Girls Gone Canon Cast - ASOIAF Episode 25 - ACOK Sansa Stark IV/V

Episode Date: November 2, 2018

  Thrust into a magical world where the line between truths and lies blurs more often than not, Sansa Stark finds herself battling for survival, hidden beneath a veil of her courtesy. intro by Anton Langhage 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

Hey guys, and welcome to another episode of Girls Gone Canon, Sansa in a Clash of Kings, episode of Girls Gone Canon, Sansa in a Clash of Kings, episode 25, Sansa 4 and Sansa 5. I'm one of your hosts, Chloe. You can find me on the internet as at Liza and Arbor, on Twitter, and on Tumblr. And I'm the other one of your hosts. I am Eliana, and you probably know me as Gloss Table Girl from the Maester Monthly podcast, or on the Asana Waste and Fire subreddit, or as Arithmetric on Twitter. Hello! Welcome, friends. Hey! This is it, guys. We're building up to the Blackwater in this episode.

This is a total anticipation-building, kinda just attention getting driven up chapter we got here like super fast i was surprised i was like next thing i know we're here at the blackwater i can't believe it i don't even yeah i mean we gotta gear up we're gonna like do a 10 hour episode next week yeah 72 hour episode 89 hour episode for the black water next week i'm i'm excited i'm excited uh i think i think we might have some tricks up our sleeves before we know it we're gonna be at feast for crows dude yeah shit i'm not i'm not ready i'm not ready to be done with songs and chapters wellures. Well, the good news is The Winds of Winter will come out eventually. It's coming out tomorrow.

Oh my god, I wish. Shut up. You're spoiling everything. Dude, I think I actually had a dream last night or two nights ago. I was like, you guys, it's The Winds of Winter. And I was like, wow, it's so much thinner than I thought it would be. And then I was like, how is he much thinner than i thought it was how is he gonna and then i was

like how is he gonna finish the story in two books especially when this was like a half a book you know god that's a nightmare is what you had i was just really confused well we're gonna talk a lot about dreams and nightmares in this episode yeah there's tons of that but first of course we'll get to some general housekeeping so starting off um patrons as we bring up every week many of you your stickers are already shipping and like in your hands um international patrons i had to we specifically ordered very special stamps all right and they didn't have enough of them at the post offices by me i went to three post offices to find these stamps and they were like no we don't have those i was like this is bullshit so eliana traveled the land i really did i was on a quest i was like brianne i was like hello have you seen a girl of about three and ten with holographic dragon stamps spoiler alert

so yeah we got those and the postage must have three stamps wow whoa actually they do need that for international shipping i had to ask one of the women i was like how many do i need to put on here to send outside of the US? So the stickers that are promised, they are starting to arrive. Get hype. I'm excited about that. I think we might end up having some leftovers. So if we do look out for that, we might be utilizing them maybe in Jersey City next month when we go to the Fire and Blood signing and Q&A with George

R.R. Martin. We're gonna give a sticker to George. I don't know how, but it's gonna happen. I don't know how, but we're going to. We're gonna give George R.R. sticker. George R.R. sticker. George R.R. put it on your George. Okay. He would love it. I bet he would love it. I think he's gonna love it. I like that you're using the secret right now on me. He's gonna love it, because he's gonna get it from us. I'm using a very, this is a very future tense, not conditional. You know, I saw one of my favorite bands a while back, and literally I was on the streets of Lansing,

and a friend that was with me was like, dude, the lead singer's right there. And I was like, no he's not, and I turned around, and he was right there on the streets of the city I was on the streets of Lansing and a friend that was with me was like dude the lead singer is right there and I was like no he's not and I turned around and he was right there on the streets of the city I was living in and I was like oh my god he's like and he like smiled and took a picture of me and chatted with me for a second and it was just mind-blowing so anything's possible you know like maybe we're gonna go outside and George is just gonna be there ready for us it could happen it could definitely happen weird stuff's happened now that we started off with a happy positive note we want to dive into a couple emails and tweets and different things from the week and we did get an itunes review that uh we

of course are not too impart we're not too partial to read this itunes review and we think it'd be nice to talk about it so we want want to talk about the Barristan thing. We got a review from someone on iTunes that said mostly good three out of five stars. And they said that they have heard us on other casts and found us to be insightful and that our treatment of Ned was refreshing as Ned bashing generally tends to be shallow and wearying. However,

the treatment of Barristan Selmy was horrifying. If you're an older person or care about older people, you might want to skip that one. Yeah, I appreciated the measured way it was delivered, and I wanted us to bring it up because I want to take this sort of criticism to heart. You know, we don't want to necessarily like isolate anyone or make them feel that way. And I can see how what we said could come off that way. And that's absolutely not what we intended. But I can definitely see how, you know, some of the joshing that we did has that effect. I don't know. I guess maybe we can come off a bit ageist, which that could also have to do with Barristan being, you know, 50 years older than us almost.

But when I jokingly groan, oh my God, he's going to die. It isn't just because he is old. It's more over the telegraph of his character, right? It's where his character arc is heading in the books. And it's not just because of the show or because of his age. Heroes and legends die like everyone dies. And while Barristan isn't necessarily like inherently bad, he supports a system that is and his wanting to fix it comes

too little too late. And the way that his plot is heading because of that is not exactly toward living to an immortal life. So I do see what you're saying. I can understand where we can come off that way, but none of us hate our grandpas and we do love Barristan as we actually kind of pointed to one of our good buddies. Shakespeare of Thrones had said it a lot better than we did that, you know, Barristan is just someone very set in his ways and he's unfortunately not going to have the time to change his ways more than he possibly can in these books. We don't think that he doesn't have time because of his age or because of the way that his storyline is written. The same way that we know from the books that Myrcella and Tommen don't have very much time to change who they are.

Like, different kind of characters, right? Ramsay and Euron. I don't know about Euron. We don't know what's going on with him. But Ramsay, Ramsay's not gonna have time to change his ways. Like, that's the whole point of his character. And he's going to likely be overthrown. It's like how Quentin isn't still alive. Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah, I just wanted to acknowledge what this person said, give that it's space, and have a conversation

about that. We did get a great comment from Emily A. on iTunes, which I believe is Emily, a bong of ice and fire, Emily. I haven't used my iTunes account in years, and I went through Apple's password recovery and waited 24 hours to be here

because Chloe and Eliana deserve all the stars and they are insightful and intelligent and they probably never forget their passwords. Emily, you're very sweet. That's so untrue. Literally, we forget not only our passwords, but Girls Gone Canon passwords every day. There's always a password request in the email.

I've resetted my password on many things every time every week every day yeah next thing i know i'm trying to reset it to whatever it used to be i'm like why didn't anyone or whatever you can't change your password to this because your password's already this and you're like that's what i wrote so that's frustrating the struggle is truly real. We live such small and fragile lives. We also got an email, which of course if you haven't before,

feel free to go ahead and email us at girlsgonecanon at gmail.com We've gotten hate mail, we've gotten love mail, we've gotten just wanna chat mail. We've gotten memes. We like memes. We like it all, man. So send us an email we did get an email from alana who says hey first off thanks for the cast i look forward to it every week

especially now that you're on sansa chapters because she and aria are the best starks who deserve the happiest of endings true now my real question in the past you guys argued the fact that janos is beheaded by john is basically insignificant in regards to the Sansa-John relationship. In the most literal sense of the word. I'm not some John's a fangirl by any means. Because it wasn't intended by George R.R. Martin. Whoa, Eliana said that, not me. My question is, how do you feel about the idea of the death of the author in literary criticism?

