Girls Gone Canon Cast - ASOIAF Episode 248 — AGOT Daenerys VII featuring Madeleine

Episode Date: April 25, 2025

When the Lhazareen pay the highest price in the Dothraki violent exchange, Daenerys makes a choice: Raping the women and children won't be among the spoils of the war. Madeleine joins us to analyze this turning point in Dany's character that sets the trajectory of her story, while bringing insights from historical popular romance tropes. ---- 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: liesandarborgold.com Intro by Anton Langhage

Hello and welcome to Girls Gone Canon Reads a Song of Ice and Fire, episode 248, Denary 7, a game of thrones featuring Madeline. I am one of your hosts, Chloe. And I am another one of your hosts, and yes, in the room with us, but actually, is our friend Madeline, who's, like I said last week, brilliant, very excited for her to be here. I don't even know if this is like, Sunny takes or not, but it feels so because of the color of the font, but I'm excited. Hello, thank you for joining us.

Hello. That's so much pressure to call me brilliant. It's a little irritating actually. I'm so sorry. I just do feel that way though about you. So I'm not going to apologize for the way that I feel it's just my feelings are valid. It's just so much pressure. Don't feel pressure this is a time to have fun to talk about the Lazarine women who have no rights

whatsoever. Okay actually this is not a fun time. You came on for a very complex chapter and- You chose this. Yeah, you did choose. Well, this is one of your two choices. You had two choices, really, but this is the one you narrowed down on. Madeline's one of our friends and patrons and hangs out in the Patreon Discord with us

and comes to brunches and she's one of my dear friends, truly. So I'm very excited to have you. So tell us as much or as little about yourself as you want to and tell us why you chose this one. You chose this. I chose this one because there's so much going on in it. You've got sort of the growing magic thing happening and you've got nights nighting and you've got Powerplay and you've got the Dothraki which are so interesting to me because I grew up in a household with several Middle East Studies people who do not like this series or the show because of like how they perceive that and I it's like very fascinating to me the sort of layers

of prejudice happening here too, which is really kind of interesting to dig into. And as far as what I want to share about myself, I'm not like active on social media or anything. I'm just a person who's here in Chloe's house. Literally. We're really glad to have you and very excited for you to bring some of that background to the episode, especially I know you're excited to talk about Miriam Mazdour and excited to hear a little bit more about the love story through some of your framework I know you're going to bring. Yeah, I was really excited to dig into that.

I read some books about the history of romance novels and particularly Desert Romance is this kind of story that repeats in Western culture about blonde women getting abducted or sold to warlords in the Middle East. It's like this romance trope that sort of has popped up for a long time. And I'm so curious about how aware of that history George is and how much of this was intentional. So excited to talk about that a little later. Yeah, that is really interesting. There's a lot of things where I'm like, I don't know. I don't know, George. But we'll dig into that. Other things where we're like, we don't know. We don't know George is apparently Chloe has surfaced a story of George's that is not sci-fi or

fantasy and we are very excited to dig into it this month. Yeah this one is really weird and kind of dark and a little gritty like you know how Meat House Man and like second kind of loneliness and like or second you know like those those stories are kind of gritty, a little edgelord, this has a little bit of that in there, but like, I like it. It's actually more of a horror story, if anything, but like everything is horror when you really think about it. So remembering Melody, it's in part one of Dream Songs, volume one.

Read it up. It will be our Patreon bonus episode this month, April 2025, how the years fly by. And we will announce next month soon. Next month's might be obvious to all of you if you've just been keeping track of where the podcast is going. It might not be obvious. It might not be. Nevermind. It might not be, but it makes sense in the context of what we've been doing. So yeah, patrons in the Stranger Tier and above get access to that, but if you're a patron in the Thunder Tier and above, you get access to our Discord where we have brunch

slash happy hour once a month as well as a bunch of fun channels. And affectionately, Eliana likes to call that brappy hour. Brap. Brap. Yeah, we will be announcing that date in Danny 8. You should come, it's really fun. Yeah, you're an attendee. I just realized I like really missed out

on a chance to call it like Brap Summer last year. Oh my God. It's over, you know, it's so over now. There was our Shrek episode, I made that get Shrek'd in the Charlie font. That's true, that's true. At least there was that Shrek summer. We had that.

Jump into those guys however you can. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean like what? Now we got, what is it called? Blue Flame. Blue Flame, Blue Sky? No, no, Blue Flame with uh, Charlie. Charlie did the song with Selena. Oh yeah. Benny, what's his name? Benny Blanco. Benny Blanco. Certainly is a young man. So come to Brappy Hour and talk about Benny Blanco with Eliana. People are people are like very about him right now. He's having a moment. Yeah.

I heard a really funny thing about him that I have to say it. I'm sorry. I can't not say it. OK, yeah, let's go. His album he put out has the beats per minute and the default garage band beats per minute, like for every song. Wait, I love that for him. Is that on purpose? No, like it's inferring that maybe it wasn't necessarily on purpose,

like just didn't know to change it. Like wrote everything in that beat alone. Hasn't he been producing for a long time though? Yeah. It's like a dependable beat, right? Like I've heard, I heard this in the 2010s here, random fun fact, is it a Girl's Gotten Candid episode if we don't have a random tangent, that during recessions people tend to want like more of those like dependable beats and stuff. Yeah, it's like hypnosis.

When it comes to the music. Yeah, because you want to pretend you're not fucking dying. Well, it just like feels, yeah, some sort of stability. So yeah, in the world as it crashes down around you and the economies and shambles and everyone's dying. Yeah, so Benny Blanco really, he's just trying to regulate us and like give us a warm hug. He's trying to support us the way he supports Selena. Oh my God.

Benny Blanco, M.K. Ultra. He's the one we've been waiting for. Maybe maybe so. Anyways. Well, we're very excited to have you here with us. Benny Blanco, M.K. Ultra. And with that, we got a comment from our friend

Thunderclap on Podbean from last week's episode, Denary VI, in a Game of Thrones where we talked a little bit about punishments, right? The wine merchant's punishment for trying to poison denaries was that he was tied to a cart made to chase before the cart and keep up. And Thunderclap pointed out in Jamie IV, A Storm of Swords, The goat wanted to make a show of parading him in, so Jamie was made to dismount a mile from the gates of Harrenhal. A rope was looped around his waist, a second around Brienne's wrists. The ends were tied to the pommel of Vargo Hote's saddle.

They stumbled along side by side behind the cohort's striped zorse and Thunderclap was able to get a zorse into the quote for Eliana. So that's points right there. At first it sort of sounded like there's a goat that was parading Jamie Lennister around. Basically. I mean almost. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean we're reading the same book, right? You know like the idea of like a Muppet movie except everybody's a Muppet except for like Jamie and he's the only human But instead it's like with goats And it also kind of goes well, you know if you think about it with this episode goats got sheep and lamb It is Easter Sunday. Blaze it! Yeah, we've got eggs, we've got lambs, we've got goats.

We've got vapes. Yeah. It's Ultimate 420. So, we've got Sacrifice coming. Oh, it's coming. We do. It's coming! Can't wait.

We talk about the Great Shepherd and stuff, you know, things in this episode, so. That's the big G. Yeah, I appreciate that thunderclap. You know, I knew I felt that there was something going on there. I was like, I feel like this parallels other things. Thank you, thunderclap. Yeah, in the books. Picking up what we were putting down is what I will say. That's how I'll put it. Love a good thunderclap quote. Yeah. A good comment from the clapp- no, I'm not calling it the clap. I don't think he wants that.

From thunderclap. From thunderclap. The clapping, which is thunderous. Okay. Sorry thunderclap. Well speaking- well going from thunder, we'll have a lightning round. Yes. How about a light- a lightning round of clapaws?

What the fuck? Well because, you know, thunderclap. Lightning round of applause.. What the fuck? Well because you know thunder clap lightning round of applause. Oh okay. Just let me have something in my life. The clapas clapas. Whenever I hear that song I think that she's singing applesauce for some reason. Makes it an interesting song. Um let's jump into a lightning round of what we missed between Daenerys 6 and Daenerys 7, starting with Catelyn 8. Catelyn gives her council to the king in the north, although he tries to send her away. Leave me alone, mom. Tyrion 7. Tyrion meets his father at the Inethic Crossroads, accompanied by his own guard of three hundred

Vale Mountain Clansmen. Sansa 5. Sander Clegane is given a white cloak. Sansa begs for mercy for her father. Aw. Eddard 15. Aw, that's so sad. Varys brings Eddard news from court and offers him a chance to live if he chooses dishonor. Dishonoring your

mother. I'm sorry. So sorry. She only got named recently. Catelyn Nine. At the Twins, Catelyn negotiates their crossing. John Eight. John is given a Valyrian steel sword and a lesson in family loyalties from Aemon Targaryen. That brings us to Daenerys VII, where Daenerys considers the price for the Iron Throne. And so we open the chapter with, When the battle was done, Dany rode her silver through the fields of the dead. Her handmaids and the men of her cause came after, smiling and jesting among themselves. Dothraki hoves had torn the earth and trampled the rye and lentils into the ground, while a rocks and arrows had sown a terrible new crop and watered it with blood.

Dying horses lifted their heads and screamed at her as she rode past. Wounded men moaned and prayed, Jaka, Ron, moved among them. The mercy men with their heavy axes, taking a harvest of heads from the dead and dying alike. After them would scurry a flock of small girls, pulling arrows from the corpses to fill their baskets. Last of all the dogs would come sniffing, lean and hungry, the feral pack that was never far behind the colisar. The sheep had been dead longest. Ugh. Which ones? Yeah, I know, for real.

Yeah, it's quite an opening. It's, I think, nicely ties as well with the other chapters that we have leading up to this and around it, because it's surrounded by, especially Rob, right? Being on the precipice of war, because he's kind of like our... He and Catlin are kind of our front view into that. And it's definitely a warning that this is the fate that's going to fall upon the Seven Kingdoms like next book with the War of the Five Kings on the rise. Next chapter. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So surrounded by it. Yeah, I really appreciated the imagery in this chapter opening the description of the mercy men with their harvest of heads is just really evocative, you know, given the themes in this book, in this chapter about mercy and the different ways that mercy can show up. Killing small folk without thought, in this case, is sort of framed as mercy. And that's really interesting, especially considering what happens in a couple of pages and interesting framing. Yeah, especially that imagery that's so like the girls picking up the arrows and putting them in their basket, like reverse flower girls, like there's tons of

imagery of war and peace and flowers and young girls. And that right there is the saddest, like just the gathering of the arrows that were spent to pick it up and do it again. Yeah I wonder if this is one of the first times that sort of a massacre is depicted like a feast. Yeah like red wedding light. Mm-hmm. I also was thinking that you know as you mentioned similar things are gonna be happening in Westeros soon and I think it's really interesting that the chapter after this is Tyrion, and we sort of get like a view of Tywin and the Riverlands, sort of planning out his butchery really methodically. And how,

even though the approach is so different, the outcome is still the same. It's like this harvest of heads, no matter where you are. The next book. And having, I mean, the children be part of, right, like the the gathering of the arrows shows like, you know, how each each generation is raised in this. It's not even like, you know, these are the Dothraki girls. They have jobs, too, apparently, that aren't just like the fighting. It's this is how they aid in the war effort.

Yeah. While the boys are trained to be warriors. The worst kind of girl bossing. Yup, absolutely. And more to come. I don't think they're bossing. I think they're definitely workers. They're definitely not bosses. Yeah, that's for sure.

The town is on fire, and the women and children walk with a soul in pride, even in defeat and bondage. The townsfolk are less composed, and Dani pities them. The mothers are pulling sobbing children along. Only a few men are in their group, cripples, cowards, and grandfathers." I like this line of, it was different with the townsfolk. Dani pitied them, she remembered what terror felt like, and I think that Daenerys's empathy is very much the impetus for a lot of her actions going forward. Here, we see it again with the Unsullied, right? She thinks of the image of the young boys who has no one, who have no one but their puppy.

