Girls Gone Canon Cast - ASOIAF Episode 67 - ADWD Jon Intro/I Ft. Maester Merry

Episode Date: September 20, 2019

Girls Gone Canon Episode 67 - Jon ADWD Intro/I Ft. Maester Merry     The Girls dive deep within Jon's first chapter of A Dance With Dragons (and of course, an introduction of what to expect) with Maester Merry, who released a wonderful essay on Jon snow at  The Last Temptation of Lord Commander Snow Pt 1. Maester Merry's Twitter:  https://twitter.com/MaesterMerry  Blog:  https://upfromunderwinterfell.wordpress.com/  --- Eliana's twitter: https://twitter.com/arhythmetric    Eliana's reddit account: https://www.reddit.com/user/glass_table_girl  Eliana's blog: https://themanyfacedblog.wordpress.com/  Chloe's twitter: https://twitter.com/liesandarbor  Chloe's blog: www.liesandarborgold.com  Intro by Anton Langhage     Jon

Hello and welcome to Girls Gone Canon, A Song of Ice and Fire, Episode 67, John in a Dance with Dragons, Intro and Episode and Chapter 1. I am one of your hosts, Chloe. You might know me from the internet as Liza and Arbor on Twitter, Tumblr, and LizaandArborGold.com. And I am another one of your hosts, Eliana. You might know me as GlassTableGirl on Reddit, on the Maester Monthly Podcast. Maybe you know me as Arithmetric over on Twitter. But there's someone else you might know.

Our good friend Maester Mary is joining us today to talk about Jon. Hi, Mary. Hello. You guys might know Maester Mary from YouTube, from Twitter. She has a great blog, Up From Under Winterfell, on WordPress. You're right. My blog is upfromunderwinterfell.wordpress.com. You can find me intermixing intelligent thoughts and complete and utter shit posting at Twitter,

where I am at Maester Mary. Display name currently Mary Mazder. You can also find me on my YouTube channel, which is up from under Winterfell. I've got some stuff about Arya on there. I haven't updated in a while. Big mood. But you know, I'm still hanging out. That's life.

Yeah, it is. That's life, man. We aren't going to ask you when part two of your Jon Snow essay series is coming out. I would never ask you that. But for those that have not read it we did say last week it is required reading so i don't know why you're listening just kidding you can do whatever you want with your life but mary did write a wonderful essay called the last temptation of lord commander snow part one killing the boy on his arc specifically in a dance with dragons

uh so that is why we hired her she is a professional my people called her people which is my cat called her and your cat called my dog it was it was a heated negotiation you know trying to get her on here almost as heated as stannis and john in this episode right there's the heated sexual tension is it anchor is it both we don't know what uh what do you think we can expect in part two when you do get it grooving and up? If I had my wish, this essay would be out before this episode releases. I don't think that's going to happen. But, you know, like we can all dream like George R.R. Martin dreams about when his books are coming out. So I think it's fine.

So part two is focused on the second half of John's arc in dance. So we're really focusing on letting the wildlings through the wall on his decision to send Val to go get Tormund and how that impacts his relationship. And then finally, his ultimate decision after the pink letter to go to Winterfell to get fake Arya instead of marching to Hardhome with the wildlings. So that's the events that we'll cover. I'm really trying to focus in this section on analyzing John as a Byronic hero. George R. R. Martin has called John a brooding Byronic romantic hero and said he considers himself to be a romantic writer. It's really interesting in terms of where I think John Snow's arc is going. For example, one description of a Byronic hero is someone proud, cynical, with defiance on his brow and misery in

his heart, a scorner of his kind, implacable in revenge and capable of deep and strong affection, which I think is like such a good description of Jon. It's a little bit counterintuitive because we usually think of these heroes as being maybe more dark than John is. But I think particularly when you're reading John's arc and dance, you get a different impression the more closely you look at his character and his motivations. That's a lot of what I'll be focusing on in the second half. Well, I'm really excited when it does come out to read it. We will be sure to talk about it, I'm sure.

And I feel like your essay and eliana's essay should go out sometime they they totally should i think my essay has a crush on her essay for sure if you say that your essay is going to stick your essay with its pointy end what the hell you guys it's a double entendre, I only had bionic man jokes for John, but here we are, you guys. We'll find other opportunities for double entendre, but it's okay. You know, words can be sexy too. Words. Yes, I think we're really looking forward to that. Our His Dark Materials episode 3

has just come out in the last week. If you haven't gotten to listen to it yet, take a gander at that. But next week we will have episode four out. They did announce that in the U.S., November 4th is going to be our premiere date. We knew it was going to be somewhere between the 4th and like the 28th-ish. So we'll be done with the first book when the show is premiering. I am very excited about that. Me too. I think it'll be good.

Me three. I'm excited. Y'all are gonna be awesome. Thank you. We are plugging through at high speeds. We're getting there. We're getting to some juicy stuff. The episode we're about to record is very juicy. Yeah, things start getting real there. Speaking of other things that get real

terrible at segways the forgotten characters of a song of ice and fire which was suggested to us by i believe shadow fox over on patreon uh and how they're going to affect the winds of winter will be coming out this month unfortunately as you all know because we have constantly remembered him and kept him in our hearts, Strong Bell Boss will not be discussed in this episode. Thank you for taking that one. That felt good.

And neither will Howlin' Reed. I know. And that's because he won't be in the books in The Wind's Winter. He'll be in A Dream of Spring. So only forgotten characters. Yep. Justin Massey. I vote for justin i like justin massey he's an interesting one is he i don't know if i'd say he's forgotten but maybe he's interesting i i love how differently theon and asha see yeah i also love that you just

want to like smack him across the face all the time. But also... Smart little mouth on that one. But also... No, Eliotta. Anyways. We will not be releasing an episode next week on September 27th. It's a Friday for A Song of Ice and Fire. We will be returning the week after with Hannah from Game of Owns on for John 2. Without further ado, we're going to get into a very wonky lightning round. We're going to talk about Jon's arc in Adowada, respectively, A Dance with Dragons.

And first, we're going to do a little lightning round because we left Jon on his last chapter in A Storm of Swords. And we ended A Storm of Swords. However, we still have two chapters left in A Storm of Swords. Sansa 7. Peter Baelish comes on to Sansa in the Godswood and Lysa breaks. The betrayals and lies unbundle. Lysa poisoned her lord husband on Peter's advisement and she flies out the moon door.

Not like with wings. She gets pushed. And then we have the epilogue of A Storm of Swords. And then we have A Feast for Crows. A whole ass book, in which Maester Aemon dies, Sam leaves the wall, and then guess what? We time travel and

do that all over again. It's like the time warp. Yeah, and so after A Feast for Crows, as Mary said, rewind, and here we are. It's a dance of dragons. Now we're getting all the things that we experienced, but from the other side. All these feelings.

Now we understand everything about behind the cold Lord Snow. And we get a look at Jon in a dance with dragons. And as we said, Mary has written an awesome essay about the different struggles that Jon has in the dance with dragons. So we're going to let her lead this off. As we start dance, we're thrown back into John as Lord Commander, which is appropriate to the central theme of this book, which is John's leadership. And George R. R. Martin has this like very, very famous quotation about, you know, his take on leadership. And a lot of people focus on George R. R. Martin talking about Aragorn's tax policies. But I think that the real thrust of

George R. R. Martin's message comes from this part of the quote, which is, ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom as much as I admire, I do quibble with. The Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper. We look at real history and it's not that simple. It is certainly not that fucking simple for Jon Snow. And this whole book is about the limitations on his power both internal constraints and external constraints in the storm of swords introduction we talked about how the starks were getting lost in their

journey right aria and sansa and bran have these new identities and so does john and in a dance with dragons john seems to finally have found what he thinks and it is his place or could be the place for him we get this passage later on in John 1. There were mornings when John Snow did not quite believe it himself when he woke up thinking surely this was some mad dream. It's like putting on new clothes, Sam had told him. The fit feels strange at first, but once you've worn them for a while, you get to feeling comfortable.

He had his choice made for him at the end of A Storm of Swords. Aemon has told him that the choosing is always hard, but Storm, he got to pass his test because it was chosen for him. Will he pass the next tests in A Dance of Dragons? Because they're numerous. I don't think so, because he dies. It's so interesting because in the books compared to the show, John faces so many more tests and each of the tests that he faced are so much more complicated.

This chapter opens with hinting at how John has swapped Dala's boy for Monster to deceive Stannis. He also has this extended bargaining with Stannis about his military campaign, about putting Stannis' men in castles on the Wall, and then later he borrows money from the Iron Bank to feed the Watch. You have Alice Karstark show up at the Wall, and Jon orchestrates a freaking wedding to wed her to a wildling. He deliberately defies Stannis to send Val, who of course doesn't even exist in the show, to search for Tormund so that he can bring Tormund back to the wall and bargained with Tormund to let the wildlings cross the wall. He also learns that, oh yeah, Mance Rayder didn't actually burn. That was Rattleshirt.

And John keeps it a secret because Melisandre convinces him to send Mance to Winterfell to rescue a fake version of Arya. And then finally, the biggest divergence from the show is that John has to choose between going to the mission at Hardhome and riding to Winterfell to avenge Arya when he gets the pink letter. This is like 80% of his arc, and almost all of this complicates his ability to focus on anything, a focus strictly on allying with the wildlings to defend the wall from the others. So it's this extremely complicated morass where Jon, who's just trying to do a good job, do his duty, has all this other crap thrown at him that's distracting him from what we learn he believes is the true mission of the Watch to defend the realm from the others.

Basically a lot of meta commentary on corporate structures. Look how this comes back to this every time. Late-stage capitalism. Well, it's funny, right? That's a joke, but of course, part of the reason we empathize with John is that yeah, we know. We're just trying to do our job, and then all this other bullshit

gets in the way. That's super relatable. And I think part of what's difficult, right, and we're gonna see it throughout the next few chapters, and we saw it a lot in Storm, right, is some of the people aren't coming to the watch with the best intentions with the same intentions as john but there are many who

have been there for a long time and do think that they know what their job is and they're just trying to do their job and part of leadership is doing that coalition building and he's not really doing it he's doing he's barreling forward doing what he thinks is right and part of that is as you point out in your essay he doesn't always share what his actual reasons are for things what he sees as the guiding morals behind it and some of those are actually lying with his love for the stark family and his desire to protect them like we saw it in the clash of kings we saw it in storm of swords john thinking of winterfell when he decides to protect them like we saw it in the clash of kings we saw it in storm of swords john thinking of winterfell when he decides to protect the wall instead of staying with the free folk

we see it when he we see it tear at him when he chooses to defend the wall because of not wanting to take winterfell because he doesn't want to have to burn his father's gods thankfully you know a better job offer came on the table and we're're going to see it again, how Jon acts as Lord Commander for what is essentially like a house in its own way, but it's not House Stark. He gets chosen. It's not this, you know, he points it out to Stannis regarding how hierarchy works amongst the free folk. It doesn't pass through blood. People are chosen, which makes his rule a little more tenuous, of course, as it has been for the past, like, few Lord Commanders, whatever. But part of what drew him to the Watch, there's, like, a very different context, right? Because part of what drew him to the Watch in the first place was his family. He saw his uncle Benjen,

he's like, oh, he's found meaning there. That's pretty cool. But now Benjen's missing, missing and ned is dead and rob is dead and john doesn't know that like brandon rick and aren't dead they're effectively they kind of are effectively dead in john's story for him in his characterization so he's like navigating that relationship being at the wall and with the realm and what feels like a very real and impending danger with a an impending family and he has this new pack right in the way that aria thought she had a new pack and what he does he's like he sends them all away and next thing you know he's the lone wolf who dies yeah it's like what we see happen with ned in king's landing that one by one he sends people from his house away finally he's left on the streets with what's barely left of his house uh of his house men. And he's just bleeding out, right?

When he fights with Jamie and John does the same thing and he ignores the warning of daggers in the dark. And there they are. And something that you pointed out in your essay, Mary, that I thought was really interesting was you said that Sam and Eamon are the two who keep pulling John back into the watch and keep sort of in a way writing his motivations or showing him why he's here and he took his oaths

and what's at stake but then you know yeah he loses them because he pushes them away and therefore begins to kind of lose his ties to his brotherhood and in a way it's very much the same as what we saw in A Storm of Swords when Jon sent Ghost away and was tempted to join the Free Folk but now

without his brothers he's drawn to his other family. I just am really hit by the tragedy of it when I think about John sending away Sam and Eamon, and Eamon in particular, because it's John's interpretation of Eamon's advice to sort of kill the boy and let the man be born, that ends up pushing him towards isolation. Because John doesn't get that he is allowed to have relationships and affection for people without that impairing his judgment. He views his relationships with his brothers

as a source of weakness because that means he won't be able to send them off to die. He represses his feelings for his family because he views them as almost sinful, right? You know, he's supposed to accept his new brothers as his family. And it was sinful in the beginning, too. He wasn't allowed to love them because he wasn't one of them. Yeah, it's so sad.