As in, the text is all that matters i'm certain that many nice catches in addition to more out there theories are completely unintended by george for example parallels between net and baristan arianne and sansa good queen alisane and any positively framed potential female ruler for the reason creators have a certain set of interests that pop up again and again in their work without necessarily intending it to be the case but this doesn't necessarily diminish the niceness of those catches to put it more succinctly how does george's authorial intent actually matter when reading a song of ice and fire in your opinion i do want to comment i personally do think that there is some sort of intention behind it i don't think it means foreshadowing by any means, but I did think that George did intend to say, hey, you know, somebody should kill Janos Slynt. And Jon was

like, hey, I'm going to kill Janos Slynt. But of course, I will let you go on, Eliana, because I know you have tons to say about the death of the author right now. Yes. So, yeah, I'm very much familiar with the idea of the death of the author. And to take that idea a little further, you know, the school of new criticism, right, where they say that all that matters is the useful for literary analysis, for literary criticism, as you point out, Alana. And a great example of what this looks like is, I'm going to just plug my friends because this is my podcast and I can fucking do that. Shakespeare of Thrones just put out an essay, a a spoopy essay because when we're recording this it is still october um that talks about how these this idea of witches um especially drawing upon that the the way that they're portrayed in macbeth comes through in a song of ice and fire and how what the effect of evoking witchy archetypes has on the reader and i think that

this is very great for understanding what a piece of literature does right it it relies on the work as a self-contained piece everything is there as well as how it reacts to other things in literature but the fact of the matter is that you know a song of ice and fire is unfinished as we remembered when i woke up from my dream everything is not in there like it is not a self-contained story at the moment it's not done and also george keeps creating all this other stuff the extra textual stuff and theory crafting is not the same as literary analysis slash criticism. While like theorycrafting can definitely rely on literary analysis and draw on it, might contain it like to a heavy amount, the point of the theory is not to dissect what a work is doing as a piece of art,

but it's to try and discern what's going to happen next in the story, what the author is going to write next. And because of that authorial intent does matter, especially because George writes in a way that is very much intentional about that foreshadowing, which is good storytelling on his part. It's good structuring. Otherwise, you would end up with a lot of things and people being like, oh, that's a deus ex machina. And, you know, he has his threefold reveal structure, which his editor Anne Grohl talks about, and it's central to his writing strategy. And like, while new criticism has its place, I think we would be absolutely remiss to talk about George as an author without talking about things like his threefold reveal, same as it would be, in my opinion, incomplete to talk about Hemingway without discussing things

like his iceberg ethos, where he's talking about how like readers see a little bit of things on the surface and that a lot of writing is about intimating what's actually underneath the surface and what's actually happening so yeah I'm a big fan of the death of the author but I just don't think it works when that writer still very much actively like cultivates this culture of theory crafting and that includes his own word of the things that he says as well as again those extra textual sources and you know this entire culture of like people trying to discern where the story is going like you just have to take the writer's word for it a lot of it does also comment on like when the author says hey i actually didn't even think about it which of course in this exact

instance which is just our example given george doesn't say you know he didn't think about it he didn't think about john using a sword to cut off his head he just figured yeah john should kill jano slint you know he didn't think about the implications of that and didn't think about him using a sword. So you definitely, especially with George, I mean, he'll say no flat out to some questions and some answers. But when he does things like in So Spake Martins, he'll say things like, keep reading, dot, dot, dot.

You know that he's playing on it and he's encouraging that culture as you kind of mentioned i agree with you like even though it might not pretend like john's as a relationship like what you're saying is that it shows if you read the text as literature what it's showing there is that john is a hero right by whatever sansa's standards are by the songs by what our values are for what goodness is, regardless of what George says. And again, this is about the difference between theory and what a text is doing. Because an author can say one thing, but their text can very much be conveying something else. Like, Ray Bradbury would say that Fahrenheit 451 was not about censorship.

Like, you read that book and you're like, you might not have meant it to be about that but your book's about fucking censorship sometimes it just is what it is in the story however like you said george does cultivate this culture right he feeds into it i mean westeros.org the citadel all the so Spake Martins. I've sat there for hours and read through them. There's so much extra side info. George has built up this whole world in his head. So especially during this long night that we're currently in.

Of course, we all are doing the same. Yeah. It's just his story that he gets to build primarily. We just live. It's his world. We're living in it. We live in the eye of a giant named Macumber RR. Oh my gosh. On the back of two big turtles.

We live on the back of two big turtles. Or two big discs. Those are two fantasy get it? Over two references. Anyways. So of course, on to our giant and long what we missed lightning round ugh

a whole storm again oh my god a whole storm of chapters Catlin 4 while praying to the seven Catlin realizes that her husband and John Aaron died for the truth that her son witnessed Circe's incest

also Jamie, Jamie was part of this too. Cat fails to convince him to call a great council right before Renly, you know, fails to keep living. Brienne! Brienne though gets framed as his killer and then escapes with Lady

Catelyn. What a thrilling chapter. I can't wait. John IV. Jaor and company reach the fist Catelyn. What a thrilling chapter. I can't wait. John IV. Jaor and company reach the fist of the First Men, and Ghost joins the party for the first time. Ghost leads John to find some dragonglass, not to be confused with

dragon ass. That's in a couple chapters? No, that didn't work. That's in Shrek. Bran V. Robb is victorious, and that's in Shrek Bran 5 Robb is victorious and Stevan Frey dies Jojen Reed's prophecy was true

and his next bound to be as well the sea flowing over the walls of Winterfell of course the adults ignore Bran's warning didn't see that coming stupid grown ups Of course, the adults ignore Bran's warning. Didn't see that coming. Stupid grown-ups.

In Tyrion 8, Tyrion thinks Joffrey should take Renly's sloppy seconds, and Cersei reluctantly agrees to it. Littlefinger offers to broker the deal with the hopes of a reward at the end. Theon 3 Victory comes easy at the stony shore to the ironborn But Theon's ambitions and his desire to please his father Calls him to write a new plan Arya 8 Arya gives her last name to Jaqen H'ghar But begins to regret the first two that she named

Catelyn 5 Little cat comes home to Riverrun, and despite Robb's victories, has to face her father's failing health. Daenerys III. Daenerys finds that help is not easily offered in Qarth. Tyrion IX. The royal court sends Myrcella off to Dorne at the docks of King's Landing, but afterwards a riot ensues.

Jon V. Some of Jon's brothers return from ranging. Dissent grows in the ranks. Corrin chooses Jon as one of his rangers for a special mission. Tyrion X. After Storm's End falls, Stannis plans to bring war to King's Landing, and Lancel attempts to smuggle Tommen to safety with House Rosby before Tyrion puts a stop to it.