And that's kind of what spurs her to choose to help free them. Dani's empathy is really interesting to think about, because it's so present in a lot of ways, especially with children and people who seem like they don't have lots of power. But then also, I think, as we'll see later, as she comes into her rulership story, her rulership arc, that it is kind of a blind spot for her, too, is that sometimes if she takes other people's ideas into account, she thinks of it as kind of benevolent. You know, it's not second nature for her to kind of

collaborate with people and sort of interpolate them into her plans exactly. She sort of has to be more conscious about it than somebody like John. It's hard to like turn it into a we, right, for her. It's very hard because she doesn't know how to trust anyone. She's never been given that opportunity in her entire life to have trust or love or safety right is like the hard part of the next few chapters yeah and no one has ever been kind of in control of her life because it always has been someone. None of those people take her feelings into account so you, her idea of what it is to be a ruler is kind of I make decisions, if they're decisions that benefit other people, then that's really nice of me. You know? Yeah. Well, it's kind of like a hard balance to strike, right? Like, because you're thinking about how we've talked a lot about the isolation in Daenerys' story, and she's isolated

as a child as a she's still a child, but she's isolated as a younger child, um, because she's in hiding and because her brother forces her to be, right? Like he's, I don't think that he's necessarily letting her play with the other children. It doesn't sound like she got to do that much. And also in his control of her, he wouldn't necessarily like let her because God knows like what silly ideas she'll get in her head if he doesn't. I mean, a lot of abuse is about that sort of isolation. And then all of a sudden she goes from two extremes of that to suddenly thrust into a position of power in which she doesn't really have any equals to her here in the Khalasar,

with the exception of Drogo, who's also not her equal. So what do you do when you're in that sort of society and you have to, I mean, like, you're told this is what rulership is. She sees the way Drogo has to exemplify strength, the way that she has to claim strength as well later on in order to be a ruler. And like, we know that's not the only kind of ruling, but John has been allowed to have peers, right? Others have been allowed to have peers or people who have kind of told them, hey, you got to play nice with the other kids. You never got to play nice with the other kids. What happens now? The ultimate not only child, but lonely child.

So this is what it's like to... I mean, she did have siblings. Is that what it's like to have siblings? Never mind. No one fucking knows. It's a fucking mystery. No one can knows. No, it's a fucking mystery No, it's a mystery. There's no way to find out. Yeah, there's no possible That one has a sibling, but it's not possible. No one has ever had siblings

What we're saying is we too think we are the only way we should rule I think that what she got from Viserys was like, yeah, it was like sibling plus, right? Like, he had complete control of her life, kind of, which is not like, you know, he was like her parent and her future lover, maybe. Her god. Yeah, like everything. Like he was her babysitter yeah he was the moon he was everything in her world it makes me think of actually like after we were just discussing it in those terms um the short story bitter blooms you know the our main character in that story she thinks about someone who died and she was like he was husband father lover brother all those

things and not actually those things, but in terms of role. Yeah. Because that would be weird. Well, it kind of comes back, right? In 10 when she patches the dragons and she's like bride of fire, daughter of fire, like all these roles that she's played, all these people that she's been. Yeah. No more of that, bitch.

Now it's just her. Wow. To quote Madeline's favorite Katy Perry song, Light Up the Night. This is, this is the new thing, I guess, somehow. I didn't choose this. I didn't, I didn't choose for us to keep talking about Katy Perry. It's not that I don't really want to be talking about her, but it chose us, I guess. I didn't want this. Every week in a row. Oh my God. I don't really want to be talking about her, but it shows us, I guess. I didn't want this. Every week in a row.

Oh my god. I don't want it. I love this fucking line. The town was afire, black plumes of smoke, roiling and tumbling as they rose into a hard blue sky. It's kind of reminiscent of that one vision later of dragons clawing and wheeling in the sky amidst smoke. I think it's a Melisandre.

Oh, I thought I was thinking, um, it wasn't actually dragons, but like, you know, in Winterfell when the when the wolves are seeing it and they're like, Yeah, yeah, this is just super dragon imagery. Yeah. Love it. Love it. I don't know. George and his prose. Go off, George. Well, Droid called these people the Lazarine, but the Dothraki named the herders of sheep and eaters of vegetables the Heishraki, which means the lamb men. They're not actually dissimilar in some ways to the Dothraki in terms of having copper skin, almond-shaped eyes, but once captured in Daenerys, he sees them more. They actually look more alien to her. They're squat, flat-faced, their hair cropped unnaturally short, which is true of a lot of people if you think about it. We should just simply stop cutting our hair, just like me.

Um, and... Again, I think this is kind of interesting that as Daenerys gets to know the cultures, as she gets to know the Dothraki, she comes to know the differences between the cultures that occupy these lands. Like, the looking alien to her is on one hand, I think it's meant to be a distancing until she sees their pain later on, but you know, 20 cent you will distance and dehumanize people in order to not have to actually think about their pain. That's something that happens in psychology. But on the other hand, I mean, they literally do probably have different features. And I

appreciate that you realize is wait, just because they look similar in terms of skin tone and having black hair, they don't actually look the same as someone who is Asian. And you know, my ethnicity gets lumped in or confused for other ethnicities. I'm like, we don't actually look that similar. Absolutely. I also noticed that he that George really positioned these people as very victim-y. They're vegetable eaters and they're associated with lambs, which is like always a stand-in for vulnerability and innocence and people who are just like sitting around waiting for a lion to come, right? Yeah, he does that throughout all the text, right?

Too in this chapter, like you can see that he when you can feel George doing a very coy playful giggle at you from afar When you read this story sometimes like you're like, oh, I just know he's sitting there just smirking. I know he's just doing a mirthful giggle Yeah Picture that. Yeah, like sometimes I read some things and I'm like, Oh, you fucking you're so clever, George. You're just so clever. But there's a lot of that in this chapter where like he's clearly painting it this way and clearly like the thought later that we'll have of Danny, like, of course she'll help. I freed her from her slavers, right?

Right. Quiet echo. And like, so there's just a lot of that. Like George is obviously playing with the framework of what's going on here a lot. He is, he is. He's getting everyone set up for like, hmm, expectations. This is what you would think would happen, right? Yeah, you'd think this would all be a good thing, right?

And then dad dies and you're like, wow, bets are all off the table, huh? Like shit is hitting the fan now. A lot of things will hit the fan soon, but I like that point, what you pointed out're like, wow, bets are all off the table, huh? Like shit is hitting the fan now. A lot of things will, will hit the fan soon, but I like that point, what you pointed out of like, George is leaning on those kinds of tropes of like, hey, they're vulnerable, but obviously we'll kind of play with those ideas later on as well, especially here with the line of the grass of the Dothraki Sea was not meant for sheep.

Especially when we just had last chapter with the going to the bazaar and the woman saying, oh my pigs couldn't live here. Oh well sheep can't live here either. So we're starting to run out of animals that can live here. Dragons and horses? Yeah. Bazaar. Bazaar. I wonder if there's horses around. Yeah. Around? I mean maybe. There might be like if some of the drogo snai could have come

up. I guess they're further east, right? They're ET. Yeah, but everyone's moving around lately, you know, because like things are, things are wild. Things are getting weird. Didn't they say that we saw one last chapter, though? We did, we did see a person.

I mean, that's not like crazy, like they're at like the nexus of all these places based off rock. So there's a lot the nexus of all these places based off rock. So there's a lot of different people from all over. Yeah. It's like Europe, you know, if you live next door to Europe, you can just hop on over. It's basically the back door, you know, 45 minute drive here. Good luck. They're going to drive. I was reminded a lot of this painting by August Schneck, I think, called Anguish, that shows a mother sheep protecting her dead lamb from a bunch of crows that are surrounding it,

presumably to try to eat it. And it's a really emotional painting that really seemed relevant. Yeah. Danny sees one boy bolt for the river, but he's cut off and cracked with whips until his thighs run red from blood. He's sent sprawling with a whip to the ankle. The Dothraki men that corner him grow tired of this game and they just put an arrow in his back, eventually killing him. Jorah meets Dany at the Shattered Gate in full night garb, dark green surcoat over male gauntlets

grieves. The Dothraki had mocked him as a coward in his armor, but Jorah solved it the way it solved in camp, with violence and murder and stuff. I think it's sort of interesting in this first book how sort of knighthood and what it means kind of unfolds slowly to us. And I think this example here where he's putting on all of his regalia, right, even though it's outside of the context where it's totally appropriate, maybe, is, yeah, really interesting. And I think says something about his self-image.

And I also sort of really appreciated the mention of the materials in this description. Like it mentions that he's wearing metal, which really, I think, makes him stand out in this environment. And all, you know, he's makes him stand out in this in this environment. Andal, you know? He's just like clunking around there. Total andal.

And not just that, but then like, also the big highlight that they make fun of him. They're like, LMAO, why are you wearing that? And then like Drogo gets a very critically bad injury in his chest that would have been avoided had they worn armor. Right, we've got some irony going here. Yeah. Some great dramatic irony. At the same time, I too, will make fun of Jorah.

Oh my god. It is interesting though, because it gives you a sense of like, maybe how they will regard, you know, that clash they'll have, culture clash with the, with those people in the Seven Kingdoms when they eventually cross the sea when they drive there. Yeah, specifically the northern culture. Which might be less metal but still metal, maybe more leathers. Who knows? Well I mean because Jorah's wearing northern garb. Oh yeah that too, yeah.

Yeah, like his armor is designed after like his northern armor. Like this is the stuff he was banned with Hmm, hmm, hmm We should all be fine I know Well that's interesting that it's sort of like positioned as nightly clothing right? But if it's northern then it would be like more generic warrior, I guess right? I think they still wear like a non-zero amount of metal, you know, in the North. So yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's like, I don't know, Jorah also is like kinda...

He's a multicultural man, I guess. Brother... Lord... And I mean, I mean, I wouldn't be surprised like that he does- no, he's not a lord. We don't let him be that anymore. We- but it's not surprising that he has taken on some on dull stuff if he has. Well, it makes sense with his backstory to write that he would assimilate more than other northern warriors, especially because he is a knight and because he like won that big

tournament and ruined his life. There's trying to fit in to, you know, to southern expectations. Yeah. But yeah, life. Trying to fit in to Southern expectations. Yeah. But yeah, no, actually though, like I think that's part of it too. Like the North never, he never felt accepted too by their customs in some aspects. And he wanted to prove himself in a way that he thought was real slash big and didn't believe in it. I don't know.

There's something there like getting Linnece's attention. Mm-hmm. He's interesting. He's got low self-esteem. Listen, I just want to know what George owes me that like fucking David and Dan never gave me is I just want to see Jorah suffer when he sees that Jon gets both Daenerys and the fucking family sword. I just want to see that. I deserve this. There should be a third. A third thing. Yeah, what other thing can he have that like, Linesse comes out and is like, I think that boy's hot too. She comes out of nowhere.

Linesse is like, I want a three way with Jon and Dany and Jorah has to watch, which she'd probably still like fucking Cuck. Do we think it's likely that she is, obviously it's not likely, but do we think it's possible that she would show up again? Because she's just like in Volantis, right? Like or somewhere. We might go to Volantis with Danny. So that could be something.

Maybe too much of a coincidence. Yeah, maybe the world is too big for that. Like does she have enough time in her day to have a Jorah Lanness whatever confrontation and like also burn Illyrio alive? I don't know. I don't know what we've got time for. Jesus. I guess I really don't. We'll save that one for the fanfic. Yeah. But anyways, yeah, Jorah and Jon would not get along right away, unlike what was depicted in Game of Thrones. That's all.

That's all. That's one of my big things. Yeah, but they're all just dudes. Yeah, they were both softened so much. Men love each other, obviously. Women hate each other. Dudes rock. Well, and men love women other, obviously. Women hate each other. Dudes rock. Well, and men love women too.