Whereas the story asks us many questions about leadership, especially in this book. And a part of what can make someone an effective leader is continuing to have that empathy and those emotions. We see characters who don't have it for the people that they're ruling over. And because of that, they end up making the wrong decisions. And Mary, did you want to go over any of these things that you have like here on the side? One of the things we see in dance is John recontextualizing his sort of the central conflicts of his arc into leadership. And I think the big conflict that John has is best embodied by the Tully house words, family, duty, honor. And what John is trying to do as a leader is figure out how do I reconcile what my duty as a leader is supposed to be with how to treat my own personal honor?

You know, how do I keep my promises, but at the same time do my duty to the realm and the watch. But all the while, this is undermined by the same damn thing that has been undermining Jon throughout his entire arc, which is his love for his Stark family. Um, and, and that's, what's really poignant about him sending Sam away is that Sam, you know, in Game of Thrones is the relationship he develops that tethers him to the wall and keeps him from running back to Robb. Sam kind of about the letter he ends up sending to Tywin and sort of convincing Jon, hey, you got to do what's right for the Watch, even if it feels wrong in the context of your Stark family. So basically, we're seeing this struggle that's been only interpersonal for Jon now have this new wrinkle, which is that instead of just having his duty as a man of the Night's Watch, he also has to do his duty as a leader. Yeah, and it all kind of comes back to John VIII in Game of Thrones with Aemon, right? When Aemon says, what would your father do against this whole realm? And he says

he would do whatever was right, no matter what. And that's what it always comes back to John, those words of, i would have to do what ned would do i would do whatever was right the right thing especially to dance with dragons with some of these choices that john has to make regarding children and regarding his really close friends and they're really really kind of sympathetic situation they're in uh he he does what ned would do you know he lies to try to save a baby and uh it's interesting it's sad it reminds you of the good place where the good place is right now in season three of every action has all these unintended consequences attached to it and that's what hits john in

this book so the good place quotation that that reminds me of that i think is perfectly applicable here is you know every day the world gets a little bit more complicated and it gets a little bit harder to do the right thing and to be a good person. And I actually like, I get teary-eyed just thinking about that because that's so what punches you in the gut about Jon as the leader of the Night's Watch. It just gets more and more complicated. And what's noble about John is that he's still trying to do the right thing. Like even when he fucks up, for the most part, I think kind of until the very end, most part i think kind of until the very end he's really trying his best and that's that's deserving of applause regardless of whatever shitty things i'll say about john for the next hour aristotle

said i count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies for the hardest victory is over self and uh john faces that pretty often in this, right? He faces that pretty often. It's the eternal internal struggle of humanity, right? The gap between what we should do and what we actually do. But it's interesting you bring up that Aristotle quotation because it makes me think of one of my favorite passages from Kant, which I accidentally, this is a moral philosophy podcast, you guys.

I'm sorry. I was thinking about the categorical imperative earlier. One of the more controversial points of Kant, which I think is in the grounding of the metaphysics of morals, he talks about the fact that having a good nature doesn't make you a better person than someone who has a bad nature. And the reason for that is that a truly good person does the right thing for the right reason. If we're altruistic simply because it makes us feel good to be altruistic or feel good to do the right thing, that doesn't make us a good person.

Only when we do the right thing, when there's a cost, and when it feels bad, are we truly doing something morally significant. Just on a personal level, I find that to be like extremely gratifying thing for a philosopher to say because uh i think just personally we're always wrestling with the darker parts of ourselves um and for me that's a lot of john's appeal as a character he's he's wrestling with some of his darker impulses um and is still able to overcome them. And Jon's not doing this for like pats on the back. You know, he's not making choices that make him friends.

He's not making choices that make him a hero and gets awards and trophies. There's not going to be some sort of Star Wars parade where Princess Leia hands him the medal at the end of the story. If the show's to be believed, which I mean, it kind of is with the broad strokes. It's a little, to put it bluntly, there. If that's the end, if he's closing this loop on Ned, on what Ned had to begin and what mercy Ned extended right in the situation. Jon's not going to do anything for the reward. And this is, there's that line later on in A Dance with Dragons, you know,

I'm the shield that guards the realms of men, and that must be more than one man's honor. And that's exactly what Kant wrote about there, that it's not about doing things for that trophy. And John certainly doesn't. That's all he's ever wanted, though, is to get that back, Pat, for someone to say, John, you did a good job, son. And no one's there to do that. pat for someone to say, John, you did a good job, son. And no one's there to do that. And no one has done that. Just a really sad situation for John, especially in A Dance with Dragons, you see it so significantly. And I think that's part of what's really powerful

about what we're going to see in this upcoming chapter, right? Because Stannis clearly wants that pat on the back. And he makes that very explicit to John, whether or not Stannis knows he's doing so. In my opinion, he kind of makes it explicit to everyone a little. I know that there are readers who will disagree, but I think it's absolutely there within the subtext of his dialogue. Whereas John, he's doing it, as you all said, because he thinks it's the right thing to do. I think the difficulty is he's barreling forward with all of these things that he believes are the right thing to do. And I think there's another saying that's, you know, if you go it alone, you can do it faster. But if you do it together, you can go further.

And that's, I think, a bit of a struggle for John in that he believes that leadership must be lonely. Like a lonely God like Dany feels. Exactly. And I think that's part of what we're seeing juxtaposed in their storylines. And that's the reason their attraction will be so strong when they do meet. And it's sad because that temptation and that fruit of the tree that Jon has to deal with, when he gets back with his family, if he gets back with Bran and Sansa and Arya eventually, he can't really give himself fully to them. I think him falling into his family and loving them and finally being accepted, it's going to be so hard because it's the one thing he'll

probably have to give up. A family that loves him finally. You could see Stannis's temptation as a desire for prestige and recognition. The reason he doesn't get along with Robert and the reason he's got this chip on his shoulder is because, you know, Robert always got all the pats on the back and he didn't. Right. But John, John's temptation is his love for his family. And it's a family that also kept him on the outside. You know, not ever. Like, I'm not saying Ned didn't, you know, love him or care about him. But it's his family that's still subject to the stigma of bastardry. And so I think it's really telling that when we we analyze the mistakes that John makes as a leader, they're not born out of a desire for power or prestige,

his love for and perhaps desire to seek vengeance for his family. And to kind of put this in Eliana's maybe terms about a tragic hero, you know, you might think of it as his tragic flaw being his love for his family. It's really tricky of George R. R. Martin to paint that as a flaw for John, because it's not something that we conventionally think of as bad. Like, it's good to love your family, right? This lets George kind of hide the darker side consequences of John's kind of emotions towards his stark family we don't hide the darker side of lady stoneheart's vengeance right but but on some level john marching to winterfell to avenge what's happened to a fake version of his sister is really born out of perhaps a similar place,

right? If less corrupt. And so I think it's a very powerful thing. I think it's Brockopolis on Twitter that said this about Daenerys. George R. R. Martin buried the poison in our sympathy. George R.R. Martin buried the poison in our sympathy. And it's a little different with John. But I do think that one of the things George does really well with his characters is that he hides their flaws behind something that we relate to and something that we don't normally think of as being bad. And I think that's true with John's love for the Starks. It's really a very double edged sword for him. And I think that's part of what ties his story together with Daenerys. I

don't think that, again, wanting a family is necessarily bad. But I think that same desire for a family and for belonging is very much a big driving factor in Daenerys' story as well. And so it's interesting to see how the same desire in both characters and their loneliness and their styles of leadership that are juxtaposed against one another manifests differently in both of them and what they end up choosing. At the end of the day, Jon has to turn away from both of these temptations of family. At the very end of the story, Jon doesn't get to stay

with the Starks or with the Targaryens. He doesn't get to be with Dany. He has to reject this very thing that he's wanted, that he's burnt with, just like we talked about in Jon 12 in A Storm of Swords. He knew in his heart of hearts, of course, he's always with just like we talked about in john 12 in a storm of swords you know he knew in his heart of hearts of course he's always wanted it always and he has to turn that away and just

walk away from it all at the end of the day and i think that is the true tragedy of that and like what that trait is born here and what it brings and what it ends it's very sad and it's a little bit foreshadowed by the way that john's arc ends in dance right which is that he decides to save his family right that's the choice he makes but he doesn't get to go be with them or to save them and i think there's there's sort of two a kind of two twofold way that that george sort of shows us that in the end John doesn't get to be with the Starks you know one is yeah he kicked you know they kill him he dies but the other is that there was never an aria there to begin with the whole time we're reading John's like agony about his

sister she's never there and we know it he's tilting at windmills. The kind of dramatic irony, I think, is meant to enhance not only that, you know, Jon Snow knows nothing, but that the things he dreams of, the things that his heart wants wants are an illusion for him. But in a way, he kind of always knew that to some extent, that desire to protect them, even though he couldn't be with him. And I think that carries throughout a lot of his story, right? Because in A Game of Thrones and in Clash and in Storm, he comes back to the wall because he thinks of what will happen to Winterfell.

And again, that's why he chooses the wall instead of going back to Winterfell to burn his father's gods. He's like, I will protect my family, even if it means not being with them. And that's, I think, what you were saying, right? That was for him, in some ways, choosing the right thing, except for the part where he goes against parts of the the night's watch vow but you know there there are ways to debate as to whether that was right and whether that was wrong you know in terms of sometimes the vows that they make you swear aren't

right he chooses to protect them even if it means it feels bad and he can't be with them robert frost's home of course i mean the road less traveled is what John takes. And it's not an obvious allusion to the road less traveled, right? You don't think it but John takes the road less traveled. He doesn't take the shortcut to Winterfell. He's offered everything he ever wants and he has to turn it down time and time and again. And when he takes the true thing he wants, which is protecting those he loves he ends up dying for it because it's not in the interest of the wall so when he comes back as he eventually likely will since as we know he's dead right now um if he if and when he comes back

he is gonna have to change in some regards it's gonna be interesting how he changes and what he will choose from there on out it's it's interesting that you mentioned the road less traveled. You said one of the quotes that you really like, and this is one of my favorite things John ever says, is, you know, I would do, you know, Ned would do what was right no matter, no matter what, no matter the cost. The response to that is, you know,

then he is one man in a thousand. And I think that's, that's really significant. Ned and Jon in their ability to, you know, resist their impulses are one, you know, one man in a thousand. And I think something that y'all touched on in your coverage of Theon are some of the parallels between Theon and Jon. And this idea that Jon is one man in a thousand, it reminds me of this quotation George has about who he wants to be. You know, who wouldn't want to be Jon Snow, the brooding, bryonic, romantic hero that all the girls love? But the one that I would fear becoming is Theon. Theon wants to be Jon Snow, but he can't do it. He keeps making the wrong decisions. He keeps giving in to his own selfish, worst impulses. I think that's just such an interesting back note to john's story we all want to be like

john when he's at his best we want to be able to overcome our selfish impulses if john's one man and a thousand you know aren't most of us more likely to be like the young well with that we'll move into our lightning round and get started in A Dance with Dragons. We do have a few chapters to summarize before we land on John 1 and go further into this chapter. In the prologue of A Dance with Dragons, Varamyr Sixskins seeks a new skin to slip within. Tyrion I. Illyrio unveils his master plan. A dragon with three heads. Blue eyes, white dragon.

Daenerys won. Daenerys begins to lose soldiers to the sons of the Harpy and is later presented with her worst fear. A pile of bones, charred flesh sloughed off of them, belonging to a child. This is just such a downer, y'all. That leads us into Jon I in a dance with dragons as lord commander of the watch john has to find a way to treat with a king who seems to want more every day all while combating vivid unsettling wolf dreams later he is given a cryptic remark from melisandre daggers point at him in the dark thus begins john one with John dreaming from ghost's skin. He hears his packmates calling to him.

His black brother's eating a goat. He's eating well, apparently the only one, letting rain wash down a wound that he took from the goat's horn. It rickon. It's rickon. He has a sister who's singing to the moon with a hundred small grey wolves singing with her somewhere

out there. It's Numeria! Someone's thinking of her. Someone's thinking of me. That took long enough. The taste of blood was on his tongue, and his ears rang to the song of the hundred cousins. Once they had been six,

five whimpering blind in the snow beside their dead mother, sucking cool milk from her hard, dead nipples, whilst he crawled off alone. Four remained, and one the white wolf could no longer sense. Of course, we know the one he can no longer sense, which is his brother, north of the wall, who smells of summer, which is summer. On the nose. That's a little on the snout. On the boop.

