosHistory HoW Facebook group — https://www.facebook.com/groups/historyofwesteros/ --- 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 188, A Dance with Dragons, the Iron Suiter, Victarion, featuring Aziz from History of Westeros. I am one of your hosts, Chloe. And I am another one of your hosts, Eliana. And yes, your other host today, I don't know if he needs any introduction. Aziz, thank you so much for coming on. I think a majority of our listeners

know where to find you, but please tell us where to find History of Westeros and what you all have been doing lately. I caught up with the Krieg and Stark patron stream the other day. What's coming? Well, thank you for having me. That's the most gracious introduction. I really enjoy talking about Victarion because he's such a strange, unusual POV. Not a good man, but a good set of chapters. And where you can find History of Westeros is, well, Googling History of Westeros would probably give you a few different options. But we're on YouTube and all the podcast platforms primarily. And that's a great way to get started. Yeah, there's a lot of episodes. A lot of episodes to jump in there.

Yeah, we stay consistent. That's a fun thing to be. I've got a cat here, a recording buddy, that you all can just imagine. And honestly, that's the real secret to our success is lots of cats. They are very conducive to podcasting. Pro tip. Podcasting. Yes.

Behind every good podcast, there is at least one plus cats that are executive producing the podcast. And that is an industry secret. I don't think you're going to learn that anywhere else on the internet. Only here. That's why our podcast is produced by Allie and Jake. Yeah, thanks. Well, no, Jake's the intern still. I think he's due for a promotion.

We still haven't decided whether to bring him on full time. Yeah, you're right. We probably should. It's a conflict of interest thing. He's also working for the other podcast in the community. Anyways, it's a long story, but he's got to non-compete. Non-compete.

Aziz, Eliana has been telling me, and I have not been on all of the social medias. I've been telling everyone. She's especially been telling me, I feel like, that you have some seafaring pets at home, not just cats. Yes, indeed. And that is perhaps the true secret to why I have maybe some insight into

Victarion's chapters because of his experience at sea and my experience with freshwater aquariums, which is very similar to sailing across the oceans and reaving and plundering. It's really similar, I say. I have some fish that are like two inches long and some shrimp that are even smaller than that. And yeah, I've been a fan of aquariums since I was a kid and I've recently been getting back into it.

It's one of those things you kind of go in and out of, I suppose, as a hobby, at least when you're my age, and you've had time to have cycles of things like that where things you're interested in become cool again. That's a weird phenomenon, right? Like, this was cool when I was in my 20s, and now it's cool again. It's true what they say. Wow. But we were talking about fish. Yeah, everything comes back into fashion.

It's like a cycle, you know? We were talking about that on our Sailor Moon episode, right? Like, I mean, obviously that was a big deal for us growing up. Disappeared for a while. Now it's blown up even bigger than before, which is exciting. Fish have always been there, though. You know, fish, they predate us as a people. They put outlast us if we stop spilling shit. I was walking around with a shea. I shout out

to a shea the other day, and we saw some artfully arranged rocks in a parking lot. And I was like, you know what? Stone. The original decoration. Yes. And then I thought, why am I not in marketing? And, yeah. Yeah, I used to be really into collecting rocks, so I feel that. Big money

in that. Not even, like, good ones. I'm just like, yeah. Pet rocks. That was a big thing, too, for a while there. So, speaking of rocks, next week we'll be back with Victorious One in Dance of Dragons. Damn. Damn. I mean, George didn't call him dumb as a bag of rocks.

Isn't that a direct quote from George? Dumb as a bag of rocks or something like that? Yes. Did he say that? Something like that. It may have been that exact phrase, but it was something to that effect, if not. So yeah, Ileana, she nailed it. I mean, just perfect

insight. Yes, we'll be back with Victarion 1 in Adabada, and after that, we will be starting a new POV. Who could it be? Who could it be? Well, you'll find out on our next episode. Yes, but

we're going to still be keeping with a little more Victarian this month. We do have one more Victarian chapter that we will be covering for our Patreon episode. That's the Winds of Winter Victarian chapter that, again, it is my first time experiencing this April for our Patreon episode for patrons in the $5 tier and above. And last month we had our Meat House Man episode. Yeah, I'm excited for that T-Wow discussion because it's not a complete chapter, but it gives us a lot, I think, not a complete look, but a lot of a look at what's to come. We also have a Discord for our patrons in the Thunder tier and above. That's the $10 and up tier where we chat about anything and everything, whether it is the box of rocks that

is Victarion or if we want to talk about Sailor Moon, which our episodes, as we started last month, have been coming out on the last Friday of each month, so tune in for that at the end of April for episode two, season two of Sailor Moon,

Crystal. And we'll also have a brunch over at Discord pretty soon. Brunch slash happy hour. We'll announce that date for our patrons very soon, but it's a fun time where you get to chat with fellow fans, like-minded buddies that like the stuff you like, which is kind of cool. I think that's

all the events we have going, but I'm sure we have some stuff cooking up now that the His Dark Materials rewatch has completed. I think they've got some stuff in store like they want His Dark Materials rewatch has completed. I think they've got some stuff in store, like they want to rewatch some Firefly. And there was even talk of Love Island, if I recall. Well, I don't know if anyone's actually watching that. Plus, the winter season just ended. I hear they're doing starting to do two seasons a year. So they might do a summer season as well. I'm not about to go down that rabbit hole right now, but I finally caught up

with the winter season. Your eyes got a little crazy. Your eyes were like, I saw it. I was ready to go. Right now, I'm watching Love is Blind. If we're talking about reality TV, that's our current thing. But if you want to talk about other TV that we do actually have a channel for on our Discord, we have Succession. That's a thing that people enjoy. If you do well at Love is Blind, you get to go to Love Island? Is that how it works? That might be why I confused them.

I'm sorry. They're two completely different premises. Love Island is definitely, you definitely see people. Love is Blind is- How else would you find the island? Not like that. Yeah.

Aziz and I are getting majorly educated today. Wow. On love. Yeah. I wish I could tell you all more about The Bachelor, but I don't know anything about that. But I feel like that's an OG amongst the dating show reality shows, you know? That does seem like it's been around a long time. That one's been going on for a long time.

Yeah. Ages. Yeah. Back in the day, we had like Joee millionaire and the bachelor okay i don't know this love is blind island shit and i'll try it for you i don't know the real world i remember that one oh my yeah oh yes that is real actually very real though was it i don't know what you're talking about i don't know if any of them are i mean mean, maybe that was a little raw. It was the real fake world. Fake real world. I prefer to think of them as like...

The Truman Show. The Truman Show. They're sketch comedy. They get a premise and they go with it. The writers write a premise and they tell them to go with it. Sketch comedy. But none of them are comedians or actors, so...

Every now and then you get comedians for some of them work out pretty well too i guess uh and they hope to be actors for some of them too for sure interesting interesting that's true it's a stepping stone another type of stone well to bring it all back yeah the original uh original decoration um euron is using Victorian as a stepping stone, kind of. Yeah. A whole bag of stones. They did go across the step stones. We'll keep jamming that in there repeatedly.

And we have a lane stone and a Maya stone, too. Eliana. So I pulled out a couple of things from our Discord of things people have said in reaction to the previous Victorian episode that ended Feast. One of which was in regards to a loophole, perhaps. Victarion, as you all know, does not feel like he can kill Euron because he'd be cursed as a Kinslayer.

So one of our patrons, John, suggested, what about a light to moderate maiming? Just like take Euron's eyes and all his fingers, then turn him over to his thralls. These ironborn have no creativity, like there are no good guys here, but there are a million ways to deal with a guy that's horrible. Hmm.

Uh, it sounds like the Vargo Hote experience. Yeah. That's what a goat would do, not what a bag of rocks would do. Or a kraken. That's not what perhaps a kraken would do. I guess you have to ask yourself in general, not what a bag of rocks would do. Oh my God. Or a Kraken. That's not what perhaps a Kraken would do. I guess you have to ask yourself in general, what would a bag of rocks do? And if it's not this, then no. Yeah. Ruskly said by John. He didn't think of it. Ruskly said.

I did think it reminded me a little of what I have no mouth and I must scream. I was like, I could see George go in that direction. But how do you deal with an evil of that level? You know, got a good point. And then our friend Maddie also said, in reaction to us being like, does Victarion not know how to navigate by the stars that the main reason why you would stay close to the shore is for supplies as opposed to navigation, which thank you. Thank you for that insight. Because in that moment, I was like, well, I don't't understand why can they not just go yeah that's really smart that's a great answer to our questions from last episode about whether or not they knew about the stars better answer than i gave for your questions better answer i like this i like john's creativity i like maddie's

look at the world um this is fun. This is good. And you can get- Look at all the fun we're having. Yeah, you can get this and more at the Discord. As said, you could add your little thoughts and Eliana might go find them. You never know. Watch out. Well, this, of course, brings us into our lightning round, which is going to be a little crafty today. It's going to be like an ironborn-esque edition.

And so those of you at home of course know that our lightning round catches us up on what we missed between the last chapter and this chapter. So that would be with the reaver. And now, of course, I had to cut this down because it turns out this is the 63rd chapter in A Dance with Dragons. That means 62 other chapters have happened in A Dance with Dragons. For those of you keeping count at home, we had to cut that down a little bit. That's a lot of prompts. So I settled on the Greyjoy plus Daenerys edition of the lightning round for today.

I really wanted to include Quentin, Tyrion, and Barristan, but it turns out those are a good portion of those 63 chapters as well. Yeah, so too fucking long. Too fat. So, let's kick it into gear. A Feast for Crows, of course. The last Greyjoy chapter was

the Reaver. Feast for Crows is over. Let's move on. We're in a dance with dragons, and I'm done with you. I've told you to watch out. These lightning Reaver, Feast for Crows is over. Let's move on. We're in a dance with dragons and... I'm done with you. I've told you to watch out. These lightning rounds are evolving. You're like the meme in Toy Story, dropping the toy.

I'm done with you. That's Feast. Drop a Feast for Crows in the trash. It's over till next time we go to a Feast for Crows. Let's kick it off with a dance with dragons with Daenerys I, where Daenerys navigates the very difficult task of ruling over Meereen.

Daenerys II, conflict with the Harpy's sons escalates. Daenerys wishes to visit her chained dragons. Reek I, Reek is promised a bath and given a task. Daenerys III, the Carthene declare war. Reek II, Theon travels to Moat Cailin to deliver a peace treaty

to the remaining ironborn for Ramsay. Ramsay's bride arrives. Is this love is black? Oh my god. Love is bad. First sight, the other arranged marriage reality show. Speaking of, Daenerys IV, the Green Grace tells Dany to marry, but Barristan and Daario

have different ideas. And let's circle it up with a third one with the Wayward Bride, where Asha, recently quote-unquote married, is at Deepwood Mott where a battle erupts. Daenerys V, Daenerys weighs her armies and chooses to marry.

Reek III, Roose borrows Reek and introduces him to Barbary Dustin at Barrowhall. Daenerys 6. The bloody flux comes to Slaver's Bay and Daenerys closes her gates to it and allows Daario into her bed. The Prince of Winterfell. Jeyne and Theon suffer humiliation and more at Arya and Ramsay's wedding. The Turncloak. Theon walks the crypts with Barbary, who reveals some of her own plans for House Stark.

The King's Prize. Asha is taken prisoner by Stannis, under guard by Alysanne Mormont. The snows fall heavier, and the camp is locked in by snow with no provisions. A ghost in Winterfell. New faces that arrived at the royal wedding reveal themselves as unlikely allies to Theon. Daenerys VIII, now wed and bed, Daenerys finds herself forced to compromise against keeping the peace. Theon I. Theon and Jane take a leap to faith. Daenerys IX, the fighting pits are interrupted by a surprise contender. Drogon, the new bombshell to the villa.

Well, we have Victorian Greyjoy sails the world to bring Daenerys Targaryen home. Steal her for himself. Gonna happen. It's gonna happen. A more romantic version of the Helen helen of troy story right it is it is more romantic for sure what you said marjorie even says a thousand ships when she first hears about the attack on the shield island and she's a face that launched a thousand ships there you go i love that i can't wait to hear more about this. Podcast over. I know we're going to talk more about that.

I do want to say, I want to ask, there are a couple of reasons that I'm sure you did. I know that you said you love Victorian. But why did you pick this chapter of all the Victorian chapters? Is it because the title is a bit of a pun on iron suits and iron suitors and knights? Or is it just like, is there something else that speaks to you in it? There is that. There is the creepy narrative change. There's the just creepy sorcery and blood magic stuff.

There's the huge amount of world building and stuff off the map in history about the doom and Velos. It's just a really cool chapter. It would be cool through anyone's perspective, I think, if they were traveling in these places. What I like about how George writes Victarion is that if you were to categorize all the characters based on certain archetypes, Victarion would be kind of on his own in a lot of ways, despite there being lots of Ironborn chapters. Because George has said before,

it's really difficult to write children because he's not a child. It's hard to get inside the mind of a child. It's probably harder for him to write women because he's not one. I would assume it is. And it's just harder to write things that aren't your perspective. Victorian's a big, dumb, brutal, courageous, thick guy that just that's hard for George to himself to get into the mind of someone like that and it feels like he's done a good job of it so i find that compelling in odd ways for writing quality and just for getting in the mind of a type of character that we don't usually have that perspective on and because he's so basic he actually gives us information on this world that we take for granted because

everybody else is living in, all the other characters have been living in this world. They're too smart to be thinking about the things that Victarion's thinking about, but we don't live in that world. So Victarion's basic questions are actually somewhat interesting sometimes. His answers are terrible. He has no idea how to get there, but his questions are actually quite interesting. Just don't listen to him when he comes to conclusions you're not fucking wrong there i really agree i really do agree and i think i'm actually especially this chapter i started to come around to victorian a

little in some ways like you don't have to hand it to him i'm not saying that but like just hand exactly yes flaming hand it to him but there are kind of just there's some interesting things here like yes of course he's a racist xenophobic rapist adjacent to slavery you know kind of an asshole but but besides all of those terrible things you start to kind of feel bad for the fucker in this chapter. You suddenly see the outline and you see what he's been dealing with his whole life. And you're like, damn, I almost hope the guy wins somehow. But he's not going to. But I almost hope he does. Almost.

