Girls Gone Canon Cast - ASOIAF Episode 68 - ADWD Jon II Ft. Hannah of Game of Owns

Episode Date: October 8, 2019

We are joined in scolding our boy Jon Snow for his mean behavior to actual best character Gilly by HANNAH from the beloved and excellent Game of Owns. Oh, this is the one where Janos dies, also. Kill the boy. UPDATED VERSION - hey all! thanks for being patient, we had to reupload due to some track incompatibility between us three.  Now they're all playing mostly nicely with each other, so give it a redownload if you haven't already listened.   Game of Owns: http://gameofowns.com/ Game of Owns' Twitter:  https://twitter.com/gameofowns --- Eliana's twitter: https://twitter.com/arhythmetric    Eliana's reddit account: https://www.reddit.com/user/glass_table_girl  Eliana's blog: https://themanyfacedblog.wordpress.com/  Chloe's twitter: https://twitter.com/liesandarbor  Chloe's blog: www.liesandarborgold.com  Intro by Anton Langhage  

Hello and welcome to Girls Gone Canon, A Song of Ice and Fire, Episode 68, John 2 in a Dance with Dragons, featuring Hannah from Game of Owns. I am one of your hosts, Chloe. You might know me from the internet as LizaNArbor on Twitter, Tumblr, and LizaNArborGold.com. And I am another one of your hosts, Eliana. You might know me as Glass Table Girl on Reddit or the Mason Monthly Podcast. Maybe you know me as Arithmetric over on Twitter. Maybe you don't. It's fine. But you know who you probably do know? Our very special guest today.

Yes, she is a special, special woman. I actually spent Eliana Don't Get Jealous Challenge. I can't tell if she said that to me tonight. special woman i actually spent eliana don't get jealous challenge i spent the season eight finale holding her hand uh experiencing the good queen sansa moment with her sorry eliana god um she's like staring at me so you probably know her from something a little more articulate than what I just said, though, which is Game of Owns, an excellent podcast who has, of course, done it, done it all, been there, done that. Thanks. I don't know when I'm supposed to jump in. You can just keep saying nice things about me, but I'm excited to be here thanks for having me thank you for coming on we're really excited the second Eliana mentioned you coming out for this chapter I was like oh that's perfect yeah I'm really excited it's been a while in the making because we talked about this mid-season or something and I was like it's the middle of the season let's do it in like

nine years and now here we are so are you know I was looking forward at our calendar and we're ending John probably around Christmas time wow yeah right our like the good lord's birth yeah good lord slash king guys yeah no no I really love the parallel

but yeah John is portrayed as a messianic figure a bit yeah yeah yeah absolutely John dying Christmas I a messianic figure a bit. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. John dying Christmas. I mean, I just thought that was a perfect, perfect amount. So take with that, Girls Gone Canon fans, what you will, but where we will be around Christmas time and when John is over and what that means for chapters and POVs. But we have something else happening after that.

We have a new POV. We will be bringing that up closer to those on Patreon. Depending on your tier, you might have already seen that. Spoiler. So keep it to yourselves. Hush, hush. Hannah, we're so excited you finally joined. I

am really, truly glad that I didn't I couldn't experience it with Eliana that weekend. We had different plans, but it was nice to have you there as another girlfriend to hold your hand during some really cool moments or get sad together. It was a cool experience. It was really magical. And especially because I mean, I love Sansa so much. You love Sansa so much.

We prayed to a Sansa votive candle. We did. Oh my god, I forgot you all did that. It was really something else so i feel like we shared a lot that weekend yeah which was great it was special it was a special night it was and hannah's uh reactions to the finale were much more pure than mine were because mine were influenced by poisons that were at the party and by poisons i mean there was the strangler i had some strangler wow what else was there some sweet sweet, there was the strangler. I had some strangler. Wow. What else was there?

Some sweet... Sweet Sleep? There was Sweet Sleep. Robert Aaron's Sweet Sleep. And there was a third. A third head of the Poison Dragon. It was... It'll come to me probably halfway through the podcast. I took a picture. I could probably find it. Yeah, me too.

The finale. Game of Thrones finale. Hannah and I spent it. It was a Game of Owns and Manimals and Drinking Got BK hosted party in New York that I got to attend. Yeah, Eliana, if you would have come, you would have known. Just kidding. I know. I'm sorry, everyone. It was a blast, though.

It was all Game of Thrones themed. It was fun. It was good. So we're bonded. I feel like we didn't It was all Game of Thrones themed. It was fun. It was good. So we're bonded. I feel like we didn't really get to do that before that so now I feel like all three of us are on the level that John 2 will really be an effective chapter.

We'll see. We'll see what I can contribute. I feel like you have lots to contribute. I have lots to contribute. You're an expert on this chapter. Yeah, you've done it before. I truly have. Haven't we all, though?

I don't know. Get back on that horse, girl. The Night's Watchman horse? Yes, the Night's Watchman horse. But hey, we do have an email or tweet of note to talk about. And it's not from horse. It's actually from our friend Nick. And Nick sent us an email or tweet of note to talk about and it's not from Horse it's actually from our friend Nick

and Nick sent us an email asking if we've read A Song of Ice and Fire or Game of Thrones fan fiction asking what our favorites are and also asking in honor of Thursday Night Football what teams we support oh Hannah

actually has an answer for this fuck Hannah lead us off I mean for the fanfiction part I quit fanfiction cold turkey oh my god that is not the answer I was expecting

I did good for you I quit fanfiction when I was like during Harry Potter so I don't read fan fiction anymore. So that's my answer for that. I'm sorry. That's fine. I like the idea of it, though, so.

Me too. Go off. I support it. But what about Thursday Night Football? What teams do you support, Hannah? Oh, I just love college football. So that's not the NFL, so I guess they don't really play on Thursdays, but i just love college football so i wouldn't have known the difference if you had yeah someone is playing football on a thursday somewhere so told me the distinction i mean the odds are up there is what

i'm saying four o'clock somewhere someone is throwing a football on a thursday night somewhere on a thursday yeah it's true so i'm here for all of it. I just, I love college football. So I'm a big BYU, I'm a big BYU Cougars fan. I went to BYU. So my alma mater, love everything about all their sports teams. And that's it. Go Cougars. I'm Eliana, I made you watch a BYU basketball game one time. I forgot. That's did i guess i'm a then a byu cougars fan fan by proxy that's a different like sport but it's still the same i guess team right in a way it's just like the same yeah yeah i mean in a way yeah i guess so or not you're a fan no i would say yeah no you guys lost me that's too deep

you can go watch a BYU sports game with me one is football one you use your hands the other you use your feet well actually you still use your hands in football I forgot American football you use your hands so never mind when you use your hands

and the other you also use your hands but you can hit people. Eliana, no sweetie. Sweetie. Eliana. This is how sports works, right? I can't wait to save this. This is going to be a Eliana

Explains Sports soundbite and it's going to be saved on my desktop. Your ringtone every time El Elliot calls. So, Aliana, I take it you don't have a favorite Thursday night football team? No.

Just the Cougars basketball team? Yeah, I'm just really into the BYU Cougars. Basketball team, specifically. Okay, good, good. What about fanfics? team yeah i'm just really into the byu cougars um basketball team specifically okay good good what about fanfics what do you have for fanfics i don't usually like have i think i i don't read that many fanfics that i again support the idea of it i'm gonna plug our good friends uh they identify as the boltons but you might know them as like tender vittles or leech lord or leech lord bolton over on twitter they have they're really into the fanfic scene they in particular have a

specific genre in which they like to i think write bolton fanfic which is really interesting um there's a lot of creativity out there i in particular so i i've felt the fanfic itch to read a few times in my life one of them was around i think rio and rika in digimon tamers rika is my shit dude she's the best i want to cosplay her i don't care who knows it should i be red oh my god Why is this every episode also question mark? The other time was, and I'm going to argue, it was a wholesome feeling. I went and read some Pip and Gren fanfic, and that's my taste. No, good for you. Very wholesome, so pure.

They were all very pure. I think. They have a pure relationship. I've only read one fanfic ever, and then I promptly quit fanfiction after reading the fanfic that I read. That fanfic is A Song of Ice and Fire

How Fragile is the Heart? Or it's Beyond the Ice and Fire How F how fragile is the heart or it's uh be oh no sorry beyond the ice and fire how fragile is the heart and it is about drum roll uh it's about sansan and i don't what a surprise i don't want to feel your shame i feel a lot of shame from youtube maybe from like a thousand other people too but like youtube twos is worse uh it was basically sansa goes with sandor at the black water and they go to across the narrow sea they go to tyrosh and eventually like she almost gets married to a magister in tyrosh or some crap and

then like he has to fight for her honor and then he proposes to her at one point and he has this little monologue where he's like, I want to give you birds and puplings and take back your ancestral home. And it's pretty romantic and beautiful. But then I got to a page or a chapter of the fanfic where it was an update. And this update was from like July 23rd, 2014 or some crap. It was like, we're going gonna update soon, you guys. Then they never updated. Classic.

Classic. I got ghosted. That happens. Nothing has ever happened. I check it out sometimes. You mean you got winds of wintered? I got winds of wintered. They wrote Sandor really well. They did, so. That's good. Yeah, they wrote

it really well. i liked it it wasn't like gross or anything it was actually really nice and like pretty pure even the proposal was real pure i was just like good for you guys be happy you know away from all the carnage deal with mini dramas telenovelas you know i'm only here for i guess like pure fanfics if i'm actually doing the fanfic thing. But otherwise, I'm here for... I haven't finished reading it. I only just started it. Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, if we're talking about Harry Potter

fanfics, which is not Thrones. And also My Immortal. So many... Those are, like, some of the classics. Those are bangers, I hear. I know. Those are classics. We should do a My Immortal reread. I've never read it. Oh my gosh. Yes. Oh. That would be...ad. I've never read it. Oh my gosh, yes. That would be... You're in for it.

I guess if I had to choose a team, my dad likes the Lions, so he should be happy, I guess. If he's happy, I'm happy. They beat my city's team a few weeks ago when he was here visiting, so he was happy then. His friend was here that lives in the city and was like this sucks and he's like

haha you suck and I'm like good for you I'm glad you're happy dad because none of this means anything so that's kind of how I feel about it so I guess the Lions you know because they don't win even in Game of Thrones they won't win love a good underdog

like Sandor well I don't know I was going gonna ask if we should have just supported george r martin's team oh no turns out i don't actually know anything about those two yeah they used their hands oh my god well without further ado anna are you ready for your first lightning round are you have you been getting like hyped up how are you feeling is this i'm feeling great i've been rereading this sentence over and over again so there's not i'm i'm i'm disclaimer i ruined it already because i was like there's not much funny shit in here you guys usually i make it funny usually it's a thing this is a funny moment for eliana but i i wasn't

feeling it i felt like this is a little serious. It's fine. Feel however you want. Just totally read it. Totally however you want, you guys. And I'll do better next time you're on, Hina. I will. Okay, is it my time to shine? It is. Bran 1.