Boop, boop, snoot. Boop, snoot I think it's that John begins a dance with dragons while he's in ghost is such a smart bookend given that his last spoken words in a dance and it's

a huge clue that John's soul is going to go into ghost when he dies and perhaps even that we'll get a POV chapter that And it's a huge clue that Jon's soul is going to go into ghost when he dies. And perhaps even that we'll get a POV chapter that looks kind of like the beginning of this one. And it's also a clue that Jon seeks out his pack, his family, through his connection with the direwolves. And this is such an important part of Jon's story.'s story so you know y'all call this thematic resonance right yes i would call this thematic resonance mary very very good it's it's absolutely cushioned with the very mere stuff as well and with brand throughout a dance with dragons

interestingly enough he's mastering a lot of this fantastical skill. And it's a little different for him, right? He's reaching farther into that fantasy. But there's more and more that it just has made it so apparent. He's definitely going to go into ghosts. And yeah, again, regarding that thematic resonance, as you said, he's seeking out his pack and his family, which is, as we've discussed, a huge conflict for Jon in this book. But there are other animals about too.

Like a raven flying through the air, cawing snow at him. And so John awakens and it's Mormont's raven which has been cawing from, I guess, the moon and the trees within his dream. And it's time to get up for the day. John throws a pillow at the unrelenting

bird and the pillow bursts as it hits the wall, which is... I mean, he must have thrown that pillow pretty hard or this pillow was like what, shoddily made? I don't know. The image of just exploding feathers as John throws it at the raven cracks me up. Like, yeah, it's one of John's best supporting characters is Mormont's Raven. And it's so interesting. You have this prophecy bearing talking bird, which is super high fantasy. But then George throws a pillow at the mother forker. And it's like very relatable and realistic. for sure because like the bird is standing in for the alarm clock and then as you said everything explodes and i can just imagine if this were filmed in this way in a tv show john getting up and going and blowing like a strand of hair out of his face like i can't believe that this happened to yeah this is the slice of life beginning right and um but also the bird is that his luna to john sealer anyways a few chapters go in a storm of swords i think it was during the battle but also the bird. Is that his Luna to Jon Sieler? Anyways.

A few chapters go in a storm of swords. I think it was during the battle, one of the mornings of the battle, he was awakened and it was basically an alarm clock moment we talked about. So this happens often for Jon. I think Jon's maybe not a morning person is what we should learn from this. I mean, perhaps

it's because they're called the fucking Night's Watch, so I don't blame him. Yeah, it's because they're called the fucking night's watch so i don't blame him yeah it's false advertising honestly like he at his interview he was told many different things about the job that are obviously different now like getting stabbed on the job maybe uh delores ed pops in he offers him breakfast and john is like how about some roast raven and a fucking beer he feels strange about a steward grabbing his food because that was him not too long ago. Ed then tells him what is actually for breakfast.

Very good, my lord. Only Hobbes made boiled eggs, black sausage, and apples stewed with prunes. The apples stewed with prunes are excellent, except for the prunes. I won't eat the prunes myself. Well, there was one time when Hobb chopped them up with

chestnuts and carrots and hid them in a hen. Never trust a cook, my lord. They'll prune you when you least expect it. That's an interesting line. I think we're going to come back to that towards the end. There's some interesting foreshadowing to talk about, but don't forget that.

It's me giving side eye to me and mary just like three finger hop yeah eyebrows eyebrows so it actually sounds like a really good dish i know it's also why i made mary read this passage and i put it in here because i think food's important it does sound really good honestly especially the hen and with that in it like prune that hen dude i'll eat it. John asks for an update on the stockades, because apparently kingsmen and queensmen and even some black brothers have been trying to bed some of the free folk women that are being kept as prisoners. John had to put guards on them, and it's gone better since, but, um. This is phrased really interestingly to me. John kind of plays it off like, oh, those men, like, right.

And he's not, like, necessarily thinking that. But the way that it's phrased, it makes it sound like, oh, the brothers are sneaking out with women who want to sleep with them. But let's be real. Not every free folk woman, like, while many of them are brought up to be much stronger because the circumstances call for it. Not all of them are spearwives. We see that, right? We have Gilly literally here as an example of that, granted she grew up in different circumstances, but

especially if they're prisoners, if they're starving, if they're battle-worn by now, I don't know how many of them are forced or coerced into it. They're prisoners. There's not really great power dynamics at play so I do it's good that John puts guards there

but yeah who watches the watchman right yeah exactly and where's the accountability and right now it's kind of like shit's kind of weird at Castle Black it's like a hostile awkward work environment going on,

and it has entirely to do with Stannis and his presence and his ever-increasing wants and needs. If you give a deer a cookie. He's gonna try to conquer the North. But first, the wall. More wildlings continue to turn up for refuge, though, including a mother with a daughter and a son dead in her arms. This is so fucking sad.

I imagine Jon recalling this image later as he's berating his brothers for their lack of compassion towards the wildlings. Specifically, I think about this passage from John 11. I would sooner have them dead in the ground, said Yorick, if it pleased my lord. It does not please me. John's voice was as cold as the wind snapping at their cloaks. There are children in that camp, hundreds of them, thousands, women as well. John 11. Think about the difference that framing plays and how john and the watch

consider the wildlings like john imagines them as refugees fleeing the others who you know are their common enemy but marsh and companies see them only as raiders as invaders now i don't know if george r martin intended this to be an allegory, but it's very timeless and relevant. Something I was thinking of with this little passage of the woman with the son dead in her arms. This is definitely a Danny parallel to Danny's first chapter ending with the children's bones. It's interesting to how they deal with that trauma differently. Yeah. Because I imagine for both of them, these are sort of like, kind of formative traumas, you know?

Yeah. And for him, this furthers what he does, right? And we complain often about how the closest small folk looks tend to be through Davos, who, you know, having Ben-Wan and Brienne and Arya on the ground with the small folk. But I think Jon's kind of coming pretty close in dance for this reason with the refugees of the free folk. And George is kind of hammering home that anti-war message and humanity of taking in people that are on the run from an awful war. I think what's going to matter most for Jon in the end is that he's choosing the realm of these people,

the wildling mother with a dead baby in her arms on the run from the ice zombies, which with Dany, it's like her child caused this. You know, her dragon caused this and there's no changing what her dragons are. They're fire made flesh. They're going to keep doing this. So how could a human care anything for an Iron Throne

when these real horrors are being committed and seen against the helpless and weak what john's seeing it reminds me a lot of the hedge knight even with you know with dunk which why what am i to them a knight who remembered his vows uh or when sir arlen tells him a hedge knight's the truest of kind of night other knights serve the lords who keep them or from whom they hold their lands but we serve where we will for men whose causes we believe in and it's different for the wall but it's the same line that he continues on with that every knight swears to protect the weak and innocent but we keep the vow best and the knights watch in a way are very close to being hedge knights and to remembering those vows for the most part of guarding the realm for sure and as we're

going to see later on in this chapter i i like that you pulled out this quote because the interesting thing is it's not just we serve where we will for men whose causes will believe it the point of the wall is you serve where you are even for men whose causes you don't believe in yeah because that's that's the duty but anyway that's the one of the things that's interesting about this quote from the hedge knight is that i i always view it in tandem with with jamie's like soliloquy about you know so many vows they make you swear and swear um no matter what you do you're always forsaking one vow or the other and forsake it not only and it's just like not only is that a uh huge through line for john's arc um if you compare it with this um this idea that dunk is the kind of true knight

it kind of goes back to what we were starting with at the beginning which is that John is kind of the guy that's remembering to protect the weak and the innocent everyone just has different ideas of innocent

because most of the free folk had been in the battle and they ran when the battle broke only to find oh shit we have nowhere to run to except i guess that place all right and john asks did you question this mother since you know there are still some of those other savage free folk war criminals out there i my, my lord, said Ed. But all she knows is that she run off the battle and hid in the woods after. We filled her full of porridge, sent her to the pens, and burned the babe. Burning dead children had ceased to trouble Jon Snow. Live ones were another matter.

Two kings to wake the dragon, the father first and then the son, so both die kings. The word had been murmured by one of the queen's men as Maester Aemon had cleaned his wounds. Jon had tried to dismiss them as his fever talking. Aemon had demurred. There is power in king's blood, the old maester had warned, and better men than Stannis have done worse things than this. The king can be harsh and unforgiving, aye, but a babe still on the breast?

Only a monster would give a living child the flames. Um, yeah, Summerhall much? Or even like Aemon's writing back and forth with Rhaegar, sending him letters of prophecy? What came of that one?

Well, not much good. Well. A lot of other things. I mean, this is kind of tinfoily, but a father and a son, two kings to wake the dragon reminds me a little of the deaths of

Drogo and Rago. But in reverse. And apparently that worked. Everyone. Step one, acquire dragon eggs step two oh as in thinking it's the wrong i mean as in there's no if john is azora high i mean aegon died rhaegar died and john would be the the king but obviously i don't think john will accept except that there's this emphasis on the father first and then the son, so both die kings, like y'all are saying,

in light of the fact that Jon interprets this as Melisandre's plan to burn Mance and then Monster. So if this is actually Melisandre's plan, is it kind of interesting that Melisandre spoils the plan herself by burning Rattleshirt and then sending Mance on a mission for Jon? You know, these are the murmurings that help motivate Jon to send Monster away. But like, what is Melisandre's actual game if she doesn't really care about Mance for the sake of his king's blood. He's not a real king, and maybe she gets that.

Or she's playing the long game here, right? She's like, well, we can use Mance for many things, I guess, is her hope. She's planning too far into the future in the way that, like, I don't know, Illyrio and Varys did. But I mean, she can kind of see the future, but not really. And she also says to Jon, though, in this chapter, like, you know, you might be onto something about this Mance character being needed. Yeah. Do you ever think that they might have called him, like, Manster in the way, you know, we've got Monster here.

I'm not going to even dignify you with a response. Moving on. The other thing that gets me about this passage is what we were talking about earlier, which is just what are Amon's thoughts when he says this line? You know, we get from Clydus that he has this aphorism that good men can make bad kings. And I just I wonder if he's talking about good intentions leading to bad outcomes or more about good men succumbing to temptation. I definitely think he's thinking about Summerhall, but I don't know that we know enough about Summerhall or exactly how that stuff goes, how things go down with Rhaegar to guess the lesson that Aemon's taking away from either series of events. But both of them are really relevant to Jon's arc. There's lots of ways that a good man can do a bad thing. Yeah, and it's obviously something that's going to come into play with Stannis, I think, in the future. A little on the nose, right? It's a little blatant foreshadowing that Stannis will probably do something

bad and not be as good of a man or as righteous as a man as you think he is. But I do think that it does have to do with Summerhall. I'd say I think we know enough to know that this likely is wisdom he has gained from other places. Aegon the

Unlikely did something that led to big explosions and a ton of his family and friends dying. Including Dunk having to go into a burning building to get them out. And we know that it was likely it was prophetic driven. Probably from the ghost of Highheart who was

coming to court with Jenny. So it's not too far off to think. I mean we know that Aegon was one of the best kings, right? He had policies he was trying to push that the best kings right he he had policies he was trying to push that the lords were obviously rejecting so he wasn't getting very far but he was the most well intended of the kings until whatever happened at summer hall he was a good man and unfortunately good men can still lead to ruin i do think there is an aspect as you were pointing out of like the road to hell is paved with good intentions here with all of that. But what I don't understand is I can understand in some ways the underlying philosophy and hypotheticals that come with, and some bad men have been good kings. In the context of the Targaryen dynasty, it doesn't really bear that out, right?

We don't really see that from what we have of their kings. Because a lot of the kings who were bad men were also bad kings. Like, for the most part, they were. None of them seem to have been good kings. Like, I'm gonna just throw, you know, Maegor, bad man, bad king. Yeah, there's a pattern. Alright. Aegon IV, bad man, bad king. There's a pattern. Aegon IV, bad man, bad king. Okay, like

Baelor the Blessed. Maybe man debatable, bad king. Aegon III, who knows? Alright, king. Most Targaryen rulers were bad rulers. Just putting that out there. Most Targaryen rulers were bad rulers.