Here's a question I'd like to pose to y'all. And I think it presents Victorian in a perhaps interesting light, as well as the societies within Westeros, especially Ironborn, which is objectively one of the worst, if not the worst. If Victorian had been born, younger brother to Robb Stark, would he have been a dependable right-hand warrior at Robb's side in the rebellion,

in Robb's war against the Lannisters? Or would he still be an awful raping monster? You know, which, I don't know. I think raised by Ned Stark, he might have been a decent guy. I think Euron, no matter where you place him, that guy comes out a psychopath. But I feel like Victarion might be one of those guys with a good upbringing, with good parenting,

you know, without Kellan and having Balon and Euron for his brothers. And maybe, maybe would have been not good, not good, but you know, a guy you wouldn't mind having on your side. I don't know. What do you think? I think that's an interesting question. And it's something that we do talk about a lot, right? That difference between nature versus nurture in the story. And you know, I think that there is of course a possibility that he could still be both both the things that you said i think he would absolutely still be a dependable commander and brother for

rob because we see that despite the fact that he hates euron and his family he still fulfills a lot of those duties for all of his brothers in that family while still being you know a terrible like rapist etc and i i at the same time I think he's one of those people who needs, he kind of needs religion in order to give himself a sense of ethics. He depends on these codes in order to tell him what is moral. So it's entirely possible

that with a different set of morals, he could fulfill those. But at the same time, like I don't know that the North is necessarily that much, like it isn't always that much better, like you have this codified rape system with the first night prima nocte with with the the boltons so i think it really to an extent to coin to us there's something there too like for example i have a family that lives in a northern place right that you start to once you

get different populace you get like a smaller populace spread out against a lot bigger of a place there's a lot of freedom that comes from living there right when you think of what the boltons are able to get away with they're not able really to be reined in by anyone quite so easily they have their land they have a wide berth of land and that works for them they get away with what they want in some aspects and i think that there's elements of like you can still find good people in that environment but the land and the people and the lessons are a lot harsher and there is a lot of toxicity for some of the kids in the north that are trying to grow up to be these great, strong, brave men. But that said, take a

look at the lessons that you're learning, right? Considering being told your whole life, pay the iron price. And then you get to the north and it's a man can only be brave when he's afraid. And you know, if you're going to kill someone, you need to look them in the eye before you take their fucking head off. You still can kill them. That's fine. We're still okay with that. But like, look them in the eye, you know, hear their last moments, see their last moments off you still can kill them that's fine we're still okay with that but like look them in the eye you know hear their last moments see their last moments unless you can't and i think that's interesting that like ned teaching his sons that we can see bran right bran is growing when he was growing up in winterfell before being taken into a different environment he was learning to rule and he was learning what social customs are as a ruler how he should treat his

people how he needs to interact with the people of winterfell and the people from outside of winterfell and how to negotiate pieces or how to negotiate different things and contracts so i think victorian never was given any of that attention nothing like like that, right? He was just told, steal stuff off the bodies you kill. Kill the bodies. Do a good job of doing that. Congratulations. Don't let other men make you feel not like a man. You're good to go.

Earn your way into the Drowned God's watery halls. Yeah, yeah. I like what Eliana said about a code. If someone had programmed him with a decent code to live by, that ultimately could be. Yeah. Because I think you're right. Like he lives in a box. He's an inside the box thinker.

And that box is his religion. He acknowledges other religions exist and those gods are real. But still, he's still on team drowned God. Because that's the one he was brought up with. Yeah. Well, let's get into it. So the chapter opens with grief appeared alone at daybreak her black sails stark against the pale pink skies of morning

54 victorian thought sourly when they woke him and she sails alone silently he cursed the storm god for his malice his rage a black stone in his belly. Where are my ships? Where are my dragons? Oh my god. No, they're actually not the same. You sound just like him. Exactly, right? It's Uncanny Valley. Ninety-three ships had sailed from the shields, down seven

from their one hundred. Again, keep a pen and paper at home for this one. Get ready. Crewed by men from all of the various islands, ships of various strengths and sizes, worthy of facing a king. The journey had begun through the Stepstones, capturing a Westerosi-bound merchant ship,

the Noble Lady, full of salt cod, whale oil, and pickled herring. Full of food, they take other prizes in the Straits of Redwyne and the Dornish Coast, cogs, galeuses, a galley, and soon there are 99 ships leaving the Stepstones to join as three fleets at the Isle of Cedars. George continues to make us do math. Okay. Hurtful.

It's really hurtful. 45 ships arrive. 22 of them are Victarion's own, 14 are Ralph the Limper's, and only 9 are Red Ralph's stone houses. 14 are Ralph the Limper's and only 9 are Red Ralph Stonehouse's. The ships that do show are cogs and fishing boats, slavers, merchant men, not warships. They would not do very much in battle. Before that, a couple handfuls of ships came.

The Noble Lady, Raven Feeder, Iron Kiss, Maiden's Bane, Headless Jane, Fear, and Empty Seas and Skies after Ralph the Limper came, bringing what sounds more like weed strains than ships. Lord Quellen, White Widow, Lamentation, Woe, Leviathan, Iron Lady, Reaper's Wind, I mean, Warhammer, and six more ships behind. Two of them are storm-wracked and under tow, and I have to say, my roommate says that he lost all of the Indica ships. Like, straight up, all the Indica ships. Every single one of those are in the weed catalog. I mean.

Yeah. These are just the sativas, you know? Yeah. Should we start growing stuff? And then just so we can name them after Victorian ships. Yeah. Leviathan. Reaper's Wind.

That is the most badass strain I've ever heard. That is absolutely a weed strain. Fuck that. Reaper's Wind. That is. I have the Leafly app open right now and let me tell you. Oh my god, Leafly.

I want to get war hammered. Take a hit of this Lord Quellin. Hey Leafly, sponsor us. So it turns out the storms had been wild. Red winds from Valyria, smelling of ash and brimstone, black winds putting them to shore. A cursed voyage, they said, and Ralph the Limper claims that

Euron must fear him for sending him so far away. The crows I must not mean for them to return. Victarion thought the same thing on this first storm outside of Old Volantis. And the losses that they, as they make their way east for Daenerys I kind of actually found some of this a little reminiscent of Quentyn's own journey towards the same, literally the same

person, Daenerys and his own losses his hit a little more emotionally in terms of him knowing the people this kind of hits hard for Victarion too he prides himself on his fleet. But because of the sheer number of people and ships, he's a little more equipped to deal for that percentage of losses

as opposed to Quentin. Yeah, I mean, Quentin was just with, what, five friends at first or seven friends at first? And yeah, just traveling, trying to hitch a ride. These guys are, yeah. That's a lot of ships. He's like Frodo accidentally stumbling into Mordor out of nowhere. Victarion knows what he's doing to an extent,

especially this is where his genius lies, ships. He knows ships. I really love right here that he is counting. Something really interesting here is that he is counting like something really interesting here is that he's counting these ships over and over making the math work going that won't work I won't win with that I have to have more than that and he's counting like how many

came I mean he's doing math for like hours and I make fun of George for doing all this math and making us do it with him but I'm like oh that's what Victarion's doing that's why his head hurts yeah all the time. I mean, I just would have given up. I simply would have been like, we cannot keep

counting this. That's it. I would have just languished on a beach somewhere, hung out with the monkeys. I don't know. I wouldn't have kept going. I would have stopped there. Yeah. The gods hate kinslayers, he brooded. Elsewise, Euron Crozi would have died a dozen deaths by my hand.

As the sea crashed around him and the deck rose and fell beneath his feet, he had seen Dagon's feast and red tide slam together so violently that both exploded into splinters. My brother's work, he thought. And those were the first ships he loses, they were not the last he slaps ralph the limper to make him you know like that that's payment for all those ships he lost and again because ralph also kind of muttered they were cursed and he threatens to make ralph a mute which is a um definitely the answer to most problems for the gray joys i feel like yeah i think that would solve all their problems. If they just did it more, you know,

I think they're just not doing it enough. That's, yeah, that's clearly, you know. That's it. Just keep trying the same method, expect different outcomes. Insanity. Where are his ships, though? Like, for real, that's a lot.

Isn't it? Yeah. It does make me think that it's Euron based. It could be. It would be interesting to open the Winds of Winter and maybe not to the Forsaken necessarily, but getting a chapter where Euron's just with all of the ships of the goddamn. You know how sometimes people talk about they want like a spin-off you know one of just like normal people or something that could be fun like you're the lost ship of victorian's fleet

oh yeah they just travel around that could be a cute cute spin-off something i find interesting about the particular largest block of ships that went missing is the their red red ralph stonehouse's block is that he's particularly loyal to Victorian. He's one of the ones that multiple times spoke against Euron in public. So, I mean, it could be multi-level thinking here where he was pretending or something. But this is also the group that was supposed to pass through the Basilisk Isles and just pay the iron price for their supplies.

So you could kind of see that going wrong. pay the iron price for their supplies. So you can kind of see that going wrong. You know, like why just attack other hardcore pirates for supplies? I mean, that might not go well. Or, you know, or something else like disease or be pretty ironic if Krakens got them. Well, and it goes back to like Newt, right? What Euron did with Newt of like saying, come on, come to my side. It makes you wonder if there's a little bit of sabotage going on there.

Bribery. Yeah, to turn his crew against him, which as we'll discuss towards, you know, the end of the episode and during the episode, he's already doing things that will probably turn his crew away. Like without needing Euron. How very John of him. Right. Can shit too. Like, without needing Euron. Mm, how very John of him.

Right? Well... Can shit too. Well, the storms end. He declares he will have his fleet. A monkey above on the mast howls in frustration with Victarion. He hates the monkeys, but the monkeys love when he tries to get rid of them, so it's a total lose-lose scenario. He just loses to the monkeys, and that, you know, that's embarrassing.

The monkeys are great because they are a good example of George being like, no, I'm not going to change this trope. When animals warn you of things, it's just, you should listen. They're the most certain bellwether of

human behavior. Like in a movie, if the dog or the cat doesn't like someone, you automatically know they're a bad guy or gal. That's true. And this is all the monkeys. But the monkeys are freaked out by Makoro. They just don't like Victorian. But Makoro is the one who really freaks them out. So that's kind of saying something there they just have disdain for it's like we're not worried about

him i mean he doesn't even have a crossbow but this dude this guy who sat in the ocean for 10 days or whatever hmm yeah i would be scared of him too he's just living i think it's it's really funny to note how easily victorian is manipulated it's one of the things that most reveals him to be a dummy and that's saying something because there's a lot of things that reveal him to be a dummy i mean honestly that his sailing the dothraki sea comment in the next chapter isn't really that dumb it's just ignorant right he just says he just doesn't know but this is but getting taunted into an across the world super dangerous mission based on just like oh a brave man could do it oh i could do it that's that's all it took it's like i dare you it's pretty much the you know reverse psychology equivalent of i double dark dare you and that's all it took like man so

from there it just becomes so easy just to realize how much euron is manipulating him and just how anything victorian does you can you can guess Euron predicted he would do that. Or will do that. Are men okay? We're not. We're really not. Not this one. Not early on.

Thank you for checking in. I just wanted the temperature check. I'm like, damn. Damn. I mean, he even hates the color of the ocean. Like, what? Right. Water isn't always the same, bro.

He's like, it's too blue. It's too blue. It's too blue. It's not green enough. The clouds are wrong. I'm like, yo, people like pay a lot of money to experience that. Experience this exact like tropical wonder that you have right here, Victarion. Like he lives in the farthest Western point of like all the known world. And he's like, no, it's going gonna be the same no matter where else i go and he's been doing this for like ever like his whole life he's

been sailing places so i'm just like you come from a sailing culture i will say though maybe it's like it's similar to you know sleeping somewhere and you're so uncomfortable and then you're like i just want to be in my bed. Maybe that's him, but about water. But his bed comes with him everywhere he goes because he's on the ship. Well, and he likes his bed to be one fucking color around it. Okay, God, Aliyah. someone that has the courage and ability to sail the world but has no curiosity about it whatsoever and just total disdain for it all like this man only intends bad things because there's nothing to be like oh actually i like you know nothing's gonna turn him around and be like actually maybe

i uh the world is interesting and maybe i should take pleasure in its variety. No, that's not happening. I think that's a perfect encapsulation of him, though. He has no curiosity. Yeah. He doesn't want to learn other things. He's content for the world to be as it is. And new knowledge very much scares him. Yeah.

He's concerned with, am I about to break a rule, a superstitious rule? And that gets him thinking, which is what I was referring to earlier about when he gets interesting. Like he's trying to piece together how the world works despite all these contradictory superstitions that most people just kind of live with, which is also interesting because his brother did the same thing,

but just broke through it. It was like, okay, there are no gods. I'm going to test this and prove to myself that the gods aren't real. And Victorian's more like, my brother would know what, my brother Aaron would know what to do here. Is it, should I sacrifice seven people for the seven gods, burn them because of R'hllor, and then they also go in the water because of the Drowned God?

Yeah, that'll work. Just, it's like superstitious stew. You know, he just throws it all into a pot. He's like, that'll work. I love that because with what you're saying that he like doesn't he doesn't have an imagination and he doesn't want one he wants nothing to do with having one because his brother you're on has taken the ultimate imagination like when he tried to dose imagination yeah he's like that guy has taken 10 tabs a day for far too long is what i'm saying and like victorian's like please stop trying to dose me in the last chapter. My fucking godbrother, please don't dose me here.

That is the relationship. He straight up wants nothing to do with it. He's like, please no. I really like that viewpoint. Very interesting. It's a lot like that awesome line that Rainey's had on the TV show where she said, to Allison, where she said, you're not trying to whatever. You're just trying to carve a window in your own prison.

Victarion is just trying to size up his his box that he lives in. He's not trying to go venture out of it or even look out of it. He doesn't want the window. He doesn't want to see what's out there, which is a weird thing to say about a guy who has traveled across the world. It's like it's so peculiar, which again, that's kind of why he's kind of interesting. Ironic. Despite all that. Yeah, ironic-born.

But that's the thing is every time in the past on his own that he tried for that freedom and to make his little box bigger, he was struck down by Euron for it. That's a good point. It's a deeper fear, you know? Like, he fears it also because of that. Because of Euron directly, I feel like. good point. It's a deeper fear, you know? Like, he fears it also because of that.

Because of Euron directly, I feel like. Yeah. Damn. And that's some of where he's been the most manipulated. Some of his own trauma is the thickest, right?

Because he killed his own wife, which is awful, but he hated doing it, which just shows how beholden to his own rule set that he lives by. He's like, well, I have to do this. If he couldn't stop himself from that, then there's nothing he can stop himself from doing. If the rules, quote unquote, say that you've got to do it.