Catelyn 6. Cat thinks on how she's always done her duty. The Starks are winning the war, but Catelyn feels a great loss is to come. Bran six, Jojen's dreams come true. The sea comes to Winterfell, and Bran has to make lordly decisions in an attempt to protect his people. Arya nine, Jaqen H'ghar leaves Arya his coin after finishing her kills. Arya takes on a new identity as a cupbearer for Lord Bolton, Nan. Daenerys IV. Daenerys trips balls in the House of the Undying. In Tyrion XI, Boros Butz rots in the dungeons of House Rosby for failing to protect Tommen at Jaqulyn Bywater's men taking him for Tyrion. Tyrion sends Bronn and his clansmen off to prep for the battle. Tyrion's

wildfire is ready to deploy. Theon IV, the new Prince of Winterfell, finds that his captives have gone missing and takes advice from a servant, Reek, on how to diplomatically handle the situation. In John 6, the only exciting part of John in A Clash of Kings,

John meets a wildling woman who is kissed by fire and destined to change his life. We also learn the tale of Bail the Bard, and John gives the gift of mercy. And that brings us finally to the son's chapter oh my god 10 years later i know i was like leafing through my book on the bus i was like where the hell is this chapter um sansa four in a clash of kings love is poison a sweet poison yes but it will kill you all the same sansa's visit to the godswood

yields her more information from danto's hollard but it still gets her no eta on an escape plan she and sandra clegane collide once more this time on a rooftop not a safe place to collide and she awakens the next morning after a nightmare to a rather nasty surprise. Her womanhood. Insane. Every day. The sky is thick and black with smoke. I love that first opening passage that we get, all the descriptors, the red keep tasting of ashes. This is, of course, because Tyrion had his clansmen raid and ambush Stannis' baggage trains, so Tyrion sent his own

wildlings to also burn everything down on the inside so Stannis' horses would have no food as he burned things on the outside. I love all the fire and smoke imagery in this book. Of course, it all is leading up to Stannis, right? He's set up as a solid player in a clash of kings, arguably the largest antagonist of all of the main point of view characters and the black water is of course arguably the event in this book as well that's why we infrequently get sansa chapters in the beginning of the book they're not all pushed together there they're building up and spread out so that in the last little bit of this of this book we can build up to this 136 hour episode of black water yep that's what we're gonna do and yes but both of these chapters just have such great sensory

imagery and i also wonder to what extent like this all this like fire and smoke imagery is what we should expect when daenerys gets the King's Landing. Yes, I love that. It's building the mood. It's building the anticipation. Everything is smoldering, too. It reminds me of a line from an Arianne sample chapter in the Winds of Winter that we talk about in our Patreon Winds of Winter episode for Arianne, where the air is discussed as

being very green, right? The very air is green. It reminds me a lot of that imagery as well. Sansa meets Dantos in the godswood, and he asks her if she's been crying. She has, but she says it's because of the smoke. Dantos leans against a chestnut tree because he's really drunk.

He's as drunk as can be. He has this wine stain going down his tunic. Sansa's Florian is a drunk, but I mean, he's all that she has. It's a little unfair, right? Because Arya got Syrio and Sansa gets drunk, abusive, old fat people, right? Like Beric and the faceless men and the mummers and and like it sounds like it's dantos and us we're also drunk yes we are we the reader are dantos we're dantos um dantos has learned that a lot of things actually as a fool and he talks about how being a fool means that everyone just talks about things like

he's not there and it's a great parallel of course to how people think sansa's stupid dantos tells sansa that stanis has burnt the godswood when he took storm's end offering it to relore and that he's heard that stanis has vowed to burn the Sept of Baelor if he takes the city, allegedly. And the rumors are, right, that Melisandre is ruling Stannis' body and soul. And, you know, he's going to burn all the things, which may or may not be true. And, like, of course, this comes later on in the story. But I find this to be very reminiscent of the discussion that we had regarding the rumors that Quentyn hears about Dany, that we had regarding the rumors that Quentin hears about Dany, about how she's like this horrible queen who like sacrifices people and things like that. And it's a lot of that people

are sensationalizing the enemy. Yeah, we get a lot of that in the last couple chapters when Joffrey calls the Starks and their wolves unnatural with the rumors of Rob skin changing in battle, right, and becoming a wolf. But even more so, we get this in Arya 13, A Storm of Swords, when the Lannister soldiers tell Arya and Sandor about Sansa killing the king. I forgot. You've been hiding under a rock. The northern girl, Winterfell's daughter. We heard she killed the king with a spell and afterward changed into a wolf with big leather wings like a bat and flew out a tower window, but she left the dwarf behind and Cersei means to have his head. It harkens back to that same idea when we talked about Shira Seastar bathing in blood and Danielle Lothston and other witches in the story, right? Redhead witches especially.

For sure. And Sansa hopes that Stannis does burn the Great Sept of Baelor, she thinks. When Sansa had first beheld the Great Sept with its marble walls and seven crystal towers, she thought it was the most beautiful building in the world, but that had been before Joffrey beheaded her father on its steps. I want it burned. Again, this follows that train of thought last chapter of casting aside the pageantry of the Seven after losing her father at the Sept and wondering how the gods could allow any of this pain. Dantos hushes her. He says the gods will hear her, and she doesn't think they will. They haven't before. Dantos argues the gods sent her him, so they've at least heard her, but Sansa's growing impatient with his drunk old man, right? His promises are growing old. He claims he has a

connection that will get her out of King's Landing, but Sansa says this isn't fast enough. The times now, they've forgotten me. Of course, we know Dantos' friend now. I think this is one of the better mysteries that the story pulls off at first, right? When Littlefinger is off with the Tyrells, it's a distraction. He's nowhere to be found in sight. You don't know who this friend is that Dantos has until you do. I'm also kind of a dingus. And, you know, I was reading this very quickly, right? The first time. And I don't really think I caught on to or cared that Dantos was like,

yeah, I got a friend. I'm like, yeah, of course. Like he has friends. And again, you didn't take him same as everyone else. I'm as a fool. Dantos fooled Aliana too. Damn. I'm so

glad I've seen it. Dantos says the castle is more heavily guarded than ever before. That now is not the time. Now is not the time, Chloe. It was the time, though. Tyrion's closed off the Blackwater Rush.

Only the King's War galleys are seen in the Blackwater Rush at this moment they row up and down and throw arrows all cash at Stannis' archers that are set up at the south shore Stannis is still on the march though for King's Landing, his vanguard had appeared

two nights ago, and King's Landing woke up to tents and banners in the morning. 5,000, near as many as the gold cloaks. There are Fossaways, red and green. There are the Eastermont Turtles, a favorite, of course, for George, I'm sure. There are the Fox and Flowers of Florent, and there's even Geyerd Morrigan, who's now called Geyerd the Green. Renly originally had Geyerd in his camp, but when Geyerd requested to lead the vanguard, Renly wouldn't let him. He had Loras Tyrell lead it, of course. So Geyerd Morrigan defected to someone who would give him that spot after he died. He deflected to Stannis. Geyerd Morrig Morgan's standard was a crow in flight, black on storm green, which is very much like Blackwater, right, with the black and the green of the wildfire.

It's also very Davos with his sigil from the Blackwater. And of course, you also have Stannis' new sigil up there. It's a pale yellow banner with a burning heart of the Lord of Light. Spoopy. yellow banner with a burning heart of the lord of light sansa says that the rumors around the city are stannis has 10 times as many men as joffrey does dantos doesn't exactly think it matters because stannis can't crops without ships but sansa's like dude he has ships like more than joffrey like anyone has more ships than joffrey dude so dantos explains strategically Stannis would have to come all the way up Massey's Hook, through the gullet, and cross the Blackwater Bay,

and which, okay, but that's literally what he's doing. Like, that's what this whole entire battle's about. Anyways, okay, Dantos, you freaking drunk idiot. Dantos begs Sansa to have faith in him, that his friend will get them out of the city eventually and they'll have their ship it's like a boat but yeah and I just want to unpack all of this for a second

because like A of course it's very fun that we're getting all this exposition in Sansa's chapters and not Tyrion's because you know Tyrion's actually part of the battle and has been like coming up with all these plans and B it confirms that sansa knows to an extent a lot of what florian is telling her like she but she's just impatient because of very obvious reasons as we went over in the previous episode right she knows that stannis has 10 times as many forces like she confirms it every time like dantas is like well we can't

because of this and she's like yeah i know that and sansa's keeping up with the news and i think it's worth considering that like you know as you pointed out aria and john i'm gonna just throw john in here too like they have many mentors positive mentors in their lives or at least useful ones and sansa just like learns from people who aren't looking out for her at all they're all drunk so they're not really like great mentors but they're kind of teachers, not really. But she gets the very unlikely lessons from them, or she learns from them to some extent. Like, Sansa is kind of learning war and military strategy from Dantos, who is a shitty knight. But he is a knight, so he knows some things, and he has some knowledge, and that's what's going on in the scene.