Bran, Coldhands, Meera, Jojen, Hodor, and Summer all arrive at the Three-Eyed Raven's lair. You did so good. She's been practicing it. Taking a little bow. Tyrion II. Illyrio and Tyrion make way for the Rhoyne. Thoughts of their past loves plaguing them throughout the journey. Should have been Grey plaguing them.

That's actually why I used plaguing. So there is a method to my art here. The Merchant's Man. Quentin Martell attempts to book passage on a ship in Volantis, disguised as a wine merchant, ready to carry out his father's great plan for fire and blood. And so that brings us to the John 2 overview. My time to shine again. Yes. If you're feeling like you've read this chapter before, you have.

This chapter is the same chapter as Sam 1 and A Feast for Crows, but from Jon's point of view. Jon must choose to send his friends away from the Watch in order to protect them, and also chooses to send Jando Slint away from life. Which is extremely hilarious. But before all that happens, Jon too, Jon reads the letter, his letter, over and over again, thinking that he cannot sign it. I have to sign it. They chose me to be the Lord Commander. The wall is mine, and the watch as well. The Night's Watch takes no part. I feel like that was a strong open. What do you think, Aliana, do you? I'm so excited!

You're so good! It never gets old. We only have until Christmas. Is that truly a present, or is it, like, a curse? You're gonna take this away from me. John died for your sins at Christmas, is what I'm saying. I know, right? I mean, like, maybe it's a gift for you. You don't have to do this fucking thing anymore. Merry fucking Christmas, Chloe.

Thanks. I do really like that Daenerys parallels are so prominent in this chapter the it's just mind-blowing especially read them in tandem that's what I call the ice and fire read I guess but like read those in tandem sometime not just Jon and those two together in dance is like just such an interesting display of power and rulership and leadership and like choosing the right choice even in the midst of like is this a right choice if it hurts the people i love i agree with all the things that you're saying and i think what's interesting right is like i feel like my okay whatever what's interesting is like as we see throughout this chapter john is like yeah it's we're gonna send all these people wait all the people who fucking supported me the entire time at the ball it's like sam's gone amon's gone time to ball out

that's that's just john right like no one likesannis, and that's literally all you have left. Yeah. Right. He's like, whatever. All the people kept me grounded. Go wild. Go wild. Do crazy shit. Good.

That's what I think is kind of interesting about opening the chapter in this way, though, is because I feel like this is one thing that he kind of does right in this chapter. I feel like he, I mean, you could argue that he does a couple other things right depending on whatever your opinion but I feel like you get a wide spectrum of John's leadership abilities and he all of John and all of this whole book and all of his whole life is just like about him growing into himself as like a leader and we are introduced to this whole like kill the boy theme and I just feel like opening up the chapter and something that seems like he's actually making the right call

and actually using his abilities to do the quote-unquote right thing is interesting as he then potentially spirals into like you're saying setting all of his whole squad away like making all these different decisions that may not help him down the road he's not exactly blending into the political climate and fatigue of the night's watch right and change is good absolutely and they need a lot of reform and change but once more i am brought to reference parks and rec that the merger cannot just happen like this this fast and uh even in this chapter we're gonna read a lot about john sending you know 10 men from stanis's camp 10 men from the wall 10 men from east watch to go to this place and uprooting these people that have these lives

and they've already been forced into these miserable ass lives right like whether or not they deserve to be there we look at sam who was just like i just want to read books dad i don't want to shoot people and his dad's like gonna chain you up like in manacles uh you think of some of these people and what does one person's life mean to deserve to be there living this solitude life in an ice room you know um it's an interesting just thought on human life and what what the book is telling us on that like they just get uprooted to move around like ants you know like they had this is the life they've finally formed of doing this stupid monotonous thing with these people

that are some are cool some are garbage all day long until they die and i think there's a matter of that that goes with like john says this is your duty now and for some of them they didn't fucking choose this life it's like that's great that you decided this was your duty john awesome congrats some people were forced into this penal colony yeah right or like aren't gonna buy into this whole brotherhood thing or don't feel that same sort of loyalty or like familial bond that I think you're supposed to kind of buy into. Some people aren't searching for that family still. Some people already know that family's garbage. I mean, you think of some of these guys that were getting beat by their parents constantly and, you know, crazy shit that like they just ended on the streets, and they ended up rounded up and taken to the watch just because they didn't have money and they stole some bread.

You know, not to have air to it, but... I don't know, some of it is just really messed up, and it makes you think about society, obviously too much, and you're like, damn. We're gonna think about society more in a bit, but first Dolores Ed is gonna bring Gilly to John's chamber, and

when Gilly gets there she kneels immediately when uh John's together with Gilly he tells her you don't need to like kneel like that it's just only for kings with ear horns ironically John there's so many moments where it's like narrator voice in this chapter where John's like John didn't think this and it's like John did think this and it's a bit much Gilly is updating him on the kid's status and she's kind of talking quickly and she's talking about you know the titty sucking and uh John's all amped up he's like in his head he's like time to give my orders and he says he has something to tell her and he thinks

in his head at first ask her but he reminds himself this is a tell her environment now that he is lord commanding the shit out of the wall uh gilly asks if this is about mance and she starts to kind of babble about how val begged to trade her hand in marriage for mance's life which like yikes it's not worth that val just putting that out there it is not worth that damn he can get himself out of it. Come on now. Bail the bard. Able the trickster.

He can bail himself out. Oh my fucking God. Proud of me. I know. Jon says that they're here to talk about Mance's child, not Mance. And Gilly begs Jon to save him. And Jon says, I can't john says i can't only you can you can prevent forest fires and just kind of messed up it is because he's suddenly just

offloading it onto her but gilly to her credit many things are to her credit in this chapter but she shows how smart she is here and we've seen it throughout a lot of the books but at first she quickly responds with no john says to her credit she doesn't you know attack him or anything she responds very poised right and shows that strength but she says no immediately and please no because she knows what john is getting at in terms of this switch at first but she tries to play it off at in the way that she would have this scenario right by saying oh yeah i'll take both the boys and i'll save them and john's like that's not you know that's not what we're talking about because the king's men would ride after you immediately and gilly also knows this john says you're gonna take dallas son and

you're gonna leave your own and we're gonna read the whole passage here because it's pretty good. It's like a really solid passage. There's a couple of really great passages. A lot happens in this chapter. But I do want to comment. I'm doing a lot of framework in my mind of this chapter as Ned and John, and we're going to get into it later on. and John, and we're going to get into it later on. And in this moment, it does make me think a lot about Ashara as that sacrificial social lamb of, you know,

she was probably the mother of John, of the bastard that Ned had, you know, that purple herring of Ashara Dayne. And I wonder if they were just thoughts of the babies that were being born in the rebellion and saving them and keeping them safe. And, you know, the secret of the Tower of Joy and Ashara Dane and the whole stillborn child and committing suicide cover up. It's crazy

to think about that it's the same echoes that we're seeing right here. Yeah, for sure. The same kind of problems permeate through no matter what time you're in or who you are. From the wall to Dorne. Yep. From the windows from the wall to dawn yep from the windows and are you ready for your time to shine again so ready you get to be gilly and i get to be

really mean to you i just want you to know it's not your fault my whole life for this yeah it's not your fault if i comfort her she may think that tears can move me. She has to realize I will not yield. You'll take one boy and that one Dallas. A mother can't leave her son or else she's cursed forever. Not a son. We saved him, Sam and me. Please, please, my lord, we saved him from the cold.

Men say that freezing to death is almost peaceful. Fire, though. Do you see the candle, Healy? She looked at the flame. Yes. Touch it. Put your hand over the flame. Her big brown eyes grew bigger still.

She did not move. Do it. Kill the boy. Now. Trembling, the girl reached out her hand, held it well above the flickering candle flame down let it kiss you gilly lowered her hand an inch another when the flame licked her flesh she snatched her hand back and began to sob fire is a cruel way to die dala died to give this child life but you've nourished him cherished him you saved your own boy from the ice now save hers from the fire they'll burn my babe then the red woman if she can't have dallas she'll burn mine it's a scene dude this is like the biggest fucking sacrifice

john is asking yeah uh also throwing it out there, I don't know, John being like, yeah, put your hand in the fire. Let it kiss you. It's some Targaryen-ass shit. All right, John. Yeah. It really is. It's kind of excessive.

John is, it's crazy because two chapters ago, we were just saying how all of a sudden Stannis like snapped and turned when he was so like, I'm chivalrous. I'm here to save things. And then he started not getting what he wanted. and he was just like a total dick bag that episode being like yeah fuck gilly and fuck those kids and fuck her titties like he was just like a total asshole and now john's like all right well how about you put your hand in the fire gilly yeah do you think

he knows what he's doing here though he does he totally does and it's awful yeah he has to but it's just funny because i feel like we've already seen so far in this chapter in the beginning when when he's like don't bow to me i'm not a king but then five seconds later he is acting so not kingly necessarily but just so forceful and i feel like you kind of see that in his own mind flipping back and forth between stuff that he thinks he should be doing and stuff that he wants to be doing you know what I mean and so this is one of those instances where it's like he feels like he has to whether he feels like he has to force her to put her hand over the fire to like get his point across or he

feels like he has to send the children away this way john uses like well you know i'm a cop so you know i have to go uh you know my heart is like actually good but it's first off it is some fuckboy behavior i just want to put that out there like okay john um but it's like do you have to go john like why are you doing this and why is this your duty i think it's ned's memory obviously that propels him so much but especially here you know that he's overtly projecting this because it's it's like aria throwing the rocks at numeria right that's what he's doing verbally he's throwing rocks at numeria yeah such like a chosen one complex yeah and i think it's interesting that you pointed out the whole thing of he's like,

no, don't kneel to me, I'm not a king. Because a few chapters before, in Storm, he's all like, don't call me a lord, I'm not a lord. But now he's Lord Commander and he's stopped correcting people on that. So he's just like the next step, right? Now he's like ordering people around and then in the next book or book after, he's going to stop correcting people on kneeling to him or he'll have to because that's what he'll grab his teeth and bear it yeah that's what's expected of a king right for people to kneel to them john says that gilly's son though has no king's blood

and stannis wants free folk to fight for him, and allegedly he wouldn't burn innocent blood without good cause. Is having king's blood good cause? Huh. Are you sure? Allegedly. Allegedly. Allegedly. Interesting you say that. Jon assures Gilly

your son's gonna be fine. He's gonna be under my protection. He's gonna grow up. He's gonna learn to ride and hunt and read and write and when he's old enough he can like go and find you if he wants to i'm gonna go show him you know his paternity test i'm sorry maternity test i don't think he wants to know his paternity test so yeah let's just keep that one quiet everyone's got one parent they have to hide from their kid right who did some shit uh speaking of this is this is everything john wished and wanted and projected his childhood to be right this is the life ned wished that he could have given john in full the choice the choosing it's the one thing john never had john never had that choice to go off and seek out the family he didn't get

to have. And it makes me think of a bunch of quotes from A Game of Thrones, like in John 5, when he thinks that his mom didn't have a place for him and that he wondered who she had been, what she had looked like, why his father had left her, because she was a whore or an adulteress, a fool, something dark and dishonorable, or else why was Lord Eddard too ashamed to speak of her? There's even the line in A Game of Thrones 7 when he thinks, you know, where was the honor in that? And your mother, what of her? He will not even speak her name.