And it's so easy to convince him of what the rules are. Like, as we said, he's so manipulatable. It's true. Like, well, what's my brother think? Well, yeah, you got to go across the world, man. are like as we said he's so manipulatable like well what's my brother think well um yeah you gotta you gotta go across the world man i i think he contrasts well as you said like you're on then who has broken every rule but also as you're saying right he kills his wife because you know as chloe phrased it last chapter like he can't imagine a world where like it didn't have to be

like that and and you think about him having this like crisis and never questioning his religion you put that up against characters like what like melisandre right or like erin and the forsaken and things like that and he just he doesn't do any of that whereas euron is like i don don't know, I'm going to compare him to another very nautical series. In SpongeBob, he's like imagination. And he makes the literal rainbow. But Euron's doing that too. He's trying to break reality just like SpongeBob.

I just wanted to get a rise out of Chloe. On the polar opposite, I think is a great example is Daenerys because she has been through a lot of these similar situations where she doesn't have control over where she's going. In her case, it's literal.

Whereas Victorian could, he's in charge of the ships. He could give the order to go elsewhere. Eventually, Dany's in charge too, but obviously at the beginning, she's not. But she goes through

the Thraki Sea and the Western, like the markets there and then karth and she's blown away she's invested and interested and curious and thinks about all these things experiences wonder and despite all the hell stuff going around her all the awful things happening to her and even down to like the the magic stuff like she experiences the closest thing to what Victorian experiences with the fourth wall being broken during black magic or blood magic where something really weird happens and they both perceive it very differently. And so that's really kind of neat that he happens to be going to her and they've experienced

similar things but their viewpoint on them is just dramatically different. That's another reason I think Victarion's interesting because he provides that perspective. He somehow makes Daenerys more interesting. Which she's already among the most fascinating there is so that's an

achievement I think. Hell yeah. Victarion had really hoped to have a majority of these ships with him already like 70 80 at least but now things are looking very bad despite three sacrifices before sailing and another three of the stepstones he has not had luck he was only able to voice this to the dusky woman and when grief finally, he sends word to recall all hunting parties and break up the shore camps. Yeah, so we're told once again that Victarion has continued using the Dusky Woman as a therapist. Not a very good one, because she can't really guide him in any of the different treatments, right?

She just listens. And it reminds me a little bit of jamie's relationship with ill and pain both of them you know having their their tongues ripped out and and these very warrior-like men kind of using these different kinds of people and their relationships how they differ right down to the hand injury too there's even a little bit of a similarity there that's right yes that's right and being kind And being kind of strung together because of that, right? Like not being able to function without that other person because of that. Interesting.

And very, very trapped by their upbringing. Like Jamie Kingsguard at 16, he's like, what is my life? What have I done? He has his realization about his life when he's already in a relationship with his sister and has children with her and is already hated for what he thinks he's done even though he was anyway you guys know all that but yeah so yeah the parallels are enormous yeah that's a great point especially with jamie george is good at this i also tried to step to step out the box once right and he kind of broke the whole one thing he was supposed to do, which that's the story. That's legend.

Yep. Yeah, and he got hated for it. You're right. Yeah, they both, yeah, breaking out of the box might be the right thing to do, but you can suffer personally for it quite a lot. There's a lot going on with tongues in this book, right? You have a it reminds me a little bit of Wax,

who, you know, he, although mute, can reveal huge secrets by the end. So I wonder if there will be some sort of reveal for the dusky woman where she's like, in the sand, you know, you idiot.

Your brother is controlling me. Your dick sucks. Please stop fucking me. She draws a dick butt. Yeah, please stop raping me. She's super angry. I mean, see this at sea this is like give me some dirt to draw in for the ah this ocean I can't draw on anything

yeah yeah he keeps her on the boat my god yeah there's something going on there with tongues definitely and she freaks out at Makoro too so not just the monkeys she also yeah yeah says a lot to come a lot to come. A lot to come. Yeah.

Hmm. Like if she's a part of Euron's plan, which is entirely possible, certainly strong. Yeah, because why would you gift your brother a woman with a tongue where she can talk to him? Yeah. Maybe that's- And of course, Victarion, as easily manipulatable as he is, Euron knows that he's gonna not get around to killing her, as he puts it. It's like, no, he's too...

He's got his brother sized up properly. Yeah, he's like, no, he's gonna keep her, and he's gonna... But this... Makoro just breaks the plan. No one saw this coming. She didn't see it coming. Euron couldn't have seen it coming.

I mean, I guess Makaro himself did in his flames. Makaro saw it coming. Someone did. Wild cards. Wild cards. They load up fruits and pigs and rations and leave Shark, the ship,

to tell stragglers where they went. Shark needs to get repaired anyway which brings them down to 53 ships but there's nothing he can do wolf warns him that another day could mean another ship and victorian knows that but he says they can't wait and if they win with a small fleet wouldn't their victory be that much sweeter i think there's something interesting here about those pigs right and i want to say i've seen it in like a bigger theory about something but you know obviously danny and drogan's psychic connection in the fighting pits is a big deal of part of why he comes to her but also he was

drawn by all the blood including the blood of boars and pigs so viction just put a metric shit ton of pigs on this ship. And he's flying to Slaver's Bay to go to Daenerys. Where, famously, her giant fucking winged lizard is flying around in the sky hungry as shit. With a heat radar for pigs. I'm like, Victarion, you're more than a mark. You're now bait. Bro, you're bait. Squid bait. You're now bait. Bro, you're bait. Squid bait. You're pig bait. Yeah, squid bait.

He just ran a hook through himself and dangled it. Oh my god. Yeah. That's pretty cool. The pig stood out this time. I was like, damn, I know you're gonna eat a lot of them, but you better eat a lot of them before you get there. I'm worried for you. There's gotta be some symbolism there.

I like where you're going with that too because bringing up Drogon and Dany, that was really loaded with symbolism too with the woman who's killed there is named Barah, Barsenna Blackhair. She's super Robert Baratheon, killed by a female slave Robert Baratheon killed by a boar in front of Dany.

Dany's watching Robert die in front of her in replay mode, so... Real time. And then her dragon symbolically comes in and is like, okay, you took the throne. Now I'm taking it back, yeah. So, yeah, this could fit into that whole symbolic umbrella nicely.

Because Victarion's bringing a load of people to Dany, right? right like makoro is an on team victorian he's on team danny like he believes she's the actual messiah or whatever and so that's pretty unambiguous i suppose whoever else like maybe just the ships and crews or and maybe even victorian you think there's a chance victarion is won over by her somehow? Or is he just going to die and he's going to scond with all his ships? Real talk, I'm thinking

the latter. It would be pretty cool slash fucked up if she shows up in Westeros with most of the Iron Fleet. It's kind of funny, actually. I mean, just imagine him at her side with his big flaming arm, like if he's fighting for her.

She could use that. Maybe she shouldn't, but she's got Jorah. Right. Well, she doesn't right now. Maybe she will again. I'm not hoping for it, but it's probably. I don't know. I see him dying by then for sure.

Yeah. I worry for that guy. Jorah might be the one to kill Victorian because there's a weird like. I don't worry for him. Yeah. You know, I worry, I worry for that guy. Jorah might be the one to kill Victorian because there's a weird like, I don't worry for him that much. George dropped a weird clue about that.

Something about nipples on a breastplate being killed by a slave soldier with nipples on your breastplate. And that's exactly how Jorah has just armed himself

from the second son's armory. He's wearing armor with nipples on his breastplate. Interesting. Yep. I forgot that. i know that that phrase comes up a lot because i guess you know george suddenly had that weird conversation about batman so yeah obscure obscure possibility there that maybe that would be a way for danny to accept jorah again if he slays victorian interestinging that out there. I for one would just not accept that. It's like, good job on the killing him,

but that's not enough. I am. I don't have dragons to start. Bears, boars, squid. What other animals we got going on here? All sorts of bait. For dragons, they all are bait. Actually, though. actually though various forms it's what danny said to the dothraki right when they were messing with her when the the the co's were messing with

her and she's like they're all prey to the dragon and they're like whoa and joe was like see how my son inside her is making her talk like that and we're like oh come on like no that's her yo she's saying that yeah so that's the kind of like i can kind of believe maybe that victorian could be won over but also like no if he's thinking like that he just can't see a woman as a leader and that's that's that's gonna have to be it for him then he's about to short circuit when he sees yeah what if he sees a dragon like what is like that alone could be like wait wait, those were real? I didn't think about that. Too distracted by monkeys. So, Victarion needs to get to Daenerys before

the Volantines do. There's a lot of politics going on here. He saw some galleys in Volantis that are full of sailors and merchants who are cheering the new triarchs who all want the queen dead. So, we're getting a little bit of that, what's going on in the free cities alongside whatever Quentyn's chapters and Tyrion's chapters have been showing us. And I thought this was really interesting that they overhear that a bunch of the people, these sailors and merchants, they're not cheering for Daenerys. They want Daenerys to fall because they're already speculating on all the jewels and the slaves and the riches that are going to flood into Volantis.

And I mean, I think something that is starting to come to the forefront of the story is really the economic impact of Daenerys's reign. We've already seen how that's impacted a lot of Slaver's Bay, but it's going to have very international ramifications that I think are super interesting for the story. Yeah, because right now they're meeting and coming across all these different people that are already starting to say like, oh, fuck that chick. She's ruining our life.

We're going to go get her. And he's kind of to Aziz's earlier points, like we're seeing so many important things that he isn't even really listening to. He's like, yeah, yeah, whatever. Glossing over that. Moving on. Back to the boat. It doesn't phase him. It's funny.

He's like, you know, there's 300 ships coming and we're only, you know, like you said, I don't know exactly how many because that would involve doing the aforementioned math, but it's a lot less than 300. On the other hand, there's all this fear that amongst the powers that be that since those ships were crewed by slaves, they might not actually be hostile to the Ironborn after all. They might be pro-Danny. And if they see Ironborn ships attacking slavers, then they gonna be like hey those must be our friends and yeah it is

convenient that the ironborn's prohibition on slavery even though thraldom is so very similar is uh but victorian wouldn't be unable to tell the difference to him they're hugely different because one is an ironborn precept and one is not and evil and bad. Yeah. Yeah. They're only kind of slaves for us. Only kind of. Yeah.

Your children aren't slaves, but you are. Oh, what a huge. I mean, that is a big difference, but it's still slavery. Yeah. So that's kind of cool that he can use that. It makes the whole situation a little mysterious. It's hard to predict how it will go because we see how awful Victarion is. We're in his head.

It's unambiguous. Again, another thing that's very unambiguous. But Dany, she doesn't know any of this. She's like the way she looked at Dario or Drogo. She's not going to be into Victarion like romantically, I don't think. But she won't necessarily see the red flags or know about them or assume them, which I think you could probably assume them. But she's going to have people telling her otherwise, like if Barristan's around or

Tyrion's around, we're like, that dude, maybe use him, but don't trust him or anything. Yeah. Yeah. He's not a stupid use either. He could be a good use, but not that great of a use, right? Because he's actually looking around at the Volantine fleet right now, which is like 300 to 500 ships teaming with slave soldiers. And he's like, fuck.

And he's watching and he sees that they have allies. They have the Yunkish men, Astapor, New Geese, Karth, Tolos, even Marines ships, the ones that fled before danny took the city he again looks and he's like i have 53 ships fuck but but he thinks you know what if euron can do it and live to tell it with one ship if he can mock the gods i can too though he is down a best mate. He's down Newt the barber. He only has Wolf one ear, a very big downgrade in his eyes and mine, you know, because Newt the loot man,

Newt's out there. Newt, Newt. Wolf asks if they still mean to make for marine and Victarion's like, yes, for the dragon queen. And we get kind of this monologue from him. The fairest woman in the world, if my brother could be believed. Her hair is silver gold.

Her eyes are amethysts. Was it too much to hope that for once Euron had told it true? Perhaps. Like as not the girl would prove to be some pock-faced slattern with teats slapping against her knees, her dragons no more than tattooed lizards

from the swamps of Sothoryos. If she is all that Euron claims, though, they had heard talk of the beauty of Daenerys Targaryen from the lips of pirates in the Stepstones and fat merchants in Old Volantis. It might be true. And Euron had not made Victarion a gift of her, the crows I meant to take her for himself. He sends me like a serving man to fetch her,

how he will howl when I claim her for myself. Let the men mutter I'm really rooting for him just like even especially because I know he won't win that's why I'm rooting for him I think because I'm like oh you stupid motherfucker you're sitting here and you see he sees

like right here he's like and Euron wanted me to just bring her to him what an idiot now I'm gonna go take it and I'm like but yeah you're not looking at all these, he's like, and Euron wanted me to just bring her to him. What an idiot. Now I'm going to go take it. And I'm like, but yeah, you're not looking at all these gifts he's giving you in the moment. Like you don't see the manipulations. Oh, no.

Oh, no. Yeah, he is very much underestimating. I get it. Like he doesn't believe there's really necessarily dragons. And if there's that, then, yeah, why believe she's so beautiful and why believe the other stuff but not only does that but there's the unsullied and all these other things she really does this is not an easily kidnappable person oh let alone the fact she's not even there she's not there to be kidding let's not forget she's way there's a lot of things working against him she's. We haven't even mentioned that. That's kind of...

Honestly, that's why I don't think he'll succeed. I think he might even die before he fucking meets her. At least Quentin got farther than that. Jesus. That's actually a great point. Quentin... Well, Quentin also started a little earlier. Not a little. And we love an underdog.

Not an updog, an underdog. Sad to say, Victarion's plan is as bad as it is. It's way better than Quentin's. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. It actually kind of is, though. But now,

what do you do with... He's got almost a very different problem right quentin was like shit we are very underprepared for this mission i don't have anyone who knows how to speak like these languages except for the one guy and he's dead and then victorian's like i just do not care about knowing any of these languages but like he's got too many you can't hide like 54 ships. Whereas Quentin is like, you know,

we don't have enough to like have a presence and like spread out. Victorians like there's too many of us. We're going to sneak up on them. And it's stopped there. That's where his plan stops. He's like, but from there we'll simply kidnap the dragon queen. Like that needs a little more sorting through the details rather

than just once we spring our trap and sneak through the rest will be simple. Like, what? Some straight Penelope pit stop, tie her on the train tracks and pray for it. I don't know. I don't know what Victarion thinks here.

He is praying for it though. Every night he prays for Daenerys. The Penelope. I like that Penelope reference. Help me.

Help me. Multi-reference because it's also the Trojan War. Ah. Oh. There we go. I like this.

It's coming. Soon Aziz is going to unleash the Trojan War. It's coming in this episode buckle up oh my god trojan horse oh my god trojan kraken hmm that'd actually be cool so victorian had lost too much to leave without the prize he closes his good hand into a fist and asks for the maester to come to his cabin. While he waits, he looks off across the fleet at long sails on the Isle of Cedars, drowned 400 years ago unseen.