Like, Sansa's, like, putting forth this idea that has some merit and then dantes dissects it but of course as we know part of it is just that like little fingers plan actually isn't ready that's like really why they can't leave but sansa's not entirely wrong they probably could escape if they really wanted to yeah absolutely and to an extent it's just like when you work out and you're training your weakest muscle, right? Sansa is training her weakest muscle by working with these people and learning what's right and what's wrong. Have faith in your Florian. Try not to be afraid, Danto says to her, which like. No, thanks. Chloe and I are making faces.

I'm not even like I don't even have the capacity to energize making a face. I'm just like, why? Like, he's the worst. He's just a drunk old piece of shit that it's like you're having your second chance and you're not doing anything with it, dude. This is when you're supposed to be taking your second chance. Do not throw away your shot, Dantos. So I don't know. He's also being misguided, of course, by Littlefinger,

but he's in it for the gold, we learned. So, whatever. He's misguided. He's learned that, you know. The gods aren't good. The gods aren't good, and as opposed to the squeaky wheel gets the oil or whatever, it's that the nail that sticks out gets the hammer,

because that's what happened when his entire family died. Sansa digs her nails into her palm, thinking of the day of the riots and the nightmares she has had ever since. This is some crazy, like, traumatic dreams and thoughts, right,

from a 12-year-old. Sansa thinks about the riots in her dreams and in real life she struggles for breath she can hear people screaming at her without words and she thinks of them like animals which of course I can see that happening especially after the description of the riot that we get but it does remind me a bit of Quentin's roaches especially when she starts to think of how, you know, like, I had done nothing. Like, why did they hate me? Those people hated me. Yeah, and this does happen later, that roach sort of language. In the next chapter, when Sansa,

she thinks that the soldiers are kind of like ants as they are climbing the wall. But I kind of think that's supposed to be a little more dignified i mean ants are pretty strong and i really liked a bug's life and ants is like okay oh my god i also think like maybe that's to show perspective like on a scale was maybe the more important in the next chapter but yes bug lives matter i agree in the actual riot sansa thinks they had hemmed her in and thrown filth at her and tried to pull her off her horse and would have done worse if the hound had not cut his way to her side they had torn the high sept into pieces and smashed in sir aaron's head with a rock try not to be afraid he said just when they're like yeah he goes try not to be afraid, he said. Just when they're like, yeah. He goes, try not to be afraid. Oh, okay.

Great. That worked. Yeah, that worked real well for you, dude. And of course, Sansa thinks about how the city is afraid. People are hiding. Small folk are barring their doors. And the last time that King's Landing fell, what happened was the Lannisters, they looted and raped their way through the city, putting hundreds to the sword, even though the city had not fought back, they opened their gates.

Right, this is further illustrating how not normal in Westerosi society it is, how Westeros has these social norms and these kind of like social contracts that really lays the foundation for the setup for the Red Wedding being such a big betrayal in the next book. And you can see that sort of Lannister mentality, right? The Lannisters are expecting the worst because they expect Stannis to be as bad as they are. This time, the imp meant to fight, and a city that fought could expect no mercy at all, says the chapter. And Danto says that he would have to fight if he were still a knight, and how he really ought to thank Joffrey for making him a fool now. And of course, a voice echoes in Sansa's head. There are no true knights.

Sansa speaks back sharply to him, right? Like she's like, you're an idiot. That would be an awful plan. Why would you even think about doing that? Thanking him. He'll just like make you a knight again and make you go fight or you'll die. Dantos tells her that she's clever, creepily calling her Jonquil. I wish he would stop. And Sansa kind of blandly replies, Joffrey and Cersei say I'm stupid. And then Danto starts drunk rambling at her about how it's always better that way because people won't suspect you. Yeah, and he's not wrong, but it's also funny because, you know, later we find out in the books that turns out Cersei is the opposite of Sansa. Like she keeps, she's convinced Sansa to think that Sansa is stupid, but turns out Sansa actually isn't,

and Cersei thinks that she's not stupid. She thinks she's very smart, but turns out she's dumb. Yeah, it really goes on to show more of the contrast between Sansa being the good fair queen and Cersei is the bad evil queen that has her subjects and people fear her. And then Dantos, he grossly drunk burps which is a mood and Chloe edits all of mine out

and then Dantos tries to kiss Sansa and then she's like no and softly kisses him on the cheek and bids him goodnight taking her leave trying not to cry get a job Dantos

he actually really doesn't yeah like he's just like her leave, trying not to cry. Get a job, Dontos. He actually really doesn't. Yeah, like he's just like flipping flipping tricks in the Great Hall, you know, literally to stay alive. He's sleeping on Littlefinger's couch. Dude. Oh, what a bad look. Get a job,

both of you. Like we need to just go put some freaking, send a raven and drop off a newspaper with some ads in it because they need jobs. Mm-hmm. Sansa walks the drawbridge to Maegor's Holdfast. It's unguarded. The gold cloaks guard the city walls. The Kingsguard are off performing their duties to the city in Joffrey.

So Sansa has an open map scenario in the game right now, right? But she, of course, has nowhere to go whatsoever. Like, it doesn't really matter that she could. Where would she go? Everything's blocked off. The Blackwater Rush, the walls, the gates. She walks the moat, the spikes. She goes up the turnpike, but once she reaches her room, she just, she can't stand it.

She feels trapped, even opening the door to it. So she continues to climb the stairs. She watches the smoky sky and shadows and she can see the whole city from up there. She sees the catapults. She sees cinders and fires and soldiers. She's frozen with fear at the rail and a stab goes through her. She almost falls, but of course she's caught by none other than Sandor Clegane. Okay, I'm going to throw this out there.

Yes. Yes, having premenstrual cramps is painful, but I would not describe it like a stab. No, me either. It's like a grab and like a twist. Yeah, it's like a constricting. Yeah, but George doesn't know that. Okay, I just wanted everyone to know in case you didn't. It's okay a constricting. Yeah, but George doesn't know that. Okay, I just wanted everyone to know, in case you didn't. It's okay, George.

We forgive you. Some of you do know. Some of you don't. Yeah, absolutely. Having your period sucks, absolutely, but it doesn't really often feel like a stab. Sandor studies Sansa, and he grasps her tightly, enough to cause her further discomfort. Which, kind of weird. He's almost always around, catching her when she almost jumps off a building

on accident or on purpose, right? Like the tension, the terror. And it's also kind of a weird other suicidal Sansa moment, whether or not she means to jump in this kind of section. Sandor asks her if she thinks she has wings or if she means to end up like her brother Bran, which is like, OK, obviously, as we're going to talk about more, Sandor doesn't know how to emote and he's a little aggressive and harsh, not a really good approach, right? Like he could be a little, you know, he could reel it in a little, but it's like a lot. But he's like angrily

protecting this girl at every turn, right? Like he's mad at her for not being smarter than she is, which she's, as we see, she's doing great. But to him, it's like, you're never going to survive this place. You need to survive, kid. Yeah, maybe if he were more sober, he would know. I don't know. Sansa bravely tells Sander that he startled her, that's all, and then he counters, no, I scared you. I still scare you.