Especially their queen. But it's not okay when women do it. Thanks for rehashing the rules real quick, guys. Yeah. Well, Jorah tells Dani that Drogo waits for her in town. He took a few cuts, that's one way to put it, but nothing of consequence. He had slain Kull Oggo and his son Fogo. The blood riders cut the bells from their hair and Fogo's bells have multiplied, his steps becoming even louder.

And Ogo's khalasar had been attacking the town when Drogh came upon him. And I like the detail finding out that Fogo dies soon after, dies soon to Drogh after becoming Khalas college, just because we were discussing last chapter a little bit of, so like do the Suns inherit the Colossar? And we were like, I don't know, maybe like they die soon. Some might, some might not. I think it all just like depends, you know? Yeah, absolutely. It probably depends on who else is around that has an interest in that job. An interest, yes. Who puts in an application. A murder application.

Yes. Across town, a girl Dany's age is sobbing as she's raped atop a pile of horses by numerous men. That was the sort of deliverance that Othraki brought the lamb men. I am the blood of the dragon, Daenerys Targaryen reminded herself as she turned her face away. She pressed her lips together and hardened her heart and rode on toward the gate. Ooh, deliverance, more Easter stuff. Oh yes, that is what we're doing here today.

The Lazarine, maybe thinking that Drogo's Colossar would bring deliverance, reminds me a little bit of how, you know, at Harrenhal they think that Roose and the Northmen are here to free Harrenhal and it's going to be Deliverance, but then it's actually like a bazillion times worse. Most of Ogo's riders fled, leaving up to 10,000 captives. Dany sees them as slaves. Jorah says he advised Drogo to head to Meereen where post-plague slavers pay double for healthy girls, triple for boys under 10. The gold could buy ships and crews.

I missed it the first time, but 10,000 is so many. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot. Go ahead. There's a lot of Dothraki in general, which like kind of gives you a sense of the scale of what will happen if Dani like unites the Colossar's Colossar all of the Colossar I don't know I'll have to think about pluralizing this at some point but anyways also Jorah discussing where the Dothraki would get better prices for their slaves like that

stood out to me I'm like oh he knows all this because this was his trade like he would think about oh how can he get the most profit for selling children? Right? Like, these aren't just post-plague slavers. He's advising them, oh, you should sell these children to brothels, where you'll get a better price for them. I'm like, bro. Yeah. And it's probably part of the big decision why Daenerys goes east, right? Why she decides to stay east.

This is the first mention of Meereen right here in the story. So this actually gives you a map towards where she's going and why she's going there, because that's where healthy girls and boys get shipped and sold for extra money. That's a good point, yeah. And unhealthy ones just for less money. Yeah.

It seems like it's a moment where she's making a connection that the brutality is to pay for her throne, or at the very least that it benefits her in some way. There's a quote that says, this is war. This is what it looks like. This is the price. And that made me think of a few things. One of them is that this whole first book, The Arc for Dani,

is so much about transactions and prices and exchanges, which is leading us to the trade that's coming for her with Miri Mazdur. And also it's kind of like her moment of political awakening a little bit, that she's making a connection between all of these people suffering. And there's an inkling there where she's understanding that it's connected to her, which I think is really interesting. Just that structure of power and like, even in fixing it, I am the problem. And how do I come to grapple with that? Like, that everything has a cost. And if you want one thing to happen, you still have to pay for it, which is also the equivalent exchange she's going to learn with Miriam Asdur.

Yeah, only death can pay for life. We see it here first. Here first, yeah. And it's not even like, you know, technically for life, right? Like, death is the price of power as we, you know, get. That's one of the lessons that comes from the forsaken as they talk about blood and what it buys you. It's not even life. Like if you want power, this is what it means. And I think it's also to an extent a question of like, well, what are the different kinds of power that someone can have? And all the different ways you can treat somebody else like a commodity, right? Like there's the slaves being sold and that ties in so beautifully to the harvest of heads earlier.

And that whole description at the beginning of this chapter, where the brutality is described in such like agrarian terms, kind of like the bodies are crops kind of pound of flush. Nice work to work. Well, that right. Don't you feel that way sometimes? Yeah. Yeah, right. Don't you feel that way sometimes? Yeah. It reminds me of like those lines right from Lena Zerob of In Rain Will Make the Flowers Grow and the rain in it is the blood. It's the blood of the revolution and the flowers are, you know. Yeah, just like the line at the beginning here. Yeah. The front of this chapter, the blood watering the ground.

Exactly. Which... Exactly. Again, good work, George. Exactly. Again, good work George. All of this is punctuated by the screams of the girl being raped in the background. Dani commands Jorah to make them stop. She harshly commands Jogo and Cuaro to aid Jorah in that there will be no rape. Jorah tells her she has a gentle heart, but she doesn't understand this is how it always has been. The men who fought for Drogo to get to be the Cal. Well, you know, get to claim their reward. Quarro agrees, telling Danny, the girl is a lamb girl.

The riders do her great honor. The lamb men lay with sheep. It is known. This little bit of stereotype here is so interesting to me because you have all of these layers of prejudice where, you know, Dani has some prejudices towards the Dothraki, and then they also have prejudices towards the Lazarine. It's just kind of like, like interesting how how it's all reflecting off of each other and bouncing around in here.

Yeah, like they're closer to one another than they are far but yet. Yeah, there's a tribalism there, absolutely, and xenophobia amongst all the different We have to tell stories to make it okay. Yeah. To do this to people. Mm-hmm, like everybody knows this thing about them. That's why they're less than a human, the dehumanization, like Aliana was saying, you know, once you dehumanize folks. There's an irony there too, and that, you know, that's what people said of the Valyrians back then, right? Like that they lay with sheep. And who knows, maybe they fuck dragons, maybe what happens, maybe what you need to do is you need to fuck better animals, allegedly.

That's what we're being told. Jesus Christ. That's what skin changing is about. Lord has risen. I mean, there are like, not that I like subscribe to this, but there are some reasons to think maybe that that there is some kind of like human dragon hybrid stuff in the past. Yeah. The problem is they were not fucking good enough animals. I like to think about it with like horses like a horse could kill you if it fucked you

if too much. I agree. Just putting that sorry. I said that very like bluntly and I do mean it bluntly. Is that what's happening here though? The dragons kill, yeah. If you're comparing the people to the animals, this poor girl. Yeah.

Well, specifically Eliana was talking about fucking dragons if you wanted to know exactly what was happening. I never even came up with that theory. That's what someone else told me about the virions. I was like, are you sure bro? And they're like, yeah. And I'm like, oh, okay. Maybe. If you're sure. I okay, maybe. If you're sure.

Oh no. If you're sure. Oh my God. I think it's more likely that it's some sort of like magical warg style. Yeah. Sting changing bond. Although you can get into it. I'll save it for you guys to talk about

when she learns about what. The winter comes out, oh, learns about what her baby looks like. Gender reveal party. Sorry. All right, so Eerie and Jogo agree about all of this prejudice. They're like, oh yes, it is known, and Jogo offers to bring Dani the girl's tongue in order to stop the screams. I don't think that would stop the screams.

The tongue is not where the noise comes from. I'm like, and he's like in my top five faves, you know? He needs an anatomy lesson. Oh my God. Good thing he's gonna meet someone that studied with Meisters, soon. Dani won't have them harmed. She claims them, all of them.

She commands her cast to do as she commands or Drogo will know why. They reluctantly accept her commands and Jorah kind of looks at her curiously. Yeah, so interestingly though, even the Drogo, I guess Drogo just really wants to make Dani happy. He's like, do you want her tongue? I can do this for you.

And he's the first one to obey her when she's like, claim that girl for me. So he's like, all right, sure. People please her. That's what you want. Yeah. I also, I noticed that the descriptions in this passage of how the men are speaking and looking to her as she, you know, makes these demands, they're puzzled, they're perplexed, they're baffled.

It's sort of like interesting adjectives here where they just seem like they don't understand why anyone would not want someone to be raped. Like they just are like so puzzled, like what, they're not human. What are you talking about? Yeah, because that is how they regard them. And like, I think that's probably why,

Lord knows where I did this as we've discussed. Was it here? Was it on St. Rick's scenes channel? But that the Ironborn and the Dothraki actually do in fact have a lot in similar, you know, those those who are very much raised in that culture and accepted as truth like the Ironborn are like, I don't know, like, obviously, they want to be my sold wife, right? Like, why would they not want that? It is an honor. And so they're like, why wouldn't they want this? As well as, you know, being like, I don't understand why you would suggest this to me, um, in general.

It's also that like terrible like idea, like, what do you mean they should be so honored that I'm sticking my penis within them without their desire or want or consent. It's an honor to receive my cock. Like, it's very interesting how it's all framed. Yeah. We have this back and forth with Jorah and Daenerys and Jorah says, you are your brother's sister in truth. Viserys? She did not understand. No. He answered. Rhaegar. Then he goes off and he's like, I'm mysterious. Yeah. Yeah. Just bringing up Rhaegar for the plot. To a point he kind of does understand what she's doing here.

Yeah. He absolutely does. Jorah does. Jorah's like, real honorable. I don't see them as humans either, but go off, girl. Yeah, he's like, whatever. Look at all the profit we're losing out on, but... Mm-hmm. I did find that a little interesting in that I'm like, all right, Jorah, so like, you know this about Rhaegar, like, do you really think that he would have treated you better than Ned, I wonder? Yeah, it's kind of baby-town frolics.

He has to be delusional about it, though. He's delusional. And make it about somebodys. He has to be delusional about it though. He's delusional. And make it about somebody else. He is. Well, Jogo shouts at the rapist and they shout back, laughter at first, but then Jogo's a rock flashes and the man loses his head. It turns to shouts and curses and it's over pretty quickly. Aggo points to where Danny sits and the riders look at her coldly. One even spits. Agoh points to where Dani sits and the riders look at her coldly, one even spits. All the while, the man currently raping the lamb girl continues, unaware of what's going

on around him. Jorah dismounts and wrenches him off, and then Agoh puts an arrow in his throat. They bring the girl, wrapped in a blood-spattered coat, to Dani and ask what she wants done with the girl. Dani commands Durea to see to her wounds and the rest ride with her. This kind of reminded me of like when the president pardons a turkey at Thanksgiving in that it's like sort of funny, like kids idea of justice. I almost called it performative, but I don't think that what Danny's doing here is performative. I think it's actually very genuine,

but it is sort of like more symbolic than it is effective, I guess. Mm-hmm. And that like, like pardoning the turkey doesn't stop the slaughter of all the other turkeys, and it doesn't sort of change the system that like sets things up that way. And I like, you know, to be fair, like at this point, she is an adolescent, she's a kid. And also, she's sort of experimenting to figure out how much power she has. And she probably really doesn't honestly have power to do that much more than this at the moment. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. It's like it stends the bleeding for the moment, but it's a bandaid on it. It's not like it's like in season two of of hot d right when aegon is taking the throne and like seeing people in court and he like all the people are like we're poor and hungry and he's like oh i could fix that i could just like easily fix that and auto is like you idiot like you can't just fix it if you fix the one like if you can fix it on a broader scale but you can't just fix it you can't just one-off ad hoc fix everything, then everyone's gonna line up. And I'm not saying, like, then everyone's gonna line up to be saved by Daenerys, but

what I'm saying is, it's systemic. Like, mm-hmm. As everybody is staring at her going, what the fuck? It's because they're like, this isn't, it's done every day. It's done every hour. Like what are you doing? What are you doing? Whether they agree or every hour. Like what are you doing? What are you doing? Whether they agree or not is like what are you doing? So yeah, it's a big move because

You can't just fix it systemically at least she's doing something but it is also very like like especially the act of her being like What what do you want done to them for doing this to you? That girl's gonna be like I just want to go somewhere Not here like get me away from here. It's very like that reminds me of the kiddish like the queen for a day princess for a day things in a way too. Like it's just a- What is that? Like where like a peasant gets to be the queen for the day or whatever and like a very like symbolic gesture. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean it does- it's it's one thing right and then she tries to do more

But at the same time like I mean she probably wouldn't have like it when we talk about how much power she has we see how Much power she has when Drogo dies It's a yeah, it's a good thing for her. She had dragons because otherwise a terrible Yeah, does befall her or would befall and that's like exactly what we're exploring, right? Like you have Kat, who's about to have the same thing, that she loses Ned, right? And then it's what is she? And she's been asking herself that this entire book. What am I? Literally, like, do I give him another child and, you know, help him and give him one more?