And it all boils back to that framing of Ned in this chapter. You think of Eddard IX in A game of thrones when he's speaking with bara who had one of robert's bastards and he thinks she had smiled then a smile so tremulous and sweet that it cut the heart out of him riding through the rainy night ned saw john snow's face in front of him so like a younger version of his own if the gods frowned so on bastards, he thought dully, why did they fill men with such lusts? It's everything that Jon and Ned

both had wanted for Jon to have. But Jon chose duty in protecting the realm because he didn't know or have a place. Let them grow up close as brothers with only love between them. And let my lady wife find it in her heart. Do you actually have this fucking memorized? To forgive.

Of course I fucking do. Do you know how sad I am? Do you not have that memorized? Do you not know how sad that is? That's like the saddest vision. Oh my god. Fuck. Yeah, I it's all of what you said of like

the hopes that Ned had, right? He tried to raise Jon as his own son, knowing all of what you said of like the hopes that ned had right he tried to raise john as his own son knowing all the things and i think that all these hopes that you're saying is part of what's so cruel about this the scene right regarding those hopes because i think in this chapter we begin to see kill the boy really start to gain a lot of traction in john's life and i mean first of all that obviously means something what could it mean regarding the babies and the fire the boy anyway second there's john thinking that in what he's, he's better than the system that raised him. And the irony is that, like, in prioritizing the safety of Mance's child, who, sure, he's not really a king. John has made this whole point very clear to everyone, but no one seems to want to believe him. And he's still

playing into the class dynamics and the title dynamics of the system that he hated and that, very much oppressed him. And he ends up very much trapped in it right he thinks he's above it and he's like yeah i can do it i can protect gilly's son but he's not gonna be able to and in doing so ends up perpetuating the cruelty of like all the society that prioritizes some people based on luck and birth versus like that whole egalitarianism because i mean again kill the boy what does it mean it's so ned in that right this is the only way he can secure safety for the people he loves and to him it's like if he can't protect the people he loves if he can't do that one thing that one stupid thing in this shitty crummy life that he's stuck in

then what's the point of being in stuck in then what's the point of being in this life right what's the point of having that power if you can't protect your people with it even your close loved ones um it's something we see blood raven you know driven mad about in his life uh it's so sad i'm so sad all the time. Because this is also, this is not what Ned wanted for Jon. This is not what Lyanna wanted for Jon. He was a precocious sweet baby boy that had

the whole world at his fingers. He was gonna be an heir to the throne. He could have been so good for the realm. He was Aegon the Unlikely in that way. I mean, it's that redux of he could have been but this is what's crushing him that the heavy weight that sits on him even now the doom is about this boy yeah and it's funny because it's so self yeah he brings it on himself

like he could very easily i guess maybe easily, but he could take a different path. But he just kind of like gets into this spiral of feeling bad for himself that he can't see past his nose on what he has to do for his duty. He gets lucky because he gets a chance to come back, right? That we know of he's likely going to come back. Not everyone gets that chance to come back yeah and this passage is like this whole entire chapter is making it glaringly obvious that it's uh first the father then the son so they both die as kings right because mance is likely going to go out in a blaze of glory and winterfell for hashtag aria but it's not even gonna be his son it'll be an

innocent boy who died for what right and he's right for me it's gonna even gonna be his son. It'll be an innocent boy who died for what? Right. And he's gonna be like, for me? And he's gonna be like, yeah, I guess. But then you think it really isn't about King's blood, it's just about blood sacrifice, likely. So, I mean, they're just gonna be propelled to keep going. Mel will be like, I did it! But then everything goes bad with Stannis, and she's like, oh no, I didn't do it after all!

I've made a huge mistake mel looks into the camera i did it for one second i want to remake game of thrones like that i would love it if it was the office i love those little gillia's weeping because if john takes her son she thinks he's gonna make a crow of him with everything that he's saying so all of us just sat here and like like yay that's so great because that's what ned wanted for john and that's what john you know would want for this kid but uh gilly's like you're gonna erase his whole culture and make a crow of him i won't do it and he says you will or both children will die gilly like that's what's gonna happen you know it no yeah no you're the raven also oh right sorry shrieked mormon's raven die die die you're just so good at it thank you

you know like the real hero of these john episodes has been your baby i just really you know i want to commit to the burp scenes commit to the bit i get it um proud of you i was bored yeah it is uh just like faded like gilly you know this is what happens if you if you don't do it like Like, this is the only route. He's doctor-stranged everything. But no, it's not. But he's saying to her, Gilly and her son could be fine.

I mean, like, it's bad that Mance's baby is at risk and will die, but, like... Why is that baby worth more than the other baby? Who cares? Yeah. Gilly's son could just be fine. She keeps her head down down it's bullshit that people discount the kid just because it's part craster's kid i agree i and that's something that i really dislike about stannis it's like that kid never chose to be born to craster and gilly gilly never

chose that life marcella joff and tommy didn't choose to be born. I mean, yes, the actions they take after their birth, which just goes back to the primary debate in the first book, right, of what do we kill first, the dragon or the egg, you know, Dany or you know, her kid, like, she's Prego, what do we do? And it's like,

she didn't choose to be born of the line that did some crazy bullshit. She was, and yes, that may frame some of the line that did some crazy bullshit. She was. And yes, that may frame some of the way you look at her, but give her a chance to see what happens. And it's the same thing. Joff, Marcella, Tommen, Craster's grandchild here. We don't know what this child's going to do. And to be fair, now, scientifically speaking, yeah yeah his blood is basically coffee creamer at

this point but it's like 75 percent craster right oh absolutely so like now that i say that scientifically though like yeah that's fucked this kid might not even live but john doesn't get to make that choice for him it's all exactly it's not his choice it's not and he's making it yeah and he's saying i get to decide it he's making it because he feels like he has to which is even worse yeah you know but to me it's like okay he feels like this weird duty to do it not because he necessarily believes in it but because he's like wow i can't believe i have to make all these hard decisions which i feel like makes it worse he's not accepting any constructive criticism or guidance from his friends too

you know what I mean? He's just like alright you report to me this information now Sam this information now you know Ed like I don't get to have friends anymore because I'm the boss and it's like you work best by collaboration. I don't know. Honestly maybe John didn't try hard enough because you know what he's

like they're gonna notice if both the kids are gone but like let me throw this out there the heist has been pulled off before with only one kid all right davos got away with it yeah it's doable john maybe didn't try hard enough you know stannis doesn't know what they look like he doesn't and also like we know this john doesn't know this that melisandre didn't see that edrick storm had disappeared and i mean you just know that stan is like the only time he's been in proximity to look at either of the children he was probably just like sniff sniff this child smells poor yeah or he's like this is a baby yeah i do not want the baby and like walk away

i am bemused at this baby. Yeah. He doesn't give a shit. So it could, he could have gotten creative, but not for the sake of our story. Yeah. Instead,

he just gives Gilly leave and tells her to run back to her quarters. And Sam arrives moments later and the Raven tries to eat Sam's palm for some corn. And John's like, I'm sorry. That clearly didn't work. Wear some thicker gloves. Okay. Whatever. didn't work. Wear some thicker gloves. Okay, whatever.

Hilarious. And Jon shows Sam a scroll that came from King Tommen Baratheon. At Winterfell, Tommen fought my brother Bran with wooden swords, Jon said, remembering. He wore so much padding, he looked like a stuffed goose. Bran knocked him to the ground. He went to the window, he looked like a stuffed goose. Bronn knocked him to the ground. He went to the window and threw the shutters open. The air outside was cold and bracing, though the sky was a dull gray. Yet Bronn's dead and pudgy pink-faced Tommen is sitting on the Iron Throne with a crown nestled amongst his golden curls. Hmm. Is this foreshadowing?

his golden curls. Hmm. Is this foreshadowing? Is this it? Kinda, in multiple ways. You know, not to turn this back into a King Bran is actually good podcast. Oh my god. Which I do once a week in these chapters. But it's not my fault he wrote it. So like, how is this my fault that George is writing this? I don't know. I don't know. that sounds silly to me but brand the boy king versus tommen the boy king is so interesting you could even look at some of the rulers like blood raven versus the high sparrow you know as far as who has political power or who has magical ish power which i wouldn't say high sparrow does but power comes from masses of people that follow you so friendship is magic yeah uh the stark and Winterfell versus King Tommen, the first of his name and later Bran,

the first of his name of Westeros, maybe. There's that line about Aegon in A Dance with Dragons in the epilogue. Tommen has been taught that kingship is his right. Aegon knows kingship is his duty, that a king must put his people first and live and rule for them. I don't know. I don't know anyone that could do that you know or that's been raised to be good and put his people first i don't know i don't know but uh especially that just that line brand's dead and tommen sits the throne so you know that that could never happen but winter is coming i've heard and the wolves

will come again i've also heard so i just think it was an interesting little line to put us in that mortal peril of no my favorite family's dead except they're all gonna come back and everything's gonna be great forever and there will be a time for wolves yeah air horns go off i don't know if man's kid survives or not but you know what is sad speaking of people masquerading as kings and being children born of incest did we think about tom in here just now and how he's obviously doing because of the maggie the frog prophecy and then again about gilly's kid i don't know yeah i'm sad it all comes together there's some ideas later we're going to chat about don't you worry oh i'm

not um so then Sam wants to say something and then he holds back noting that John hasn't signed the letter and John says well not on J or his letters right so why the fuck would mine I mean the landmasters probably think that the wall's been helping Stannis the whole time because like all that happened last time we asked for help

was we got Jano's slant please clap Sam asks don't encourage me was we got jano slint please clap sam asks i wasn't sure that was gonna happen thank you hannah thanks i come through um sam says i mean they might still help because it's about the wall and not the rebellion and john's like i don't know i don't think tywin gives a fuck and he's dead so he definitely doesn't no he can't come to the phone right now why because he's dead oh he's dead i love this dialogue from john it's death and destruction i want to bring down upon house lannister not scorn john read from the letter

the knight's watch takes no part in the wars of the Seven Kingdoms. Our oaths are sworn to the realm, and the realm now stands in dire peril. Stannis Baratheon aids us against our foes from beyond the Wall, but we are not his men. I love that this chapter is framed as like, Jon is being righteous and just, but is he? The first sentence of the whole thing, I want to bring down death and destruction on House Lannister. I mean, yes, but you also in the same exact paragraph are saying, I'm sworn to the realm. I have no opinions. Yeah.