And Sander then lets go of her, then he's ranting at her that, you know, Sansa was glad enough to see his face when he saved her from the mob, but, like, you can't even look at me after that, and it's like, I'm gonna put in my commentary here for a second yeah but i don't know that makes perfect sense right

yeah it's a little like harsh like i don't know if i want to look at his face either when i'm alone on like a rooftop chilling it when i'm alone on a rooftop, you're drunk and you're like always grabbing me very, very angrily. And I'm like, it has nothing to do with everything else. It's because you're being mean to me. Also, like she's already been grabbed at by one drunk guy tonight. She's she's good, fam. She's like, I'm good.

Exactly. It's it's she's like, oh, this this almost happened to me. Anyway, Sansa remembers the howling of the crowd and the blood running down her face where Stone hit her and the man's garlic breath who pulled her from her horse. She's thinking about the nightmare she just had and she's listening to Sandor rant at her. She thinks something really interesting. I love breaking this apart. After I read it, I was like, whoa. She could still feel the cruel pinch of fingers on her wrist as she lost her balance and began to fall. So right in this moment, you're of course thinking that she's talking about Sandor grabbing her wrist, right? But then there's a paragraph break and George has written, she thought she

was going to die then, but the fingers had twitched all five at once and the man had shrieked loud as a horse. When his hand fell away, another hand stronger shoved her back into her saddle. So right before that beat, before that paragraph break, we get a pause that's meant to misguide us when we enter the next paragraph. Because yes, Sandor is cruel in his actions towards Sansa and not exactly the best at emoting, but we are purposefully misguided in this moment to think she's feeling his fingers pinching her as she fell a few moments ago. But the sharp stab and period pain that she describes feeling in her belly and the pinching of the fingers is actually from the man that tried to pull her off her horse in her thoughts.

I think it's just interesting language and interesting how George writes around Sandor, and it puts us in the confusion of Sansa's head and the trauma she's enduring right now. Yeah, that's a great point, and it's one of those really great George fakeouts, and as you said, a great way of evoking that confusion. There were more people in the crowd, and some had clubs, and then Sandor leaps at them. He's like slicing and dicing like a blender

in a blur of steel. And Sansa remembers that the group breaks before him, and then Sandor laughed, his terrible burnt face transformed for a moment. So of course, Sansa has met the man beneath moment so of course sanza has met the man beneath the mask right she has met the beast and when sandor is killing he's feeding into that broken man role that we hear in septon marabold's speeches to brienne who of course is almost

certainly talking about sandor in that moment sanza makes herself look Sandor in the eye because of course a dog will die for you but never lie to you and he'll look her in the eye and she forces herself to extend her courtesies to him. She thinks on how the scars aren't even the worst part of Sandor. It's not his twitching mouth either. It's his anger-filled eyes. And Sansa is very good at perceiving what's behind people's eyes and understanding who they are behind that, like how she thinks about the fact that Littlefinger's eyes never smile even though the rest of his face is. Sansa then thanks Sandor for saving her, but then Sandor's super harsh and mean because

he's a tsundere, and then tells her that a dog doesn't need courage to chase off rats, which like, that's some of that roach language. Sansa speaks truly and frankly to him, and she has another brave moment. She hated the way he talked, always so harsh and angry. Does it give you joy to scare people? No, it gives me joy to kill people. His mouth twitched. Wrinkle up your face all you like, but spare me this false piety. You were a high lord's get. Don't tell me Lord Eddard Stark of Winterfell never killed a man. And he's right on that.

Eddard did kill people, which Sansa knows, but she's right in her next line. That was his duty. He never liked it. And we know that what Sansa is saying is true because we straight up had Ned's point of view chapters for a while. And we see

that it doesn't bring him joy. He doesn't linger on it. He doesn't relish it. He doesn't really talk about it. And he can't even stand it to the point that he's like, I can't even deal with killing this dog right now. And Sandor's a great character, but he's kind of being a total edgelord. Oh, yeah. In this entire scene. And absolutely. And this is really him covering up those feelings, right? Because everything that he says in his next speech to Sansa is something that at the time it sounds like he's being ferocious and hard and mean. But in a way, it's really the mask. This is the mask of the hound that goes right over this personality.

He tells her killing is the sweetest thing there ever was. And he gives her a speech on how men in the end are just that, men. Which of course we know, until they break. Just as if I was one of those true knights you love so well, yes. What do you think a knight's for, girl? You think it's all just taking favors from ladies and looking fine in gold plate? Knights are for killing. He laid the edge of his longsword against her neck, just under her ear. Sansa could feel the sharpness of the steel. I killed my first man at twelve. I've lost count of how many I've killed since then. High lords with old names, fat rich men dressed in velvet, knights puffed up like

bladders with their honors, yes, and women and children too. They're all meat, and I'm the butcher. yes, and woman and children, too. They're all meat, and I'm the butcher. Let them have their lands and their gods and their gold. Let them have their sirs. Sandra Clegane spat at her feet to show what he thought of that. So long as I have this, he said, lifting the sword from her throat, there's no man on earth I need fear. Except your brother, Sansa thought, but she had better sense than to say it aloud. He is a dog, just as he says, a half-wild, mean-tempered dog that bites any hand that tries to pet him, and yet will savage any man who tries to hurt his masters. Chloe has sad feelings in the notes when Sander talks about killing his first man at the age of 12.

Okay, how old was Sansa at the purple wedding did sansa also kill her first man at the age of 12 in a way yeah she's 13 around then though she does just turn 13 but in a way yes absolutely that is sansa's first kill even if if, you know, completely not voluntary and not direct. Yeah, Arya, obviously, much younger. She's doing Arya things. And we do see that that messes up a person. I mean, Sandor says these things, you know, like, I'm a killer, and I don't need land. I don't need family. I don't need people. I'm for killing. I like killing. I don't need gold plate. I killed my first man when I was 12. But as we know, that's not normal. That's not right. These feelings aren't right. Like you should have fear. Like you aren't a butcher. You're a human, right? You're not a robot.

You're a broken man. And he learns, I think, a lot of that as much through Arya as he does through Sansa. Oh yeah. those two do a number on him sander then goes on to talk about how cowards fight with fire so then sansa asks what are you gonna do when stanis gets here fight kill die maybe aren't you afraid the gods might send you down to some terrible hell for all the evil you've done? What evil? He laughed. What gods? The gods who made us all. All? He mocked. Tell me, little bird, what kind of god makes a monster like the imp or a half-wit like Lady Tonda's daughter? If there are gods, they made sheep so wolves could eat mutton, and they made the weak for the strong to play with. True knights protect the weak, he snorted.

There are no true knights, no more than there are gods. If you can't protect yourself, die and get out of the way of those who can. Sharp steel and strong arms rule this world. Don't ever believe any different. Sansa backed away from him. You're awful. I'm honest. It's the world that's awful.

Now fly away, little bird. I'm sick of you peeping at me. Wordless, she fled. She was afraid of Sander Clegane, and yet some part of her wished that Ser Donctos had a little of the hound's ferocity. There are gods, she told herself, and there are true knights, too. All the stories can't be lies.

Baby girl. I know. Not all the stories are lies. Yeah queens ellie sanza there are some there's some truth in all of them that's why people love them right right and there are uh we don't know that there are gods there's something adjacent right there's magics yeah there's hashtag magic sanza dreams of the riot once more that night. She's unable to escape it. The mob surrounds her like a beast with ten faces.