Just putting that out there. Most. But they were, like, some of the ones who were, like, better, at least. They were, for the most part, at least well-intentioned or trying to be good men. So I just don't understand. I mean, he's clearly, in my opinion, not pulling from recent Westerosi history when he's thinking there. Is this some of that, like, deep some of, like, the prior

to the unification of the Seven Kingdoms that history that Maester Aemon's talking about? Because even from some of the other countries or nations, the other nations that we see in the World of Ice and Fire, Bloodstone Emperor seems like a bad

man and a bad king i think george is probably sort of like trying and maybe missing on making a point about machiavelli here about rule through fear potentially being effective um and and maybe to some extent we can we can see that at stannis like is stannis successful and getting people to bend the knee because he's able to make them fear him rather than to make them love him so i i don't know if that's what george is going for the thing that that comes to mind for me which is something that i disagree with but i'll state the opinion of people that i disagree with um which is a elio and linda have said that you know tywin is supposed to be an example of like a mock of machiavellian leader who was effective but a bad person right and i think that's the difference for me there's a difference

to me between effective leader and good king. First of all, one of them is station. The other is the morality between what goodness and effectiveness is. And it comes back to, again, that thing that I was saying earlier of like, you know, you can go faster alone, but you go farther together. And I think Tywin was going faster. And in that way, it can be argued he was effective but I can see why there's a disagreement there

because I feel the same that he didn't have sustainability when he was building his region. I think that there are some people that would make the argument that we could remove morality from the picture

and just look at whether or not a leader was effective at achieving their goals. And we could say, you know, say Aegon the Conqueror, for example. Like, his goal was to conquer Westeros, and he was successful in conquering Westeros, and he was able to make the Seven Kingdoms submit in part because of the burning of Harrenhal. And who gives a crap about whether he was a good man and had good policies? He achieved his goals. Therefore, he is a good king. I think that's BS.

It's possible to have a school of thought that says we can determine whether someone is a good leader without looking at whether they're acting morally or not. Yeah, and I agree with that. I just think that Eamon shouldn't have said good case because none of them in the history bear out his example. Definitely a pattern. So Jon reflects on his wolf dreams. They've been getting stronger and he's starting to remember them now. He knows Grey Wind is dead, but if his dreams didn't lie, Shaggy Dog and Summer must be alive as well. What could it mean?

What could it mean? What could it mean? He gets dressed and he sasses the raven some more. He thinks that bird is too clever, which, you know, probably because it's Branraven. is too clever, which, you know, probably because it's Bran Raven. He also thinks about how the Raven ate Jeor's face after he died, though, so that bird's too clever, also maybe not my friend, foreshadowing. In some ways, it can be seen as very sinister.

It's played that way in the Death of Whees. But perhaps it's very loving. You know, the Raven wanted to make Jeor Mormont part of him. Oh my god. Actually, there is a character in his Dark Materials that has a similar thing with that. Exactly! Anyways, it's in The Subtle Knife. We don't have that. Exactly! But there is a culture. There is a culture that was part

of their cannibalism that I think we might end up seeing in Skagos. But anyways, tangents. It's respectful! I'm just... I'm cracking up over here because I keep thinking I guess Gior's back on the menu, boys. Oh my god. John descends a flight of stairs to a desk and some nice chairs, some super lit upholstery, oak and leather.

I was like, oh, okay, they get to work. Oak and leather seat me well. Or else I'm damned and doomed to hell. I don't know. So damned. Danis is in the king's tower and the lord commander tower is of course burnt down so john is staying in donald loy's very modest rooms behind the armory the king had presented him a document to look over and sign sitting under donald loy's old

silver drinking cup and pits bits and pieces of donald loy are still scattered around the room the cup six pennies and a copper star a niello brooch with a broken clasp and of course a musty old brocade doublet that bore the stag of storms and ooh oh donald john knows his true treasures were his masterpieces in the forge i love these echoes of donald loy still hanging over danis over stanis's story in john's art i i just adore that um john is also one of his true treasures one of his masterpieces because of the influence that donald loy had on john and how john thinks so he'll continue to think about him throughout this book john's like the one kid he actually got through to he's like i finally did it i finally had my million dollar

not million dollar maybe what what is i don't know one of those touching movies films breakfast at rudy's my finding finding forrester moment there we go he can't take the room of technically jerem ormont is dad number three right because he comes he comes in, I think, third, and then Donald Noy is dad number two, right? So he takes dad number two's room and in a way that's kind of like he's taking on the person that he looked up to in the way that Theon does

when he takes Winterfell, he takes Ned's quarters, but that all went awry. Jon also has to make a decision between Stannis and the Wall, as we'll see soon. So it is interesting to think. I've seen a lot of people speculating recently, how did Donald Noy end up at the Wall? What happened here?

So, I don't know, it's interesting how Jon's choice between a Baratheon and the Watch is going to compare. If Jon puts his seal to this mysterious request from Stannis, he thinks he'd be the Lord Commander that gave away the Wall. He worries what he will be if he refuses Stannis he thinks he'd be the lord commander that gave away the wall he worries what he will be if he refuses stannis though each night he walked atop the wall with lady melisandre and

during the days he visited the stockades picking captives out for the red woman to question he does not like to be balked balk this would not be a pleasant morning, John feared. John's thoughts about not wanting to be the Lord Commander who gave away the wall reminds me of how later when John lets the wildlings through the wall, he recites the words of his oath, and to them he adds, I am the guard who opened the gates and let the foe march through. I am the guard who opened the gates and let the foe march through. It's just really interesting how this is something he's resisting right here, giving away the wall, and yet people are going to accuse him right or wrong.

I think Stannis both forces Jon's hand with respect to the wildlings, but also teaches him how not to treat them. So, you know, is he doing this, like, because Stannis, you know, wanted him to make peace with the wildlings? Or is he doing

it to sort of prove he can do it better? I don't know. It's interesting. it is a good question during that time he hears iron emmet in the armory iron emmet stayed behind at castle black to train the men and the new recruits because i don't know alice thorne sucks and he should have been fired a long time ago cotter pike though was sad to lose Iron Emmet. John grabs his cloak, noting that the bed where Ghost lay is empty. Aw. And then begins to saddle himself with weapons.

As he's leaving, the guardsmen at the door ask John if he wants a tail, but he declines because he hates having guards. Yeah, maybe you should have used those guards, John. Maybe you should have appreciated them. Just saying. He'll wind up with a tail eventually, though he ends up in ghost am i right oh my god you're fired mary oh wow wow you fired her for that how could you let me let her do that okay well you're hired again but i mean okay you're fired you know what i mean i'm on probation it's

a privilege honestly to get fired on girls gone canon. A privilege Eliana exercises weekly. I'm the most rewarded person in the world. John stops to watch Horse and Hop Robin whatever the fuck name that is fight in the yard. Horse is really interesting. I think that should be one of our Patreon tiers as well. Horse the human.

Oh my god. That goes against everything we're for. But it's subverting expectations the spectacle oh my god Bojack Horseman so Hop Robin has a club foot and he's like afraid of getting hit um John thinks maybe they can make him a steward instead which I love this because it's very Sam like it's like he's seeing sam all over again well fought john said to horse but you drop your shield too low when pressing an attack you'll want to correct that or it's like to get you killed yes my lord i'll keep it higher next

time horse pulled hop robin to speed and the smaller boy made a clumsy bow. I tried to channel a horse-like voice. What? Nope. Not even gonna touch it. I'm just gonna keep going. Okay. You're very brave. I think it is interesting.

We've seen it with Ed earlier and now here with Horse that John has now stopped correcting people calling him a lord. He's like, yeah, I guess so now. He earned it. Inside. Yep. Started from the bottom. Well, he didn't really. He started from, like, I don't know, a little above the bottom. Now I hear. Yeah, I like that this is very much reads as

that Sam analog, but also reminds me of him with Bran in a little way. Him telling Bran, you know, you better watch. Dad will know if you don't watch. I think it's very much so him fostering that relationship and also like with Satin,

training Satin as well. Jon's true calling was being a teacher. Being a dad. Now he has two baby boys, Horse and Satin. No, he's got all of these children and some of them are Bowen Marsh and he's like, I hate my older children. I do not want the old pomegranate to be my child.

How did he come out of me? He's a time-traveling fetus. Like, I don't know, like, if eating pomegranate seeds gets you, like, trapped in hell, then what happens if you give birth to a pomegranate? Man, I just don't know. Some of the king's men are sparring in the yard, and John notes, actually, turns out the king's men and the queen's men, they're staying in separate quarters,

like an awkward middle school dance, but there were those that were not, those were only the ones who weren't too cold to be outside. Then as John's passing them, some asshole, his name is sir godrey farting more like sir godrey farting calls out to them boy you there boy and john's like excuse me and thus doesn't deign to respond he's like it's rude he's been called worse things though since being elected which you know so he doesn't really humor him and eventually the guy goes like

snow lord commander making fun of him. He's all like, you got a fancy sword there, boy. You gonna fight me with it? And Jon knows the guy a little bit now. During the battle, this guy killed a retreating giant, and then Jon has like a moment of trauma, thinking of Ygritte and the Last of the Giants. You know, remembering how Godry killed this retreating giant,

pounding him on horseback with a lance. What a good guy. I know. Good truly truly uh yeah like this guy just tries to goad john into sparring he's like i promise i'm not gonna hurt you and this guy's like such a dick he just keeps trying to goad him and i think that line that john uses his sword when he must is very much ned like yeah right like ned uses it mostly for ceremony not everyone regards him as some great warrior because he killed arthur dave but ned ned wasn't a warrior and john wasn't either and i mean john's been in many fights and battles he's like this isn't a fucking game you think this is a game that's john it's a heavy as the sword not just the crown yeah john tells him he has a duty so some other time and godry takes that to mean that john's like a pussy ass weak bitch and he's like okay fine but everyone he and he like makes sure everybody knows

he's the one that didn't want to fight yeah i love that he like punctuates it so annoying like george knew what he was doing writing writing this dumb fucking guy. So annoying. Like, fuck this guy and his honor code. I think George is being really deliberate here. He plays with the idea of dueling and fighting as

a problematic way for people to defend their personal honor. So in Dying of the Light, which is George R. R. Martin's first novel, he talks a lot about the relationship of dueling to honor. The characters in the books use it very much like the Ten Duel Commandments style, like Hamilton revolutionary era dueling, like if there's any slight to your honor, then you must sort of fight it out.

And I think this passage where, you know, he's sort of impinging John's manhood is an example of John choosing duty over honor. And I mean honor in that way where it reflects your sort of personal reputation and standing. John just simply doesn't think it's important to deal with this, like, flea fart asshole. And he would much rather do his job. To his fucking credit.

Regarding that honor, I mean, he's doing his duty and by not partaking, he is doing that duty. Because he knows that he's not going to win regardless because this guy's clearly disrespecting him. And Jon's seen this kind of asshole behavior before in people like Joffrey. He's like, even if I win, they're still not going to respect me. This is a waste of my time. I have fucking budgets to be doing.

He really does though. Jon views the wall as he makes his way to the King's Tower and he's seeing repairs happening that's another thing that's happening not just budgeting but everything was burnt down during the battle they have to rebuild and he thinks especially before the wildlings attack again my command john reflected ruefully as much a ruin as it is a stronghold it's a metaphor and it's such a good one, as much as

I think it's important to notice the mistakes that John makes. This is such a good place to take stock of what a, like, foobar mess John inherited when he became Lord Commander. Literally, he's been beyond

the wall, or a fucking captive, for most of the time that he was a brother and so just like a real life leader he gets handed everybody's mistakes and in this case it's generations upon generations of mistakes and neglect and when we are thinking about John's failures and the things that he does well, I think it's really important to recognize that the deck was really, really

stacked against him from the beginning. Yeah, and it's hard to steer this train that he just was given anywhere but the ground. Stannis' presence is ruining any semblance of normal that he could bring to the wall. And he's trying to build the defenses back up

and keep everyone fed, but the winds of winter are not in his favor. He's met with resistance at like every turn and saving the watch looks like selling it. Reform is hard when you don't have any resources, right? For sure. Like you need to bring all those partners to the table but i think you know i like the part where you point out that

the the status of the wall in the castle is a metaphor for the night's watch itself because i think that a song of ice and fire uses this very often you have the the the sacking of Winterfell happening in Clash slash Storm, and that heralds the deterioration, like the low point for House Stark, and towards the end of the series, you know, assuming that King's Landing and the Red Keep, etc. are burned down, that's also very much signaling the end of House Targaryen. So this is a literary device that George uses very often. Stannis' battle standard streams from the King's Tower, where Jon and his colleagues had not long ago battled. Well, Eliana's ideas about kind of the metaphors that come through the buildings makes me think about how it's interesting that we have this burned out Lord Commander's Tower that Jon won't

stay in, right? So the place Jon should be is in the next best tower, which is the King's Tower. But what does Jon do? He abdicates the King's Tower and he lets Stannis stay in it. And then even when Stannis leaves, Jon doesn't go back to the King's Tower. so i think it's a little bit interesting to think about whether or not george is sort of playing with john's reluctancy to be a king um in a way in the way that he caters to stannis by placing him in the king's tower and then not going and situating himself there after stannis leaves yeah i think there's an aspect of that and regarding Jon's leadership he thought

he wanted to be a ranger but turns out leadership meant starting out as a steward and I think he sees leadership as being a position of serving ideally the realm, the people that he leads in a way and

that's part of the the i think emotion behind taking donald noyce quarters that's that's interesting um one of my other favorite fantasy authors robin hobb there's a culture in her books and they view um being a king or queen as being the sacrifice and the idea is that if you're sacrificed you're a servant to the people um that's just sort of interesting to think about if john views his leadership in the same way and i think he i think he does two queens men shiver with their hands in their armpits outside of the tower and john John tells them, you should get some real gloves tomorrow because the ones you have are garbage. I love that this whole chapter is John like being like, what is with the people from the South? Have they never been in the cold?