He finds this maester that Euron gave him girlish, and the maester had told him that this place was once called the Isle of a Hundred Battles. But those men were now dust. It should be called the Isle of a Hundred Battles. But those men were now dust. It should be called the Isle of Monkeys, Victarion thinks. There are pigs too, giant black boars, piglets, all with no fear of man. Yet, Victarion had banned them from the ships,

yet these monkeys are all over, the monkeys and the pigs alike, and he wishes he had a crossbow. I love the world building so much. In this chapter, it's definitely one of the draws. Even though Victarion has no curiosity about these things, he still thinks about them. He still gives us kind of a tour.

And that's pretty cool. I mean, George is just really good at writing this stuff. 400 years ago, getting drowned, and what must have happened, just thinking about how it would have been, those seconds where the doom was occurring and whatever happened before to give it the name of all

those battles, yeah, like that's really neat. Even though Victorian hates it. What did give it that name? No, I mean it must have been a place that the Freehold warred over is my best guess because they

ruled the region for like 6, 7, 7,000 years or something. There could have been some other culture that fought over it. So I assume that they fought what, six wars or five wars with old Ghis? So I'm guessing since it's kind of between them. It is kind of in MacDab in the middle of the two nations it's kind of hard to conceive of another guess to be honest but obviously there is other possibilities

but that's pretty overwhelming I think. Ghisgar versus Valyria in the old days. He was doing a little gardening for sure here he was having some fun as he starts to discarding. There's something cool there too that like in a way Valyria and all these secrets

about Valyria and secrets about the Doom he really didn't start publishing a lot of them until this kind of second half of the series. He's starting to get a little comfy. He's like let me write some fun new shit for the Isle of Cedars. He's like why not? A hundred battles.

I'll write it someday. So maybe next book. Maybe next book. You never know. Yeah, look under your chair. Look under your chair. It's the wind of winter. It's there. Victarion, like me after making that joke, hates this place, these people, the skies,

the sun. No, not you people. All the people that I live amongst. You know, I just want the winds of winter. The sun. He hates the sun no not you people like the the all the people that i live amongst you know i just want the woods winter the sun he hates the sun big mood same hates the isle of cedars he hates the storms they're nothing like the southern storms which are as treacherous as women the water is all wrong it's shimmering turquoise at the shore it's a blue so deep that it's black in the center and he misses the gray-green. Oh my god, does that Philadelphia water settle down? He misses the gray-green

waters of Pike, the white caps, the surges. He hates this shit. The hunting's good, though. It is good, but the forests are odd. They're still and green and full of queer, bright flowers. He really needs to, like, I don't know. We gotta do something to cheer this guy up up because I'm like, flowers fucking

rock. Yeah, flowers are cool. Horrors lurk within the broken palaces. Ooh, cool vibes. And statues of drowned Velos. Half a leak north where they anchor. His dreams ashore were dark and disturbing and he woke with a mouth full of blood.

That couldn't mean something, could it? Victorian's just been flossing too much, you know? Or not enough. I just need to floss. Yeah, that's true. I need to floss more. I'm projecting.

And Victorian, you know, we were talking about this earlier, right? He's so ignorant. He's supposed to be this really brave military leader leader but because of his ignorance and his lack of curiosity literally everything scares him he's like oh my god is this flower dangerous and i'm like bruh it's a flower but then again you know like his prejudices just just make him somehow afraid of even like the most mundane things but i guess in his defense like magic is real in this world and therefore i don't know what if the trees and the flowers really are dangerous some of the trees yes are in fact

perhaps dangerous as we remember from our last pov doesn't mean they're not beautiful yeah i'm like i can't tell like is victorian right to be afraid of the foliage or not i mean he's just not avant-garde is really what it comes down to. There is just such a Paul over the whole chapter. I mean, what is the first word in the chapter is grief, the ship he spots. And then we have the,

all the supernatural terror and the stories of ancient death and destruction and his xenophobia. Yeah, it's just so much negative energy all throughout the chapter and then it just gets bigger with the mystery and sorcerous stuff. Yeah. It's thick.

Yeah, and I think that the real lesson is that like a true man, Victarion thinks that everything should look like a Zack Snyder film. And this does not to him. He is pretty upset, you know? Yeah. But he can't back down.

I like that you brought up that the first word of the chapter and that they're waiting for that ship grief. It comes up a couple of times, Kersen. I think that's the thing that Victar victorian is trying to repress his grief he's like instead of dealing with my brother and my grief what if i tried to steal this woman that he wants to marry and then you know kind of fuck himself over in the end who knows that's true that's a good point just wants to get back in yeah we have this quote of the maester said he had bitten his own tongue into sleep but he took it for a sign from the drowned god a warning that if he lingered here

too long he would choke on his own blood hmm okay but i felt this chat part of the chapter was actually so riveting because eliana over the few weeks, you and I have been talking about a lot of concepts coming off of Bran Stark. You know, one of the reasons we kind of chose to do Victarion next was coming off of Bran and some of those nice, dark concepts with the skin changing and

warging and consumption. And every time we've kind of ripped through this, he's been waking up with some blood in his mouth or like the taste of blood in his mouth. We talked a little bit about Thistle and the Dusky Woman, for example, right? And compared them last week,

that Thistle bit off her own tongue while being skin changed into, right? Out of the sheer horror of it and to try to take away some of that agency there in body, and kind of Hodor having that taste in his mouth and Bran often waking up with that taste in his mouth of blood after having warped her skin changed, and Arya and Jon and Bran having those dark dreams all the time and waking up with a little blood in their mouth, I think we might be on to something here, with the dusky woman having her

tongue cut out so that she doesn't A. Spill the beans and B. Bite it off while she's being skin changed by Euron. And is he also being skin changed by Euron? Because that's what it feels like. His dreams. That's what I was going to say.

That was my little tinfoil based on what you were saying before. I was like, is this because is he having those nightmares because they're looking through that shit? This is definitely like the perhaps the section of all five books that is the most deeply supernatural in terms of at least if you look at like darkly supernatural stuff, you know, like, for example, we have two chapters ago, Gregor Clegane is given a white cloak. Basically, he's ready. The mountain is made ready for the first time. Like, he's announced that that's the time.

Two chapters from ahead of now is Jon dreaming of his flaming red sword and black armor as warmth seeps out of him and the ice spiders are crawling up the wall. And the dead thing's in the water letter like come on right that is some creepy stuff and then like three chapters after that is asha watching the burning of of the prisoners in stannis's army and then the next chapter is victorian's next chapter followed by Arya going down under the Faceless Men and getting her face put on her, followed by the Walk of Shame. It's like, whoa. That book has nothing but bangers as you go through it.

Yeah, for real. Like, I'm not like a, I'm a feast lover, right? I'm a feast enjoyer. That's my number one. But I used to be kind of like, I don't know that I like dance as much. And in the way that we're reading it is very different, obviously, but reading it through that half,

like second half of the book, how do you put it down? How could you put it down and sleep with yourself at night? Like you have to finish it. You have to keep going when you get to that second half. It's just, I didn't even mention John Connington, you know, showing his gray scale off. Yeah, that's right. It's just... I didn't even mention John Connington showing his grayscale off.

Yes. That's five chapters after this one. He's bringing the magic back. Yeah, it's coming. It's coming hard. Not like that. The Griffin Reborn. Yeah, it's so good.

Right. I agree. I double cosine all of what you just said. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah, sister. We haven't busted that one out in a while. I'm feeling it today. Yeah, I know, right?

So, it had been said when the doom arrived at Valyria, a wall of water 300 feet tall descended, drowning hundreds of thousands of people, and only fisherfolk at the sea and spearmen in a tower on a high hill had been left to tell the tale after. Velos had been turned from cedar and pink marble to rubble, and the pyramids of the island's slaver port, Gozai, were gone too.

Yeah, I thought this was so interesting because usually what you hear about the Doom of Valyria, which makes a lot of sense, is that it's assumed that it's a sort of volcanic activity and that really fits with a lot of what we hear about how valyria was made and the freehold but this specific part does not mention any of that volcanic activity there's no fire it's very much about the sea and it sounds like it's describing a tsunami which could of course come in tandem with some of that volcanic activity, if any of it has to do with any of the shifting of tectonic plates, et cetera, and part of the same event. But I just thought that was a great little bit of history. Yeah, it adds some context to the doom, adds some more detail to the type of devastation. You're right. It wasn't just volcanoes blowing up. It was things that happened because the volcanoes blew up, caused other climactic impacts or whatever the right term is. Yeah, floods like this.

It's interesting because when you think of the Duma Valyria, you just think of a huge-ass volcano blowing all over Valyria, right? You don't think of this part of it. So seeing the devastation up close that was also caused and understanding a little bit more about the east when we've had so much detail about Westeros. That's really great. I love that he says he chose it because of so many drowned men, the drowned God will be strong there. Victarion had thought when he chose the island for the three parts of his fleet to join up again. He was no priest though. What if he had gotten it backwards? I just, that's just, I love that line of thinking so much. It's so entertaining. Like, yeah, of course. He's not questioning whether his initial read was correct. It's just like whether it's backwards or not. Like, surely the presence of drowned men is relevant somehow.

It's just he's not sure if it's good or bad. There's no, like, maybe this is irrelevant entirely or, you know. I'm no priest. How would I know or, you know. I'm no priest. How would I know? I love that. I fucking love that. I'm going to start saying that to people. I'm no fucking priest.

How would I know? I feel like it's an authentic slice of how superstitious people in an actually magical world might think, you know, like, well. Yeah. I mean, it's not. It's not like off base, right? As you said, it's a magical world. It could actually mean something. Who knows? Heck, the Doom was like, are they supposed to think that was a natural phenomenon?

Like, if I lived in that world, I would not think it was natural. Yeah, none of us think that the Doom was a natural event. Like, why would they? Exactly the doom was a natural event. Like quasi-natural. Why would they? Exactly. He's not entirely wrong. It's just... Yeah, it's kind of funny, though, that he's reading it in terms of, like, is it good or is it bad in regards to that magic?

Or is he reading it wrong not being a priest? Because we see a couple of priests and priestesses throughout the series who are tied with religions, and they do sometimes interpret things backwards. Because, yeah, isn't that funny? Because, yeah, it's like science. If you get something wrong with science, you eventually maybe hopefully figure out the right answer.

But with magic, I'm not so sure. You can just expect repeatable results that you can extrapolate conclusions yeah or i don't think you can and i don't think you should yeah that's like how i feel yeah good point even if you can you probably should especially not when it's you know this kind of magic blood magic and right resurrections and yeah it doesn't seem good no not so much it gets a little it's getting a little hairy on the inside of those details huh yeah so one other thing uh i wanted to throw out here while we're talking about the religion stuff and the beliefs i I guess, and the comparisons here is how he handles his belief that his brother's gifts are poison.

The way he responds to that. It's another thing that he just perceives it, but he just has no idea what to do about it. But he thinks he does. He's like, oh, I just won't kill her like he expects me to, or I won't release the bird, like the ravens. You guys had some great notes on those ravens.

Yes. Euron knew he wouldn't release the ravens. Don't we assume that, or at least can confidently guess that? Yeah, I would think so. As we get towards there, there's definitely some stuff to check out with those ravens. Definitely. Yeah, yeah.

Chekhov's ravens. They are. I didn't even notice the ravens until y'all called them out. I was like, I don't know. Birds. But those brand chapters especially are what made me really sit there and go, wait a second. Ravens mean something. I got a bird brain um

so yeah yeah he doesn't really know what to do he's just like they're poisoned but what if I just kept drinking the poison I don't know meanwhile his actual hand is basically poisoned or in fact I guess infected I don't think anyone's messing with it it's the same thing it's a yet another parallel

to what was happening with Drogo. Like a magical healing of a wound that would eventually kill him. It's just that this happened sooner than Drogo was a lot farther. Like Drogo went weeks with that thing. Well, so does Victarion, but still. Mary Mazur went after him right away with her stuff, I think. Well, his was like in the chest, right? So it's a much more, I think, vulnerable area.

Closer to the bloodstream. Yeah, and what someone pointed out to us that I missed for years is that sewing dead skin back on is medically unsound. That's a terrible thing to do. I did not know that. Putting that flap back on is almost unsound. That's a terrible thing to do. I did not know that. Putting that flap back on is almost proof that she was trying to kill him. I saw several people point that out when we did our reread. Wow.

Someone who is a nurse, and they were like, and George doesn't get these things wrong. Not basic medicine and infection stuff wrong. She said, he hasn't gotten these things wrong so i assume this one he didn't get wrong either so it was probably deliberate so but here it's just he's at sea like it's moist you know like where's he gonna have again there's no dirt to draw in so there's no dryness you know what's he gonna do hold his hand in a barrel of salt or something right that did maybe maybe it might be good yeah again not our lack of medicine yeah we are not i'm not no medicine's not my strong point

so victorian thinks that perhaps the drowned god destroyed the island in anger and that the damp hair would know for sure but unfortunately the damp hair is back in the island preaching against the crow's eyes godless rule but the men had cheered him above victorian and other godly men in his cabin the dusky woman takes care of him without asking and lays a damp cloth on his brow and works on his hand he thinks about as you said earlier aziz right his brother's gifts being poisoned and wanting none of the leavings. And he had decided to slit the dusky woman's throat and toss her as a blood sacrifice. But he just never got around to it.

And now he found her a confidant. What a strange comment. One that never confided back. Who among us has not gotten around to our scheduled blood sacrifices? It's such a hassle, right? Who's among us? I have a really busy schedule, okay? Really busy.

Seriously, that stuff takes a lot of work. Yeah, he's getting a little attached to something false, it seems. Put some time on my Calendly, you know, for my blood sacrifice. Yeah, can you schedule it on Friday?

Thanks. Google Cal. Yeah, recurring. Weekly event. Send me an invite. You know, to better streamline, we're just going to do sacrifices only on Thursdays from 3 to 4 p.m.

I hope that time window works with everyone. Please come having had, no having lunch during the sacrifice. Thanks. It's an evolution within society. Rather than a bunch of individual blood sacrifices, it's very wasteful to just gather together and do one as a group. It's called lean methodology.