And then, you know, very Lady Jessica. But the whole story is we're exploring how women get power when power is so conceived off of, you know, one place in the society. Yeah, I actually love that you called that out, because I think Kat is the other sort of like political awakening story that comes to mind in this series where sort of at the beginning, she's not complacent exactly, but she like sort of doesn't have an appreciation of how lucky she has it with Ned and that that her life being good is not because it's a good system. It's because she like luckily wound

up with a good man and sort of especially in clash, I think sort of seeing her sort of learn that how lucky she was and that and that she's living in a system That really like hurts other people who don't aren't as lucky. I don't I think that's an interesting sort of parallel there Especially like with the the Sun, you know Like that everything my power now derives from my son now that my husband is dead And that's what Daenerys is also coping with. Like if her husband's gone, then her son, but then they'll kill her son and her without the husband. And like, you know, how do I run from that?

And how do I live with that? And how do I survive that? How do I use that and leverage that? And then it becomes the dragons to her luck, as you said, to her crazy Targaryen luck. Yeah. Yeah, what are the chances, man? Came to her in a vision last chapter,en luck. Yeah. Yeah. It's what are the chances? Came to her in a vision last chapter, you know? Yeah. Just asking the question even by asking the question you already move the wheels a little of like, Hey, but what if we didn't do that? And

like some of the men might be like, I don't know, like, fuck it. I don't, I don't really care for that. I want the system to be like this. But for those who don't benefit, it also then raises the question for them of like, what if it wasn't like that? That's so true, Besky. So Daenerys heads through the Wooden Gate, the ruins of the town, houses are afire, headless corpses are everywhere, women are being raped. And you know, with the exception of the women being raped, it does feel a little bit like when I play Bloodborne. And each time Daenerys, it's like that, everything's on fire and it's ruined and so scary.

Every each time Daenerys stops, sends her cause to end the rape and claims the victim as her slave. There might be rape happening in Bloodborne too, I'm just not at that point in the storyline. But anyway, we can continue. One of them, a thick-bodied, flat-nosed woman of 40 years, blessed Dany haltingly in the common tongue. But from the others she got only flat, black stares. They were suspicious of her, she realized with sadness, afraid that she had saved them for some worse fate. There she is. Magic has entered the story, guys.

Jorah? I guess not really. A magical person. Yeah, guys. Jorah... I think it's not really. A magical person. Yeah, basically. Jorah warns Dany she can't claim all the woman, but she asserts her authority as Khaleesi and as the blood of the dragon. It's not his place to tell her otherwise.

Exactly. Exactly, though. Yeah. I mean, I guess he was also maybe thinking... Was he thinking it from a logistical point? Yes or no? I don't know. But also, you know, as we were discussing regarding what this all means, it is a turning point for Daenerys' character in general, right? We've kind of been building and establishing who

she is, and this is one of those character defining chapters in which someone has a choice to make, and this is the choice that they make, and it you who they are and we see it continue. It defines the rest of her arc until Storm and Dance, obviously, but really starts coming to fruition in Storm. And earlier in the chapter we see that she knows fear, right, from growing up with Viserys and she doesn't let the thought come to the forefront here. Here you can see that sort of cognitive dissonance where she won't let herself touch it, but part of why she empathizes with the women and girls who are raped is because that was her life with Drogo. It was continuous rape until, you know, she was like, I don't know, I guess I can do cowgirl now and that fixed it thing, like, how do you deal with that cognitive dissonance of like, wait, the threat to all these people are the source from which your power derives.

But, you know, no one was there for her as well during that time of continuous rape. She was like, I either have to stomach this or there's only one other way out and that's death. And that was just the way of things, which is what everyone is telling her in this chapter. This is just the way things are done. And I think that when we talk about characters who are exceptional, like I think that Daenerys is that because she does see that injustice and rather than choosing to accept it the way that Jorah has done so, he's like, I can make it worse. Right? Like she realizes things do not have to be the way that they are and that they can, in fact, change. Right? And she does, she sparks that change because she knows what the price is, like on an intimate level for those who have to pay it.

And it's very much an interesting continuation of what Veri says to Ned a few chapters before this of like, why is it that it's the innocents who suffer when it comes to war? And I think like there's gonna have to be more growth for Daenerys' story, right? She's starting to realize like, wait, it isn't just like the innocents when it's the Dothraki who do it, even when I do it, as we see when she realizes later on that Drogon has eaten a child in all likelihood. And it's also, I think, an interesting contrast with what's going on in King's Landing, right? There's a big change as the King dies and Cersei has decided, well, fuck it, I want to change things.

And I mean, again, she got lucky. She got really lucky. I mean, Daenerys, I guess, gets lucky that the dragons are born, but also Cersei gets very lucky. She's like, thank God Robert got drunk. Yeah, in this moment, the plan finally worked. That's so interesting and so well put, but it did kind of also throw into my head, as we continue to think about how she's learning

about the price that has to be paid for everything, in the moment she's not aware of a price that she is paying. Interesting. In order to give these people mercy, right? Like other times that we see big mercy moments, like Brienne with the no chance, no choice, or Sansa saving Dantos, there's sort of like a sacrifice that has to be given in the moment. Often, I guess actually that would be interesting to kind of like look at these,

like more of those mercy moments. Because mercy costs you too. It doesn't just cost like for them, it's you have to pay the price. You're also using it. And of course she does, right? Or like, you know, in a bigger way. Broadway, yeah.

She loses support from the other Dothraki and the Kallasar. They flee after Drogo dies. I mean, they all lose respect for her in taking Mirian, not just the woman too. Well, it's interesting because it's a gamble. Are you gonna have to pay the price or not? She's rolling the dice here right now. And it falls in such a way that, you know,

she survives until the next round, until, you know, shit hits the fan. And then dragons are born. Yeah yeah that was also a die roll I mean she she more or less says like this is a gamble goes into the fire yeah I really wish you were doing that episode on Easter I would know right I wish I wish it lined up just right it would have been great next time great if we were doing the Easter episode we were doing for Easter this year was the Winds of Winter chapter in which John comes back. Jesus.

Wouldn't that be great? Yes, Jesus, exactly. He is risen. I bet somebody's done some great writing about resurrections. Yes, I'm sure. Is it George? Across the city, a building collapses in fire. They find Drogo at a temple, seated before a pile of severed heads, wounded by a shallow Iraq cut that took his nipple off. Dani kneels and praises him as the son of her life. One of the riders, Mago, arrives very angrily and accuses Dany of taking his spoil. A lamb girl. Drogo, curious,

is like, explain Dany. And she does, and though he frowns, saying it's the way of war, she pleads for the girl's safety or for them to be taken as wives. Cotho mocks her, comparing it to a horse mating with sheep. Dany, reminded of Viserys, retorts the dragon feeds on both. I thought that phrasing of that was actually really interesting in the chapter because it says, you know, she is reminded of Viserys, not that Cotho reminds her of Viserys. And even like this line actually we see that kind of sentiment echoed with like Tywin and to some extent like Tywin plagiarizing Virgil, JK, JK. But her retort to Cotho kind of takes on the persona of the dragon in the same way that Viserys would. So again, interesting phrasing. A clash of cultures

kind of happens here too, where Daenerys insists that among the Dothraki and the Lazarion, she's like, you know, she's like, we could be more peaceful, right? Because her own upbringing in culture, which I think is also an interesting one, because she's raised between a couple of different cultures as well, right? Going between all the different free cities, but also the fact that she is raised in that sort of Westerosi culture by Viserys. Like I think that it's, you know, even though she was raised overseas, I, as an immigrant kid, will like make the argument, yeah, she was raised as Westerosi as well. And that all of these values are at odds with that of the Dothraki. And I don't know, I think it kind of pairs well

with the other chapters surrounding this one because we're seeing that clash between the Northern and the Southern people, especially as Rob and them start crossing the neck and then also even Tyrion being like, hey everyone, look at all these people I brought. Like, hey dad, I came home. Daddy, daddy, look at me. Yeah, look at me, look at all of my new friends.

They're very different from us. It's the Vale Mountain Clans. I brought home the people I knew you'd hate the most, daddy. There's this idea in this passage where Dani pleads for their safety, right? And she's like, have them take the girls as wives. And it's so sad because it's such a nice city in a way, right? Because it worked out for her. She and Drogo ended up, you know, in love-ish.

She came to love the rapist that she was sold to. Maybe it could work out for these women too. We see marital rape is just as common, right, across both continents here. We see Cersei and Robert in this very book outside of just Daenerys, so this is the price of the Iron Throne, right? It's built on bodies, as we've been saying. It always has been. It always will be. And of course the men who she takes these women from, they won't be a friend of hers in the next two chapters. There's just no winning. There's no winning in war and there's no being right in saving these women. It makes me think we talked a little bit

about the girls in the Dothraki camp and how they have jobs and makes me think about a woman's role in war. Dani wants to craft a world where women can have roles in war, like during Vietnam when women were able to be nurses, admin, military intel, air traffic control. We see her immediately elevate Mary Mazdor in the camp for healing and give her a job. Because at the end of the day though, you still need war for those goals. We still bombed Vietnam. The game's just too complex and she's just 14. Well, I think it's also interesting that like if you look at her suggestion that they just marry these women, if you look at it as a political compromise, it seems so kind of another like pardoning the turkey kind of thing where like, like you don't have the power to actually society that would like affect the next generation. Right. Like she's proposing such a big change.

You know, it's not clear how that would last for more than a day or two, really, because she doesn't have any kind of political power to back it up and keep them safe even after they do get married. And like, I know it's not really fair to like, like, you know, critique her political ideas here because she's literally sort of came into consciousness about this like 20 minutes ago. But you know, it is kind of like interesting and sort of highlights the like lack of sustainable power that she has. It's also just kind of an interesting thing to examine from a couple of different lenses, because on one

hand I'm just like, wait, what do they- I guess they just sell them as slaves, like I'm surprised, maybe in the other Calisthenics it's different, but I'm like surprised that none of the Dothraki ever take any of the prisoners as wives. Maybe they do as like, I don't know, sex slaves or something, but I'm just like, wait, so they're all Dothraki? Like, that's just kind of surprising, but I guess they change the makeup of the different khalasar, perhaps as like, if you take on another khalasar, you can wed the other Dothraki women, but I guess you don't of the other towns who are not Dothraki that you pillage. I'm not really sure about the mechanics of that part of the culture now that I think about it.

You would think that a nomadic culture would be at least somewhat diverse racially somehow. If you don't have one kind of place where you settle down. Yeah, I don't know. Right. Yeah, I don't know. That's yeah, that's what I'm thinking. But at the same time, I guess they're kind of like, I don't know, Doria is weird is what the other Dothraki think. So maybe not.

But I did think they would be maybe somewhat diverse in that they're picking up people from a couple of different cultures. So now unsure. George has said right that one of the inspirations for this is the Mongols, right? Yeah, and they were diverse. Super diverse. Yeah, they had to be. So that's fascinating.

I wonder if the world book gets into this. I haven't read it in a really long time. Same. So I don't remember. Same. Yeah, that's a that's a good place to check out. Let us know. Yeah, yes, let us know. Someone knows.