Because I am from Michigan originally, as you guys know. So for me, I don't get it. I'm like, what? Don't you put like clothes on before you go in the snow, you idiots. get it. I'm like, what? Don't you put clothes on before you go in the snow, you idiots? Dude, I got fucking scolded when I was in the countryside over in some peninsula island town, right?

Over in the UK. And it was like fucking 60 degrees and rainy and wet. And no one wears huge rain jackets all the time, but they scolded me for not having a sensible jacket. That was the terminology she used. She's like, you don't have a sensible jacket. That's how I know you're not from here i'm like it's fucking july slash august but that's how you know

and that's what john's that's what's happening here as as someone that grew up in arizona and then moved to boston i i empathize with the southerners yeah he meets sam halfway up the steps and sam's actually just delivered a letter to stannis stannis does not take this letter well sam says i'm not i'm not supposed to talk about it i'm sorry and john's like don't which is very honorable. John wonders which of his father's spiderman denied status this time. Uh, clue, John. It's a ten-year-old Liana Mormont that he's thinking about at this moment.

So hilarious. I don't know if it's because of, like, Westeros, an American musical from Ice and Firecon, and our friend Dom, who played Stannis, and he played Robert, but also Stannis in it and it's his yelling for Davos that I hear but Robert is

obviously the equivalent to Fred Flintstone right like that's an obvious parallel to Robert Baratheon but I feel like the Baratheons all have that hint of like Ugga Ugga caveman deep down and I just see Stannis in my head all the time just shaking his fist and yelling at people like steam coming from his head like Stannis is my head all the time, just shaking his fist and yelling at people. Like steam coming from his head.

Like Stannis is just standing over his hide map, shaking his fist, asking for a brontosaurus burger. That's it. Yabba dabba doody. That's Stannis. You're hired. You're hired forever. Wait, wait, Mary, what is your sun sign? Yeah, it's important.

I'm sorry, I'm a Cancer. God damn it! We're never gonna find one. Yeah, my moon sign's a Cancer, but yeah. They chat about Sam's new adventure in archery, and then they part ways. Guards are outside the tower, and they force John to give up his steel,

because no one can bear arms near the king. Some base Dothrak shit over here. Melisandre sits near the fire and Stannis stands at the table Lord Commander Mormont used to sit at. Rude! The kink more lambswool breeches and a quilted doublet,

yet somehow he looked as stiff and uncomfortable as if he had been clad in plate and mail. His skin was pale leather, his beard cropped so short it might have been painted on. A fringe about his temples was all that remained of his black hair. In his hand was a parchment with a broken seal of dark green wax. John kneels to Stannis, and Stannis demands to know who Lyanna Mormont is. Stannis, whomst! Whomst it of!

Shaking his fist, exactly. You're shaking your fist. It's perfect. I know. Mage's youngest daughter, Liana, was named for Ned's sister, you know, Jon's mom, and is about 10 to 12 years old. Stannis, of course, says no doubt to curry your father's favor, even though that's not really how the North works, but okay. But it is kind of how casting television characters in order to create memes works.

Yes, well, if they wrote a show. It turns out, though, speaking of adaptations and writing things, Leonor Mormont was the one who actually wrote this letter. It's, um, Chloe wrote this, so so i'm gonna give her the credit the most motherfucking badass letter ever and she says if you don't know it by heart now you're truly lost also it's like one sentence bear island knows no king but the king in the north whose name is stock i love that uh stannis this is pissing him off so much right he's like this is a 10 year old girl and she's scolding her lawful king and right he's like this is a 10 year old girl and

she's scolding her lawful king and then he's just like please don't tell anyone lord so he doesn't say please stance wouldn't say please but i know he's just like don't tell anyone and then he says that carhold is with him and that's all the men that need know he doesn't want his brothers trading tales of how this child spat on him. This is such small dick energy, you guys. No. I mean, first of all, Stannis should just shave off the beard if everyone thinks it looks drawn on. That's the first thing I have to say.

So I want to circle back around to Stannis saying, oh, no doubt to curry favor, because that isn't how it works for this group of people, especially the Mormonts. Like, the Mormonts aren't trying to garner anything more politically. For a Northerner, like, mage to name her child after Lyanna, it's not to curry favor. It's to pay due and show respect, especially to someone of the North that the North lost because of war. The Starks garner that respect. We see that with the wolves later,

who Stannis means to recruit per Jon's suggestion, but he doesn't understand how they live or what makes their motors run. Valiant Ned's precious little girl works because of the just and fair way the Starks have operated and treated their lords. Lyanna's memory is bitter to some like Barbary Dustin, but most remember her favorably as a spirited young woman. Liana was this symbol of hope for the northerners in the war, something to fight for, to bring back home. Something that symbolized the rebellion. She symbolized the

north's freedom from the tyrannical reign they decided to back Robert to fight. And that was who they were fighting for, to bring back Rickard's vivacious wolf maiden daughter from the dragon. Just like they end up fighting to bring home Arya and how they'll end up fighting for Sansa and even Bran and Jon. There's no favor to be curried for the Starks because they're doomed and dead at this point. All the known Starks are, they're gone, right? And yet the Mormonts and this 10-old girl are writing they refuse to kneel to anyone but their liege lords, the Starks. You even listen to Wyla later in Davos 3. They killed Lord Eddard and Lady Catelyn and King Robb. He was our king. He was brave and good and the phrase murdered him. If Lord Stannis will avenge him, we should join Lord Stannis. This is what northern children are

brought up on in the north the starks and the northerners send people south and they bleed and die for their cause and come back and some don't that's what it's about damn this is the essence of north remembers and i think that's something that stannis can never appreciate um He doesn't appreciate the style of leadership that you're talking about. And it seems like he is completely ignorant of the northern history behind the Wolf's Den, behind the Manderlys' motivations for supporting the Starks. And I think that ignorance, right, that the ignorance of the kind of North remembers ethos is going to come and bite Stannis back in the ass. Yeah, there's definitely a lot in this chapter that points to that.

It's a combination of that and like, what Robert went to the North for the first time in like, 10 years at the beginning of the series. And that was the first time pretty much anyone of the royal family had gone to the North in such a long time. they don't trust this random ass king who it seems like a lot of them are asking have you ever been here before like how can you rule us yeah literally they're like how can you rule us if you don't know us and the North remembers is both they remember what the Starks did for them and their vows

and a lot of it is because the Starks remembered them and defended them and their autonomy when a king in the in a Baratheon name, right, even though we all know he was really a Lannister. Yeah, a plant. Betrayed them. Yeah. A plant.

That's what you said. I like how you laughed. That's my favorite part. You laughed at your joke. Yeah, well, it's funny. That's what you said. I like how you laughed. That's my favorite part. You laughed at your joke. Yeah, well, it's funny. John thinks of Mage and how her and her eldest daughter rode south to fight and die on Daisy's part with Rob,

and how maybe Liana's letter would have had a different tone if John Stark had signed it. But he made his mind up and there was no use on dwelling on it. Stannis has sent 40 ravens out to northern lords, and he's been met with silence thus far. The only one he's had luck with was Arnulf Karstark, uncle of the dead Rickard. The Karstarks have no other choice, John

might have said. Rickard Karstark had betrayed the direwolf and spilled the blood of lions. The stag was Karhold's only hope. Psych! As we saw in the chapters before this character read-through, this actually isn't true. Arnulf Karstark is

out here playing with maybe 40 chests. Maybe it's like 1D chests. Who knows? Right? And the one vassal, it's kind of actually really sad. The one vassal that said this was like, he's all the men vassal it's kind of actually really sad the one vassal that status is like he's all the men we need he's the only one who pledged to me is actually trying to betray him yeah this is what gets me people think stannis is set up to like sweep the north and i'm like but what allies though he's not about to be betrayed like literally with the camp that he

has up there i'm like fuck and john tells him you're not the only king people are you know being demanded to kneel to they have to consider their loyalties and there are still kings to consider especially if the aforementioned mage comes to the fold bringing rob's will north i think a lot of people presume rob's will is going to solve or it's going to solve a stark civil war. But I don't think there's really going to be time for there to be a stark civil war. Arya doesn't want to rule. Sansa will likely just be happy to be fucking home in Winterfell.

I think Rob's will will really exist to punch Stannis down over anyone else. I used to think maybe he does lose against the Boltons, but it makes more sense for him to survive that because the bitterness is what comes back later, right? The bitterness of losing and having the bigger lose is like being rejected like he was by his brother, being rejected by the Lords, being rejected by the Northern Lords. When he finally does win and he saves the North and they say, okay, but we don't want you. We have Jon Snow. We have this resurrected guy that we believe in. does win and he saves the north and they say okay but we don't want you we have john snow we have this resurrected guy that we believe in there's a so spake martin from george's live journal i think it was from uh august 6th 2000 and someone asks i have a question since rob legitimized john and named him heir uh for winterfell in the north before the Red Wedding. Granted, no one knows about this that's alive or free.

What does this make Jon's rejection of Stannis' offer? Does it make it moot later? And George says, Edmure and the Great Jon are prisoners, but you're forgetting envoys. Howland Reed, Galbraith Glover, Mage Mormont, Jason Malister. They're all alive and free.

As to what is and isn't moot, the key point is only a king can legitimize a bastard. But, so which king do the northerners listen to? At this point, we can agree it probably won't be Stannis. He might win and they'll reject him. And of course, it'll be like Storm's End all over again. I protected you, I killed for you, you reject me, you're righteous king? It's going to be really interesting who the Northerners will follow.

I think, um, in response to this, thinking about all the different Kings that we could swear allegiance to, uh, John has this line that I absolutely love, which is, fuck you.

This is bullshit in times as confused as these even men of honor must wonder where their duty lies and this is such a great encapsulation of John's struggles within this whole book

is in it it okay so not only does this reflect what john's state of mind is right now which is what the fuck am i supposed to do guys like look at all these different obligations that i have um it it also demonstrates that John is extremely focused on duty, right? He's really trying to figure out what the right thing is to do. And I don't think that John is the kind of person who would take Rob's will as kind of sacrosanct unless there's someone else sort of supporting it or like pushing him to accept that position um so I think it's going to be really interesting to see

how this conflict plays out not only in terms of how it affects Stannis but in terms of the way that that Jon reacts yeah I think you know Stannis is pretty fucking lucky that theon shows up at the end of this book right regarding the carstarks but that might be john's quote-unquote betrayal of him right might be one of the ones that hurts him the most he's like i thought we were friends and you know stannis is frustrated right now as he's going to be later on than as he is all the time pointing out that you know none of these kings have come north to help the watch like i have like stannis leans so heavily into this idea that john is indebted to him because he did the right thing. And that plays a really big role in persuading

John to help Stannis. Throughout his time at the Wall, John's willing to give Stannis political and eventually military advice. This is going beyond the bounds of what John has to do as a leader of the Watch. Is John doing this because he feels a sense of like personal obligation and debt to Stannis? I really wonder if a similar dynamic is going to end up being at play with Dany. It certainly feels like there was in the show. Dany is a kind of pitch to Jon is like, hey, I'm bringing my dragons here to help you. So you better, you know, scratch my back afterwards and march your troops to help me because I put it on the line to come save your butt. And I think it's really important about Jon's character that he recognizes the debt that he owes to Stannis and doesn't just put it aside

but instead kind of views that as a reason to have some level of loyalty to him. And they definitely played it in the show for her but we'll see that rejection of the northerners of her as well likely that we'll see with Stannis first. Jon tells him, give the lord's time

you'll get your answers. And Stannis shakes the letter around. It's like, letters like these from a ten-year-old girl? Next time it's gonna be a nine-year-old girl. I don't actually know any nine-year-old girls. Beth Castle, six years old. Wyla Banderly, maybe just a little

bit older. Twelve. Wait, no, no. Fifteen? She's gonna send him a howler. Yeah. She's like 14, 15. You're gonna send him a howler yeah she's like 14 15 you're gonna send him a live journal post oh my god tag that bitch i hope so at him i would do that at him yeah they rode north with rob bled with him died for him they have supped on grief and death and now you come to offer them another serving. Do you blame them if they hang back? Forgive me, your grace, but some will look at you and see only another doomed pretender. Again, that's a telling line.