But that's the thing about Jon is that he's so extremely biased. And I feel like he can't even see past his own bias. extremely biased and i feel like he can't even see past his own bias it's like he just is so deeply rooted in his stark upbringing that i feel like it's impossible for him there's no way really take the yeah there's no way from take like the neutral night's watch side because he just like he doesn't have it in him to that that's his only identity yeah yeah that's a good point like so he doesn't even practice what he preaches. And as you said,

he totally thinks he does though. Jon needs a therapist that he can vent how he wants to kill House Lannister too and not another member of the Night's Watch.

He's like, yeah, this is what we're doing. And then after he reads this aloud, Jon and Sam go back and forth as to like so are we gonna send it because it's fine it kind of sounds like they're sucking stannis is a light bringer

here a little bit it's like you shouldn't mention stannis at all yeah that's true also it would be a hashtag almost family reunion almost if house lannister slash neighbor athien showed up at the wall from king's landing to help and then stannis was just there and the Lannister slash Nay Baratheon showed up at the wall from King's Landing to help, and then Stannis was just there and the Lannisters showed up and they were there. Oh yes. They're like, yeah, I get it now. Yeah, like if they all just showed up at the wall,

that could be fun. Like family feud. I think that would be fun for me. It would make a great chapter. Yeah. Imagine Cersei at the wall. She'd's such a bitch that would be amazing amazing she would hate it i know that's the chapter we deserve fuck so they do a brief synopsis of if you give a mouse a cookie meets goldilocks with tywin thinking it's too much stan is not enough um john thinks that the lannisters could end the night's watch if they

think it's too much aid and the two discuss northern politics for a little while with reminders that the lannisters have some northern men and the car starks and the boltons sam tells him that paper and shield are better than none that's so ned sam like the novel a paper shield's better than none is so like ned and redley there's also the point i was uh, I was revisiting the Game of Thrones episode, Kill the Mouse. Oh my god. Where they cover this episode,

and they were talking about how, along with, yeah, sure, the Lannisters could just end the Night's Watch if they wanted. Y'all were saying that, like, well, so could Stannis, if he doesn't like the outcome of everything, too. They've got all their men here already.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, they have more men than you still. Like've got all their men here already. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they have more men than you still. Like anyone has more men than you, John. That's true. I mean, he's literally scrapping people together into a pile to send them places later on. And it's just like, oh, you got no one. It's devastating.

I think there's an interesting part of that, that whole passage. Somehow he had hoped Sam tarley might see it differently it is only ink and parchment i i like that it kind of hits two things as like the whole like it's only ink and parchment much like ned uh but i wonder if this could even pertain to like his future claim at the throne it's only ink and parchment and it also makes me think of how something else being announced via ink and parchment if it also makes me think of how something else being announced via ink and parchment if he had accepted stannis's lordship and burnt the godswood and taken winterfell it would have only been ink and parchment no one would have followed

it yeah there's definitely truth to that i think uh that's interesting that's what you got out of this scene because sam obviously seems to have some faith in it and I also see this as a difference between like John and Ned's mindsets because like due to John's upbringing as a bastard he values the idea of honor because his dad told him to

but he doesn't really have as much faith in this whole social structure and that idea of honor in the same way that Ned does because like ned believed that robert's will and changing a couple of words were gonna save him in the realm and it was gonna fucking work but it didn't and it almost feels like john in a way learned from that's mistake but we know that he didn't because he doesn't actually know what happened in the throne room and how it all went down so it's more that like i don't know john's experiences and the treatment that he's received what he saw of the betrayals that befell ned and rob has made him more wary

of paper shields than sam who's raised and has benefited in some ways not in a lot of other ways from the system yeah after you see your family get screwed over at that extent, how could you ever go back to believing in it? Look at Sansa. Yeah, fool me once. Disenchanted. Go ahead. Yeah, that's interesting. I didn't read it that way. I didn't read it anyway. that like we see so much of him growing outside of the system quote-unquote is not helpful and then how in this situation it could be something that's a benefit to him out here like pull me

once shame on you pull me twice you can't get i'm gonna get pulled twice yeah get fooled again i don't remember the i don't i don't remember the exact quote from george can't get fooled again 43rd president it, 43rd president? John has Sam get out the wax seal and is like, before I change my mind, and he seals the letter, Sam then is like, hey, so why did Gilly leave your office crying, boss?

And the raven quirks in the background and it's like, blood! Which isn't at all menacing. I can't, what does it mean, Eliana? What does it mean? What does it mean? John says he's sending Gilly and the boy away.

Interestingly enough, the same way that Ned speaks about John. He barely speaks about John. He sometimes calls him the boy. And Sam gets nervous talking about titties coming out. About Gilly's titties and feeding the kids. So Sam suddenly starts to stumble into historical talk and he's like, and goat's milk for the kid and boy commanders. And did you know about the Night's Watch?

And John's like, shut up. Talk about the others and what you found out in the libraries. Like, that's why I called you here. Sam gives us a really good info dump about the others. The others aren't mentioned often in the books he's reading, but they are mentioned in the annals. The first men left runes on rocks.

So the books are really the first account from Septons that found those runes and decoded them. The archmaesters question any of the first long nights history, and they call John the 998th Lord Commander, but the oldest list that Sam has found shows over 600 plus Lord Commanders. Yeah, in this part, John kind of, in my opinion, rudely interrupts Sam waxing about those discrepancies and the way that histories are portrayed. And we already know from many, many, many things that John and Sam have very differing perspectives. But I think this really highlights that because on one hand, sure, Sam's maybe a little bit distracted

by all the books and reading through it, as you see in his chapter. But I think there's also just a slight difference in focus. So a colleague of mine sent me these like personality quizzes about what's your innovation animal. and then I made everyone in the office take it and I'm an owl Chloe's a penguin in case anyone's wondering and it made me think about the different ways that people approach problems and I think that from the way that John redirects this conversation he's one of those people who's like more of an action-oriented like looking ahead trying to find the solution here kind of person when it comes to working style whereas sam is more interested in understanding things holistically and understanding the root cause in order to find solutions and like

granted of course sam again isn't actively looking for the root cause here because he's a giant fucking nerd and that's why we love him but highlighting i think that inconsistency in history is part of that meta conversation within a song of bison fires we realize that like a lot of the stories that we heard that we know people like aren't the same as we realize like for example the people involved in john's past and parentage whatever you know you just got it in feast about sansa using a spell like a bat and killing the king and flying off with big bat wings like it's interesting how history just recontextualizes what actually happened into

like a little blurb uh the songs for example you know we hear all the different songs and they're all just condensed versions of heroes and stories throughout Westeros that later George has expanded in histories um a lot of the Lord Commander stuff, and then you have the Night's King with his many different identities, right? He could be a Bolton, or an Umber, or a Karstark, or a Stark. And, of course, all of the

Brandons that Old Nan mixes up. Brandon the Breaker, the Builder, the Booker, the Agent, the PR Director. You know, there's just so many fucking Brandons that Old Nan can't keep track of them, and it makes me wonder what's going to be said of the kids in the end right of john danny brian aria sansa i think we're going to end the winds of winter on such like an like an incline like such a oh man all of our kids are finally kind of coming out in the end they're doing some good uh it's going to be interesting to think about the very end of you know who is sansa going to be the red wolf queen who bled

for northern independence or john the white wolf who forsook his honor to do his duty to the realm or denarius stormborn the dragon queen who came to purge her realm of its evils and take it back what are the annals going to say lightning round style you know i feel like the whole a song of ice and fire thing can be kind of cliche like especially the way we saw in the show but it also just makes my heart sore thinking about like these little clips of summaries of all the stuff that all these people have been through and how that that's gonna gonna come across these little couple line, couple line things.

Like it makes me feel so warm and fuzzy on the inside. It's so interesting to look ahead, right? Like, uh, you think about Arias and, you know, of Numeria,

what Numeria did and Arias idolization of Numeria. And you think of, I mean, even think about Skagos and the wolf king the Stark king who rode a big black wolf that lived there you know

it's just cool to think about what history could say about them all if history even mentions them I think there's a moment within this chapter that kind of nudges it a little more where Sam's talking about archery we'll get there in a second but he's all like i kind of wanted to write down all of like he's like i kind of wanted to write down all of olmer's interesting stories put them in a book and john's

like yeah all right you can go fucking do that at the Citadel then and who is going to tell all these stories like if Sam's going to tell it maybe they're going to come out a little more favorable to some of these people but obviously as we've seen from things like Fire and Blood I mean you don't always get to control how your story gets told

yeah who lives who dies who tells your story who tells your story that's all I can think about right now oh my. That's all I can think about right now. Oh my god. It's all Hamilton. It's all about Hamilton. So there you go, folks. The secret.

That's Hannah and mine's analysis. Yep. Alright. So they continue their conversation and Sam mentions that he's found mention of obsidian and dragon's glass the children of the forest gave the watch 100 obsidian daggers a year in the age of heroes and the others only come when it's cold or possibly bring the cold with them they're not sure they ride dead animals dire wolves mammoths horses some accounts speak of ice spiders even no undead dire wolves i'm just here to talk about how i learned recently that spiders can fly wait

talk about that okay no no no no no i don't like it i don't want it no no no no i'm not gonna be able to sleep is the thing. Alright, I'll stop. Thank you though. Thank you for your page, Mitch. You're welcome. Men who fall in battle to them must be burnt or join their undead army. Fire and obsidian are the only thing to wound them and dragonsteel

may defeat them as an account of the last hero in the Long Night says. So basically they just have to get. A lot of lyrian steel. And convince everybody to. Give them their fancy swords. Yeah that's going to go fine.