Thanks. Thanks. The 5S system. Yeah, so Victorian monologues to her. It's really fun. It's what everyone wants. While she changes his hand wrappings on the state of the ships saying that he was foolish to

have split the fleet, but had he kept them together they all would have slowed each other down, right? The faster ships would have been hostage to the slowest, which seems like a metaphor. Am I right? Euron and Victarion. The provisions would have been scarce as well because no port can really feed

100 warships. No one wants 100 warships in their port, and the storms would have been scarce as well because no port can really feed 100 warships. Like no one wants 100 warships in their port and the storms would have scattered them all. So he had separated them with each of them going a different route to Slaver's Bay. Red Ralph took the Corsair's Road along Sothoryos with all the little dinos where men could pay the iron price in the Basilisk Isles for provisions. The heavier, slower ships went through lease, selling their captives from the Shield Islands and victorian uh he has an emotion this is nuts mark it down while he hates weaklings he's like is this guilt do i feel guilty about selling men of westeros to these lysine slavers he thinks that men were not goats or foul to be sold for gold for gold. See, he and Danny are going to hit it off. It's like the best Tinder date ever.

He was happy to leave. Yeah, they both hate slavery. Yeah, they hate it. Same kind of thing, right? It's the same thing. He's happy to leave this selling, though, to Ralph, because Ralph would load the big ships with provisions. He wouldn't have to look at it.

He won't have to deal with it. He could pretend it didn't happen. Out of sight, out of mind, yeah. I mean, if someone else does the slaving, it's totally fine. Yeah, doesn't count, right? Victarion's really good at repressing things, so if he wanted to talk, you know, if he just wanted to keep talking to someone

and not have them talk back, maybe Victarion. I'll teach you how to start a podcast. Please don't. The Iron Podcast. Yeah, he called the Iron Price. The Iron Price. Yeah, he called the Iron Price, the Iron Price is right. Ooh, why didn't anyone make someone that

or something? Anyways. You get the random, it's wrong, you get blood sacrifice. Or drown, no, drown, sorry, drown. Yeah. This is the Game of Thrones. Game Show of Thrones.

Here, we've seen it in the previous chapters with Victarion. We've seen it in a bunch of the other Ironborn chapters too, that they are just at an inflection point in general with Westeros, right? Where they're being forced to reflect upon their society, and then they have to evolve. There is no path. There's just no path forward that lets them continue being where they've been. Balon has set them on a path where they have to choose a course. And they just can't go back to the old way, even if that was like his dream. There are two paths. It's either they take Euron's path, which lets them retain their extremist patriarchal power systems in society.

But they sacrifice their code of ethics, right? What ethics they have it's not the best ethical core but they're they would sacrifice that in regards to you know these very uh blurry lines that they have about slavery or they give up those ideals they give up having this victory and this like masculine pride, follow a woman like Asha. And that could actually lead to their society rebuilding and being sustainable. But it's very much about, I think it reminds me a little of like this one society and dying of the

light, like their society was not sustainable, but they were an extremist patriarchal one. And I was like, I don't know how you're fucking living right now. How have you kept this up this long? Somehow they persisted somehow they persisted they forgot about somehow they forgot about the iron fleet oh my god what if george forgets it victorian did not victorian did not forget about

the uh valentine he did not he did not i like what youantines. He did not. He did not. I like what you're saying that if they would just give up a little bit of that pride, they could have a sustainable, working, wonderful society. If only. Asher was trying to tell them. Well, and I think that's where

the future sits, right? Sea dragon point, maybe. Salt and a rock. know you have one in the north one in the islands something like that is gonna happen for sure because it's gonna be people who want that old way people who want to do it also rocks yeah well um technically have you ever licked one of those lamps yes i have actually anyways yeah break the wheel can also refer to the, you know, the wheel you steer the ship with. Oh, yeah. There you go.

It could. You see it kind of like that. His ships crept east along the disputed land, soon to swing south around Valyria, the most heavily trafficked area with prizes and islands for the taking. He tells the dusky woman he cannot wait for more ships as he tears off his bandage, crust of scab coming off with it. Nice, nice. He explains his plan just like he had done back at Lannisport. Sweep in from the sea, smash the slavers unawares. Taking the girl and racing for home before getting caught by the Volantines.

Yeah, just step three profit. He's no Kraven, but he's also no fool. He thinks it's impossible with 53 ships. Are you sure you're no fool? Anyway, the dusky woman will be Daenerys' maid, he says, but they're interrupted by Maester Kerwin, who's young and mustachioed. The maester asks to see his hand and Victarion studies him hatefully, finding him appalling and girly with his smooth pink cheeks and soft brown curls.

He used to have a cocky little smirk too, but he had smiled at the wrong man in the stepstones and Burton Humble knocked out four of his teeth. Not too long after that, he complains to Victarion that he was assaulted by four of the crew members below the deck. Victarion had slammed a dagger on the table and said, this is how you stop that. But Kerwin never used it. Yeah.

Poor Kerwin. So fucked up. I feel so bad for Kerwin. Like. Yeah. It's such a bummer. It is another poisoned little gift, of course, Victarion thinks. But yeah, Kerwin didn't sign up for this shit.

I'm going to let Eliana talk about Kerwin in a moment, I think, a little more. But there's something that stood out about him telling the Dusky Woman she's to be Daenerys' maid. And it's really cute. It's really fun. What a fun date idea, right? right like you get to be her maid forever now it reminds me a little bit of tyrian well in the show with shay but in the books with lawless with shay being lawless is made sansa in the show but lawless in the books and that lack

of agency that shay really has right and here you have the Dusky Woman has even less than that, right? She can't speak. She can't object. She can't speak for herself. So not only is she being puppeted by Euron's whims as well, whether present or not, now it's Victarion just taking away all her choice. It's also a parallel

to Faelia Flowers, I suppose. Yes, yes. Yes. Who she was the one saying that i'll be his maid or his second salt what is it salt wife rock wife whichever one i forget aaron's like oh god run or yeah swim stupid girl yeah but it's too late for her yeah so you you kind of wonder if that was what the dusky woman was you know before she didn't get strapped to a prow, but instead she was strapped to Victorian. I don't know what's worse. Yeah, I don't know.

I don't know. Both of them are pretty bad. And that's a great comparison. You know, the two brothers are not so dissimilar in that, right? They share that in their background. Yeah, a lot of that comes from, I think, the society that they have to some extent. Some of it is just like they're bad people. I mean, Euron, bad person.

Victarion, also pretty much a bad person too. And the stuff that happens with Kerwin, though, reminds me of something that our friend Lo had said in regards to gender nonconformity and how those gender roles get reinforced when someone isn't conforming that sexual power is wielded over them for the most part you see that with for example like and when we discussed this was in regards to brienne right breaking those gender lines or aria breaking those gender lines and and how especially like people who are assigned female at birth, like people will rape them in

order to try to force them back into submission into where their gender should be. And you kind of see that here with Kerwin to an extent because he seems gender non-conforming for ironborn society, how sexual dominance and power is wielded over him. and it gives you a little insight into the way that masculinity is perceived in the ironborn culture right there's no questioning like nobody questions the sexuality right or of the ironborn who rape kirwin um because they're still taking on what they see as that like masculine role or like of sexuality in regards to rapists and and as i said i think um victorian doesn't really like think much of it he's like that's what that guy deserves for that um and it reminds me again a little of randall charlie who's kind of like don't come to me brianne if something

happens to you it's that same in the box thinking where men must be men and women must be women and if you're not necessarily rooted in how you're born but how you behave so he's basically you're right he's low is right as well say that that's victorian views kirwin as girly and to him that is worthy of contempt like we could see him as girlish and just not see that as negative just see that as what he is you know i mean maybe he is girlish i don't know i mean we don't really know him that well all we have is victorian's point of view on him but that if if one of the three of us thought of him that way, it wouldn't be a negative state. For him, it's the absolute worst, especially because in the next chapter, how he treats the slave boys who were very feminine.

He thinks they're the absolute worst. He thinks they're as bad as it gets from his perspective. And he was taught that, presumably, but this is one that he really leans into so this is like some of his worst because i don't see this from euron or theon nearly to the same degree or even balon like he's worse than them like balon was fine with his daughter inheriting like in a way he was like an odd like a slice of mini progressiveness there from him in a sea of the old way. Balin was a really good dad to one kid. He was like an exceptionally amazing parent to one child. Yeah, isn't that weird?

Sent the other ones off to die or be hostages. Yeah. Yeah. One for three, you know? One out of four. Four. However many. That's not the worst odds. Smudged writing on his hand. For three, you know? One out of four, you know? Four. However many. 25%. Oh, yeah. That's not the worst odds.

Smudged writing on his hand. Theon? Is his name Theon? It's hard to keep track when, you know, with Krakens, you pull a tentacle off and it just regrows anyway. Yeah. I love that. Yeah.

Yeah. There's something also, and we kind of discussed, we discussed this in our meathouse man patreon episode actually another plug but something also in the way of like as a maester he is not shackled to their society and by being free and representing that freedom of knowledge and that progression of knowledge it's a threat in some ways and by them assaulting him for being different and for not conforming to their society they're almost like you know ruining the freedom that he had and taking it away from him thralldom in a way right like to to force him to their whims and it's interesting it reminds me of some of meat house man of like when there's something you wish

to possess or something you wish to covet right right? Because they are free. That's the ultimate thing that you want. And in a way, like Victarion hates that because he couldn't ever imagine it because he knows he'll never be free from the society and ever. And they want that they want that and they want to squash it. Power. And the freedom aspect is interesting when you look at it also with the maesters, and the chains that are associated with them. And again, like coming back to Randall Tarly, how he's like, no son of mine will ever wear chains. Yes. That hatred of that freedom and knowledge.

And ironically, the guy who was stripped of his chain is the one we see most capable of surviving an environment like this kyburn who ended up in yeah brave companions of like the actual worst and he did fine there like if kirwin was in the kirwin was in the brave companions he would have ended like he did here yeah kyburn could have been fine on victorian ship quite possibly probably would have fixed that hand, again, coming back to the Jamie parallels. That's true. Well, Maester Kerwin inspects the wound, telling him it's not healing, and if it doesn't stop pussing, we're going to have to cut it off.

And Victorian's like, I will literally kill you, first of all. So do not. Another Jamie parallel, right? To Kyburn, right? Yeah, I will kill you dead. So de-pussing it is. They cut it open. It's disgusting. It's a really

gross description. I can't tell you it without going bleh, bleh. Can't do it without gagging. So, just imagine it in your head, and Victarion's like, I want to see all the blood, and kind of goads him. So, Kerwin presses deeply, and Victarion grunts his approval at the pain and the blood. So, when they finish,

he commands him to clean up and go. The dusky woman binds him back up. Kerwin was like, you should go into the fresh air, sir, where the wound can breathe. And he's like, fuck you. If my men saw this, they would desert. And we have this line. I killed him, but he stabs at me from beyond the grave.

From the hot heart of whatever hell I sent him to, he thrusts his steel into my hand and twists. He remembers Ciri's longsword and feels it in his hands as he flexes. He calls it a scratch from a little kitten and thinks on when he originally bound it, how it festered. He's like,

was the sword poisoned? Why else would it refuse to heal? I can think of at least 50 other reasons why this wound will not heal than poison. I don't personally think that he had poisoned his sword. No. But like maybe it's something to do with the fact that you keep binding it in a damp, dark, stuffy room

and you don't let it breathe. And also you're on a deep sea adventure and you're battling and drinking every hour. You know, those are just some guesses. Just a couple. Back to the Drogo comps, right? He's like, I drink what I want and I ride what I like. Blah, blah, blah.

Yep, that's going to work out for you. It probably doesn't help that, like, you know, the first things that he did when he got that wound, he's like, what if we handle the dead bodies? What if I go have sex instead of binding it up? You know, sex notoriously known for being a very clean activity. Fun, not necessarily clean. Fluids, fluids, fluids.

All of them. Bodies. Isn't it amazing, though, that out of all the crazy, gross, terrifying stuff in this chapter, that bucket of pus is definitely the worst thing? I find it so fascinating. I don't know. I think I like those pimple popping things. bucket of pus is definitely the worst thing. Stop. I find it so fascinating. I don't know. I think I like those pimple popping things. Fascinating. My God. I'm so stressed out right now, Eliana. Don't stress me out like this.

She does this to me like every week, Aziz. I don't... Is it like Jerry Maguire? show me the bloody yeah literally the bloody so gross Ileana do you have a metaphor for us?

I do you know the festering wound on Victarion and how he's like no one can see no one can know that I have this pain and this wound and it rotting is very much it makes me think about that grief right beginning of this chapter and and that victorian and the poison in his family with euron right just rotting everything that's the real poison not anything you put on your sword it's guilt

that's amazing i do i like the way he described that that was like a really poetic he stabs at me from beyond the grave from the hot heart of whatever hell I was like and it's a reminder of how supposedly a lot of real world Vikings were actually into poetry which is like an ancient form of rap battle I suppose and

yeah they would compete with swords and poetry yes so Victarion is channeling a little of that energy I think, here. I fly to you with wings just sinking for me, Chloe. It's the wings of song that he soars to Daenerys on. He's a poet. I'm not kidding.

I'm, like, serious that he's a poet. Yeah. Yeah, well, we were speaking of the Viking poems, because I think, was it last Victarion episode where you invoked? Yeah, yeah. And then our friend Shiloh. Our friend Shiloh was telling us, you know, about how Tolkien definitely did some Norse names for the dwarves.

Like all of them. Ripped them all straight out of Norse poetry. And so there's a little Norse poetry going on here with Victarion with his wings of song for Daenerys later. And not only that, but it kind of reminds me of what I told Aliana. My Victarion voice is somewhat based off of, which is Clayface from Harley Quinn, the DC animated show Harley Quinn.

I don't know if you've watched this show, Aziz, have you? No, I am aware of it, but I haven't actually watched it. Okay, it's very good. You should check it out. It's totally great. It's really gritty and dark, but hysterical and bright and campy. But Clayface, he wants to be an actor. An actor, sorry.

Oh, like Sailor Venus. Yeah. And he's Clayface, so he can form his body in different ways. And he's kind of like a big, lumpy idiot with a heart of poetry. And that could be Victarion. That could be him. The hot heart idiot with like a heart of poetry and that could be Victarion, you know, that could be him. The hot heart of poetry. Hot heart of poetry. Yeah.

The thought of poison pisses Victarion off, thinking that poison is for crannogmen, cravens, women, and dornishmen. He wonders about if the maester was poisoning him and that the crows eye gave him the maester, taken off of Greenshield originally originally where he served Lord Chester. His brother had also sent him with three cages of Ravens for Kerwin to send word back with, but Victorian had forbidden him to loose them.

Let him stew and wonder. Yeah. Lot stands out here. First of all, Victorian, you're running out of people to name soon in that list of people that you think would use poison. He's like, everyone, that's not me.