I think that could apply not only to Stannis, but eventually Dany as well. There's a part of me that also kind of wonders like what did status write in these letters like i feel like there might have been a way he could have better appealed to northern pride have been like hey you know i want to work with you the way that i want to be as close to you as king robert was with ned you know something like that but he would never i don't know something like that that would be make them more inclined to side with him as opposed to like, so I did this thing for you everyone, bend down which I'm pretty sure is what he wrote

ba ba ba ba ba ba da bend the knee wait, like Stannis, a lie, remove it Baratheon, you think he didn't write an incredibly diplomatic letter, Eliana? I can't believe- Stannis,

sensitive pants Baratheon. Oh my god. Melisandre reminds Jon that, well, you know what? If Stannis is doomed, so is your whole fucking realm because he's the one true king of Westeros. Huh. Sounds fake. But okay.

God damn it stannis is amused at john's lack of words amused is a word to use i guess here for stannis he says he's like that's cute right he says he says john spends his words like golden dragons he asks him how much gold the watch has speaking of gold dragons and john's like fucking done dude and stannis yeah stannis is like so you're poor so you're poor yeah and john's like yes that's like the point of us uh he suggests white harbor if he wants gold and stannis is like oh the letter i received from lord too fat to sit a horse certainly showed manderly's age and his weakness melisandre wonders if he wants a little wildling wife to appease him and john's like um manderly's wife is long dead and he's 30 stone and has two grown sons and some grandkids as well who will meet later on in davos

three and val would uh not have that she would not marry that man not at all also lord manderly wants a strategic a politically strategic marriage we've seen it earlier he'd be like what the fuck i'm gonna do with this stannis is frustrated that john won't give him the answers he wants to hear god john and john's like i'll i remove it john tells him he's going the wrong way, because Val's not really a princess. We've been over this many times.

And Mance is the one that's gonna bind everyone to the cause. Not Val. Stannis is like, alright, sure, I agree. But, like, Mance is an oathbreaker. He can't just, like, I can't just let deserters and oathbreakers run rampant and free breaking rules.

Stannis has this great line, Suffer one deserter to live, and you encourage others to desert. No, laws should be made of iron, not pudding. This quotation is hilarious, because pudding laws, this is just great. But it's also an example of how stannis is the pure iron um he's literally you know comparing his rule to two fucking iron um it's also a really interesting wwnd what would ned do moment? I think John is, John is kind of immersed in this idea that it would be useful to give mercy to,

to Mance. But of course a game of Thrones opens with Ned executing a deserter. So, you know, what, what, what would daddy do? I mean,

that's the interesting ned question what would he do if he had more true knowledge of the cold ones and that's what john does what he thinks ned would have done with that knowledge but the most we see in the beginning for ned magic wise is the dire wolves and lewin's doubts and ned's beheading of the deserter and that's it. After that he's too swept up in the politics and it is interesting because later Stannis does have Mance, you know, rampant

and free. He goes to Winterfell. Sure it's a suicide mission pretty much but he goes to save Arya. He does let him free technically even though he's raptured. Does Stannis know this? Does Stannis know M does stannis know that's the question no not really right yeah which is fascinating in its own right but yeah either way an oathbreaker and deserter is running free right now so maybe that's an inkling of uh bad times ahead for Stanny Boy.

Oh, Stanny Boy. We can make good use of him. And Stannis is like, yeah! With his king's blood! We're gonna burn it! We're gonna burn his son! We all got damn kings! He's gonna be the king when he dies! It's gonna be great!

And Stannis is like, good, because I'm not gonna suffer other kings. Because'm the king and john's like what i feel like john is just staring into the camera this whole entire episode yeah you ask too much he says and respect to him for standing up for the watch but stannis doesn't agree of course he starts to get short he's like i asked you to be lord of winterfell and warden of the north i need these castles i require these castles but the watch has already seated them the night for and stannis doesn't really appreciate it he says it's just rats and ruins and that this costs them nothing is the important key line here the other forts are better and says he knows, but this is all they have

open. Stannis is mad because these 19 forts are open along the wall and he wants to resettle them, but Jon basically calls him out. He's resettling them with his own knights and lords to be vassals to him, not the Night's Watch. Yeah, and I mean,

this is part of that hypocrisy in Stannis, right? Because he's all like, rules are rules, Jon! Mance is a fucking deserter. Then he's like, but, give me those castles. Um, who's gonna be Stannis? I mean, I can read Stannis. I'm not that interesting, but I'll do it. Perfect, you're cast. Alright.

You're hired! Kings are expected to be open-handed to their followers. Did Lord Eddard teach his bastard nothing? Many of my knights and lords abandoned rich lands and stout castles in the south. Should their loyalty go unrewarded? If your grace wishes to lose all my lord father's bannermen, there is no more certain way than by giving northern halls to southern lords. How could I lose men I do not have?

I had hoped to bestow Winterfell on a northman, you may recall, a son of Eddard Stark. He threw my offer in his face. Stannis Baratheon, with a grievance, was like a mastiff with a bone. He nodded down to Splinters. By right, Winterfell should go to my sister, Sansa, damn straight.

Lady Lannister, you mean? Are you so eager to see the imp perched on your father's seat? I promise you that will not happen whilst I live, Lord Snow. First of all, Tyrion and Jon are friends.

No one else knows this except for Jon, I guess. But also, there's this line Stannis says because he loves to neg Jon for reasons I don't really get he's like did Lord Eddard teach his bastard nothing I'm just like god damn it Stannis like chill the fuck out like did you teach your bastard shadow babies

how to play catch I mean maybe you should look after your own fucking bastards first Stannis and what they're up to, killing political leaders before you go around just throwing insult at Jon Snow. Stop just carting your big ol' shadow dick around,

you know what I mean? Also, it reminds me of that line he says, how could I lose men I do not have? It reminds me of Sansa, in a way, when she thinks, when I'm queen, I'll make them love me ruling through love not through fear he's at the point where he's like I'm gonna scare him into being my friends and uh I think it's obvious that's not the right way to rule a quick thought

on Sansa which is you know Jon says multiple times that Winterfell belongs to Sansa, which is not only foreshadowing of Sansa eventually ruling Winterfell, it's also the opposite of what Kat thinks would happen. You know, Kat thinks Sansa would be disinherited because, um, Jon would, would, uh, take Winterfell from her. So this may be like the only instance in the entire books in which a cat is wrong. But to talk about what's going on with John here. Okay, so John is criticizing Stannis for offering castles to Southerners. But like, buddy, how is this different than offering them to wildlings like you're gonna do in a couple chapters? I mean, I get that it's technically different. Because Jon makes the wildlings say the words to join the Watch.

And there's some precedent for wildlings joining the Watch. Mance, the stolen child, right? But it still doesn't make sense from a political standpoint. He's criticizing Stannis because of the politics of this move. And he frames a similar challenge later to Stannis with placing wildlings at his own fighting force. And that's that, look, it just is not going to work in terms of your relationship with northerners to give wildlings lands and to give them castles. And I think, unfortunately for John, this is an example of him being very good at giving other people advice and not being very good at taking it himself.

I also think that this is kind of the second or third heavy-handed thought in this chapter that makes us wonder if John taking Winterfell would have, from a political standpoint, been a lot better than him becoming Lord Commander. Remember, in the context of Leona's letter, he thinks of the response about how it might have been different if it had been signed by John Stark. So I think George really has his thumb on the scales here to make the cost of John's honor and duty to the watch very high. Yeah, it's what makes that internal battle before his death so tense and inevitable. He's on a very slippery slope.

He's doing things a Lord Commander hasn't done or had to do before in this manner. The last king we even hear about visiting the wall was during Jaehaerys and Alysanne's reign, and we know the Watch has kind of become a militia joke in Westeros. We see how they're treated and regarded in King's Landing. And while, yes, it's admirable Stannis came north, he's been grinding his teeth the entire time, and he's not enthusiastic about anything but his just desserts for helping. I feel like Jon probably has a ton of remorse at that choice of winterfell being swept from underneath

him mainly because he knows he could make a difference just like in a game of thrones when he thinks he could protect the how could he protect the realm when he can't even protect his family and that's echoed again later in this book he has that power to rally northern lords the look the name the experience he could cut out this middle man which is stannis uh the middle manis because he's a middle brother yeah i got it but he could cut that out he could but his choice has already been made for him in that he made this choice in book one. Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. For sure. And there is still a part of me, though, and we'll see it, I think, play out a little in wins, that thinks it would be divided. Some of them would be like, yeah, sweet, love it. John Stark, all about it. And some of them would be like, sweet love it john stark all about it and some of them would be like so you deserted what about your vows but you know we don't have to deal with that today john's not gonna

he doesn't press on he changes the subject he's heard there's gossip that stannis you mean to you mean to give a gift of a castle to a rattle shirt in the magner of then also i heard it from gilly and since it's like who the fuck is gilly rude an angel a motherfucking angel is who gilly is i knew that my partner was the one when he was like gilly deserves more respect and has to and like deserves more i don't know, something like that. I was like, yes. Gilly's awesome. Stannis is like, Gilly needs to milk

her titties more and talk less. Or talk fewer. Oh my god. It's not really the actual quote, but it is to me basically. We call this calming your tits in my house, the way oh my god john agrees castle black needs no useless mouths and informs him she'll be going south on the next ship out of

east watch where people will appreciate her yeah right where people might appreciate her melisandre says it would be cruel to part the prince from his milk brother monster there's a part of me that wonders if someone said the same thing once, of John, way back in the day to Ned, you know, as he was leaving the Danes and heading north. Oh, of John and his milk sister, Mira

Reed? Uh, perhaps. It has those vibes, and separating the babies, but obviously they went north together, so no worries there, fam. Just saying. Doesn't Edric Dane call them milk brothers? Yeah, he does because Wyla, he says, was also his milk brother. But that means Wyla

stayed in Dorne. So how did Jon Snow get north? Interesting. So in between, Jon is thinking, careful now, careful. He tells them of the abomination that Gilly's son is, and Stannis says he'll not be able to do such things here.

This is not King's Landing. Leave Gilly alone! He'll find another wet nurse and for now feed the boy goat's milk. He says it's better than whore's milk. Leave Gilly alone! Yeah, honestly, Stannis is a real dickbag in this chapter. Usually I'm like, Stannis is a just and righteous man. I'm like, he's a great moral character.

But right now I'm like, holy shit, leave her the fuck alone. Yeah. He's such an asshole, which is why it's important to recognize that, that Jon is pretty justified in setting up the lie that he sets up here. For John's character, it's important that right now, John is actively setting up the deception that he's going to use for the baby swap with Monster. Later, John is going to conclude that some things are worth more than one man's honor. But the fact that this early in the book, John is already deceiving Stannis for a higher purpose, in this case, protecting a child, is really important to understanding how John is going to continue to interact with power.

This and John's state of mind, I think are really interesting from a Kantian perspective to go back to the I'm making this a moral philosophy podcast thing. So, Shojon explains why Kant thinks lying is wrong in actually a really pithy way. And that's because if we all lied, then there would be no more truth, only better and better lies. A lot of simplistic readings of Kant's work say that lying is always morally wrong, no matter what. I don't think that this is the best and most nuanced reading of Kant. Instead, I think a precise reading would say that we're always responsible for the consequences of our lies, even if they're made with a good heart. This nuance is really important

for how we understand John's story, because John internally takes responsibility for his lies. We see that he accepts that they harm his honor. Ned does the same thing when he lies. He broods about it. He accepts that it's a kind of bad and destructive thing. The moral background of a dance with dragons in a Song of Ice and Fire universe is going to continue to make Jon responsible for his lies, even when they're done with a good intention. So for example, the Watch uncovers John's participation in Melisandre's ruse with Mance. So I wonder how he's going to end up being held responsible for this baby swap. There's definitely a lot of theories that it might be Monster who gets

sacrificed to the flames in order to resurrect John. And even if that's not the case, there's a lot of ways that this particular act could come back to haunt him, even though it's done with good intentions. I think it's interesting because engaging in an act of resistance right now, John is arguably acting against an oppressive military force. Like Stannis is trying to be righteous, but a lot of what he does is very dickish and despotic, right? So a philosopher might say that John is doing something supererogatory. He's going beyond either his duties or his virtues. What he's doing is thus heroic. It's not ordinary. If this kind of idea interests people, there's a lot of people that have written essays about the idea of how Kant would treat like lying to a Nazi who comes to your door if you're you know

hiding people from the Nazis right and there's there's a particular author who wrote an essay that discusses how people who resisted that the Nazi regime by hiding Jews in their homes actually experienced a lot of depression and guilt afterwards. And sort of the upshot of that observation is that when we do things that are morally challenging, even if they're ultimately right, we very much like Jon Snow experience brooding and regret as a result of them. And perhaps that makes the acts ultimately more heroic. Yeah, I mean, Kant argues to act morally correct, you have to act out of duty, which is absolutely what Jon consistently does.