All the high lords. Fine it's going to be fine. It's fine this is fine. Jon's like oh this will be great. I love it. They already all love me. They don't know me. But some of them already hate Jon.

Jon's like sure. More people. Love me or hate me. Jon's like, sure. More people. Love me or hate me, it's an obsession. More people to hate me, Jon said. Good. Thriving. The known Valyrian steel swords in the world aren't enough to kill an army of others. They're extremely coveted due to the whole supply-demand thing, and

I mean, there's that huge idea that all these swords are going to come north, but there's only some that are even known where they are, right? There's Heartsbane, Lord Mael Tarly has that, he's in the Reach, and we'll probably see it through Sam, but we might also see it in REN chapters

or JonCon chapters if he is the friends in the Reach that Aegon has. Lady Forlorn, that's Lin Corbray's sword that we've already seen. We'll see it through future Sansa chapters. Longclaw, that's Jon's sword, the House Mormont blade. Nightfall, which is wielded by Ser Harris Harlaw in the Isles. And I do expect we'll probably see that again if Ash or Theon do return to or head back to the Iron Isles

or in the Reach chapters with Sam, with Euron maybe. Oathkeeper is half of Ice, which we know made for Jaime. Brienne is using it to find Sansa, but she's in the Riverlands, in the Crossroads area. She's probably not going to meet Sansa soon. There's Red Rain stolen in a raid from House Drum on the Westerlands, possibly because it's, it's similar to rain as in house rain, possibly their ancestral sword that was lost due to its coloring and name.

And I totally forgot about this dude, because how could I ever remember Iron Islanders from the King's Moot? There's a lot of them, right? They all have planes. I get it. Dunstan Drum. Do you guys remember him? Extremely not.

Exactly. It's a forgotten character from T.W.L. maybe. Yeah, I know. I can't believe I didn't think about this at all or come up with anything from the Iron Islands for that. He was just too forgotten. Euron undermines Dunstan Drum. He's who has the sword. We see it at the King's Moot when he presses his plane. And Euron undermines Dunstan. He takes one of his biggest backers and supporters, Andric the Unsmiling, who's a great warrior, away from

Dunstan. He grants him the Lordship of Southshield after he takes the shields. So if Dunstan Drum still survives, I think it's possible we're going to see it through Ash or Theon if they return and he's going to support them against Euron. And there's a scene where we see Goodbrother and Roderick the Reader and Dunstan all talking in the yard about how, oh, this is interesting. Euron's

kind of out of control. They're like, oh, this is interesting. Yeah, we think he might be a psychopath. We're not sure 100%, but he might have murdered some people, like everyone. But they're all talking in the yard, so I'm wondering if they're going to partner up and be part of the force that reawakens the part of the Isles that's left that Euron hasn't corrupted. And then there's Widow's Wail, the other half of ice. Joffrey had it last. It's not missing or anything, so it's likely it passed from him to Tommen. I wonder, so going back to what you were saying about Tommen and some of the sad stuff to come for him in the Winds of Winter. whale do you think especially since it's more of a one or two-handed sword it's not as big as a

bastard sword or as big as ice or anything if maybe it's easier to handle and it will be wielded by someone maybe with a a more feminine frame or a dornish frame because widow's whale could also mean a whale like elia's whale and maybe one of the sand snakes could wield it i mean let's not bring into the play the fact that rainey's had a kitten too i thought you were going for aria no no i was going for maybe a sand snake now because i don't think aria will be by the time this happens this has to happen by the middle to end of t wow i mean i thought you just meant eventually in general because i wasau i mean i thought you just meant eventually in general because i was like i mean it's her father's sword right right right no but yeah

i don't know it's an idea yeah yeah i think um one of the dornish is interesting maybe first to them i as you said there's a couple of them heading up to king's landing i think another widow wailing of course could be marjorery, not just Cersei. Yeah, absolutely. Another thing that I thought was interesting was the dragonbone hilt dagger that the failed assassin, the catspot had. It's still in the

possession of Peter Baelish. I forgot all about that. He has it. He took it off of Ned. So I do think this is going to be evidence used against him in Winterfell at some point because he took this off of Ned.

I bet he just like stares and looks at it and he's like I'm so smart. Fuck the stagger. I tricked everyone. I think it's likely we'll see it come back in either Arya or Sansa's plot. There's a Valyrian steel axe that's reputedly possessed by House Celtigar. We might see that come back

maybe through Aegon's plot or Orienne's plot, Orienne Waters. We talked about him in our patron episode, the Forgotten Characters episode this month and how they'll affect the Wind's Winner. But I don't know, that might come back into play. Maybe not, but we'll see. And then there's a couple missing ones with no fates,

which, okay, I already know where half of these are, even though it's no fate, right? You have Blackfire pass from Aegon I all the way down to Aegon IV eventually. Daemon Blackfire gets it. He has his rebellion, and the whereabouts of the sword are quote-unquote unknown, but, I mean golden company

right yeah and I think that there's that aspect of what there's a passage I think floating around there a draft of it allegedly I don't know Galanix Galanix yeah Galanix on Reddit

chronicled it in um a post about clues that lead to the black fire theory around phagon and one of them has to do with like an old draft of this chapter discussing illyrio saying that oh the sword we can't forget the sword and wanting to give it to agon but I think that got nixed in the final. If Blackfyre doesn't melt from wildfire later, and, I don't know, maybe Daenerys takes it from the ruins like her martyr's sword.

That's kind of interesting. Yeah, right? Kind of rock and roll. Rock and roll. There's Brightroar, lost when King tom and the second lannister of the rot sailed to valeria never returned or went out for the homie uh dark sister vasanya's sword last known wielder was blood raven too bad we have no idea where that could be can't figure it out george said that george confirmed when a shade of history of westeros asked at a

convention that blood raven brought dark sister up to the wall with him so we have that going for us it's too bad mira reed has to warm up with that sword before she gets dawn you know yeah so hard being the sword of the morning so hard so hard uh lamentamentation House Royce's sword it was lost in storming of the dragon pit off of William

Royce's uh dead body don't know that might show up maybe in the veil plot maybe one of the

Royces will unearth it or something who knows maybe the High Sparrow has it or something

maybe it like got passed around the the church going community we don't know we might find it we might not sam could lead an archaeological dig oh my god the dragon pit that'd be really pure i would read too i would be a great game i told you i only read pure fan there you go this is the pure thing i want sam going on archaeological dig being like all right everyone i would do that as like a video

game truly uh orphan maker ancestral sword of house roxton it went from john roxton to eventually unwin peak after the dance roxton roll roxton roll it was never found so the peaks are noted blackfire supporters i think we're to see this surface in the Agen plot. There's Truth, which is a Valyrian steel sword carried by Moredo Rojar of Lys. There's Vigilance, the sword of House Hightower. Its last

owner was Lord Ormond Hightower, so wouldn't surprise me if we see it in some of the Citadel-y chapters, right? In the south. Maybe Sam chapters. And then a great curved Valyrian steel blade with a dragonbone hilt from Sandok the Shadow

and 135 AC. And that is those are the noted Valyrian steel. That's it. So that's what they have against the others. Isn't there a spoon? There's a spoon somewhere too, right? I have no idea. That's a great... Do you guys guys i mean there's so many of these that a you kind of forget about that i forget about and b they're just scattered everywhere

and i feel like we didn't really learn anything from the tv series about how this is really going to go down but how realistic do you think that it is that we have enough of these things to even make any sort of impact yeah i mean okay dragon stone has been mining it since stanis arrived at the wall right he sent off a an email and he was like better get the going on the production floor mining this obsidian but who's project managing i don don't know. And that is Stannis' biggest downfall. And that is why he has to burn his daughter. But it's because of his horrible corporate structure and foundation. But I digress.

So Dragonstone's going to have a huge abundance. And I almost wonder if Stannis will not get it there. Because Stannis maybe dies or does some shit whatever and he doesn't get the obsidian there and then danny shows up and that's why john has to bargain with him for it that's interesting i haven't thought of that till this moment so i'm like how does he get this obsidian because stannis says he's mining it but doesn't ever arrive um and then it's also noted skagos has a bunch of obsidian so we all know what davos is actually bringing back not rickon it's bringing probably a back instead

i don't know i think it's going to be a mad rush of these places have obsidian they have mines etc and these places can mine it and get to us and it's doing business to get those and getting the Valyrian swords north and also getting dragons north. I mean, as we learn fire, they're vulnerable to fire. Lord help us all. It sounded like they said that fire dismays them. The quote is like fire dismays them

but Obsidian actually stops them. Yeah. It sounds like, I don't know, the way, I don't know a shit ton of mosquitoes fucking dismayed me yeah probably a little bit more but in what the show has seen us there's a lot that i don't think goes down in the same way as in the source material the award-winning hit tv show game of thrones love that show right it's not tv it's hbo oh my god but i think that there's merit to the idea that the fire doesn't truly defeat them yeah which i think makes it more interesting because there's more of the scramble to get

something that actually works it would be be interesting if the fire is something that they rely on and then they realize that they can't. Some drama. It holds them back a little, but not enough. So, I don't know. And we just saw that. Sam's like, I'm going to look through more books then. Sam's like, well, guess what?

You get all the fucking books you want when you take this hit, hot vacation getaway with your closest friends Gilly, Eamon, and Darian to Old Town. Sam's like, I didn't want to go on a vacation with Grandma.

But thanks. Right. This isn't fucking Little Miss Sunshine. It actually is. it follows a similar plot amon's super fucking old he's not gonna make it yeah how's he gonna travel who's gonna send the ravens bran no it's it's clitus it's fucking yeah it's clitus god yeah john is like if you still mean to pass the boy off as your bastard son you should go and take Gilly and the boy to live at Horn Hill with your mom and sisters and have them watch a child

because okay that's exactly what they want to do with their lives but lossing past that right uh yeah Sam says Darren can see her to Old Town just as well as he could and he begins to stammer and get upset poor baby he's so afraid of his dad yeah his dad's fucking scary there's also a slight edge to what john's saying and i'm kind of wondering is john testing sam a little bit in like a slightly mean way he's like sam you said you would do it right oh this child is your bastard like he's like what now that you have to go face your family are you ashamed to call him your bastard well and on top of that what about i mean the show played with it and it obviously might not have as deep of an impact but gilly right she's very much so not a lady of the range and she's and she owns that as we'll see in a sec. But as we also see in this chapter from some Southerners, they have some predisposed prejudices,

right? Yeah. Well, I have some predisposed prejudices against Randall Tarly, so. But Jon has to know those things, right? Like, that's like, time and time again in this chapter, it's like, Jon knows what he's doing. Yeah. Yeah, I think Jon kind of knows, but he, A, I think John kinda knows but he

A doesn't care B he theoretically doesn't have that much right experience with southerners he might not I don't know he's just like whatever everyone's gonna do whatever the fuck I want

put your hands over candles cause I'm in charge he decided to put out the lord's face and he thinks that's it yeah so sam tells john he's been working on his archery and john's like i have dozens of archers sam and all of them are fucking better than you and i don't have any reading and writing people i need you to learn and become a maester and come back and sam's like i don't want to cut up corpses same thing i had to dish in high school during the frog thing but we tried to get a kid to eat a piece wow oh my god two types of people the shit uh he uh he's afraid of wearing a chain which which we know why, obviously. And John is very firm on the matter.