That stood out when you read it out loud. I'm like, huh, interesting. Good portion of people in that list. Cravens is like not a, it's not like a narrow category, you know? Yeah, it could be anyone. I'm like, that's like 75% of all people. I that's like 75 of all people i'm a craven little bitch yeah wait a second how come you were so fast to call me a craven okay no i it was both of us wow but me first anyways well i you know we don't have time to divorce on page today so

uh not in front of our guest eliana oh my gosh Okay, so all he can think about is how he's like, yeah, don't loose those ravens. Fuck, fuck Euron. I'm not telling him what I'm doing. Ravens, you know, birds, things that are famously skin changed into by people with abilities to skin change and warg. Like, loose them, you idiot.

You're being spied on. Why would he give you three whole cages of ravens to send word back with? Because he knows you're not going to send them. They're going to be crammed in this little cage and be shitting themselves. You're going to have PETA up in your dick. Send them out.

You're being spied on, you fool. Boo-boo the fool. They probably can't even get back to Westeros. They don't know where the fuck they are? Wait a good point oh my god they don't know how to get back to where they are and they were like let from the shield so even if they did go back to westeros they'd go to the shield islands not to wherever euron is they certainly can't find the silence or you know victorian did not think this through. Unsurprisingly, which Euron knew he would not do.

Yeah, so he doesn't know how ravens work. He's like, yeah, they go to where you tell them. I don't know how ravens work, yeah. It's so hard, like, that we know what his brother's capable of and he refuses to know. Because I'm like, Victarion, you big fucking idiot. Like, don't you know that your brother's a nightmare holy

shit don't you know my god and he does but he doesn't right like obviously he's he's keeping those thoughts away he's like we're not gonna think about that today otherwise I might hate my life but this entire mission feels like such a trap for him and his pride is just turning

that shit invisible it makes me think of two things right the the numbers of ships that he has now it makes me think of the the thing that broke apart the triarchy back then when only one of them came back with most of their ships during that that war and then also makes me think of of Roose Bolton sending some of those troops ahead and being like, the ones that were not really pledged to him, and be like, why don't you go scout that out? And then they all fucking die.

And it feels like, yeah, they're kind of trying to, he's trying to get rid of Victarion's power, because Victarion's power in the Iron Islands is very much his reputation as leading the Iron Fleet and literally the martial power that they bring.

But also, yeah, the birds, if anyone here has a right to be like, wow, I hate the color of this water. I hate only seeing fucking water all the time and not seeing the shore. It is the birds. Yeah, they love to fly. Those bitches love flying. This is bullshit.

They're birds. That's what they love to do. Those bitches love flying. This is bullshit. They're birds. That's what they love to do. Yeah, flat, flat bitch. Yeah, that's a bummer. Bummer for those burbs. Man. Now I'm like, they're lost. I never even considered that until Aziz said it.

I'm like, oh my God, the birds are lost. Have you all heard about how that was actually a way an exploratory tactic used no you would let go ravens or other birds this there was an actual viking explorer named floki raven friend who figured this out he he sailed out and you know and he would let the birds go and if the birds come back to the ship there's no land because the birds wouldn't want to come back to the ship otherwise if there's land they're like I'm gonna go over there fuck this ship there's trees over here scouting

so that was their canary in a coal mine except a lot less danger to the birds so this is sort of like the inverse of that I guess maybe all of these crucial thoughts are being interrupted by This is sort of like, I don't know, the inverse of that, I guess, maybe. All of these crucial thoughts are being interrupted by Longwater Pike,

who announces the captain of the grief coming aboard with a prisoner, a wizard fished out from the sea, a monster of a man tall as Victarion, twice as wide, a belly like a boulder. Victarion's is just like a rock. With a tangle of bone white hair like a lion's mane black skin with slave tattoos across his face a gift from the drowned god long water pike says and marks of evil victorian thinks on his tattoos there's something there victorian thinks that the slave tattoos are marks of evil because of his religion he finds the slave evil as opposed to being like oh that's evil because it's slavery right how evil that this person was forced to get their face tattooed so he is thus evil as well

yeah victorian yeah it's a really interesting way of framing people who are associated with something even though they had no say in it yeah him that doesn't really make a difference apparently yeah thinking less of them, thinking smaller of them. Yeah, I'm like, I feel like you've got this all wrong, Victarion. But he's got a lot of things wrong. He's like, how could you let yourself be enslaved? And it's like, it's in the words, in the words you're saying. Especially looking like he does.

Like, how did that guy get enslaved? Like, cast a spell or something. But he came off, it's interesting that grief found him. So that seems important. Metaphorical or something. Literary. Literarily significant. Yeah.

So he had been 10 days in the water, which Victorians says should have driven him mad from drinking seawater. Yeah, probably. But it was holy and priests would use it, but no mortal man could drink it for days and hope to live. Well, what if they're not a mortal man? Anyways, he asks the man if he's a sorcerer,

but he answers that he was a slave of R'hllor, a red priest, and the red priest Victarion had seen wore rich red robes of silk or velvet, but this one was dressed in very pale pink, salt-stained and faded rags. A pink priest, Victarion announced.

A demon priest. Patooy! said Wolf on ear. Might be his robes caught fire, so he jumped overboard to put him out, suggested Longwater Pike to General Laughter. Wait, who's General Laughter?

Ah! Oh my god! That that no no because even the monkeys were amused they chattered overboard and one flung down a handful of his own shit to spatter on the boards victorian grayjoy mistrusted laughter the sound of it always left him with the uneasy feeling that he was the butt of some jape he did not understand. Euron Crozi had oft made mock of him when they were boys. So had Aeron before he had become the damp hair. Their mockery oft came disguised as praise until sometimes Victarion did not even realize he was being mocked. Not until he heard the laughter. Then came the anger boiling up in the back of his throat until

he was like to choke upon the taste that was how he felt about the monkeys he's he just like gets somehow he's back to the monkeys like there's this gigantic red priest who lived in the sea for 10 days that's freaking everyone out and he's like goddamn monkeys also he's so worried about the laughter which like whatever you can't help it if your men are going to be laughing at your situation but i distrust shit being flung on me more than i distrust laughter being done about me if that makes sense like i would be more concerned about all the shit yeah right it's a good example of victorian like just not seeing he's too dumb to he's in his own but he's in his box again he's he's just stuck in his box and he can't tell what else is happening yeah you've got way bigger you wonder how much of his courage derives from

pure ignorance like some of he's definitely still brave i mean he's not ignorant to the dangers to some of the dangers he's sailing into but but he's, as the quote says a minute, he's blind to the strings, right, or whatever. Yes. So he is, there's a lot of blindness here. Yeah, and it kind of reminds me a little almost of Tywin, but, you know, not nearly as crafty, but in terms of hating laughter and shit,

but not, not shit. Apparently he doesn't hate the shit enough. It doesn't bother him. It's a, and it's big Stannis vibes, right? Distrust and laughter too. Nothing like a bucket of pus.

Yeah. They would hate our podcast. Why'd you have to bring that shit up again? Jesus. Because shit. Can't help it. Shit and pus. Yeah,

this is a very. This is a chapter speaking of the color here is pretty neat because if you go back to the very first line not the puss luckily but the the sky the first line of the chapter

the first line of the chapter is grief alone appeared at daybreak her black sails stark against the pale pink skies of morning that's the pink robes. Then he gets the black robes. Oh, yeah. And that's the ship he comes off of. I love that.

I love that. That's gorgeous. Beautiful. I thought you were about to tell me about the color of the shit, Aziz. I'm like, I don't think we got that. I was like, where did you get that detail? Aziz is really full of knowledge. Better than shit, I guess, right?

Out than in, I always say. Burton, humble, urges them to drown him. Wolf points out, the entire crew disappeared. The wizard, Mikoro, however, defends himself and is like, it was from a storm that my crew disappeared. The monkeys

don't really even seem to like him, but Mikoro stays really calm in the face of everyone hating him. You've got to hand it to him at this moment. Wow, aspirational. Victorian respects that, despite himself, compared to Kerwin,

who he just can't stand because he sees him as soft. He's like, this guy's tough. Bold or tough. Yeah. We get a great intro and look at him in Tyrion's chapters from before he was out at sea in this manner. It would be remiss not to share it. A huge man taller than Ser Jorah and wide enough to make two of him.

The priest wore scarlet robes embroidered at sleeve and hem and collar with orange satin flames. His skin was black as pitch, his hair as white as snow. The flames tattooed across his cheeks and brow, yellow and orange. His iron staff was as tall as he was and crowned with a dragon's head. When he stamped its butt upon the deck, the dragon's moss back crackling green flame. An important color, I'm sure. I love that description, though.

I think he's a cool fucking character. I like that we get him across a couple plots, and he's the one that I don't think Victarion will survive his chapters, but Makora will definitely survive Victarion's chapters. He'll still die probably, but he'll at least survive them. Yeah, Makora's so fascinating. It's like the parallel to Melisandre. You know, someone who's on the so-called right track to the correct savior.

Really, really wonder how he's going to interact with Dany. Super curious. I mean, I don't even know if Vectarian will interact with Dany at all. But if he does, I'm a little curious about that. But Makoro, man, that'll be so cool and interesting, especially if there's people like Tyrion and or Barristan and other advisors around who will weigh in or be freaked out. I'd be like, yeah, I can't wait for that. That's that's exciting. Yeah, I do want to see how they they interact.

And like if Marwyn's there to everyone all together, it'll be really interesting. Makaro really feels like a really feels like a character from Elden Ring. Yes, I can say that. Like with the massive, yeah. I can say that now. Did you start? Have you gotten out of the cave yet? We don't need to answer that second question,

but yes, I started Elden Ring recently, and I would like to go play it at some point this weekend, I think, and maybe get out of the cave. Thanks, bitch. Leave me alone. The cave is fucking hard. It's hard. I'm not like, I just need to get into it a little more.

I think I need to get more comfortable with the sticks and the tools and the things because I'm more of a Civilization VI kind of gamer or a Sims 4 or a Stardew Valley or you know I like my little my little dopamine hits and I do like games like Elden Ring but I need a little just need time I think it'll come to me it's fucking hard I don't know what I'm doing and it's hard

is what I'm saying I can't decide if I should like tell you or just like let you I think the journey is it's own thing you enjoy the journey is its own thing. Enjoy the journey. Don't talk to me. Just like Victorians enjoying this journey. Victorian thinks that perhaps like his brother,

maybe I too am meant to have my own wizard. He asks why they call him a wizard. And the vole says that this guy knew their path for Slaver's Bay before anyone even told him, and he knew that Victarion would be here on this island, and told them that Victarion would die unless they brought him to the captain. And Victarion is about to

command them to cut this guy's throat out, throw him in the sea until a throb of agony goes through his arm. Everyone freaks out and gives the command and said, and Victian yells, no! And he orders everyone back to their duties, and they almost don't listen to him for a split second. And the best part of this

book, Chloe's favorite part of this book. My favorite part of the chapter for sure. I made this quote. I don't know, it could be the book. I made this quote very big. It's just such a good line. It's big, y'all. She's not lying. It is 20-point font. In an 11-point font doc.

Am I right? Yep. Monkey shit rained down around them all. Splat, splat, splat. It's giving onomatopoeia. It's giving everything it has. Thank you, George. Thank you for all of your hard work

in A Dance with Dragons. The Ironborn chapters have an unusual amount of that. They also have the horn. He actually types out 20 some E's. It's that Norse song, you know? It's the horns of Valhalla.

The poetry. And the monkey shit of Valhalla. It's coming down. So I guess this brings us back to the literary indicator monkeys that I mentioned a bit prematurely. There's just no ambiguity here, I think. You can't interpret

these as evil monkeys or misguided monkeys. No, they are correct, probably, most certainly, to object to blood magic and whatever else is going on in that cabin

that we can't see because we don't know narrative jumps away from the chapter which in itself is very telling in its lack of telling so yeah yeah even the dusky woman agrees with the monkey she's like if I shit, I would throw it too.

But dad, she just hissed. Yeah, basically, right? Well, she probably shits. Everyone shits. Couldn't she? Yeah, I love that. He comes in and opens the door, and she just immediately starts hissing like a serpent when she sees the wizard, Mikoro. Hiss with me, sisters.

Very indicative, you know? Kiss with me, sisters. Very indicative, you know? Like, wow, maybe we should not trust. Put yourself in her spot. Like, where the hell did this guy come from? They're on a ship at sea. Yeah, do you think like, have they met before? People just drop by?

Yeah, you can't visit your neighbor. Have they met? Like, somewhere else on land you know well that's interesting oh that would be interesting fellow slaves yeah is it like are they were they fellow slaves did she like see makoro do something before and has seen him or does she just distrust slaves of her lore in general right does she distrust sorcerers in general or can she sense something is there something that we don't realize that she can sense or if she's being of her lore in general, right? Does she just trust sorcerers in general? Or can she sense something? Is there something that we don't realize

that she can sense? Or if she's being skin changed, I don't know. Euron's like, I don't like this. This is not part of my plan. You're right. It's difficult to tell because there's so many reasons

she could react that. One is just pure surprise, as we said. Like, why the hell is this guy here? Second of all, he's crazy intimidating looking and gigantic and fearsome. Third, yeah. Sorceress, whatever. he's crazy intimidating looking and gigantic and fearsome third yeah sorceress whatever fourth just all that put together you know just hitting you at once i don't know yeah a lot of reason yeah my my reading of it was actually that she probably wasn't alone in this moment

is kind of how i took it um to me it felt definitely more like a visceral reaction that might come from someone who saw the sorcerer as a threat. And I do think it's probably maybe Euron was waiting, right? Maybe he was checking in to see what Victarion was up to. And that's not what he expected. Because to me, Mikoro definitely feels like possibly something that wouldn't have been planned by Euron would not have been planted on this trip and Euron carefully crafted every single thing on this hell ship right now for Victarion to like come up against and reverse psychology him on as Aziz mentioned so uh I think this could be especially if he was waiting for his lovely Victarion to come to bed to come to the chamber you know like this he probably figured he's coming, checked in, using his eyes to see where the fuck Victarion is around

this boat, his CCTV that he has going on between the birds and the dusky woman. And that hiss seemed like it might be from him. I mean, I would be pretty mad if this crazy wizard just shows up and saves my brother's life. Yeah. He'd be super frustrated. Like, where the, what the hell? Where did she even she even come from i mean i did not bank on a fourth i did not agree to this it changes the variable it really changes like that's like a variable that i'm sure you're on

would not have thought could have happened yeah yeah and like mccorrow instantly is like well for me to live for me to get to daenerys, I need to save this man's life. These other Ironborn won't take me there. They want me dead now. So it's like his one way to get there. And that's exactly counter to Euron's plan, apparently, or in some other way. If that's not the exact way it undermines his plan, it undermines it in some way. Certainly a monkey wrench.