And a person has goodwill when they act out of respect for moral law. So what they know is correct and what they feel is correct at their heart of hearts um and there's also something at play with the rhythm of this conversation that i want to point out because obviously george alternates often between like a character's thinking and actions so like john listened carefully to the words versus this is a thing that i'm thinking, John thought. But here there's no context given, right? He's switching between dialogue chunks with John and Stannis, where John is specifically choosing the words that he's saying and weighing them, which Stannis has pointed out.

And then John's actual thoughts with no context, no signifiers for any physical feelings, just straight thoughts. Like in between Stannis saying this is what Ned would do and Jon immediately thinks never. It's declaring to us that the situation that's being showed to us via dialogue is dishonest. And it's conveying that the honest part of the conversation is something that only we the reader and Jon are in on. Yeah, and I think that's why this is the heart of this chapter, right? Like, because you're seeing all that conflict within John in this conversation. Stand us... go ahead. I just, I think that's such a good point,

because there's all this back and forth between John about him choosing his words carefully and this kind of like more witty banter that we laugh about but I think in a lot of ways this is the climax of the conversation

it's the climax of something but yes that's what Melisandre said not to John it's a climax of something uh but yes that's what Melisandre said not to Jon Stannis tries to bring the conversation back to the forest just like Eliana here I am

I am I am I Stannis? a righteous and just woman. Ew. Gross. Never. Never. As Jon thinks inside himself later on. Anyways, Jon tells him that the Watch is housed in fed men at dire cost

to like our fucking harvest and we've clothed you. Raggedy ass bitches. That should be enough. Stannis is not pleased. I've shared your salt pork and porridge and you've thrown us some black rags to keep us warm. Rags

the wildlings would have taken off your corpses if I had not come north. Sounds like you're projecting though, Stannis, just a little bit. John ignores him and goes on saying he's given him food for the horses, builders to restore the night for and even given him land and the gift to settle wildlings. Stannis is frustrated, to say the least.

Jon's given him empty lands, but he's not giving him the castles he actually wants to reward his bannermen with. Jon again argues these are the Night's Watch's castles, and Stannis argues the Night's Watch abandoned them, but Jon cuts him off because they abandoned them to defend the Wall. The stones of those forts are mortared with the blood and bones of my brothers, long dead. I cannot give them to you. Cannot or will not. The cords in the king's neck stood out sharp as swords. I offered you a name.

I have a name, your grace. Snow. Was ever a name more ill-omened? Rude. Stannis touched his sword hilt. Just who do you imagine that you are? The watcher on the walls. The sword in the darkness. Don't prate your words at me. Stannis drew the blade that he called Lightbringer. Here is your sword in the darkness. Light rippled up and down the blade that he called Lightbringer. Here is your sword in the darkness. Light rippled up and down the blade, now red, now yellow, now orange, painting the king's face in harsh, bright hues. Even a green boy should be able to see that. Are you blind?

First of all, it fascinates me how often Stannis just resorts to trying to neg Jon to get what he wants. No wonder Renly didn't respect him. Damn. I know, right? He's like, ugh. But it's funny that now that I think about it, that Stannis ends it with, are you blind in bringing out the sword that he calls Lightbringer? Because in the last book, you know, when we time traveled forward and back to this one, Aemon,

who is blind, is the only one who could truly quote-unquote see that the sword is not Lightbringer and that's because he could not see it. Yeah. Because he couldn't feel it. Exactly. I love that also Stannis is becoming his sigil here. Light rippled up and down the blade

now red now yellow now orange painting the king's face in harsh bright hues uh total you know metaphor foreshadowing of stannis you know going consuming up in flames taking his whole reign his legacy and just burning it down. John asks Stannis to provide him the men, and he would love to give them the castles and provide them with commanders and people to help survive through the winter. He says as graciousness for what the Night's Watch has provided, Stannis can give them men to fill the garrisons. Even raw boys, young, crossbowmen, weak, injured. He'll take anyone.

Stannis laughs and says he's bold. Saying his men would never take the black. They won't serve under poachers and murderers. Jon thinks, or bastards. Sire. But instead of saying that, he says, what about smugglers? What about smugglers? Am I supposed to say something? If someone wants to read that before I supposed to say something I don't know

okay Stannis is like well I punished Davos for that so we're even and then he semi threatens Jon saying that maybe the 999th commander of the Night's Watch might be inspired to give me

castles if they see the 998th commander's head on spikes. This is nagging, like, at the next fucking level, Stannis, alright? And, like, then he tells him, you're only the Lord Commander because of me. And Jon's like, no, my brothers chose me. That's, like, Baelish saying that to Sansa when she finally goes back home. Like, what? Okay. I like that this is a volley back and forth. It's a battle of words and wits.

Considering that technique, George is showing us with the thoughts. And this was a checkmate for John, but then Stannis, so righteous, just turns it back on John, and he wins that. Like, got ya, already chopped the fingers off, fit the crime. And it really reminds me of this horrible breakup because Stenis will not accept that John is dumping him.

You're right, that actually is the language here. And I like you quoted this at the beginning of the episode where John and his thoughts, he's expressing his disbelief of like, yeah, that's right, my brothers chose me, huh? And how he still kind of can't really come to grips with it.

And Sam, as you quoted, likens it to changing clothes, change clothes, and go to quote Jay-Z. in the context of Michael Ganey's comment from the other week about Jon changing his clothes in preparation for meeting the king and likening it to what we discussed in Ned's chapters in A Game of Thrones, the only book that has the Ned chapters to try and fit in at King's Landing.

You know, like, Ned never really did fit in. It didn't matter what he fucking wore, right? And this idea of changing clothes, again, it's a lot of how the story is communicated to us, especially because in a few moments, we're going to talk about how Jon is once more, you know, discussing this concept of what it means to be a turncloak. And so clothing very much ties in with that characterization,

whether or not you feel you fit into it or just performing. But speaking of people thinking Jon's a turncloak, Alistair Thorne has been complaining about how Jon was elected and seems to be nursing a grievance, which, surprise! Quote goes, The map lay between them like a battleground drenched by the colors of the glowing sword or did you want to do this

it's almost like there's something between them him and Stannis like the whole north the what? the whole north like the line is just like the map lays between them it's like ah there must be something between us Stannis it's the north the north is between us what could it be yeah slint names john a turncloak and thorn has said

the blind maester did the count with sam john's best friend so it's a little suspect john tells him a turncloak would tell him what he wants to hear though your grace knows that i was fairly chosen my father always said you were a just man. Just but harsh had been Lord Eddard's exact words, but John didn't think it would be wise to share that. This is one of my favorite passages in this chapter because of this line, a turncloak would tell you what you want to hear and then betray you later. This is exactly what John is doing to Stannis in this passage. He's actively hiding the truth from him and disobeying him. First, he's only giving a partial truth, just but harsh,

to curry his favor. Second, he's at this moment proceeding with a plan to swap out dolla's boy with monster later he's going to break a promise to stannis to send val to get torment so when john says these words he knows he's not acting loyally or truthfully towards stannis and so do we as the reader yeah we're hearing it in between those words he actually says and it's so intensely ned right down to sending babies and children away to protect them but it's the truth comforted with a lie right john is of my blood uh the non-answers about ashara dane robert's will what he writes about robert's heir it's trying to stay that moral ground of they themselves being righteous and following the rules of this broken system yet still honoring their head and heart and families and the people they want to protect and love.

How does one play the hero when you're put in circumstances that anyone else would be a villain? How do you stay morally right in a world that fosters that? It's what John and Ned's characters are exploring, how you can stay a good man in this exploitative world of war, sorrow, and intrigue. Yeah. Excuse me while I cry. how you can stay a good man in this exploitative world of war, sorrow, and intrigue. Yeah. Excuse me while I cry. Dad, no. While you're crying, Stannis is like, yeah, but

Ned would have given me those castles. Never. Yeah, literally, Jon thinks internally, never, before he launches into everything, and Jon's like, he took an oath his brain in this moment though is like he absolutely would not

have done that thing that you're speaking of but okay yeah John's like hoops and I love that because in this moment you know we were taught because in this moment I was citing earlier you know Michael Unni drawing in this moment i was citing earlier you know michael yinny drawing those connections between john and ned and it's happening here again because stanis

is in this time as much as he both idolizes and demonizes robert because he longed for his love like he's misjudging the dead in the same way that robert does by idealizing them in a way that fits their own fan his own fantasy of himself and like what he wants in the way that that Robert does, by idealizing them in a way that fits his own fantasy of himself and what he wants in the way that Robert did. Because Robert does this when he's telling Ned, oh, Lyanna would have let me compete in the melee, unlike Cersei. And this is the exact same energy

with Stannis telling Jon, yeah, Ned would have given me those castles. But Jon doesn't have the same relationship with Stannis that Ned has with Robert, and therefore can't give him that direct answer that Ned would have, which is that never. And I just love that because, again, it's just that one word and simple protest within Jon's heart defending his quote-unquote father's honor. Jon instead dances around it after all we after all we know from John's earlier chapters as we've been saying over and over throughout this podcast episode like Ned would have done that was right and what Stannis is asking of John

right now is not right and at the end of the day the wall is John's not Stannis's it does not belong to the realm in that way. It belongs to the realm and Jon's defending that. Yes. Ideal. But not to the king. Not to Stannis. Yes. Not to one man to do with what he pleases. Yeah. And Stannis is like, alright, cool, well keep all your stupid

shitty broken castles and if at the end of the year- I don't want them anyway. I don't want them anyway. If they're empty at the end of the year i don't want them anyway if they're empty at the end of the year i will take them from you like permanently and forcefully and if you give them to my foe i'm gonna cut your head off then too so you should go now and melisandre's like wow that was harsh can i go with john to make sure he doesn't die of hypothermia when he starts crying from how mean you're being to him just kidding but she does say can i go with him ominously and stannis is like whatever

sure where's devon i want eggs and lemon water i like how at first stannis is like why do you need to go with him he needs he knows where to go it's a sex thing stannis i know there's a part of me that's like is stannis like is she gonna bang him also like i like how like stannis is like i guess this is what they mean by the third head of the dragon. Yeah, he's like, perhaps I too am horned. Oh my god. Anyway. Well, he is. Stag, stag, stag.

Stannis is just bummed that Melisandre leaves with Jon because he doesn't want to go stag. So Melisandre tells Jon, he's growing on Stannis, and Jon's like, yeah, he's only threatened to pet me twice today. There are people like that. Yeah, speaking of weird sex

things, does this mean that this is what John and Dany's foreplay is going to be like? Yes, absolutely. I hope so. Beheading really turns me on. I'm actually kind of into it. I have, like, you know, everyone has the different romantic tropes that they like.