We'll put it in the tweet or tweet of note. Someone knows that. Tell us. Yeah, we also got a couple of good comments in general on Discord that will probably like bring in on chapters where they might make more sense and like pair together more nicely. A couple of other ways to think about it are, I'm thinking of two different ways this has kind of happened in terms of war and conflict. We can also look at it in terms of maybe,

like, I'm gonna get very serious here. One is in terms of the Yazidi genocide and the way that ISIS approached the Yazidi genocide. And another way is also in terms of how marriage is treated in the DRC. So for example, when it comes to the Yezidi genocide, the idea that just take these women and girls on as wives and like we're getting rid of their men,

that's a tool of genocide, right? But granted, they're not taken on only as like, they're not often taken on as like wives.'re not often taken on as like, wives. They're also taken on as sex slaves. But there is an aspect in which getting rid of all of the men and then like, the wedding of the women in order to quote unquote purify the genetic line is a tool of genocide. But then on the other hand, looking at it from the perspective of like, the modern day Congolese women, there was an aspect

in which some of them were lobbying for it to be easier to be able to wed people, to be able to get married to men, so that they would be able to claim rights from that marriage, be able to say, hey, you have a legal responsibility to take care of any child that comes from this coupling. And so there's an aspect in which you could argue that forcing these people to take on these women and girls as wives, while yes, it still leads to the marital rape, there has to be a non-zero amount of responsibility and therefore also like, you have to start seeing them as the same culture and as equal to you in this.

And so there's like, I think a couple of different ways that this can be approached that I do not think George thought about at all. Yeah, I'm wondering now, you know, we learned so much about Dothraki weddings before, but we actually don't have that much information about marriages, right? Like we know that there are families traveling in the Colossar, right? So like, there's some idea of like a nuclear family. Yeah, that's kind of something I'm curious about, because we talked about last week, right? The idea of what happens when the husband dies of natural causes eventually. And if

the son's old enough, then and there's enough respect, do they follow him? Is there any sort of nepo baby shit going on or is it like all just fight it out or, you know, like, I guess we don't know. We don't see that. Yeah, I think it's like, I guess it's a case by case basis. Sometimes they're like, we'll just fight it out. But because they were in the heat of battle in the moment is the sun just like, it's up to me. Well, I like Rob. Yeah. just like, it's up to me. Well, I also like Rob. Yeah, like, I also think that there's some ways where this culture is like a little bit vague and like kind of not very

well organized seeming other than that, you know, the basic hierarchy of like the call and then his writers and then everybody else. And I think like, partly, there's some racism happening. Yeah, right. Like, the mythical brown people of the than everybody else. And I think like partly there's some racism happening there. Yeah. Right, like the mythical brown people of the East are sort of more messy, more chaotic, more things are case by case.

Although actually, I guess like succession is never smooth in Westeros either. But like the fact that there's no sort of precedent and it's not something that's really talked about. Yeah, I don't know. I just have. I think it's like whoever's strongest, I guess. but we, it's got to be case by case in that. And also I think now that I think about it, I mean, it is like a very thinly written culture in like,

maybe George will expand upon it on wins, but also I guess there's an aspect in which George didn't think he was going to have to like flush them out that much because he thought he was going to only write about them for like three books and he was going to be done. Yeah. Yeah. I also like it's it's occurred to me that that some of the problems with this depiction of this culture like might be one of the impediments to wins because sort of like pulling this in 1996 is different than pulling it now. And like for sure, he knows how some of this comes across by now, you know, with the show and everything. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I just think that maybe that's like an added level of challenge where he kind of has to like tie it all up and sort of make some of some of the setup pay off. Yeah.

Because he's like a different writer today than he was then. Right. He's a different person today. I mean, I'm a different person than I was fucking yesterday. And it's a different culture too. You know, you saw me. Yeah. I just, I've wondered before. No, I think you're right. Like, there's definitely, I think, a bit of Orientalism at play in terms of how he's written The Dothraki in 1996.

And it was like that then. To an extent, there are people who are still like making stories like that. Absolutely. Everywhere. Not always great. So Drogo is proud of Daenerys's fire. He's like, ah, the woman are hearse. But when he reaches for her, he winces, betraying the strong cowl, kind of thing going on. His wound is way worse than it seems. Probably,

because if you remember what I said earlier, his nipple has been sliced off. Like, just putting that like, oh it's just a fly bite. Danny demands the healers see him, but he's like, no, I've sent them to tend to the others first. Probably because he knows he's gonna fucking die. Daenerys demands the healers be brought to him, but he's like, no, no, send him away. He responds stubbornly, the others should be healed first in the Kallasar, that his wound from this arrow is no more than the bite of a fly, this little cut only a new scar to boast of to his son." Wow, can't believe Drogo foretold that Tisbut of Flesh wound meme from Boy Durham.

Oh. Yeah, oh that too. Yeah. Oh, is it from something? Not that? No, it's from Monty Python, isn't it? Isn't it? Oh no, I think you're right. Yeah, Monty Python. I'm confusing it with the arrow in the knee, dude. Which George has definitely seen Monty Python. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Oh my god, this is probably a reference to that. Wow. Anyways. Good job. Go team. Daenerys and Drogo, I think, you know, they're navigating this relationship right now, and the way that she's kind of controlling him, and it makes me think of even like Cersei

finding Robert becoming more unruly, difficult for her to control. And also Sansa and Cersei trying to plead with Joffrey to do the same thing. And I mean, like you were talking earlier about like acts of mercy, Sansa was asking for mercy, right, just a few chapters ago. And also even like as you were talking about earlier, Catlyn being like, well, I guess my son is where the power comes from now and trying to, you know, she's choosing her words and how to counsel him and being like, maybe don't do this, which ends up like not being right. But how could they know? How could they know that Rus was a creepy weirdo? But she's like, how do I guide him to this choice without offending him? And Dani and Catlin again, like, and there's even something like Visenya-like about Visenya and Maegor that makes me think of this, but

the Dani and how she's kind of referencing her son right now often in the wing, like her and Drogo have this affinity that he is thinking of his son and how to angle this, like, oh, everything I'm doing I'm doing for him. And that's how she's thinking too, right? She's thinking, oh, when my son is old, I will make sure he does not get betrayed. I will make sure he's this, I will make sure he's that. And it's not unlike Catalin and Rob, which the irony, of course, as we've seen here, and as a lot of parents probably know, if you're a parent listening, that you can think that all day long that your child will do this or your child will do that, but that child will have a will of their own. Especially if your child has a lot of power. Yeah, especially if he's a cow or a king. I definitely thought you were going to say, and you'll probably find out as a parent that your child will be betrayed and murdered.

I'm like, oh boy, no, hopefully that does not happen. I do think, though, that even if your your child is really powerful, that like, you know, parenting obviously is important, though, and there's lots that you do as a parent, especially especially with this kind of soft power manipulation that we're talking about now. Yeah, where you sort of learn how to be convincing. Oh, yeah. As as an advisor, which is pretty interesting that that for women, that's one of the ways that you can have power is by influencing the people around you. And your children are going to be betrayed. That's, I think, a fact of life. They're just hopefully not going to be murdered.

But your children will be betrayed. It comes for all of us. Eliana does not want your children to be murdered. I don't. But prepare them for betrayal. Prepare them for heartbreak, friends. For all layers of betrayal. Shrek. There was betrayal in Shrek as well. Seeing how bad Drogo's wound is, Dani tells Jogo to fetch the eunuchs, but a flat-nosed

woman interrupts, offering to tend to the cowl. Kotho snarls Drogo needs no help from sheep lovers and orders her tongue cut out. Dany, however, stops him and claims the woman as hers. So I thought this was pretty interesting because yes, I mean, Ago does report to Daenerys directly, right, as her cause, but it is a subtle turning point I think in the power structure of this colostar because Kotho does order Ago to cut the woman's tongue out, but Daenerys says that this woman is hers and therefore to not.

And then we see the line says that Ago looks from Daenerys to Kotho and then lowers his knife, which establishes that at least amongst her own cause, the Khaleesi, who is a woman, holds more authority than the Kahl's blood riders. And I don't know that that's always been the case. Might not be the case in the other Khalasar, but Ago sees- Power shifts. Yeah, same as Jorah, that the power is shifting. And also probably respects Daenerys for this show of strength, but it's not

something that the blood riders are going to take lightly, but also I, we'll see, you know, again, how it unfolds with the other other members of the well, I think also because everyone was so confused earlier when she was giving orders that like, it doesn't seem like like a wife even trying to take power. Mm hmm. Is very common. Yeah. And it's not like the fact that she's having a power struggle means that she's winning a little bit.

Mm hmm. That's a good point. Yeah. Yeah. It's a fight. We're fighting more of a test, right? Like it's good that she's having this pre-test before the final exam. The pre-SAT. Yes. PSAT. Here's a PS to you. P-A-G-O-T. My god. PYT. Pretty. Um, MMD, Miri Mazdur. The woman introduces herself as Miri Mazdur, a god's wife and a healer. Haggo mutters, Meiji, reminding Dani of Xiqui's tales she's told her of demon women and sorcery

and birthing spirits. None of that can be real, right? I dunno. Koto urges they kill her and wait for the Unix to come and take her body, but Dani ignores him. Yeah. Sometimes when I think MMD, I think Mepins of Mass Destruction. But anyway- I think that every time. When I write MMD, I want you to know I'm thinking of WMD, but now we're on the same page.

That's why we're co-hosts. Every time. Mepins of Mass Destruction Every time. Mepins of mass destruction. Mepins. Meries of mass destruction. The description of the Magi kind of sounds the way that I think Daenerys will be described by people who don't know her later on as she gains more power and be like, I don't know, she's like sleeping with demons doing weird sorcery shit. She turned like the way that they're all like, yeah, I don't know.

That Sansa girl turned into a bat and flew off. Yeah. And a real sheer a sea star hours. Right, right. And there's an aspect of it that even sounds reminiscent of like, makes you really question, well, is that actually how it went down with the Knight's Kings Queen? Which is a lot of possessives.

Yeah. Oh, and Melisandre. Yeah, absolutely. There's so many parallels between Mary Masdor and Melisandre, actually. That would be fun to unpack a little. They're both ancient at 40 and 400. Jesus. This line, this old, homely, thick-bodied woman did not look like a magie to her.

She's 40 years old. She's not. Well, she said she looked 40. Yeah, but she could also be 400. She could. Yeah. Like, who knows? But I'm pointing out. I mean, her resume is wild. This old, homely, thick-bodied woman. I'm pointing out that Dani is calling this woman old. And as all of the women on this call right now are all in their mid to early twenties, so this wouldn't be something relatable to us. And there are negative ages. 10, negative five. Yes. Yeah. It's just like, she has such a packed resume.

Yeah. And Miri does. So Mirri lets off her resume. She says she learned healing from her mother, a god's wife, and studied in a shai, learning from mages, a Jogos Nigh moon singer, a Dothraki woman, and a maester from the Sunset Lands, Marwyn. Marwyn mentioned. Jorah questions the claim, and Mirri replies the maester wore a chain of many metals tight as a noose. Probably because he has a really thick neck we will learn later in the story. No that's his choker because he's also 400. Oh slutty little choker.