All the maesters they have are on their way out of life. So Sam will go. And none of this is going how John wants it to. He expected Sam to be like, yes, I'm going to a library to wear robes. But Sam's afraid of being a healer and he fears blood. And Sam's like, I'm Sam the scared, not Sam the slayer, which like, whoa, shut the fuck up, Sam, first off. But I get you. Yeah, I'm going to be real here for a second.

I think we all know that part of Sam's huge fear of going to the Citadel is the idea of becoming a maester because his abusive father was like, oh, you like chains? Try being chained for a few days. You like that? It's like, whoa, that's not what it's like and i don't think john truly understands what he's asking sam to do because ultimately he's asking sam to confront sam's greatest fear and yeah sam's proven himself brave when he has to in the face of like creepy ice demons like the others and a bunch of other shit but it's that very personal aspect of you know the human heart in conflict with itself blah blah that george is like talks about and the greatest fear and challenge for sam isn't the others right it's his personal

issues with his abusive father and i think john to an extent can't really relate to this because again he's shoving sam into his worst fears by forcing him to go against his father's wishes that his father literally abused him for it's it's a very personal challenge and i think john's faced a lot of very difficult challenges but in ways there have been things that have gotten him out of those in like the narrative sense like the narrative conflict of many of them like when he had to choose between the starks on the wall and book one his friends came and saved him they fucking neville longbottom him and then later on you know brand gives john an out when he's choosing between like killing this

innocent man at queen's crown and egret plays a role in this too of course right in showing his loyalty and then later on with that difficult decision a few chapters ago at the end of a storm of swords john has to decide between becoming lord of winterfell or staying at the wall and it was hinted at right what john was going to choose but he didn't ultimately have to make that choice for himself the voting kind of decided it for him and he's like this is a fantastic promotion I'm going to stay here and so John hasn't had to actually truly confront his bastardy in the face of his starkness or the other familial issues his fears right we see that he still thinks of Catlin sometimes but he's asking Sam to do the same thing and is

downplaying it and mocking Sam for that. And sometimes, in my opinion, this sort of personal trauma can be surprisingly much harder than any other external difficulty in that way. Humans are really complex, and the things that you don't expect to be terrifying for them

are. And that's why this last act of a song the vice and fire that we're waiting for those last two books to to close the song out you know uh you really feel that sense as we go along with john of him he hasn't had to choose he hasn't had to choose and when he's finally given the choice the motherfucker chooses wrong and he dies for it um we know what happens john dies at the end haha and that's how serious i like you see what i did there but i did every time someone's like what's the series you like the most i'm like john dies at the end they're like no i know you like a song of ice and fire i'm like god damn it uh like john with an h

yeah different john this is what he does he finally gets the choice and he dies for his choice he dies for it and like i said earlier he gets lucky and gets to come back uh but it's like with egret to add into that list of things he didn't choose on egret died and he hesitates right we read that chapter and we specifically called out that line that you and i talked about that his hand hesitates on the quiver and he thinks i can't kill her but he doesn't he doesn't even do it yeah he finds her later and she's dead someone else probably did it he thinks it's him but it's him projecting what happens like you said he's never had to confront his bastard he's never had to deal with bastardy he's never had to deal with stark versus something um and now suddenly he has to deal with stark versus the wall and

what happens when it's stark versus targaryen yeah and even even even at the end of this upcoming book he's still choosing he's kind of making a choice but it's still not the same as being confronted of are you going to be rejected yet again he safeguards that choice too yeah he's kind of making a choice but it's still not the same as being confronted are you going to be rejected yet again he safeguards that choice too yeah he's like okay mance you go right yeah yeah he like compromises and that's what he does at the wall too he's like okay so if i do this this is how everyone can live kind of happily ish but don't you think also though that by forcing like he doesn't give sam the choice he forces him into it that he's kind of doing the same thing that's been done to him a little bit in

the sense of like his destiny's been he's like turning his shoulders and facing him towards the road that he needs to go down not that sam is necessarily going to have the choice because he doesn't want to do it to confront his past and who he is um it's kind of interesting but i just i think the fact that sam is john's best friend we're not talking about even gilly necessarily you know like sam is somebody who they've been through hell together. And he still makes these horrible comments about him and turns it on him that this is Sam's fault, that he has to do this because Sam's the one who made him Lord Commander in the first place. And you plotted for us to get here, so now we're here.

So congratulations. And he's just like, this line about when he says he has no patience for the fat boy's fears. To me, it's just like, what the heck? Because this is not some rando. I mean, this is Sam that you're thinking about. And it's just such a off putting thing for him to be thinking. He like he's like, I'm going to fix all my problems by projecting onto you guys and making you fix your problems so I can feel successful. And I know kind of like to justify and there's really no justification. It's an asshole move.

But Sam in his mind is different now, right? Like he even talks a few chapters back. I think we talked about how he thinks Sam no longer is as fat as he was. Like he's leaner. He's moving differently he's excited about things he's reading and getting excited about knowledge which is what's really so crushing here because he's bringing all this knowledge to John and all this passion John's like yeah fuck off you're going to the Citadel uh good luck take the old guy and he's just being as cold as

possible to disconnect right like he's doing what ned did ned with sansa for example ned disconnected he couldn't handle it it was too much and he had to disconnect and compartmentalize what he's doing and john is compartmentalizing uh completely compartmentalizing it's so sad because it's like to him the fat boy's fears that's that's the sam that showed up at the night's watch right like that's a different boy than the man that he knows. He's like, Sam, you've slayed a goddamn other. Like, what are you crying about at this point? He refuses to understand because he just wants it all to go how he wants it to go.

Yeah, John's just like, Sam, what happened? I was there and kind of, like, not really there, but I saw what happened after three books of character development please bring that to the table for me yeah also John needs to go to a therapist because as you said he's compartmentalizing and projecting onto everyone else but I think this idea of him trying to voice that solution getting other people to solve his problems for him reminds me of a line from another king in the first book where Robert says to Ned, Come south of me and I'll teach you how to laugh again, the king promised. You helped me win this damnable throne. Now help me hold it.

And it's just like Jon saying to Sam, You lied and schemed and plotted to make me Lord Commander. You will obey me. Oh, and the parallel is because john is robert's son oh my god you're fired don't boo me why are you booing me i'm right oh my god you know you're not chloe's voicing her troubles yeah exactly i'm projecting my troubles yeah i'm compartmentalizing. I don't want to face it. By reliving instead of disassociating your roleplaying. Yeah, I'm compartmentalizing

because of T-Wow. My lord, my f-f-f-father, Lord Randall, he-he-he, the life of a maester is a life of servitude. No son of charlie will ever wear a chain the men of horn hill do not bow and scrape to petty lords john i cannot disobey my father

kill the boy, john thought the boy in you and the one in him kill the both of them, you bloody bastard why is this like john's responsibility for both of them, you bloody bastard. Why is this, like, John's responsibility for both of them? It's not. Which is so weird, because I totally understand, and we talked about this a little bit with Gilly, kind of like, why is

this his responsibility to, like, make this choice for her? Like, this is not his job to make Sam into who he thinks Sam needs to be, so. It's literally none of the things he's doing in this book are his job it's such a weird thing to think his job was to send the fucking letter and did you forget to send the ravens john like okay you're gonna chide sam but not yourself um it's also though

again in defense of the system it's a system that's needed reform. As we've said for so long, it's not getting it. And John's trying to do the best thing for the watch. The, for the watch. And he's trying to do the best thing for them though. Right?

Like he is trying to choose what's right for them, but what's right is different to John than it is for them. As we've discussed it to him he has that start versus watch mentality and for sam it's like i know what's right for you sam so this is what's right for you and that that doesn't matter if you think you know what's right for him john because it's not he's not you he's you can't control him on that level like you could tell him to go like read a book for you and report back and give you a book report write your own girls gone canon episode you know or like you can have

him go and muck the stables or you can do stuff like that but you can't control how he thinks and what he wants and what his dreams and hopes are just because you're mad because he made you the lord commander like you weren't gonna choose winterfell anyways dipshit you literally said you weren't i think it's interesting that you bring that up i'm sorry i know handle is 25 no it's okay my god because you were talking about brand's storyline earlier and i think that all the things that you're saying are similar to the struggles and lessons that brand's going to have to learn. Bran, who literally has the power to control what other people do and to an extent feel and think and realizing, wait, no, I can't slash I shouldn't do that. I think this is also the plot of Bruce Almighty.

I've never seen it. I'm excited to see that in Bran, though. almighty oh my god i've never seen it i'm excited to see that in brand though that's like such a whole interesting other like philosophical dive that you guys can get into john and brand are both and rob we see what happened to rob these are the stark kids that are now given any agency or power john's lb is a bit different from uh that and so is brand is the lord of winterfell but then you have aria and sansa who have been reduced to no power to you know sansa is a bastard in a bad way right now she's little figures kid which she couldn't get worse than that yeah um aria you know is what fucking

she just stopped being blind a few minutes ago um i'm like uh if you are spoiled for the winds of winter you know exactly where she is and it not good. People like things look bad for our heroes at this point. So it's nice that John gets a little bit of agency. Finally, out of all these kids, he's never had agency ever. Right. You know, he's just like, I'm the bastard and I sit at this table. Yes, he had a great life, but damned. Exactly.