A monkey wrench. Oh, a monkey wrench. I'm notoriously bad at, like I think identifying red flags. I don't know why I'm just like, I think I trust Makoro. I think Makoro seems like a cool dude. He's done nothing yet, in my opinion, that makes me distrust him other than like all of the signs that he's untrustworthy. Maybe he's bad news for Victarion, but I just wanted to put that i trust him that's absolutely the question i have too is it one of those things where then all this negative dark imagery is aimed at victorian or is it aimed just in general because i think you're right eliana i think it's a good chance that

if mccora may not be a good guy, but he is absolutely pro Danny, so if you're rooting for Danny, then you want Makoro to provide his skills to her, even if some of it might not be smooth and great and perfect. Yeah.

It's better than alternatives, you know, a lot of the others, I guess. Yeah. There's something like, I'm sure that's bad about him, but for me, I'm always just like, yeah, Makoro seems fun. I'm glad that he's here in this story. Victarion's really rude, though, to the Dusky Woman and her reaction, and commands her to be quiet and demands the wizard tell him what he saw of his fate and if he would die in battle.

Is this also when Victarion victoria like smacks her which is terrible um probably and there's this line that makoro actually delivers of your death is with us now my lord when when asked about it and it's implied that it is about his hand but the phrasing actually really reminds me of cersei meeting Maggie the frog and Maggie saying to Malara of your death is here tonight little one can you smell her breath she is very close and so I'm like well what is Makoro didn't really I think answer that in a very straightforward way then all right like is he implying that it's the dusky woman or like that Victarion's just doing dumb shit and would be his own death?

Like, is it him? Is Makoro the death? Is it like all of these people, as you've said, like on this ship or the Ravens or any other thing? It could be both Victarion and Makoro if you believe that Victarion does die here and then is resurrected during this entire ceremony. I don't know. But I just thought that was a weird phrasing.

I don't think you're wrong necessarily. And I mean, it's something we'll come back to at the end of the episode. I have a couple of thoughts on even more, but I mean, really there's a gateway here being shown. We're seeing it in so many other plots. And right this moment, it does make me think of Maegor, right?

In the tower. Oh, interesting. It definitely makes me think of maegor right in the tower oh interesting um it definitely makes me think of maegor in the tower especially because we don't after he says yes we don't actually really see the inside we see it from the outside and then out he comes so i think more to come on that in just a few but i think i like your little tinfoil eliana i like it i think i might thank you i like it and I think I might. Thank you. I like it and I'm going to add to it in a bit. So buckle up.

You can bake something on my tinfoil. Oh, I'm gonna. Line a pan with it. And I don't know if it's even tinfoil. Like, to be quite honest, some of these plot elements are there. It might be more parchment paper. Okay. Oh, interesting. Parchment paper.

That is useful. I'm a big parchment paper believer not all tinfoil is tinfoil you know not all tinfoil is tinfoil just saying they got silicon like uh pants yeah sheets now too yeah yeah mccorrow says he's seen victorian in his night fires stern and fierce his axe dripping blood blind to the tentacles that grasp him at wrist and neck and ankle the black strings that make him dance what could that mean does

anyone know what that could mean I just can't figure it out I'm just maybe I'm getting a little Victorian brain here but just can't figure it out this does make me think though I definitely like I'm erring on the side. I don't think Makoro is any agent of Euron's.

However, if he was, or maybe not agent, but could Euron manipulate his dreams, right? This dream right here specifically, it reminds me of Mel looking into the flames and seeing Bran and Bloodraven, right? If they're operating on the same magical plane in some sort of way, maybe they could mess with dreams or step into people's consciousness in that way. Maybe Euron could be manipulating what Makoro sees in his flames.

Ooh. Next level. Yeah. 5D chess, you know? Yeah. 5D. Yeah. That's pretty cool. Yeah, I like that idea. It's pretty cool. It might be kind of along the way of him being speaking in misdirection where he says your death is is with us he might be referring to himself as one of the people manipulating victorian given that he's just

trying to hitch a ride to danny and has no intention of helping him kidnap her and he literally ensorciles him at the arm or wrist. And he says, you know, the tentacles, the grass you hit the wrist. Which of the people that you're worried about just actually cast a spell on you, Victorian? You know, maybe consider this guy. You know, maybe that everyone is warning you.

The dusky woman, Burton Humble, like all these people are like, don't trust this guy. And you're like, no, I'm going to let him use magic on me. But I mean, to be him use magic on me. But I mean, to be fair, he probably would have died if he hadn't. So I don't know that Vic had a whole lot of choice. You just said something, though. He's ensorcelled.

He could have cut off his hand. Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's true. You're right. There's almost something now I'm wondering, and I've never looked at the text this way. So like the next chapter, now I might have had my mind just change a little, but you just said, which I have to say, A++++ ensorceling, thank you for that, that was the

best word I've ever heard in my life. He does ensorcel his arm slash wrist after this. What if Euron's not able to use him as a post after that to look through? Like, what if we don't see any more nightmares, no blood in the mouth?

That's what I'm going to pay attention to now, because I'm like, what if he just cut and severed those tentacles and made him have a little less visibility from Euron through him? Stronger control is more direct. Like, a lot of Euron's him. Stronger control is more direct. Like most, a lot of Euron's manipulation was just regular manipulation using magic to help that, but he's not directly

like magic-ing him. This is direct magic-ing. Euron didn't actually cast a spell on him. He more like talked him into all this and then is using magical means to support that plan. This is... And maybe this stops that plan this is this is and maybe this stops that maybe this stops those magical plans yeah by cutting those ties maybe

the firearm now he's controlled by yeah especially if he's dead like you like you suggest it's a possibility which is it is possible then yeah like that completely would change. Yeah. You would think stuff like now allowing John to get out of the Night's Watch or whatever. And to provide some some context on that, I think that was a theory that Brendan B. Fish was very adamant about that during this chapter. Victarion is perhaps killed and then brought back during this ceremony of or whatever to heal his hand. So that's what I was referring. Yeah. I mean, I think that's definitely a possibility. And I, well,

well, we'll come to that in a moment. But first, Victarion says he's like, I am no dancing puppet. Brandishing his hand inside of his face, too. He's like, here's my pussy hand i'm gonna throw it in your face right now yeah as opposed to the gussy hand he shoves it in his face like what yeah showing him his pus and blood-filled bandage if only makoro was eliana she'd be so excited i

mean you don't know that makaro isn't excited oh my god that man has a lot of control over his emotional reaction as we've seen yeah most nurses are like into gross shit my mom's a nurse she's gross she likes gross weird things she's like oh that's disgusting let me learn about it that's interesting i'm learning a lot about your mom this week some red priests gaze into the flames others gaze into the pus yeah i bet you can see a lot you can see a lot in there so makoro basically pegged victorian as a mark within you know 32.4 seconds after seeing him like this guy is going to be easy to manipulate it's almost like he has an older brother and family that's been manipulating him his whole life and makoro got onto that or it's also like almost like mcguire can see the future you know yeah but it was basically more reverse psychology he did the same thing you're on did he's like oh only a brave man could oh i'm a

brave man he's like oh dancing puppet you know he's like i'm no puppet you know so he'll do anything to break that impression which enables mccoro to suggest all sorts of things like let me ensorcel you then i'm so obsessed with that word so obsessed yeah let's keep you let's make it let's make it a thing there's a there's a way that you phrased it just now in regards to mccoro you know seeingarion as an easy mark and how Victarion is easy to manipulate by Makoro or anyone else, because as you said, right, he's been manipulated his whole life. And it, you know, it's kind of sad when you think about it in relation to how they talk about skin changing, right?

That a horse that's been broken once is easy to break. And I think people can learn to become more resilient to manipulation. changing right that a horse that's been broken once is easy to to break and i and like i think people can learn to become more resilient to manipulation i'm just talking about my own baggage again but anyways like but i i think that that's really interesting in the context of victorian right like if and when we talk about him in relation to a potentially skin changing brother who controls people that, you know, on one hand you have it literally with the skin changing on another, you have it on a thematic level.

Yeah. So the wizard requests a silver or iron blade and a brassiere, warning Victarion that there will be terrible pain, but when he is done, he'll at least still have his hand. And Victarion says, fine, but if you fuck up, I am throwing you into the sea. And so we come to the last two paragraphs of the chapter. The Iron Captain was not seen again that day. But as the hours passed, the crew of his Iron Victory

reported hearing the sound of wild laughter coming from the captain's cabin. Laughter deep and dark and bad. And when Longwater Pike and Wolf One-Eye tried the cabin door, they found it barred. Later, singing was heard. A strange, high wailing song in a tongue the maester said was high Valyrian. That was when the monkeys left the ship, screeching as they leapt into the water. Come sunset, as the sea turned black as ink and the swollen sun tinted the sky a deep and bloody

red, Victarion came back on deck. He was naked from the waist up, his left arm blood to the elbow. As his crew gathered, whispering and trading glances, he raised a charred and blackened hand. Wisps of dark smoke rose from his fingers as he pointed at the maester. That one. Cut his throat and throw him in the sea, and the winds will favor us all the way to Meereen. macoro had seen that in his fires he had seen the wench wed too but what of it she would not be the first woman victorian grayjoy had made a widow wow metal what a metal chapter that end and the scorched hand that is i mean that's wild and you've brought up some really great points about how it's giving And woohoo! That is wild.

And you've brought up some really great points about how it's giving very Mirri Maz Duur. It's very much like Khal Drogo. And it seems intentional of a parallel, right? When you have Daenerys as the end goal for Victarion. Even the language is really similar and the coloring that is in the background of it, but when at last Daenerys found the strength to raise her head, she saw the crowd dispersing, the Dothraki stealing silently back to their tents and sleeping mats.

Some were saddling horses and riding off. The sun had set. Fires burned throughout the khalasar, great orange blazes that crackled with fury and spit embers at the sky she tried to rise and agony seized her and squeezed her like a giant's fist the breath went out of her it was all she could do to gasp the sound of miri mazdour's voice was like a funeral dirge inside the tent the shadows whirled coming to the shadows and the smoke and the fire very similar chapters in that aspect and there's something interesting here about him being able to come out and immediately command uh throw that one in the

water keeping control of his crew because i kind of feel like a huge theme as we get through feast and dance comes to some of these supernatural characters right like we start with barrack state which is kind of barrack dandarian being alive slash dead is like the worst kept secret in westeros right you keep hearing rumors that he's died every other day you meet him and it's like oh you look like you're dead a little bit bro uh and then all the people around them kind of you know the brotherhood they kind of keep it secret they're like yeah we don't ask questions about that he's fine he's alive we don't know much about it and you see that start to break down right because as the brotherhood breaks apart as war continues to tear them apart barrack it's kind of a not lesser known secret

everyone kind of starts to know it people start to accept it of his group or they don't and they leave and abandon them and it becomes kind of a gateway drug to accepting Stoneheart right because as we see at the end of Dance by that time that whole crew has split completely and some of them are following Stoneheart and some were like abso-fucking-lutely not I will not be doing that and then

you have that parallel of Qyburn and Robert Strong right his newest creation when Jamie wasn't enough Robert Strong quote unquote wink wink nudge nudge we all believe he's Robert Strong, right? His newest creation when Jamie wasn't enough. Robert Strong, quote unquote, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. We all believe he's Robert Strong, but even though it's so silly and quite obviously Gregor Clegane to us, it's taboo.

You can't say that out loud. People will freak out about that. People will abandon that leadership. They will abandon the cause. So for him to come out with this confidence immediately, he had to right and immediately like say it's his fault get him off the ship this guy's in that guy's out if he hadn't like his crew could abandon him if he is undead if he is maegor in this up his crew

could abandon him right because they might be like that's fucked up i don't know about all that he'll become a very interesting comparison to Euron. Yeah. In terms of the fourth wall breaking, I guess what is it? The last sentence of A Game of Thrones is in the first time in hundreds of years the knight awoke with the sound of dragons. So yeah, even like you said, you pointed out that the writing techniques were

similar. That's kind of what I was saying here by comparing those quotes and some of the other things are similar, like the singing, like they're singing in both of these cases. And it's scary. And when Danny's handmaidens run away, when the spell starts, because she uses that black powder and which Melisandre later refers to as fear powder. that black powder and which Melisandre later refers to as fear powder. And so you have all these like similar things where the, the, the fear is overwhelming to is expressed that people can't even help themselves running away.

In this case, it's the, the monkeys leaving the ship. The ironborn can't run away. They're at, yeah, they have nowhere to run, but the monkeys are actually jumping into the

wall like that's suicide right the monkeys are just dying right that's how freaked out they are that they're killing themselves yeah yeah they see something's up like something's more dangerous yeah it's real bad it's really like oh my god and it's also the same sort of manipulation. Like I seriously doubt killing Kerwin changed the wind. It might have, but McQuarrie probably may have just predicted the winds because he can see the future and was like, well, kill this guy and that'll happen.

Kind of the way you're on does that, where he tricks people into thinking things he's doing are magical when they're not. Melisandre does that too. There's a number of examples of pretending to do magic to make your other magic seem stronger or just to make yourself seem more magical.

Here it's like the move you have to do in order for your crew not to fucking freak out like the monkeys and leave. Kill the maester, blame it on him, say he's responsible for this mess because your culture already hates him. We've proven that in this chapter. So he's an easy person to get rid of.

Makoro may have just sensed that. Yeah, like we can't have someone who knows what's going on. Any other person, any other knowledgeable person has to go. The Dusky Woman, he's not worried about because she can't talk, but here's a maester of the Seven Kingdoms who might be able to out him or at least figure it out. Yeah, just get rid of the smart guy. The skeptic. As we see, most maesters are skeptical

of magic, so get rid of the one who would question any of it. He would perhaps question the thing I just said. Was the murder really the reason for the winds or just a cat's paw, just a way to pretend he already knew what was going to happen with the wind and just added this to it. He's going to be getting rid of his own, his own Aaron Greyjoy.

was that apparently hearing the laughter, all of this wild laughter when we're told just a few paragraphs earlier that Victarion hates laughter. So what is that about? Yeah, who's laughing? Like, is it the spirits? Is it him? Kind of like the singing?

Yeah. Like the singing in Dany's scene was explicitly Mirri. Maybe there was multiple singers but she was singing but the laughter and yeah also in that scene there were like images and shapes and shadows and then of course what happened to rego implies time was messed with the spirit world was perforated somehow yeah yeah and I do like that the language says this is a very much an aside that the sea is black as ink because

you know krakens squids squid ink it's his now it's his sea it's his time it's his season oh my god Victoria is entering his winning era I'm so excited for him yeah and exiting it so soon.