She wept and told them she had never done them hurt, yet they dragged her from her horse all the same. This, of course, contrasts very strongly Cersei's walk of shame when she sees the faces of those she has wronged in A Dance with Dragons Cersei too. The queen began to see familiar faces. A bald man with bushy side whiskers frowned down from a window with her father's frown and for an instant looked so much like Lord Tywin that she stumbled. A young girl sat beneath a fountain, drenched in spray, and stared at her with Melara Heatherspoon's accusing eyes she saw ned stark

and beside him little sansa with her auburn hair and a shaggy gray dog that might have been her wolf i think that's a great connection between the two especially as you were talking about earlier they are pretty much a mirror in some ways from one another yeah i mean cersei looks at her mirror on the wall every day and is like who who's the younger, more beautiful queen of them all? And then she's like, Sansa's dark. She really can't even tell. There's like a bazillion.

There's 20. Especially on the inside. Sansa shouts for anyone that could help her in her dreams, and no one answers. No knight or warrior from the songs or from real life. Then someone hits her in the belly and shatters her teeth and she sees a glimmer of steel that bites into her until there was nothing left.

And it's awful because this actually, like, in many ways kind of happens to her. And then you're like, oh, she's just having nightmares about the abuse that she's constantly enduring. But then... But then it gets worse. She wakes up and it's puberty! She's having her moon blood and so of course she

panics uh she rips off her clothes her blankets everything and then she falls to the floor bleeding and afraid then she washes herself in her basin and then realizes wait my maidservants are gonna know because they're gonna see that the water's pink and then she remembers like oh shit my bed clothes and then she rushes and finds red horror in her bed and she thinks she couldn't let them see or they marry her to joffrey and make her lay with him oh sansa yeah i mean i didn't have to deal with this when i got my first period my first period was bad it was when i was babysitting actually but i mean this is horrifying like this is a bloody horror she snatches up her knife and she immediately goes into panic mode and she's tearing and ripping

her sheet she cuts a hole in it she pulls back the stained blanket and she's just like sobbing now she drenches her comforters and oil from her lamp and decides this is it i have to set it all on fire like i gotta burn this to a tinder because there's nothing else I can hide this. And as she starts to light it, she realized that she stained her mattress too. So she bundles it all up. It's hard to move. It's bigger than she is. She only gets about half of it in her fireplace and her room fills with thick gray smoke. Her maids find her. Honestly, I'm impressed that she got half. I'm amazed too. I mean, she just went like Hulk on it because she was just filled with all this energy. How big is this fireplace?

Like, I'm just impressed. Yeah, it's the red keeps on. That's true. Welcome to MTV Cribs. Very, very red at this moment. Very red. In the end, it took three of them to pull her away, and it was all for nothing. The bedclothes were burnt, but by the time they carried her off, her thighs were bloody again.

It was as if her own body had betrayed her to Joffrey, unfurling a banner of Lannister crimson for all the world to see. To be honest, puberty is a lot like feeling like your own body has betrayed you. It's true. Her mates are just so confused. They're like, why is she acting this way but there's so much more that's like laced into sansa's flowering than there is when people normally get their period right now she has to marry her father's killer yeah it's fucked up shit eventually after they quell

the smoke sansa ends up getting a bath and a clean cloth for between her legs, which like, wow, like, I wonder if they tax that. It's on tax now in DC. Oh, fuck you. One of the maids brings her a green woolen dress to wear since she ruined her entire wardrobe and, you know, Sansa likes wearing green dresses.

Her shoes, though, were not burnt, thankfully, so she's forced to trudge along to the queen. Circe breaks her fast and Sansa feels super queasy at the sight and smell. And Circe says, I don't blame you. Between Tyrion and Lord Stannis, everything I eat tastes of ash. And now you're setting fires as well. What did you hope to accomplish? did you hope to accomplish? I think it's really interesting, by the way, that Cersei almost tries to force Sansa into this role in these conversations that she was forced into, right? She tells her, this is how it's gonna be for you. This is just like what I do. Now you're me. Congrats.

Yeah, and that's the difference between, I guess, the maids and Cersei. Cersei's just accepted that this is what it means to be a high-born woman sucks a lot of this language of tasting ash um which even sansa brings up at the beginning of the chapter is reminiscent i think of this line from a clash of kings tyrian 2 i guess no it was uh tyrian fuck it i don't care anymore when he speaks with circe and he says to her because she's brought like alayaya to be beaten, a day will come when you think you are safe and happy and your joy will turn to ashes in your mouth. Especially because we already saw that happen for Sansa. She thought she was safe and happy in Kang's Landing and her dad's head brought those ashes to her mouth. Circe gives Sansa the

most awkward period talk of any kid's life. Like, she's not certified to teach this health class, telling Sansa that, congratulations, you flowered for the first time in your life. Sansa had never felt less flowery. My lady mother told me, but I thought it would be different. Different how? I don't know, less... less messy and more magical. Wait until you birth a child, Sansa. A woman's life is nine parts mess to one part magic. You'll learn that soon enough. Cersei asks Sansa if she knows what this means, and Sansa does.

To her horror, she is fit to bear a child for King Joffrey. We then launch into Cersei's first childbirth story. When he returned, he would present me with some pelts or a stag's head, and I would present him with a baby. Robert went hunting. Jaime stayed. And in some ways, this kind of frames Robert as a coward, which I guess we kind of know he is. Like, in this same book, A of kings the birthing bed the bed of blood is discussed by brienne and cat and they talk about how that's what a woman's battlefield is yeah cersei says that sansa isn't going to find joffrey showing such devotion to her or their children like jamie did though she doesn't exactly say, but she winks about it several times in this chapter. You may never

love the king, but you'll love his children. Sansa, of course, argues weakly that she loves his grace with all her heart, and Cersei calls bullshit. Cersei tells Sansa that she's gonna need to learn some new lies, because Stannis isn't gonna like that one, because I guess everyone's like,

shit, Stannis is gonna win, and I mean, mean honestly sansa could just tell stannis the truth like yeah joffrey fucking sucks i hate him i've been mistreated they beat me like what what i don't know why she needs lies to talk to stannis like yeah i'm so glad that you're here this rocks i mean she's now wrapped up in king's landing though and that's what they do there is they lie i guess i guess yeah sansa says that the septon thinks the gods will reject stannis as joffrey is the rightful king yeah cersei gives a big old smirk at that right she says robert's trueborn son in air because of course that's it. That's the joke. He's not. Like Stannis actually is. A half-smile flickered across the queen's face. Robert's true-born son in air, though Joff would cry whenever Robert picked him up. His grace did not like that. His bastards had always gurgled

at him happily and sucked his finger when he put it in their little base-born mouths. happily, and sucked his finger when he put it in their little base-born mouths. Robert wanted smiles and cheers always, so he went where he found them, to his friends and to his whores. Robert wanted to be loved. My brother Tyrion has the same disease. Do you want to be loved, Sansa? Everyone wants to be loved. I see flowering hasn't made you any brighter, said Cersei.

I see flowering hasn't made you any brighter, said Cersei. Sansa, permit me to share a bit of womanly wisdom with you on this very special day. Love is poison. A sweet poison, yes, but it will kill you all the same. Sansa is more than likely going to survive all of this, and Cersei, statistically speaking, probably a prophecy literally she's gonna die does cersei even know what love is no absolutely not she's a total class a psycho narcissist okay and like like such a narcissist she fucked her brother had kids with him pulled off the whole they're the king's heirs just because she wanted to fuck herself like i'm just saying she never really loved jamie that much she could just love herself

she could just use her hand like everyone else does it's an extension of herself and i do think though so a first of all this whole like thing about love versus i don't know not love is gonna come back in the Blackwater because that's what happens in this storyline. And I do think that Cersei is making quite an astute statement about Tyrion, though. Especially as we see in the Tyrion chapter,

either right before this or right after this, whatever, close to this chapter, he's chastising himself for how he feels anything towards Shae. Oh yeah, absolutely. And with that, we close Sansa 4, and we skip right into a much shorter lightning round for Sansa 5. Sansa 5 is very much a setup chapter with a handful of setup chapters in between.