Part of what I like about the Jamie and Brianne one is it's the rivals turned into, like, romantic interests, and I think that's what it's gonna be with John and Danny, and everything is gonna go awry, but yes. Well, I mean, there's a sense in which this is a real thing, which is that

Daenerys is going to earn Jon's respect through kind of like her passionate devotion to her claim to the law to doing the right thing yes yes that too and you know that's a foreplay

in and of itself but it's also I think a foreshadowing of what their relationship is going to be like. The mutual challenge that they present to each other is part of why they're attracted to each other. They just have different methods to an extent of getting to the right things, but they're going to be aligned and stuff. I mean, if anything, you just have to look at Ygritte. There's your foreshadowing for what's gonna happen that fire uh that wild quality even that fire in her eyes he's gonna see that for sure it's gonna

be interesting they can fuck and then she's gonna die yep just like egret and this time instead of him trying to choose between killing egret and not killing egret and having someone else make the choice it's always been hard the choosing it's always been hard um melisandre says that she'll pray to the lord of light about mance because she thinks john might be onto something when it comes to saving him when i gaze into the flames i can see through stone and earth and find the truth within men's souls i can speak to kings long dead and children not yet born and watch the years and seasons flicker past until the end of days. This whole passage reminds me a lot of Bran and Bloodraven and their powers. We've obviously talked in the past about that possibility of magic coming from one pool. But that line specifically,

I can speak to King's long dead and children not yet born, A, fits in really well with all of these different themes being talked about in this chapter, especially with the baby swap. But specifically, it's standout with kind of that revolving discussion of can Bran and Bloodraven interact with the past, even when the ink's already dry? Or is it fated for them to interact with the past

like they have to make history happen they're obligated to make the timeline happen uh and that line just really stuck out that whole passage just really made me think about them it's it's interesting because blood raven gives the the caution to bran not to drown in memories and also tells him that Ned can't hear him in the past. But it seems like Melisandre represents a different philosophy. I mean, she's looking into the past and the future with the explicit purpose of changing what's going to happen. And I'm sure that that greenseers do that too. But I wonder if the rules are different for Melisandre

than they are for Bloodraven and Bran. I think, so we see that Bloodraven actually can't, right? He's tried. He cannot interact with the past. And as you said, he warns Bran, don't get lost in the memories. And I think that's going to be part of brand's growth uh you know the realization of as you said melisandre has the philosophy of i have the power and the ability to do this thing and therefore i must use it to chart it towards the course that i think is right everyone else's like ideas of what

should happen be damned this is what i think we ought to do whereas i think it seems like brand storyline might go more towards of a wow i really fucked this up meddling with shit in the past trying to maybe meddle with shit in the future and and trying to withdraw from that and being more like i might know it and i can provide what guidance that i have but it is not for me to mold the future yeah learning i think that's super interesting in terms of how that makes me feel about bran ultimately becoming king, right? If Bran is less like Melisandre and like less meddlesome and more willing to be respectful of the choice of the people whose lives he's meddling in, that makes me feel a lot better about Bran being the king of Westeros.

Because if you imagine someone with the philosophy of Melisandre being in charge of everything, you know, that seems pretty scary. Ultimately, it would be very easy, and this is something that gets explored a little in His Dark Materials, the other series that we're doing, but when you remove free will from the equation, it's easy to try and do things in the way that seems like it should be right, that seems like it should lead to innocence, etc. But the fact of the matter is humanity is based on this idea of the choosing has always been hard. Bran's storyline is very much wrapped up in Jon's, as we see, especially within the supernatural element. So I think that the themes that cross between Jon's storyline

should very much echo within Bran's. Jon, when he offers the wildlings the choice to either join the Watch or not, is espousing that idea of choice, instead of simply putting them to the sword and forcing them to take gods in the way that Stannis and Melisandre would. He is valuing their agency and their ability to make decisions and not assuming that they will behave a certain way just because they have in the past, right? The, the watch's mistake with respect to the wild things is to say,

well, they've always been my enemies. Therefore they are untrustworthy. And sort of John rejects that kind of collective punishment and, and collective judgment in favor of, of privileging choice. And I think that's a huge theme in John's arc. It's a big theme in Bran's arc,

but it's only kind of beginning to percolate. Yeah, going forward. But yeah, and I think Melisandre is a great example of sort of where Bran could end up or where someone like Jon could end up if they decide to disregard the importance of people's control over their own lives. They're very much so wrapped up in that idea of the once and the future king. the future king. It's interesting because Melisandre is seeing Bran and Bloodraven in her fires and seeing them as almost an enemy is something that we'll eventually get to on the podcast. And I think that has a lot to do with it as well. Different morally intended futures, right? Bran has a different future and what is intended for him is different from what Melisandre

is planning for Stannis. And Jon asks her, you know, are your fires ever wrong? And she says, no, they're never wrong unless I misinterpret it. And I love this line because she says, we priests are mortal and sometimes air, mistaking this must come for this may come. I thought that was great. Yeah, yeah, I think that's an important understanding. She doesn't get it.

Yet. It's part of, that's part of, I mean, that's part of Amela Sandra's character arc, right? Yeah. Eventually she'll find out how wrong she was when it's too late. Shit. God damn it. All right. Yeah.

But until then, Jon can feel the heat coming off her through her clothes hey when when john comes back from death do you think he'll be a born again virgin the sexual tension y'all so much i mean like maybe it's like aphrodite bathing in the sea but also at the same time why would anyone anyone fucking want that? They draw attention. They're walking arm in arm out in the yard, and all the men are watching them, and he thinks, oh, there's gonna be whispering tonight, which again, this does

also look suspect. The new super young Lord Commander shacking up with the mean Kang and his fire witch. Is that a threesome? After also giving them the night fort, like, the place responsible for human sacrifice and history? Suspect. Dude, John, it looks terrible, and you know it looks terrible. Like, maybe do something about it? Like, similarly, later you're going to make Satin,

the former sex worker that you think is pretty, your personal steward. And I'm all about you elevating this person regardless of their background. But John just does not think about the optics of any of that and whether or not he's doing Satin potentially more harm than good by putting him in that position. Look, John's men all think he's horny as fuck like, he slept with Ygritte, like, I mean just think about how things things look, Jon just, I beg you yeah

I mean, you're right, everyone thinks he looks super thirsty and he's like, nah, I'm fine the wall's weeping Jon asks Ygritte, not Ygritte, Jon asks Melisandre, so do you know when the next boiling attack is going to be based on your visions? And she's like, no.

Doesn't work like that, but I'll look again. And she's like, oh, but I've seen you in the fires. And he's like, uh, rude. She says, no, no, no, I'm not going to burn you, silly boy. And then she tells him, you know,

I'm worried. I feel like I make you uneasy. Where would you get that from? I feel like there's this gap between us. There's a wall between us, John. He's like, yeah, the wall. It's no place for a woman. She's like yeah the wall it's no place for a woman

she's like yeah i've dreamed i've dreamed of your wall and and the magic that created it it was pretty great we're gonna walk behind we're gonna walk beneath one of the hinges of the world awesome line awesome phrase man if sam were sitting here with Jon, he would totally be grilling Melisandre on all her cryptic bullshit. If she knows about the lore that raised the Wall, that would be a really good topic of discussion for, you know, the defenders of the Wall. Similarly, I would really like to learn more about what Melisandre knows about the making and magic of the wall maybe later in a Mel POV? Yeah, and that's of course why we don't get it, right? She tells him not to refuse her friendship as she's seen him hard pressed enemies at every side. She asks if he wants her to tell him all of his enemies because he has many. He refuses. to tell him all of his enemies because he has many he refuses there's this line in this passage where um melisandre says soon enough you may have grave need of me and it always reminds me of this line from romeo and juliet where mercutio gets stabbed and he makes a pun on the word grave

ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man um i just think it's it's something that i i wonder if george is aware of and that there's a little bit of uh hand tipping and intentional foreshadowing in the way that he uses the word grave oh for sure i mean george is often saying how shakespeare's influence his writing. So I think that could definitely be something that he's thinking about. It's kind of funny that Melisandre's like, yeah, you got to keep me close as your friend because you have enemies all around you. As though me being a close ally and friend of yours is not adding to people being suspicious about you and becoming your enemy? Think this through, Melisandre.

None of these people know anything about PR. Anyway, she warns him about all these daggers. We're going to talk about it in a bit. It's so Ned and Littlefinger and then Littlefinger fingers lessons about hidden daggers

asanza in like a second like in in the end of storm and it's all here in this place together yes um john tells her that he knows all of his enemies and she says don't be so certain john snow i mean melisandre can't be fucking certain because she's part of why it's happening but anyway the ruby and melisandre's throat gleaned red it is not the foes who curse you to your face that you must fear but those who smile when you are looking and sharpen their knives when you turn your back. You would do well to keep your wolf close beside you. Ice, I see, and daggers in the dark, blood frozen red and hard and naked steel. It was very cold. It is always cold on the wall.

You think so? I know so, my lady. Then you know nothing john snow she whispered what a good end to this chapter yeah no it's a great chapter and the end is just like so ominous and so like and of course now you go back after having read the series several times you're like ah it was very cold at the time you're like, ah! It was very cold! At the time you're like, oh, that's ominous. Okay, next. You have no clue that John dies at the end of this book.

It was very cold! It's been such a long time since I didn't know that John died. It has been a while. I know, it's kind of like everyone just feels like he's alive in their heads. Already. Cool. It's weird to think, everyone just feels like he's alive in their heads already it's weird to think like right now he's straight up just like on ice no literal pun intended

actually but I think that this line where Melisandre says it's not the foes who curse you to your face that you must fear but the ones who smile when you're looking and sharpen their knives when you turn your back. It's always made me wonder if someone other than the three people that stabbed John and the people that are criticizing him, um, help plan his, his death. I mean, there's lots of potential options. You know, one thing based on this chapter that I think about is three fingered hob, because, you know know you got to be aware of being pruned um and also like a cook would sharpen their knives like later on hob says some passive-aggressive shit to john um i mean i'm not i'm not all bought in on that but i think it it would be interesting if we learn in in winds that there's a little bit more going on with john's assassination than meets the eye yeah i'm guessing we'll like it will have it revealed of how it was

planned at some point yeah i mean there's definitely a lot more going on i think the idea of it being three finger top is interesting especially with like there's some sinister shit going on with cooks right you got lord manderly and his pies you've got the song of the rat king so i there's a thing with food being tied in with betrayal especially with poison etc so i think um who was it, the Cantus on Reddit had a theory a while ago that it might be satin that's in on killing Jon. And because he has access to his wine, he might be able to drug his wine, kind of like Lancel does with Robert. And that might be the reason that Jon's not able to grab his sword, because he's been drugged. Yes. Hmm, that's interesting.

I recall that theory. I don't know if's interesting i recall that theory i don't know if i like again i like i don't know if i buy it i think there's a lot of different options um but it's interesting to think about yeah yeah well i guess closing thoughts on john one and john in a dance with dragons uh mary in your essay you have this one great section that i really like where you basically call out john's hypocrisy that later in dance after Jon rejects Stannis by relying on his duty to uphold his oaths, Jon will use wildlings to man and defend and castles to Rattleshirt and the Magnar of Then would be political folly. Thus, the discussion raises significant questions about his motivations for aiding Stannis by granting him the Nightfort, while simultaneously rejecting the offer of Winterfell and Stannis' plea to grant him more castles on the Wall. And I think Jon's hypocrisy here is something that doesn't scream in our faces when you don't think about it right away.

But when you sit and think about it, you go, huh? Yeah, John, this doesn't look good for you either. No, it doesn't. Like, there's a lot of different ways to come at the things that Jon does wrong or reasons to question his motivations. You know, I had a conversation with Jeff, you know, the Brendan Beefish guy, on Twitter, and he, you know, his idea is like, look, it's Jon is being tempted by the ability to to play the Game of Thrones. And I think that's a really good point. Like, Stannis offers John this ability to influence what's going on outside of the wall. But I think that's only the first layer of understanding what's going on with John.

And the second part is that, yeah, Jon is, is tempted to intervene and take a part in the wars and the, the wars that are happening in the realms of men. But the reason he's tempted to do so is typically, okay, there's a couple different reasons. Like it's either one, because he wants to be able to recover Winterfell, right? And wants to support Stannis' mission in the North, because that is going to let him act in opposition to the Boltons. Or Jon has another emotional motivation, which I think is his feelings about the wildlings. His love for Ygritte and then his friendship with Tormund and Stannis also make him view the wildlings very differently than other people in the Watch. And so I think that that particular set of biases

also affects the way that Jon ends up interacting with Stannis. Yeah, I feel like Jon has a lot to face in this book. Like you said at the top, Mary, he has all these different tests that he fails throughout the book, and we are excited to cover all of those failures. Well, Mary, thank you so much for joining us today. This has been such a good episode. much for joining us today. This has been such a good episode. I'm continuing my Stannis worry watch that Stannis episodes are like seven times

as long as normal episodes from now on. It is what it is. It's life. But we couldn't have done it without you to help us because Stannis can get bored when you say the same things every single week together about him. We need to mix it up. You know, Stannis has a third. He

brought in Melisandre, so that's what we're doing i'm i'm happy to be part of your three-way mary sandra oh my god i'll lie remove it um thank you again for joining us please tell everyone again where they can find your work on the internet. Yes, you can find me on WordPress at upfromunderwinterfell.wordpress.com, on YouTube as Up From Under Winterfell, and on Twitter as atbastermerry, M-E-R-R-Y, like Christmas and The Hobbit. Amazing. Thank you again.

We can't wait to have you back sometime. This has been a blast. As always, you can find us on the internet, on social media, at Girls Gone Canon. Send us an email at girlsgonecanon at gmail.com. Discuss the episode. Send us your Girls Gone Canon episode.

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