Got it. Oh my god. So we talk a lot about how originally this was supposed to be a trilogy of books, and it was then supposed to end in the third and final book of the trilogy. And due to that, in a Game of Thrones, you could really kind of chase the footsteps on the beach, follow the sandy footprints as they fade into obscurity because you realize because a Game of Thrones is super concentrated with story Because there's so much lore history Foreshadowing and crap packed into the beginning

You can really see the outline of the story a lot more and that makes it really interesting that Marwyn Showed up because if George had stuck with the trilogy, I have a feeling Marwyn would have showed up a lot sooner obviously in Danny's plot. Like Marwyn has always been intended to show up to Danny's plot and we start to see that even more when you see different characters show up. We learn in A Storm of Swords and Jamie 6 from Qyburn that the Archmaesters didn't like Qyburn's thinking, but Marwyn did. Uh oh, that's a bad sign. But he was the only one who liked Qyburn's thinking, right? So that's an interesting first nod we get in Storm after this mention. And then of course in the prologue of A Feast for Crows, we have that bigger introduction of Marwyn. He shows up. He's called Unsound by the

Archmaesters and others in the story. In Cersei 2, a feast for crows, Qyburn calls the maesters the Grey Sheep. And he says that was Marwyn's name for them, his nickname. And that's who made the Grey Sheep nickname. Speaking of sheep, we do get, yeah, right? Interesting. Yeah, that's fascinating. There's a lot connected to Marwyn there. They're all fucking the maesters who do not fuck. That's what's happening. Whoa. That's not what's happening fuck. That's that's what's happening. Whoa, whoa. That's not what's happening, Eliana.

That's what's happening. In A Feast for Crows, the Kraken's daughter, Roderick the Reader, is reading Marwyn's book that he wrote, The Book of Lost Books, where he claims to have found three pages of signs importance, which were the visions that were written down by Dany's The Dreamer prior to the doom of Valyria. So Marwyn's like super weeaboo, big Dany fangirl, like he like has every single graphic novel. He's like, Valyrians? I love those little shits. I've been thinking about him since I was born. In A Feast for Crows Sam 5, we get introduced to Marwyn in person,

up close and personal from a POV that we actually know, not a not a paid POV. Marwyn looks more like a doxite bug than a maester and discusses with Sam what feeds a dragon's fire and says all Valyrian sorcery is rooted in blood or fire, including glass candles. He discusses the prophecy with Sam, born amid salt and smoke beneath a bleeding star, and more or less says the prophecy is not really healthy nor logical nor practical, any of them, all of them. He tells Sam to forge his chain ASAP because Sam will need be needed in the north and then finally in the world of Ice and Fire we have this passage from The Bones and Beyond, a Shai by the Shadow.

An account by Archmaester Marwyn confirms reports that no man rides in a Shai. Be be warrior, merchant, or prince. There are no horses in a Shai, no elephants, no mules, no donkeys, no zorses, no camels, no dogs. Such beasts when brought there by ship soon die. The malign influence of the ash and its polluted waters have been implicated as it is well understood from harmans on miasmas that animals are more sensitive to the foulness exuded by such waters even without drinking them. So, okay, good, good. That sounds great. That sounds like some fucking radiation. Ceptin Barth's writings speculate more wildly, referring to the higher mysteries with little

evidence. So I thought that was interesting, especially since Jorah soon will be urging Dany for them to go to Asshai. It makes you wonder, like, what mages would have waited for her there. But also, Marwyn and necromancy, right? Now that we have the thought in our head that were this a trilogy, Marwyn would have shown up in Dani's plot by the third book, obviously. So now that we know it's three trilogies at least,

beat, ha ha ha ha! Oh no. Crying. I'm so funny. Laughatron's crying. Laughing. Do you think that Marwyn is going to end up Uh, no no. Crying. Uh, I'm so funny. Do you think that Marwyn is going to end up in the Northern plot with Dani and go to the wall maybe?

He's so interested in opening bodies, alive and dead, up and the others? It kind of feels like that's, I don't know, there's something going on there. And with Daenerys being so lost in her own history and chasing the ghosts of so many of her family's past and also losing so much so often so young, right? Like I think of like, as we go through this, there's so many lines of people that she's lost and how much it happens. The next chapter is straight up just like trauma central. It's like, they just like took all of her trauma she's had ever in her life and they're like, oh how about you go through it again, Dani? Good luck. So I don't know with her being

kind of heartbroken from losing so many folks, you can see where people can get obsessed with memories and obsessed with the idea of resurrection, like Arya asks about Ned, right? Could you bring back one man who just died once without a head? I could see Daenerys and Marwyn's relationship being very toxic but like symbiotic and interesting to one another. Like Cersei and Qyburn. Yeah, exactly. Like that is going to be the Cersei Qyburn, right? Like, and I think he's going to probably enable her in a lot of ways to do different things and maybe some major-y that will rise. Yeah, I don't know, because Cersei is in a position where she doesn't really have influence really beyond Qyburn.

Like he's a useful tool to her. But in Danny's case, it's kind of harder to imagine what she would want with him. Like, you know, obviously there's many things she could want with a magic user. But I do think that it would be necessarily a little bit different just because Danny is so powerful. Well, she has dragons. I wonder if that's the point, right? And that's the test. Because again, like a lot of the time stories are meant to be tests of characters to see under what circumstances, you know, what choices do, does a person who has these traits, what do they make?

Maybe it's that Marwin is there to constantly kind of tempt her of be like, oh, what if we tried like this random ass thing? And she'd be like, no, no, what the fuck? And like, what is the line when you finally just give in and you're like, all right, let's let's fucking go. Let's do it. Right. And it shows you like where that line is for that character. Sandus is a character who's like that, where it's like, where's the line for you? Where you're like, all right, yeah, sure. Maybe. Maybe my nephew, maybe he should die. I don't know. You know, where is the line? That's so interesting. With someone so close to shadow binding, I mean, in a way it's her own. You have Marwyn and then you have Makora on the run for her for her own

Melisandre. Well, and she's got Tyrion going to her too, who's like also going to be like a test, to put it politely. Yeah. Yeah. And I think like she might be more amenable to some of Tyrion's suggestions than to Marwyn's. And as you said, she's in a position of power when we come to her, when they're going to be coming to her. So she doesn't feel the same desperation of, we must do this now, right? Like, okay, let's go. But also at the same time, like, what would Marwyn do in her name that maybe she doesn't necessarily approve of, right? Because Miri's like, yeah, and then he opened up a body and showed me the way that it works. I'm like, were they alive? Was it a live surgery with no anesthesia? It's some weird mad scientist shit. I'm not convinced it's not quite like what Shiro Ishii was doing in World War II. I'm not convinced it wasn't like that. So... Yeah. We do have other people make it sound like he did that, right? Yeah.

I think I think that's definitely what he was doing. And like, you know, it is bad. It is bad to do that. And like, absolutely heinous, especially because some of the people that that that were experimented upon like probably, you know, some of my countrymen, right? But were experimented upon, like probably, you know, some of my countrymen, right? But yet at the same time, we still use that research when it comes to frostbite. And I'm not saying it justifies it. I'm just saying that's just how it is. Yeah. Well, it comes back to people being commodities again, right? Which keeps popping up sacrifices for what? What? What for the good of your people are you sacrificing and willing to sacrifice? Yeah. Is it is that price worth it?

Is that knowledge actually worth it? And I'm a person who would be like, no, but there are people who would not say that. Yeah. Like the succession sacrifice line, right? The story that Logan says, what would you give to see the sun again? Bring the sun back again. Interesting, interesting. Grown child. What would you give to see the sun again? Bring the sun back again. Uh, interesting, interesting.

Your own child. Well, when Danny asks why Mary Masjor would help them, she's like, why would you help us? Mary says, all men are one flock. One body, one body. Not one body, no. This is such a good message for Easter. Aw, blaze it. She examines Drogo and says the wound must be treated.

Drogo agrees that he'll go to the temple but insists that no man will see him weak. Dani then tells him she is no man and he can lean on her. Yeah, it's interesting phrasing. It's very Lord of the Rings coded, which I know is phrased slightly differently. Whatever the no living man am I. And also, you know, even reminds me a little bit of like Macduff being like, Oh, I was a Cesarean. Gotcha.

Uh, you know, this, this loophole that she finds and Joe goes like, yeah, sure. Yeah. Totally less emasculating to lean on a girl, but it also shows how much he trusts Daenerys and like the idea that they are there for one flesh, one bread, one body. One body, yeah, get out. The methods of mass destruction. Oh my god, I'm gonna sacrifice you for Easter. Alright.

Yeah, there's the line from the Scottish play, Laugh to Scorn, the power of man, for none of woman born shall harm the Scottish play, Laugh to Scorn, the power of man for none of woman born shall harm the Scottish play. Yeah, I like how you wrote it and then it's crossed out. Thank you. I refuse to utter it even in finger in the document. It's just who I am. You know, once you're in the Scottish play once.

Oh, so this is a theater kid thing. Yeah, it's a theater kid. Yeah, most things. I'm a tech theater. I was tech theater. So I'm like things I'm doing over here. I'm a tech theater. I was tech theater. So I'm like, I'm different. I'm built different. Oh my God.

Do you say the name? Yeah, of course she does. She's a fucking freak. I'm out here rolling the dice. She says it all the time. Great gambling all the time. I'm so brave. Chloe, can she say it now or would you be mad?

She can do whatever she wants. There's also that idea that like, no, I'm not going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. She can do whatever she wants. Ugh. There's also that idea that like, no man does kill him, right? Like Miriam Mazador almost kills him, but I don't really agree with that because in

my opinion this bitch kills himself. Like that's gonna be all next week, obviously. Like we don't have to go into a lot today and I know we will. There's some other notes on it, but like bitch kills himself. Yeah, because what was that poultice? Right, but sorry, sorry, he pulls it off. Yeah, I think it was real. I think I think it was real based on everything I know about modern medicine. But we'll get based on the fact that like he went against every single thing she told him to do and did the exact opposite. I have had a wound before. I have had a wound before Drogo and listen, yeah, or he got scurvy. My god, and then all of his scar tissue just fell apart. Yeah.

Daenerys orders Draora and the cause to guard the entrance. Inside the temple, Drogo lies on the altar telling the blood riders to wait outside, but they refuse. Cotho threatens Dany that if Drogo is harmed, and she promises no harm because she trusts Mirri. Yeah, there's that line, she had saved her from the hard hands of her rapers after all. And it is like one of those cheeky lines from George because we as outriders, outriders, we as outsiders.

Yeah, we as outriders, I don't know, whatever. We're part of the Colossar. I'm doing the best I can. We as outsiders, you can read that line and just that little flip of sarcasm, like, she had saved her from the hard hands of her rapers after all, like, there's no way she would do anything bad to them. But of course, this is Dani's internal POV, right? So it is very innocently said.

It is not said by Dani in her mind, like with that hint of sarcasm that is for the reader to comprehend from the author's note and author's intent, like, why would this woman have any beef with the Kallasar? Yeah, it's kind of an interesting kind of parallel with the line earlier of this was the deliverance that the Dothraki brought to the Lazarene, where the irony there does seem like it's from Danny. Yeah, right. She's in on the joke there. Yeah, here is like such a similar idea. But you can kind of tell that this is her being 13. Yeah. Mirri has the blood riders hold Drogo down as she removes the arrow which is

still in his body chanting in Lazarine. She treats the wound with wine, ointments, and stitches binding it in lambskin. She warns them of fever, itching, and a scar and gives Drogo prayers and rules for healing. Drogo dismisses her warnings, boasting of his scars and defying her instructions almost immediately. Dani then asks Miri to tend to her during childbirth, wondering if she knows the birthing bed. Miri tells her during this that she hasn't lost a baby yet.