He doesn't get to, like, choose things or do things or like have an opinion on things this is just the life he's been handed so finally he gets to make choices and he's like I'm going choice crazy no one else gets choices anymore only me and all these choices are gonna get him killed

so Tom and his like beats are banned and John is like choices banned John's like I'm gonna make the fucking choice for you you're gonna leave an hour before first slide alright no goodbyes hashtag no goodbyes and I

we've been talking about this for whatever the last 500 hours but he is as he's doing this is this one of those things that is one of those major mistakes that he's making like is he putting himself not only is he putting sam in a tough position as we've been talking about but what is this putting john in a more precarious position that he seems to be kind of not really understanding where he is and how he's being viewed and not seemingly not doing anything about it which he's going to continue to not do

anything about it for chapters on chapters but i'm just wondering if you guys think that if sam was at the wall if things may have changed for john or if you think that things would have basically carried out in the same way he just would have had a friend by his side he probably would still have gotten killed let's be honest i mean sam can't stop that much but sam could have maybe tried to sway some of it for a while um i mean the bigger thing would be could he stop john not them yeah i think if sam's able to stop John from himself for a little, then yes, things could have gone differently. Granted, at the same time, yeah. At the same time, you know, what John says of how Sam got him into this job is kind of true, you know?

Like, Sam was John's PR person, so was Eamon. Eamon was also John's PR person. And John decides, you know what? I'm just not going to address any of my image problems right now amongst the people so john is unable to sleep and he finds himself tossing in bed and he remembers amen's last speech to him allow me to give my lord one last piece of a counsel, the old man had said. The same counsel that I once gave my brother would be pardoned for the last time. He was three and thirty when the great counsel chose him to mount the iron throne. A man grown with sons of his own, yet in some ways still a boy.

Egg had an innocence to him, a sweetness we all loved. Kill the boy within you, I told him the day I took ship for the wall. It takes a man to rule. An egg on, not an egg. Kill the boy and let the man be born. The old man felt John's face. You are half the age that Egg was, and your own burden is a crueler one, I fear. You will have little joy of your command, but I think you have the strength in you to do the things that must be done. Kill the boy, Jon Snow. Winter is almost upon us. Kill the boy and let the man be born. Gotta crack a few eggs to make an egg on.

I never realized that Amon touches Jon's face. It's so good. It's so sad. It's also funny. I hate to say it. It's a resentable woman. Yeah. Sad. Sad. I don't know if that was a good film i don't know

uh i love this paragraph though i feel like it's such a classic but it's gets me every time it is a classic and i feel like this whole conversation of john's death being foreshadowed in this kill the boy thing is something that's uh basically everybody just like takes his canon at this point which i think is for the better because it's what it is basically but yeah what does it mean yeah so many questions um but i think that's something i think a lot about in terms of and this is something that we kind of have the luxury of doing because we're taking for granted this idea that john's coming back but it makes me think a lot about how he'll come back or not just how he'll come back but who he'll come back as because i feel like we didn't really get a chance to explore this in the hit television show hbo's game of thrones um but i think that

obviously a song by sapphire is going to dive deeper into who John is as a man, quote unquote, after the boy's been killed. And I don't know what that's going to look like. And I think that that's going to probably have a bigger impact than him just literally just like coming back to life. And that was it. We never thought about it again. Oh, agreed. Well, and you think about what these people died with in their minds, right? You think about Kat, Lady Stoneheart, and she died with vengeance and like the loss of everything in her mind.

And Jon died at failed command. I mean, the idea that Jon won't want to be a ruler ruler, but still be forced that reluctant ruler role for a while to do the job and get the job done. That's interesting. And I do have some stuff that I think we're going to talk about a little bit, very similar to this. But I do wonder if that's what drives Jon to show Jon ending, right? If we remove some of that emotion. I can see Dany being eager at 2.0 with Jon and him choosing duty over her.

But I'm curious, how is he even even gonna fall in love again when he comes back from the dead you know what i mean like how's he gonna be emotional towards a human that's surprising to me i don't know it's crazy to think about it's gonna be weird he's gonna be more blocky i think we're gonna see this whole dialogue uh and thought process where it's like dialogue john actually thought this. Dialogue. John thought this. We'll see that a lot more maybe, or maybe not. Maybe we'll get a lot of the inside ideas anymore.

I worry that we'll miss a lot of the things I love about these John chapters. It's also not confirmed that he can get it up. I'm going to throw that out there. Yep. True. So wait, does that mean Lady Stoneheart and Undead John is canon? Oh my gosh. Thanks.

Wow, so I'm sure all of those people theorizing after the first book came back they're going to finally be vindicated. Oh my god. I'm really happy for them. Hated. So John dons his cloak he puts on his lord commander outfit and his floppy ears

and he strolls the camp with ghost a silent shadow at his side and hedge white eye fake name but okay updates john uh tells him things are normal at the wall except for some wrong way rangers which were sir richard horp and justin massey stannis had sent them out for some wrong way rangers which were sir richard warp and justin massey stannis had sent them out for some secretive reason and dwyan notified john they're going the wrong way john thinks whatever let stannis have his secrets as the gods know i have mine this is john's frodo moment oh my god i mean is this not a Ned Stark line? This is literally a Ned Stark line. This is Ned Stark kept his vows. He thought of

the promises he'd made Lyanna as she lay dying and the price he paid to keep them. Same line. It totally is because I'm also like, Jon, what secrets do you have? Everyone fucking knows what you did. Everyone knows that when you went with the wildlings and all of the things. Literally, everybody knows. everyone knows every fucking little embarrassing thing he's ever

done nobody understands him because he's john snow and damned and do you know how clean his hair looks even though he hasn't washed it in two weeks is that the secret that he hasn't washed in two weeks he's still his hair's so big he's yeah full of secrets um my god you know john has nightmares after this and usually his nightmares are like ghost eating things right that's like that's john's nightmares that's the dream put it into perspective for you uh it's ghost tearing into like sinew and flesh and blood but it's actually about gilly and she's basically in it and she's just like pleading for him to leave the babies alone but then he rips the children from her arms oh my

god then he hacks their heads off and then he swaps the heads around and tells her to sew them back in place so dark uh it's a lot to unpack yeah Yeah. Jon needs a therapist. Yeah. Part three. Yeah. I feel like that's like the biggest takeaway this chapter. From this chapter. I agree. I don't want to be a therapist. Jon too.

I know. We have like 11 more episodes to do on Jon too. So you guys are his therapist. And he gets darker. Really? Or is it 11 chapters? It's 11 chapters. We'll see what happens, I guess.

But. Let me think it happened. Oh my god, we are Jon Snow's therapists. Have a good time. Wow. Hannah's like, I'm peacing out after this episode. She's peacing out during it. Shit.

So, this nightmare is crazy. It's whack, as we know, but it's also just like a net episode a netisode that we've talked about when he slept he dreamed dark disturbing dreams of blood and broken promises

yes yikes promise me John promise me you won't make him a crow oh promise me you won't make him a crow oh promise me you won't let him burn sigh yep he's gonna fuck up you sad crow

I am sad I feel really sad sad.com welcome to girls gone canon where we get sad I love it I'm here for it laughs yep and so then Ed wakes him up he's like I'm here for it. Yeah. And so then Ed wakes him up. He's like, it's the hour of the wolf.

And we're like, wow. We still don't know what it is. Yeah, actually, that's true. I don't. Ask George. This is actually a question. And so John goes back to work. He's brought some breakfast.

The smells are stronger in my wolf dreams, he reflected. And food tastes richer, too. Ghost is more alive than I am. Hmm. Interesting. Interesting. I wonder how much more alive he'll be in 11 chapters than you, John. When he's into Ghost. When he's warped into Ghost. into ghost yeah he's like ghost is the real ultimate foodie life so isn't aria talk say the same thing essentially

yeah that food is more vibrant i think brand does too at one yeah yeah yeah because brand if you spend too much time in your world oh Oh, right. It was Bran that I was thinking of. Yep. Alas, I'm just an owl. Right now the world is cold and still, but it's warming up, and Jon's like, I don't know, maybe it'll get warmer, and it'd be really good if the wall weeps. You know, the gods are good. The gods are never good. He reaches the lickyard, and

there the calm escort has formed, and Blackjack Bulwer commands the escort, two wains. Maester Aemon is covered in a bear skin and he's like small and John's like, he's so small. And he's in the back of a boiled leather covered wain. Can we talk about Blackjack Bulwer? My grandparents told me that we had a train robber from the 30s in our family that we're distantly related to named blackjack catch them and maybe it's like inappropriate he was a train robber though

like imagine being a train robber like you'd have to board a train and hold up a whole train so i don't know i thought that was just. I thought that blackjack bull were my relative at the wall was just what a story. So Gillian Sam are standing with the baby nearby and John's kind of like, I can't tell what baby that is. And her eyes are red. Maester Amon tells John that he's left him a book, the Jade Compendium and a passage was marked for him to read.

Likely not important. Don't worry about it, John. I wanna know! Right? Eamon tells him that knowledge is a weapon. You should arm yourself before you ride off to battle with it. And then it begins to snow, which is a bad omen.

John tells Blackjack, take no risks. Make good time, but look after them. You have a baby and an old man aboard. And Gilly lays her own charges at John. Find a wet nurse for the baby like you said you would. She's careful with her words, but tells him to watch over, quote, Dalla's boy, unquote. So he grows big and strong. She tells him not to name him till he's past two years old

because it's ill luck in free folk culture john says as you command my lady don't call me that i'm a mother not a lady i'm craster's wife and craster's daughter and a mother damn straight that's my girl i felt so much pride when I read those words I love that Gilly's the best she doesn't get enough fucking credit for everything that she's been through I'm a mother not a lady

god I love her I mean Jon should respect that that she throws that back at him and she's truly the embodiment of owning who you are like tyrian thinks he knows what it is and he's like arm yourself so then we can use it against you and then he doesn't really do it and john doesn't really get it till later on he kind of gets it

now he's like whatever it doesn't matter but like gilly she's out here being like i'm craster's wife and craster's daughter and a mother who has kids yeah taking on the world and damn i'm like owning that that part about her i know protect that girl she's like i've and through it all she's saying like you know i'm not like the rest of you i've been through all this shit and like don don't, don't talk down to me. Yeah. I love that. It's especially with all the classism that we even see at the wall, right? It's still there. Even if it's just a penal colony, some people get better perks than others. We're about to get into why some people shouldn't get better perks than others and why they get their head cut off. They get their head cut off. But she, like, it's one thing to say it,

and it's one thing for Jon to own his stuff and Tyrion to own his stuff, but Gilly doesn't have a choice. She doesn't get to talk a big game. She has to live it. It's not just that she lives it. Like, these are the cards Gilly was dealt. She's, like, whatever percentage of her father's DNA. Well, and Gilly arguably has, like,

a much higher ladder to climb too you know i think that tyrian and john are still in a higher place of privilege than somebody like gilly is which makes i think it even more powerful that she's willing to own it back talking good exactly she's like you know she's been met with scorn, right, from people like Stannis. She's been maybe met with pity. She's gone through everything and this is her reclaiming her dignity and her identity. She's like, put some fucking respect on me. Yeah.