So soon. Bestie. Aziz, we have teased this all episode, but I want to hear your take on this with the Trojan War, because I feel like you have a lot of great connections going on with some of these naval moments compared to the Trojan War. Right on. Well, a lot of this is beyond Victorian. So I'll try to keep it as Victorian-centered as possible,

but there's a few things that go beyond him. For example, I've been working on an episode for a long time called The Trojan War of Five Kings because there's all these elements that have nothing to do with Victorian because the Trojan War was a long thing, more than 10 years just for the war part and then the Odyssey after it. But anyway, some basic familiar elements.

Two of the important characters in the Trojan War are Agamemnon and Menelaus, right? Menelaus is the one who has his wife taken by Paris. Helen runs off with Paris. But before they were kings, they were driven into exile and returned together to slay the current king and take over. Which is a little Euron-like. Returning, going into exile, coming back to slay

the king and taking over. A lot has been made of Stannis burning Shireen as a parallel to Agamemnon and Iphigenia because Agamemnon burns Iphigenia to get favorable winds. And his people demanded of him. It's not just him choosing to do it. He resists it at first, and then that gets pushed on him.

So that's kind of similar. But here we have this again with Maester Kerwin sacrificed for winds. It's a little more direct and a lot darker and less built up. But it's basically theirs. We have Troy has very imposing walls. That's a big feature of it. Marines' walls are also a really big deal. You have a young, beautiful hero dying, Loras, or is he dying?

You also have Loras portraying the rage of Achilles when he kills Amon Kai and Robar Royce after finding out his lover is killed, which is a big part of that story. And we have the ships on the horizon is a big moment in the Iliad when they see the Greek Armada arrive. And as I, of course, as I said earlier, it was a thousand ships, right? The face that launched a thousand ships. And Margaery starts one of Cersei's chapters with that line. It's the first line of the chapter is a thousand ships.

And Cersei immediately starts down like, oh, it's got to be an exaggeration. And of course, that's what leads Loras to volunteer to take the take Dragonstone. Then we have the Trojan horse play, which is, of course, one of the most famous parts of the Trojan War, which Victorian is trying to do with the fleet. of course, one of the most famous parts of the Trojan War, which Victarion is trying to do with the fleet. He's trying to sneak up with a wooden fleet of fake, you know, fishermen. So it's a very similar idea. Just get his army close before anyone realizes that it's his army. There was a plague during the Trojan War that afflicted the Greeks, and that's maybe paralleled by the Pale Mare. The Odyssey is, you know, ships getting lost on the way home. So maybe this is the reverse. Victarion loses all these ships on the way to all these weird mystical things. And that might be

kind of what happened. That's kind of like what happens for the Greeks on the way home. All ironborn are baptized and drowned. Kind of like, you know, Achilles being dipped in the river Styx. That's maybe a little bit loose, but I thought I'd throw that in there you have Achilles fighting with god forged armor forged by Hephaestus and Euron has this Valyrian steel armor directly fighting against the god Achilles actually stabs one of the gods during a I think maybe even Diomedes does too I forget exactly but the gods are actually wounded during the Trojan War by Achilles and maybe by one other, which Euron is trying to basically kill, fight the gods or overthrow the gods itself. I think it's kind of. Yeah, I love that.

Yeah. Right. And Hephaestus forges the armor for Achilles in his forge after Achilles loses his armor because it's right. Patroclus puts on Achilles. His armor is killed by Hector and his armor is lost. So wants to go kill hector but he needs new armor and and hephest just forges him new armor in his volcano forge and roughly similar to victorian's firearm i guess then you have the cersei versus cersei right yes yes beast of the odys Odyssey. Yep. One of the men on Odysseus' ship was called Philectetes

and he developed a stinking wound that they just, they left him on an island because his wound smelled so bad. So, Victorian has the same kind of wound. And here's similar to the pigs thing you guys were talking about.

I forgot about this one. It's maybe relevant to all the pigs is that Odysseus' men are turned into pigs. Yes, by Circe. By Circe. Yeah, you're right. So I forgot about that connection. So that's kind of cool. And then there's the comparison of Dany to Achilles where the choice Achilles is given

is to go off and fight in the war and become famous and known forever or just stay home and be never known again and danny of course is always thinking about living at the house with the red door which is kind of a similar fork in the road like one is be famous forever and known forever and probably die young and and all that but be maybe seen as legendary forever or just die in obscurity living at home, but maybe be happy. Now, in Dany's case, she didn't really have the choice at all. You could argue that Achilles didn't either,

but he did. He had a choice. He just, he chose to go fight. So, and finally, last but maybe least, is that the key river in the Trojan War is the Scamandros, which sounds a lot like the Skahazadan. Yeah.

Has all the beats. Which is right by Meereen, yeah. Yeah. So there's probably more because this, like I said, I haven't actually sat down to write this episode. I just have a lot of notes. If I were to really focus and think even more and freshly read the Iliad or something, which that's not a thing you do lightly. No. I would probably find more.

And if I threw the idea out there, I'm sure you guys probably have some ideas other people would have. Oh, yeah. It's such a rich thing. It's such a rich vein of parallel. I mean, everything's influenced by the Iliad. Yeah.

Absolutely. Parallel lives. Greek mythology edition. Yeah. And you got your Patrocluses and Achilles with your Lorises and your Renlys and got all sorts of fun stuff in there.

I love that comparison. Like, all of the comparisons were fun, but the armor especially really stood out there for Euron. I love that one. Yeah. It's black armor, too. Yeah. Black and oily, one could say. Yeah, that's good stuff. Yeah!

That's cool. We didn't bring it up but there's that the way he phrases his frustration he says it's like a black stone yes I was wondering if it was shiny if it was oily yeah I'm like obsidian that does sound like a like I've heard of passing a kidney stone

but that sounds way worse I'm a little worried about it kidney stones are super painful, too. Oh, yeah, they're horrible, I hear. Oh, man. One of my best friends went to the hospital, and she had them, and she had to get lasered out and all that fun stuff. And they are especially for dudes. Sorry, all dudes.

Only dudes. It's a very specific genre. But dudes are at risk for that shit. So I've had a couple friends with them. Yeah, rampant. Rampant stones. They get it more than once, and he just had to pass it. And I'm like, oh, God. Yeah.

I know some people that got to keep theirs. Yeah. Like teeth or something, you know? Keeping their stones. Fascinating. I wanted my tonsils. I had had my time i did too same same like i want them i was like i was mad i was four and they wouldn't let me have mine and i was so mad why not i don't know they just threw them out i guess or whatever they do with tonsils i asked too late i needed to put that in the request ahead of time i mean oh okay they were no use, to be fair. They were not really usable, obviously, for either of us. This is different than wanting that bucket of place.

They did give me Hungry Hungry Hippos instead. Yeah, I had potatoes and ice cream for like two weeks, so I'm not complaining. Yeah. I think I got some ice cream, too. Simpler, simpler times. Oh, my God. Better than monkey shit. Way better than monkey shit or or being trapped for

10 years in a trojan war my god actually kind of really would have been like that i guess if you think about it with the five-year gap it would have been like almost that long for everyone yeah that's a good point that's not you're right actually half half the amount of time but still that's a long ass time no but the whole series would end up being about a ten-year war. Yeah, actually, though. You're actually right, so stop saying you're not, is what I'm saying.

Be confident, Eliana. Victarion's confident. Why aren't you? No, for real, though. Like, Makoro being like, I do not care that everyone hates me. I was like wow wow teach me to have the confidence of a middle management man

I don't know have the confidence of a fire sorcerer having that confidence is probably better or scarier I don't know we'll explore that another time I could be scary I can learn to be scary I'm like that's the Melisandre POV

so I'm not sure you can Eliana you might not be able to be scary dang way to kill my dreams on my podcast hey I thought it was a backhanded compliment or a fronthanded compliment oh my god

you're too not scary to be scary Aziz thanks so much for coming on for like Oh my god. You're too not scary to be scary. Aziz, thanks so much for coming on for your fave character, Victarion. I really enjoyed some of the great things you had to say and I love the fucking Trojan War shit. I'm a nerd. I like when you

do your history parallels. I love your War of the Roses parallels. I love this. I know you've got lots cooking there, please for everyone at home. Can you let us know one more time? What's coming up for you? How to Google history of Westeros. It's google.com history of Westeros.

Where to find you? Yeah. Give us your social media handles too. Yeah. Give us your socials or whatever. Yeah. Tell us where are we? Yeah.

We're Westeros history on Twitter, history of Westeros on YouTube, and that's our website as well is History of Westeros. And that's our podcast name on the podcast platforms and the YouTube platform. We are currently, our next few episodes lined up are, last week we did an episode called Trial by Theory. We reviewed some theories sent in. Before that, we did Battle of the Trident, which was a lot of fun, talking about why things happen the way they did. Sean had a really great theory on saying Robert Baratheon probably didn't just smash Rhaegar once with his hammer and be like okay that's it he he probably repeatedly smashed him even after he was dead and you know that's why the rubies were everywhere and no one talks about that did he say where's

the gold where is where is the money where's the gold where are the jewels where are they where are they where are they yes yeah where's leona yeah yeah because he would have like and by that point you know brandon and rickard had been murdered as well so yeah they're pretty robert was pretty robert had a temper anyway so it's kind of hard to believe he's just like i'm honorably treating you know i've killed him and the battle is over you know uh anyway that's the kind of takes you get from my co-host sean and ashea Ashea has lots of great takes. Yes. And we have coming up an episode on Krieg and Stark next week. Then we're going to do one on Kohor.

And we do polls for future episodes. So the next one is currently in progress. We are polling for it now. But we do an episode about every week. And we love to live in this world. It's too fun. We aren't leaving. Don't try to make us.

Hell yeah. Hell yeah. I am in full agreement on that. And hey, you guys give your friends and listeners the opportunity to vote in those polls, which is awesome. Eliana and I just subject ours to what we think they're going to listen to. Sometimes we ask their opinion and we

might take it. is it a guarantee no it's also eliana's playground to be fair you know sometimes she gets some great ideas and we just got to go at it and i'm here too well you have ideas i'm so happy and honored that you invited me to your playground because we had a great time playing yes hopefully you'll be allowed to come back to play soon i will will have my mom, Eliana. Call your mom. What? Yeah, I mean, we've...

Sounds good. Seemed only right. You know, they've invited us to their playground quite a few times. Yeah, quite a few. Here we are, Victarion, finally. We're like, here's our moving seafaring playground, you know, the best kind. Yeah. And, you know, we're running out of POVs, slowly

but surely. We got, what, eight left? But I'm sure there will be a spot for you for the next time. Absolutely. Or for the wins a winner, you never know. For wins a winner, Victarion. Any day now. Look under your chair. I wonder how many chapters he has left. It is

interesting to think about. I'd say a good one yeah at least three one to three at least one more because we are going to cover it this april i just remembered that myself and many people around the fandom created a audio chapter reading of the Victorian Lutheran chapter. And it's got sound effects and the horn and stuff like that. And people doing voices. And it's really fun. And it's on our podcast feed.

History of Westeros podcast feed. Not in our video feed. We don't have a video version of it. Just the podcast feed, History of Westeros podcast feed. Not in our video feed. We don't have a video version. Just the podcast feed. So yeah, it's only about 10 minutes long because that chapter is short and not fully published, I think, but it has a nice stopping point.

So it feels like a full chapter, even though it's short. Yeah, we can fool ourselves for now, you know, just like Victarion himself. And we will link that below. We'll link a link to maybe to the iTunes or to somewhere, whichever one, or your website with that, just so you all can check it out, especially for our patrons that are going to be listening to that episode very soon. Well, if you want to keep track of when our new episodes come out as well, including that Victarion 1 or Victarion 2 dance chapter, depending on how you want to look at it, right?

Technically, it's the first one entitled Victarion, but it's the second Victarion1 or Victarion2 dance chapter, depending on how you want to look at it. Right? Technically, it's the first one entitled Victarion, but it's the second Victarion chapter. Anyways, you can subscribe to us on social media at twitter.com slash girlsgonecanon, that's C-A-N-O-N. Or perhaps you have thoughts that you would like to tell us about Victarion, about

the Trojan War, about laughter or puss. You can at girlsgonecanon at gmail.com Yeah, please just like warn us on the subject line and that way Eliana will know she should open it and I shouldn't. And if you are looking for updates on when our

episodes are coming out, you should subscribe to us if you have not already on a podcast feed near you, whatever is your favorite, whether that is Google Play, Stitcher, whatever is your favorite, whether that is Google Play, Stitcher, Acast, iTunes, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Audible, Amazon, Pandora,

and many, many, many other platforms you can find on the internet that I say every single week and yet I don't remember, please check us out there. Like and subscribe. What are you waiting for? That is the journey, isn't it't it saying all the platforms every week so many always they make you swear and swear subscribe

and subscribe what's weird is how they're all becoming more and more like each other i have thoughts about spotify they're learning anyway somewhere that you can definitely always find us is on patreon.com slash girls gone canon where patrons in the $5 tier and above get access to bonus episodes. For example, Meat House Man this past March, which almost was like March House Man, but then that did not actually make it. I thought about it. Meat House March.

Anyways. Meat House Madness. Oh, yes. Yes. make it um i thought about it meathouse march anyways um meathouse madness oh yes yes and then this month is again that wins victorian chapter maybe you've caught winds of it and of course we will be announcing soon our brunch for the month uh So keep an eye peeled out for that, for Discord and patrons in the Thudder tier and above. Yeah, nothing quite beats March Shroom Madness, you know? March Shroom Madness was my favorite. It's hard. It's okay, Meat House Madness.

You just put out your mushroom episode recently, didn't you, Aziz? Yeah, the testimony of mushroom. We had Dr. Kavita on. Dr. Finn, yes. Particularly awesome. Wonderful. Yeah, she testimony of Mushroom. We had Dr. Kavita on. Dr. Finn, yes. Particularly awesome. Wonderful. Yeah, she's awesome.

She has her theory that Mushroom was not a person at all. It was just an invention of whoever. I mean, because he didn't write it himself. It's Gossip Girl. It's literally Gossip Girl. Yeah. XOXO. It's a great theory, yeah.

So we had fun with that. I love that. Yeah. As always, I have been one of your hosts, Chloe. And I have been another one of your hosts, Eliana. Thank you so much to our other hosts this week. Bye. That's you, Aziz.

Thanks, y'all. Goodbye.