And it's sad. Like, it's a sad thing because the groundwork is there. Like, Eliana, you spoke last week about how this POV in total in this arc is such a good arc, right? Like, it's a very good, perfect arc. Like, the foreshadowing is laid out. By the time you finish it, like, you could fold this up like a sandwich on itself. Like, it's just perfect. It's the perfect amount of dressing and, like, between the bread and all the fillings, it all fits just right for a Scooby snack. Like, everything moves, paces really well. She falls in love with him just at, like, the moment you have one or two chapters to enjoy their love or their growth of their relationship, and then she loses him, then she loses then she gets the dragons and it's the rebirth it's just all really well paced and so here is another great example of like laying some of that framework of

foreshadowing to come of like here is Miriam Asdur here to antagonize the plot and move it along yeah I got stuck in the image of the sandwich for a bit there but um especially I'm kind of thinking about it too. Yeah. Yeah. I also found that distracting. I was like, I feel like I know what kind of sandwich this is because you said dressing, I'm like, it's a hoagie. It's got like-

Hoagie. I want a hoagie so bad right now, dude. I'm sorry. I just can't stop thinking about a hoagie. I've been thinking about an Italian hoagie for like four days. That's what, that's the sandwich that this is. I assume. Um,

The song of Ice and Fire is an Italian hoagie. Thank you. Okay. Yeah, I don't think George would disagree. I will say like in regards to Miriam Mazur never having lost a babe, her track record still stands because I mean, Teniris did succeed in giving birth to dragons and that's what we were really delivering anyway. Well, and the babe that she lost was like a weird like dragon. Oh not a man. Right. Kind of idea.

Yeah I think it was. Similar to the earlier language. That baby might even be in the dragon. So I think like success, success all around. Calling the Nereys also a silver lady, like how she's just like, I don't know, Silver Lady. She just calls her that. It reminds me also even a little of the epithet, Grey Eyed Athena, I don't know why, but I like that she's just like, I don't know, Silver Lady. What's the fucking song?

Stay Alive. Oh, Winter Lady by Leonard Cohen, that's what I'm thinking of. Okay. The Winter Lady Stereo. But anyways, it really actually isn't. There's like, there's a lyric, it's like, I knew a child of snow, etc, etc. So I don't know, it just reminds me of that. Seasons of my love. Yeah, seasons of my love, literally. Oh, of course. George loves Cohen, let's be real. Also, we get the note, and so I'm just calling this out because at this point of the story especially,

a Game of Thrones, super concentrated, lots of plot, just in case there was only three books going on, had to be able to nail it on that third book, not that third trilogy, The Bloody Bed. She refers to it as The Bloody Bed, coming off of further memories of Leanna in Etterd 15 and her bed of blood and roses that she dies in. So Dani's chapters are kind of this great shadow to Ned's chapters, right?

Because we get all these lines and ideas about both Rhaegar and Leanna that are telling us these pieces of the puzzles across from each other's POV. And if you paste all these little weird odd bits about Rhaegar, these odd little bits about Liana in Ned's chapter, if you sew them together, you get the answer. Right, who would have thought we'd have little r plus l equals j here across the continent, across the world? Yeah, absolutely. It's kind of great because that's like whenever

Jorah's like oh Rhaegar honorable Rhaegar would have done what you just did Khaleesi It's reminding us like these images of Rhaegar that we're seeing from people that may or may not have actually known him I'm like or not. I'm like, how the fuck does Jorah think he knew him plot for the plot He has to know him I get that but we have a quote how Droga laughed Moon of my life. You do not ask a slave you tell her she will do as you command He jumped down from the altar come my blood the stallions call this place is ashes. It is time to ride Haggoth followed the cow from the temple, but Kotho lingered long enough to favor Mirri Mazdur with a stare. Remember, Meiji, as the cowl fares, so shall you.

As you say, rider. The woman answered him, gathering up her jars and bottles. The great shepherd guards the flock. She's not that old. I don't know why I did that. Let me redo that. Hold on. She's only fucking 40. As you say, Ryder, the woman answered him, gathering up her jars and bottles. The great shepherd guards the flock. We're not that distant in age, you know what I mean? Yeah, I know. That's why I was really... Yeah, I was like, wait, hold on, let me redo that, let me redo that.

Now she just sounds like a woman. Yeah, she is a woman, she's thick. You know, we just got told she's thick. Alright. I like that you made Khal Drogo sound very sultry. I wish we had inserted more Khal Drogo quotes for you to do. We can just have you read more Khal Drogo for us though, I guess, Madeline, but he sounded so, it was like a bedroom voice in a way.

And then it goes, it is time to ride. And like in my head, I feel like I heard motorcycles. Yeah. I heard a guitar that goes, I think it's this place is ashes. That just sounds so like, like, let's get out of here, baby. Can't know it felt that way. He definitely would ride a motorcycle. Oh, absolutely.

Oh, they're probably just seeing my mama doing it. But oh, my God, the Tothraki are a bike. I'm sure that somebody has written that. I didn't know it till now. Wow. We'll have to check AO3 after this. Yeah. I thought this line was interesting of as the call fairs so shall you. It almost feels like he's tying their fates together right? Like as part of the sacrifice of you know chaining them. I think I'm just feeling White Lotus season finale-ish right now. Oh, good for you. You finished it.

Yeah, I did. I did. Finally, I can speak to you again. It also even reminds me a little of Circe and Jaime, but anyways. Yeah, I love that with that language because like it continues next chapter, they threaten her again, or they threaten Dani, and Miriam Mazdor says, kill her and kill your cow. You know, save the cheerleader, save the world. A word. Word.

But like it is, it's very much keeping them linked together, and we start to get that death for life sacrifice language coming in. They are intertwined now, Miriam Mazdor and Cal Drogo. Honestly, yeah, we'll talk about it more next chapter, but like the description of what Mirri Mazdor did here, it does sound like actual disinfection. Like I think she did actual healing here. And part of it might be because maybe she feels more bound to it being in the house of her god, right? Like, is there like a stronger binding like oath where she's like, I can't lie in front

of a heart tree, but it's her god's temple and therefore medicine. Again, lots more to come in next episode, but like, she gives him a very specific list of things to do. She tells him when it's going to be, what it's going to feel like, like that first it's going to scab, then it's going to itch and scar, and then it's going to fall off. And like tells him this is what's going to happen.

So when it's in the itching stage, he tears it off his chest and sends for the healer woman to make another poultice to put onto it. She tells him, don't drink fermented milk, don't drink milk with a poppy, that will make it worse. Your body needs milk of the poppy. That will make it worse. Your body needs to stay awake, fighting it. You're going to have a fever first and then it'll fade away. But like, you can't do this. Can't do that. He turns around and he does literally every single thing that she tells him not to.

He rips it off his chest within like six days because it's itching, which was one of the stages of healing. And then he calls for the herb women and they give him tons of milk of the poppy. And I will say, like, the herb women are some of the women in the Dothraki camp that that's their job, right? Their job is to be healers. Well, we're starting to see a schism form in the group because the Kal's wife, the

Khaleesi, took away the spoils of war. The Kal is accepting that and oh, the Kal is injured. Also they have taken a Lazarine woman and raised her above the other healers. Not to say secret maester plot, but I'm like, can you trust those herb women? Whose side are the herb women on too? They probably would have known better than to put mud on an open wound Okay, so I was not sure about it because I sort of interpreted it as if like she had sewn the herbs Mary master had sewn the herbs like inside of him and then the lamb skin

Over is like a patch that was sewn on top like he actually was packed with the herbs. Oh Like so I don't I think it Like, is it? Oh my God. The themes keep coming up like an Easter, like, or when you stop the when you, you know, sometimes you got to go, go, go. Yeah. But do you take away the sins of the world? I'm sorry. I'm hungry, which happens a lot in these episodes, but like, you know, you rub the butter under like the poultry skin and then you put stuff, the herbs, and then it makes it all crispy.

Put them on the broiler. We do put them on the fire. We do put them on the fire. I'm sorry everyone. Bodies as commodities. Eat them up. Amazing. I just, I didn't feel quite sure, but.

Yeah. I'm sorry everyone. Bodies as commodities. Eat them up. Amazing. I just, I didn't feel quite sure, but. Yeah. Yeah. Cause she sews the, you can't see this at home, but I'm massaging my titty at Madeline in the room right now to explain the story. She sews the skin. It's cause she was so sultry. Yeah.

I'm very lucky. The shake and me. Um, so. Oh dear was so sultry. Yeah, I'm very lucky. The shake and me. Um, so some Sultan X Chloe RP going on in this room. So like the nipple was cut off and like the skin was cut off, right? So to me, it seems that she sewed the flap of skin as much as she could back to the rest of the skin, and then stuffed all that up with the herbs and the poultice and then caked over it so that it stays on. But like, I don't know, there's also something interesting in that clearly

she believes in omens and whether it's like other cultures or not. Like she quotes back Dothraki beliefs to Dani and beliefs of like the Mother of the Mountains in the next few chapters. So like I think more than anything, she's probably targeting Dani's son more than anything. Like more than Drogo, because clearly Drogo can get himself killed and that's the other like bitter dramatic irony of like, I told you to do all these things, you chose not to and you died. Right, I actually I wonder what the life expectancy for a call is. Yeah, probably like 25. Yeah, that's probably true. I think there's also something to it like the prophecy, we know that Marwyn has heard the prophecy, right?

We know that so many people have heard THE prophecy, you know, born beneath a bleeding star, and other prophecies, and we get that understanding from many people of many cultures, and so like, Stallion Who Mounts the World feels like another variation, obviously, of maybe the Azora High myth, or of the Last Hero myth, or of some of these hero myths and these mono-myth stories. So So like the idea of, you know, they looked for a prince, not a princess. Well, maybe Miri Mazdur is looking for the prince, not the princess as well. And the stallion who mounts the world just like the rest of them. It's Danny's son.

No, it's Danny, bitch. You fucked up. Yeah, well, stallions are gendered, right? But I guess we don't know about their language. Right, but exactly though, like that's the thing, that the stallion must- Could just be like, strong horse. Yeah. Yeah. David Peterson tell us. Or maybe it's like two, just two men in a phone booth, two young men in a phone booth, traveling across time.

Oh my god, I thought you were gonna say it's like two young men in a horse costume. Oh that's an interesting- I thought you were going somewhere totally different with two young men because the stallion that mounts the world is just like so sexual sounding to me. Oh it is. It's like not a leap for my brain to go there. See it's okay to fuck horses according to the Dothraki just can't fuck sheep. It's scary. They could kill you. It's okay when the horse does the fucking. That's what they said in the prophecy. I know that you also had other thoughts that you wanted to explore Madeline around some tropes. I use this as an excuse to read The Shake by E.M. Hull. Are you familiar with this? I am not.

OK, so it's a romance novel that came out in like 1917 and like created the romance novel industry. It was like, OK, like one of the biggest books of all time. The first year it was published, it was reprinted like 50 times. It was this huge movie. And like basically all romance is kind of derivative of this in some ways. It particularly kind of pioneered the rape fantasy. Yeah.

As we know it today. And you know, there's all kinds of like interesting psychology about why women, particularly in the 1920s, were interested in exploring that in a safe way. And so the basic plot of the story is that there's this young woman, Diana Mayo, whose parents died when she was young. Her mother and childbirth, her father killed himself. And so she is taken care of by her brother and they travel around the world and they're in somewhere vague North Africa. And she is noticed and kidnapped by this sheik. Ooh, sexy.

Oh. Who forces her to live in a tent with all of his people. Camping, no. Camping. Sexy and evil camping. And then, you know, he like comes in every night to rape her and like slowly over time, she starts to like it. And her companions are this like French valet named Gaston, who is her entree into the culture

of the tribe. Oh, Jorah. Yes, Jorah. And then also she has a kind of very stupid Bedouin maid. Oh, all three of them. No, I'm just kidding. And so there's hundreds, if if not thousands of books that like, like follow this sort of setup.

It's like an entire genre called desert romances. Fascinating. Okay. And I am so curious what George knows about this. And like it's, it's, it's popular enough that like there's a bugs bunny version, you know, like it's it's so in the culture that I think it's dumped at her about this, that like he does like doing this with stories where he will take something like a certain structure, certain kind of story, and then kind of play with it like he did with Beauty and the Beast a million times.

So I don't, it just like is fascinating to me. And it's not like I have like any sort of final thoughts on this, it just is a big question for me. But like, I don't know that there's like this racialized story that he's telling. And he kind of transposed it onto a different race, kind of. But like, even though I think he probably does think that he was inspired by the Mongols and the Comanches, right? Like the main inspiration for this story is like fake Arabs.