In Jon 8, Jon learns a commander must know his men from Corrin, and they find Ghost wounded in the snow. Corrin says they must get to the Fist, as the eagle they suspect is a skin changer has seen them. Tyrion XIII. Tyrion and Cersei match wits once more, with Tyrion creating battle plans using Joffrey's men and Cersei dangling his love life in front of him. In Catelyn VII, the loss of her youngest sons leaves Cat in her grief while the camps in Riverrun celebrate their wins. Catelyn 7, the loss of her youngest sons leaves Cat in her grief while the camps in Riverrun celebrate their wins. Catelyn speaks with Jaime Lannister and calls Brienne's sword into play. Theon 5.

Asha arrives in Winterfell but is unable to influence Theon to give up his seat. Theon then sends Reek to find the men to defend the castle. Aw, everything's gonna be great. It's gonna be awesome. Can't wait to read that, cause I love Theon and he's now the Prince of Winterfell forever! Right? Yay! In Sansa Stark 5,

the battle has begun. Sansa finds herself in the royal sept of the Red Keep, praying for Joffrey's failure. She sings with the ladies in the sept, and she finds herself in Maegor's holdfast with the other highborn woman. Everyone, we're here, we did it it we're starting the black water kind of welcome to our 10 hour 72 hour 136 hour episode exactly just kidding it's not really 146 hours it's just 212 212 hours of

black water non-stop filibuster black water forever and just like the previous chapter started off strong i'm just gonna read this entire quote for the beginning because it's like awesome they had been singing in the septal morning since the first report of enemy sales had reached the castle the sound of their voices mingled with the wicker of horses the clank of steel and the groaning hinges of the great bronze gates to make a strange and fearful music and the step they sing for the mother's mercy but on the walls it's the warrior they pray to and all in silence and it's just that's such a well-written opening the noise of battle and juxtaposed with like the silence of the prayers it's it's that calm before yeah it reminds me a lot too of baristan's battle speeches

that we get in his later chapters. Yes. Especially like in those in those winds chapters. Yes. I want this book. Sansa has a very internal theological debate. Joffrey is getting armored for battle. Bright, shiny and empty looking, which reminds us, of course, a lot of Brand's visions and perhaps even Robert

Strong. It doesn't quite have to mean anything, but it does have some fun language, some fun layers. It's also interesting that when we meet Sansa, she starts the story kind of described as a ditz, as an airhead, right? Pretty and shiny and empty herself. But to be fair, she kind of acts like a bit of a preteen love-lorn dititz. Now that the veil is lifted, though, she realized Joffrey is actually the exactitude of that shiny, bright and empty look, right? Absolutely nothing going on in there. Nothing going on in there and his heart, his heart is empty. Oh, yeah. For some reason, everyone's horses are a shade of reddish brown, I guess. And like Joffrey has a blood bay and Tyrion has a red stallion. A blood bay is like a real horse, apparently. Tyrion

is described as wearing battle gear that made him look like a little boy dressed up in his father's clothes. That gives me a little bit of the Cersei and Jaime vibes, right, of wearing clothes when you're a little kid. Identity changes in the such, looking for something, wearing something

he never could have otherwise. Mm- it's a thing amongst the Lannisters interestingly like you also see this very much in the rest of Tyrion's storyline where he's described as like Tywin Ritz small and he's trying so hard to be like his dad and step into his dad's shoes as horrible shoes as they are yeah he also carries a battle axe because i guess this is probably an homage to something because i don't know this is like a fantasy book series mandan moore rides at his side tyrian comes across sansa and is like didn't cersei tell you to go like wait inside of makers hold fast with everyone and sansa's like yeah but i mean joffrey wanted me to come say bye to him

right kiss his sword a little bit oh really so corny Hyrian says that he should have considered sending Sansa away with Tommen but interestingly he cuts off and trails off when he says Sansa should be safe so long as dot dot dot so of course the course, the question is, so long as what? As long as the city doesn't fall? As long as his plot of the chain and pots of fire work? So long as the gods are good? I don't know, man. Blackwater. Blackwater.

It could be anything. We can ask George this at Fire and Blood. What? What's he going to say? He's going to be like, what are you even talking about? Yeah, I've got bigger fish to fry. And by fish, I mean alligators aka lizards. Lizard lines?

Aka in the neck. Anyways. Joffrey calls Sansa over like a dog because of course he does. He's like, Sansa here. And then when she gets there, Joffrey bro-says he's going to beat his uncle. And then he brings out his new sword, Heart Eater. He'd owned a sword

named Lion's Tooth once, Sansa remembered. Arya had taken it from him and thrown it in a river. I hope Stannis does the same with this one. And of course, Arya recalls this in Arya 6, A Storm of Swords, but when she recalls it, she recalls it as his sword being called Lion's Paw. This is something that was actually in an SSM on the Citadel where George said, ah, yes, there's a reason Sansa misremembers things. However, if you look it up, Sansa doesn't misremember the sword. Arya does. Sansa calls it Lion's Tooth in her own point of view. Arya actually says when she's in Harwin's grip, that's a lie.

It was me. I hit Joffrey and threw lion's paw into the river. Micah just ran away like I told him. So, yeah, Sansa actually does remember that sword's name. Must be George had a little slip of the memory there. And that makes me think, obviously, sometimes, you know. Unreliable narrator. Yeah, maybe George is the unreliable narrator we met all along. Joffrey tells her to kiss his sword, and she thinks that she'd kiss any number of swords before Joffrey's.

This is probably in Wendell, I think. Yeah, I don't think she's going to be singing any songs for him, right? Definitely not. He's going to be dead. Sansa thinks that Joffrey isn't ever going to actually be the one to kill Stannis, that one of his kink guard would do it for him. They say my brother Rob always goes where the fighting is thickest, she said recklessly, though he's older than your grace, to be sure, a man grown.

What a sick burn. Worth it. So good. Worth it. Yeah. She gets away with it, more or less. And you can also see Sansa's northern sudden civility is coming out here, like, along with judging how much Joffrey sucks compared to Robb,

because he does as a leader in every possible way. Sansa also, of course, believes to an extent that the man who passes the sentence ought to swing the sword, just as Ned did, which is part of why she's like, sure, Joffrey, I'm so sure you're gonna come back with, like, your uncles. Right, good luck. I would love to see it. I know, it's gonna be your Kingsguard who do it, not you, your Adingas. When everyone leaves to go to war, the yard goes silent. And so much of the story in this chapter is just conveyed through that sound. That's how it's, like, framed up from the beginning, and it creates this really interesting dialogue with the idea that life is not a song, because in some ways it is is it's just not a very good one not a very pretty one

words like violence break the silence come crashing in into my little world no no one just gonna i don't know what they said what it's the pash mode i didn't listen to that song very much i'm sorry it's literally the p Mode. You're literally fired from this podcast. I'm fired. Sansa turns toward the sept, where the singing pulls her in. There's a lot of people in the sept, and interestingly, Sansa likens Stannis to the stranger come to judge them all. Sansa sits between a washerwoman and a knight's son, and they sing a hymn of the seven that