Yeah, I think. Yeah. You know, it's like it is interesting. Yeah. No, absolutely. And I'm curious where like where along the line he picked this up from. Like, is it classic classic like he's just going with the trope or was he inspired by like, you know, I mean, I think there's a lot of we talked a lot about Dune in this past season so far of Danny this book in Game of Thrones. And I think that there's a lot of like Lords of Arabia.

And there are a lot of plots like that that he's playing with too, which also do embrace that idea. They embrace a lot of that desert romance, Arabian Nights, you know? Sexy and scary and different. Yeah, it's just like the specificity of like, like sort of the virgin martyr and the like, pagan, deflower who like, like rapes you so good that eventually you like it.

Eventually you learn cowgirl style. It's like, it's like, I rapes you so good that eventually you like it. Eventually you learn cowgirl style. It's like, it's like, I don't know. Yeah. And then you turn 14. So it's like slightly less bad, you know, it's like, Oh, your nose get a little tighter. Instead of 13. He did get, she was originally 13.

Yeah. Well, and even like the detail of like sort of learning how to be better at sex as a way of like improving your quality of life as you're traveling around with this tribe slash colossal is like another trope within this whole genre. I don't know. So if anyone wants to talk to me more about this or if anyone has ideas, you should go to the girls gone canon page page page page and sign up so that you can talk to me on the Discord because that's the only social media I use.

She's so mysterious. I wasn't really... There you go. I wasn't going to say it, but yeah, we are putting our guest behind a paywall this week. Thank you so much. That's patreon.com slash Girls Gone Cannon. If you want to access our guest, it's the thunder tier and above. Oh my God.

We did not plan this. This is... Madeline has blindsided me just now. Everyone. Uh, your kids will be betrayed. And oh my god, just like me. But I do think it's interesting. So thunder tear or above. I wouldn't be surprised if George read this.

But also, as you said, it's very in the cultural ether. So, like, I feel like a lot of the sci-fi movies, you know, even of that era in the 70s and things like that, technically space fantasies, whatever, even kind of follow that structure as well. So, yeah, right. Interesting, interesting. Very strange. Wait. Who is this popular with? You said it is the romance novel. I'm curious. There's a lot of things like that, though. As you said, save space to explore fantasies.

So particularly from what I've read, it is like white women really liked it. And it sort of was big in the publishing industry because it was the first time there was like a romance novel that was written by a woman that was really like targeted at women, particularly for the sake of being a safe place to live out some fantasies of things that they might not want to do in real life, which is, I think, like what romance is now, kind of. Yeah. Yeah. 50 shades of brown. At least, you know, in some ways. Yeah, that's true. Probably for some people, it's more than that. But, yeah, like, I think particularly given the

social status of women in the 1920s, where they were, you know, becoming liberated in all of these ways, were, you know, fighting for liberation in all these ways, now able to vote. I think for some women, there was an appeal to being in a situation where things don't change. And being in a situation where family continues to be, it's like a little reactionary, right? Where the idea of sort of wanting to have less control over your life, because having control over your life is scary.

Maybe it was appealing to people. And so, like creating this, like, you know, like Orientalist idea of the Middle East, where, you know, you're basically a sex slave to your husband and come to like it. It makes sense as a reactionary impulse in the same way that we have tradwives today and things like that. Oh, yeah, true. And I mean, even the fact that it is intercultural slash racial is interesting for it to be in the 20s because that's post-Great War and it's a time in which people are suddenly wrestling with the idea. I actually describe describe every now and then a song of Ice and Fire as a modernist capital M, right? Like, sorry, that like, all of a sudden everyone realized, wait, all of our countries are actually very interconnected. We just had a global war that we've not done that before.

We are all so close to one another in a way we did not expect. So, interesting. Yeah, that's really interesting. The miscegenation angle of this whole like trend is, is really interesting too, because this didn't happen in all of these books, but at least in the shake itself, um, the twist at the end is that he was white the whole time. Oh my God. He Rachel don't hold her.

So that at the end they can have babies. Because they're both white? Yeah. I love it. He was Italian. He was Italian. Oh, the spicy white. Yeah.

That was still technically not white then. That's true. Changed. It changed. Maybe. At the time. It's interesting because we're technically white now, Arabs. I don't know.

I don't know if that's true. I think that's part of it though. I think it depends. In the census, we're supposed to tick the white box. Yeah, it does. It's like Schrodinger's white. Well, and something that as you're talking about the shake specifically and the concept, the meta of who is liking this and why they're liking it right there's

something that's like for I think the white woman of the 20s coming into their liberation it's something that's almost like meta of this chapter for Danny too of like you know they see another person that has a repression maybe or is withholding something because of the color of their skin and not- and being othered, right? And not being the white man. And so like there's almost like, maybe the women of the 20s saw something in that, right? Like something that they're like, oh, there's a sexy, like quiet darkness to them that I want to understand and reveal because it's repressed within me as well. Right? Like, I think there's something of that that those women felt that they were repressed and now it's like, wow, there is

like another world and like it could be possible to touch these. Yeah, exactly. Oh wow. Shut up. No, no, no, no. I swear to God. But that is true. Yeah. That explores this in a different way. Maybe we'll get there one day. Well, who knows. Other class. Yeah. Other class. Madeline's coming back for an Aladdin episode only. I actually have never seen it. I wasn't allowed to as a kid. That's fair. That's absolutely fair.

Middle East Studies mom. Yeah. No, yeah. Anyway, so to wrap this up, I actually, so this book that I read about this is called Desert Passions by Su Min Kyo, Orientalism and Romance Novels. And there's a little chart showing the preponderance

of Oriental historical romance novels published. And the year that it peaked is 1996. 1996, it was popular. That is really interesting. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, it does make sense though, because there are a lot of these tropes in George's story he's playing with that, like you said earlier, maybe today aren't as popular and aren't great framework as a plot device. Yeah.

So, I mean, the 90s storytelling in the 90s was a lot different, and we're reading it every day right now with this. Like, there's a lot of 90s stuff and a lot of 90s tropes and things that were cool or were not cool or things that were popular or not popular at the time that George plays with all the time that haven't maybe aged well or have aged well. I mean both. So I find that fascinating. Like the idea of like the Arya's character is like very 90s. Dani is very 80s. I mean, Dani is like absolutely like this godlike alien. The purple eyes is yeah, it's so 80s camp. Yeah. Hair metal. It's so good. You know, like big blonde silver hair and yeah, I mean, there's just like,

silver hair and yeah, I mean there's just like there's so much of Danny that is an 80s 90s super chick Rockstar character so I find that fascinating Yeah, I would like would love to break it down in 20 years after we've had the last couple decades go by and maybe we have Two more books. Mm-hmm. We will and that last trilogy. He's gonna look under your chair. Yeah, it's under your chair trilogy he's gonna look under your chair. Yeah, it's under your chair. Yeah, I don't know. It's, it's so fascinating to me because I agree with what you said, Eliana, last week or maybe the week before where I don't know what this is like for sure. The, like the best written storyline in this book and of Danny's storyline, certainly it's the best. It's like, it's, it's so well done.

And so flawed and so flooded. It's yeah, it's so interesting to me because I like, it's it's so well done and so flawed and so flawed. And it's yeah, it's so interesting to me because I like I think that a huge part of why I came to these books 10 years late. I'm I'm I'm a covid reader is because I was so turned off by the optics of this storyline, particularly. And, you know, like, I think that there are like for sure, you know, like we can be nuanced here. We're like critical thinkers where it can be at once like the best part of this book. Also, like a little bit freaky. And we can also love George while having questions, having questions about how much he knows about what he's doing. I mean, yeah, a lot of it isn't perfect.

I think, like, you know, this is something like, yeah, it lot of it isn't perfect. I think like, you know, this is something like, yeah, it would be nice for some books. Not all books have to be all things for all people, you know, like not all books have to have a moral story to them, right? Or like end with justice and things like that. And demanding that is actually like worse.. Exactly, I agree. And again, Chloe has this musical she watched that we discussed recently, and where they changed the ending to be more like quote unquote. Oh, was it Ann Julia? Yes, Ann Julia.

I've had some rants about this in my text messages. It's terrible. Yeah, you're making things be more moral and like, for what? Like it doesn't, to demand that of stories, I think is scary because like, you know, when I think about the era, the other era in which they were like, let's change Shakespeare's stories to be, you know, more moral and better. Like that was the Victorian era, you know, like to demand that of stories is ultimately, it is scary to me, like let them be complex.

They'll be imperfect because the writers themselves, we are human, we are imperfect. And let us discuss them. Holding authors accountable for acts that are done by fictional characters in their books is certainly something that I have seen people do online more and more. What? What? Like, I'm kidding. I was so confused for a second. I know Chloe's sarcastic voice.

I was feeling gassed up there for a second. Yeah, exactly. My sarcastic voice. I think that there is sort of like a puritanical kind of surge towards literature, particularly that is really troubling. And yeah, like some I read a lot of kids books because of my job. And there is sort of a trend of like kids and kids books over communicating and doing the therapy speak like, you know, I didn't come to your birthday party

because like, and it's good in real life to be like self-aware and to communicate well. But in stories, it's sort of like, what is the opportunity to learn here? If everyone is just nice and wholesome and sweet, I don't know. I think that there's sort of something missing. And it's okay if something's not for you. It's okay if you decide you don't want to partake in a story. It's not for you. And you know, maybe you also, dear listener, will think, perhaps this podcast, there are people who think that of us, you know, we're not here to be for everyone. But if you think that we, Girls Gone Cannon, are for you, you can follow us on social media. Madeline wants to help with the sign off. Yeah, you can send them an email also at girlsgonecannon. at gmail.com. Yeah or find us.

You can send us a little tweet, a little tweet or a little blue sky post at girls gone cannon c a n o n on twitter at bluesky.social and you can find us in a lot of other places actually too if you're not subscribed. In your heart. Look there. We will always be there. Under your chair. Look there too. Where Tiwau and us will be. And of course, if you're not subscribed to us, I think Patreon's the best place to subscribe. And our patrons are going to tell you other places you can find our podcast. One of them is me.

Yeah. Oh my god. Wow. You've heard my voice before. You can catch Girls Gone Cannon on any of the following streamers. On Podbean, iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Acast, Spotify, Overcast, Apple Podcast, iHeart Radio, Audible, and Amazon Podcasts. You can also join us on Patreon, where if you join the thunder tier above, you have access to a Discord and monthly happy hours and things like that.

And by joining the Discord, you get access to a bunch of great channels, including but not limited to memes and shitposting channel, Fashion Hour. There are multiple channels for historic materials, A Song of Ice and Fire. There's a Pet channel, which I think is probably the most important channel of all. Respectful Thirsting, because there's a channel for that. Come by, join the community, it's a lot of fun, and you won't regret it. Yes, patreon.com slash girls gone canon is the best place to find any of our episodes, any of our updates, the best place to support us because believe it or not, we do this every week and it's made possible by patrons and friends like Madeline and many others.

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Well, me too. Meets space. Oh. I've met people in real life. Wow. Me too. Meet Space. Oh my god, who? I'm just kidding. Um... Thank you so much for joining us this week. We will be back with Daenerys VIII in A Game of Thrones. And shit is going to get worse. So buckle up, get ready, don't fall off your fucking horse.

As always, I've been one of your hosts, Chloe. And I've been another one of your hosts, Eliana. And thank you. And I'm your guest. Oh no, you're a host. You're a Dundee. You're our other other host. Yeah.

Other other host. Thanks for coming on Madeline. We had a great time. Thank you. Thank you. I learned a lot. Eliana has a new genre to read. Yeah, it's I don't know. There's like, apparently I have to read another new George genre. George genre. Nevermind. I'm done. Goodbye. Goodbye.