Catelyn once taught her long ago in winterfell gentle mother font of mercy save our sons from war we pray stay the swords and stay the arrows let them know a better day gentle mother strength of women help our daughters through this fray soothe the wrath and tame the fury teach us us all a kinder way. Wait, I just have a... Something just occurred to me right now. Let's play on words, right? Because, well, I think that Catelyn Stark doesn't embody the mother but the father because she's judging

and exacting judgment. But help our daughters through the fray. Fray in a life. Fray in a life. Yes, fray and alive fray and alive yes fray all right in baylor sept there are many people that are crammed in and they're also all here to sing and so because there's so many of them sansa thinks that surely the gods must hear some of them they must hear something and she sings among many different kinds of people again like that wash that washerwoman and knight's son, because both lowborn and high,

if the city falls, are praying, because it's going to suck, and they're all going to be the same in death, or, like, if the gates get stormed. She sings for her family, for the living, for the dead, for the knights, the soldiers, for Dantos, for Maester Luwin,

for Tyrion, and even for Sandor. He is no true knight, but he saved me all the same, she told the mother. Save him if you can, and gentle the rage inside him. Of course, if you're a $5 patron, you can hear more about how this quote relates to Sandor and Sansa's relationship and their identities in our patron-only episode, which we just released October 31st, titled Every Day is Halloween. Of course, to put it in a nutshell, Sandor does get saved by the Seven, and he does have his rage gentled in the Quiet Isle. Yes, it's confirmed. And while everyone's praying for Joffrey's strength for some fucking reason,

Sansa is in fact over here and she's praying for him to be weak and super shitty like he is. And then the sounds of the battle, which are mingled with the singing, create a terrible song. Sansa then runs into Lady Tonda and her daughters. Lawless is sobbing, saying that she doesn't want to cross the drawbridge. And Sansa greets him courteously and tries to offer to help. When Tyrion thinks Sansa would have made Joffrey the best wife, had he the sense to love her, this was a huge moment why. In fact, he doesn't say the best wife, he says the best queen. Sansa acts courteously, even in the face of adversity, uncertainty, and

danger, as we see demonstrated in the last chapter with Sandor, but also here during the battle. She puts aside her fear to help those who are more afraid than she is. Very Queen Alessandra, right? In fact, after the released excerpt from George in Fire and Blood, these passages remind me of a mirror to Alessane holding a woman's court and hearing all 200 of the woman's grievances and lives that's a great connection thanks babe i love it i love you lawless is still scared to go

inside and sansa tries to reassure them that it's safer in there so feliz orders shay look at shay uh to help carry lawless inside but But unfortunately, Lawless is sick. And then Sansa thinks like, yeah, if like having a baby in your stomach is considered sick. Got him. She does think that though. And I don't know. Lawless is a sad character. She is a really sad character.

It makes me feel very bad for her. Dantos actually refers to her in the chapter before when he's talking about people that are weak. He says, have people ever wondered about Lady Tanda's daughter? Nope. No, they haven't. And I. What if she isn't smart? I do, too.

I don't know. I feel bad for her. The guards at the door are dressed as Lannisters, but they're only sellswords. It's obvious because they're not standing. They're just sitting by the door. And people are all situated in the Queen's ballroom. No matter how nice the ballroom is, the war is still there, right? Like, yeah, come over to my house.

There's a tornado warning. Like, it's not that exciting. A lot of the Highborn women are in there with their men out at war. But also, Ser Ilyn Payne stalks around in the background. Sansa thinks, whose head does he want? And then all of a sudden, Cersei comes out and she's super blinged out and looks really very stylish in this moment for some reason. She's wearing all white, which Sansa thinks is as white as a Kingsguard cloak. And the clothing makes her look very maidenly and innocent.

The queen comes up to Sansa and asks Sansa, are you still on your period? And Sansa's like, stay off of Sansa's pussy. Like, leave her alone. And then Cersei goes, oh, how apt. The men will bleed out there and you in here, which, I'm being

real, this is a joke I would make. This is something I would say. The metaphor is really true on so many levels, though, right? Like the blood is totally, it's symbolizing loss of innocence. This is a very loss of innocence moment for Sansa. And this is the first real battle Sansa's had to endure, whether or not she's really involved in it. I imagine that's going to change in her future. I'd imagine the level of involvement on the war field, at least by the end of a dream of spring, maybe? She'll have at least commanded armies or made some battle plans, you know.

Yeah, something. Something. And, you know, we're going to talk about Cersei. You know, just keep that image of her in mind as we go through all these other chapters and what she's wearing. Sansa asks, why is sir ill in pain here and cersei goes obviously that's for people being treasonous and the traitors and they're gonna defend defend us if need be sansa would totally prefer the hound she thinks she asks why the guards can't do it and cersei says someone needs to protect them from the guards as well she breaks it down for her sellswords can't do it, and Cersei says someone needs to protect them from the guards as well. She breaks it down for her.

Sell swords can't be trusted for their loyalty. She accuses Sansa of not knowing what happens when a city is sacked, and that all Sansa has learned of life was from the singers, not necessarily untrue. Sansa says true knights would not harm women and children. And Cersei finds that utterly amusing, and and tells sansa wait for your fairy tale princess then to come out of the song and save you and i mean yes it is true cersei is right that like sellswords to be trusted like i don't know people right there's a limit sometimes for some people and their loyalty whatever it could be rare storybook princess but sansa's not wrong to have an ideal of what true knighthood

ought to mean, what it ought to constitute, the sorts of values that people should live up to. Yeah, and of course, it's interesting that Ser Ilyn once more continues to loom over Sansa's arc as he's done for the last book and a half. I do wonder if there's going to be any sort of impact when he dies, right, on Sansa in any way. I imagine that maybe we'll have her thinking of him again if she ends up executing Littlefinger. He might just flash to mind. Ooh, that's a good idea. We did it! Oh man, now we have 327

hours of Blackwater going. Yeah, if I could remember all the lines, I would be quoting that song by Usher where he's like Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun Let it burn. Hours till you breathe Yeah, let it- oh wow, that's he's like let it burn hours till you breathe yeah let it oh wow that's actually perfect let it burn let it burn baby let it burn that's actually cersei watching the hands tower burn yeah it's also tyrian deep down inside yourself but you're done with you

no one else says you know that it's over hate the thought of him being with someone else because you know that it's over jamie putting the letter in the fire at the same time let it burn oh my god i just created in a song of ice and fire music video for you you're welcome i know and then we flash back of course right here to this to the black water and and the seed and with the wild and then like the fire is all in her eyeball swirling around and then it like swirls out and it defocuses and it's really just her burning down the tower and like we are cinematography majors here so

ask us about our ideas we're gonna make an AMV we're gonna make a Pinterest board on it first don't worry you guys thanks so much for listening in hey if you guys enjoyed today's episode we did talk a lot about identity. And we do have that brand new episode that we mentioned up on Patreon for $5 plus members.

I know it's five bucks a month. So if you have the extra five, throw it our way. We'll give you some special episodes, including this identity and Halloween episode we just put up. But keep enjoying the episodes for free. We totally appreciate you listening in. And be sure to leave us some reviews on iTunes or send us an email at girlsgonecanon at gmail.com. But like, I don't know.

No one leave us any reviews on iTunes anymore because like we have 69 ratings right now and I don't want it to get fucked up. Don't fuck this up for me. Please subscribe to us on all of the things such as, again, iTunes, Google Play, on Podbean where the whole thing is hosted. We are

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guys my name is chloe you can find me on the internet as at lies in arbor on twitter and on tumblr and i'm eliana you can find me on places as glass table girl alright bye remember when I deleted all the notes earlier yeah I do guys this is your um if you're still here Chloe almost deleted the entire fucking outline and all we did was