Alright, and watch my son. It's the least you can fucking do after everything I've done. She takes the child to breast after she climbs into the wane and Sam immediately looks away. Sam. Fucking Sam. I guess it's foreshadowing of past shadowing of Sam and Gilly. I don't know. Sam lingers to say goodbye to Ed and John and they have a really sweet passage John

reminds him of you know Gilly when they first met her she was afraid and all the rabbits had been eaten by ghosts and he says it's not the wolf she should have been afraid of was it and Sam says she has more courage than she knows so do you Sam have a swift safe voyage and take care of her and Eamon and the child the cold trickles on his face reminded John of the day he bid farewell to Rob at Winterfell never knowing that it was for the last time and pull your hood up the snowflakes are melting in your hair I'm sad he finally found his brother and just like Rob sent his brother away Theon and that was his mortal mistake

John sent away Sam his brother what an idiot is the thing good analysis it was good solid A plus

the column leaves and the snow is heavily falling and Ed reminds him oh wait remember those guys Jado, Slit, and Giant your favorite people ever they're waiting for you John's like ah shit and then he watches the wall and thinks about the wall's weaknesses and strengths favorite people ever. They're waiting for you. John's like, ah, shit. And then he watches the wall and thinks about the wall's weaknesses and strengths.

The height being its strength, the length being its weakness. There's something to be said here, but I'm gonna avoid everything right now. We gotta go through. He remembers what Ned once said. A wall is only as strong as the men who stand behind it. Why did I say it like that?

Giant's real name is Bedwick, and he waits for Jon in the armory. He's the smallest man in the watch. So then Jon's put a garrison together in Icemark, and he intends to give Giant command. Giant's like five feet tall. I love that for him. I love him. He's like tiny, you know what I mean? But like six foot seven, but like it's the opposite. It love him uh he's like tiny you know what i mean but like six foot seven but like it's the opposite it's giant he's like so incredulous he's a crofter's bastard

he reminds john who was put on the wall for poaching but john sees more than that john is like you're a survivor from the fist of the first men and you survived craster's keep you've been a ranger for 12 years and the younger men look up to you. Giant's like, I can't read or write. And John's like, I have maesters from the Citadel coming for that reason. You'll be commanding 20 men from the watch and 10 from Stannis's army. He warns Giant of the brothers going with him that arrive with Janos Slynt. And Giant says 30 men won't be enough to throw wildlings off the wall if they make it to the top.

And John's like, yeah, well, LOL 300 probably wouldn't be enough to throw wildlings off the wall if they make it to the top and john's like yeah well lol 300 probably wouldn't be enough either but that's okay and we we definitely don't have 300 so anywhere like john's like looking in his cloak he's like you in there 300 nights watchman uh he's praying that the wall will defend itself like he's seen it done in the past and that they would have the aerial advantage against wildlings if they attack or something worse. Giant asks what other garrisons will be reopened and John says only this and Greyguard.

And he means to have Janos man Greyguard against his better wishes and thoughts. He says, a man does not rise to command of the gold cloaks without ability except he's like a golden rat and has no ability just like struggling lord janos cannot be as great a fool as he seems john says but then at the same time he's like i want him away from alice at dawn in his head. And narrator voice, Lord Janos is as great a fool as he seems.

Just putting that out there. He sucks. Giant is like, that's great, but Janos would be better in the kitchen, being a scullion. And John's like, I'd never eat another turnip again if he was. That bitch would poison my ass. For sure, though.

For sure. I don't know if Janos can cook. He absolutely can't. Clearly has no taste in people. Oh my god. Good thing he's not cooking people. Oh my god. Shit.

He'd season them all wrong. So what does Scott go? Half the morning passes before Janos arrives. That's like some balls right there. Like, oh, I'm just not going to show up to the meeting my boss scheduled. Jon is cleaning Longclaw, something Eddard taught his sons to do, care for their own weapons. And Janos sits and he's like scowling and he ignores Jon's sword.

Jon slid the oilcloth down his bastard sword, watching the play of morning light across the ripples, thinking how easily the blade would slide through skin and fat and sinew to part Slint's ugly head from his body. Dude, damn, that's another moment akin to Rob with his sword across his lap right there. John is big money moves, long claws out. He learned a few things about being a lord. It shows. Yeah, he's out here sharing his fantasies with everyone. I feel like it works for once

in this instance. Yeah. Because of all this, you know, John finds it hard to think of Janos as a brother he's like well he's kind of complicit in like my dad dying and also he wants me to die of course he's gonna have opinions

yeah you can't expect the guy to like love him back John is like I'm giving you Greyguard. And Slynt's kind of taken aback at first. And then he's like, oh, Greyguard, where you climbed the wall with your wildling friends, bastard. And Jon's like, glossing past that. He's like, the fort's in a sorry state. And he's forming a plan, basically, with him to get it back to working order while thinking in his mind also it's gonna suck

getting it back to working order I mean it's gonna that's the case for all of them right yeah John's like sending Janos at least with like 30 men to go with him 10 from the wall, 10 from the shadow tower and 10 of Stannis' men

Janos is like I don't like this gift I am insulted i'm and he tells him that when jano slint was running king's landing you were in diapers so you can go fuck right off with your gate with your gray guard shit yeah that's a really funny i was like wait where am i going jr slant wears gay guard uh i'm giving you a chance my lord it is more than you ever gave my father so john's doing that thing we've talked about it a little bit above before uh we talked about it last episode mary where he's giving us the truth between dialogue cuts super clever how george cuts it he cuts the emotion he builds

the suspense he takes out any body language from john and he intersperses lines of dialogue with a sharp thought behind it telling the truth and it works really well for the sad bits of this chapter with gillian sam because he's been doing this all throughout showing that the words he says are dishonest right they're different from the words he wants to say definitely i and i think there's a an aspect of that too right because like john's like jenos you mistake me this isn't an offer it was a command then he goes back to like i don't know trying to establish his dominance he tells him to go pack your shit get ready to go at first light but you know it occurs to me that in regards to what you're saying john isn't being completely

honest with janos here either he's angry for obvious reasons and that's what gets in the way but like i mean john could have told janos what he actually thinks right he's like i mean you must have been somewhat competent to do what you did in King's Landing you rose through the ranks of the Gold Cloaks and Jon Arryn was the one who promoted you and he's like that's kind of impressive clearly you could do this job and I think Janos would be way more receptive

to Jon being like yo I think you might actually be really qualified for doing this because Janos loves being flattered but instead Jon's like I hate you fuck you get the fuck out of my sight yeah that's true

also true so much Janos refuses to go off to freeze and die at Greyguard and he's like no traitors bastard order Janos refuses to go off to freeze and die at Greyguard, and he's like, no traitors bastard ordered Janos slicked around, and Jon's like, uh, yeah, this traitor

bastard will order your bitch ass around. Janos throws a little tantrum and he leaves, and Jon's like, ah, he still thinks I'm a green boy, and he hopes that Janos is going to see some sense by the morning. But of course, Janos Slint does not see any sense. He's sitting in the hall in the morning with Alice or Thorne.

They're giggling. The house is packed, right? Everyone is there. Mully, Horse, Red Jack Crab, Rusty Flowers, Ed, Iron Emmett, Owen the Oath. They all accompany John downstairs and Three-Fingered Hob is serving porridge. Black Brothers, Queensmen, Kingsmen, all of them are sitting at their tables. The air smells of smoke and grease and the sound of silverware is hanging above in the din and the voices die. John gives Janos one chance to get to the stables for gray guard slint says gray guard would be a good place for john that john has the mark of the beast

i just wanted to call that out i think it's kind of weird language right oh yeah revelations the whole mark of the beast thing and i don't know if it's like george just inserting something poetic for janice to say like oh you're the devil john snow but also i don't know it feels kind of sloppy that's just my personal opinion because it references a very specific thing unless george is intending to mean more by it like i don't know revelations beast dragon targaryen maybe but i think that's reading too much into it this turns out like i don't know by janice's repetition of that same like phrase later either he means that the mark of the beast is talking about how john's a bastard or because of his skin changing because he says he's just a boy a bastard his father was a traitor the mark of the beast is on him that wolf of his so i don't know it's just weird totally

remarking on the skin changing and i think there's a lot of that southern slander of northerners kind of thing or that like this is what the south thinks the north is going on uh but i also find it interesting when you talk about revelations in this manner especially that but there's stuff like the seals when the seals are opened um think about Euron Greyjoy and where he's positioned and what he's doing uh it makes me think of that it makes me think of how much Westeros is about to bleed from the north from the south from the west from the east it's about to just gush blood just like the revelations it's interesting john asks if janos is refusing the order and janos is like you could shove the order up your bastard ass and literally he says this this really isn't just like commentary this is this is he straight up is like up your bastard arse uh and alistair smiles. He's watching Jon calculating him

and Slint is laughing and Godry the Giant Slayer, that dick, he pipes in. I hate that guy, dude. Jon asks Iron Emmett to take Janos to the wall and that he thinks of his options. He's like, I could send him to the ice cells, see how his attitude is in ten days, but then he

thinks he would just begin to plot with Alistair Thorne once he was released. He could have him tied to his horse. He could send him to Greyguard as a cook instead of a commander. Really show him. But he would desert and probably take other men with him. So Jon says

to hang him. Yeah. Janus' spoon hits the ground. His face turns white and bowen marsh's mouth opens and closes wordless and alicer reaches for his sword and john wishes a motherfucker would yeah fight me he's like i've been waiting for this. F-I-T-E. John thinks about, oh my god, this is world star, literally about to happen, especially with the smoke hanging in the air. It's just like a smoky bar environment at this point. Half the men in the hall are on their feet watching, like it's totally world star. And John is thinking about how some of these men chose him to be Lord Commander.

Others cast their stones for Bowen Marsh, for Dennis Malister, Cotter Pike, some for Janos, hundreds of them for those people. And John thinks, how many of those men are in the cellar right now? And if that's not huge foreshadowing, I don't know what is, obviously. And it says, for a moment, the world balanced on a sword's edge. And it just makes me think, like, like John realizes I don't have many friends here. He sent them all away. It's like,

I made a mistake, a very mortal error in my calculations. So Janos begins to protest and beg. Borges is flying from his mouth and he's calling Jon a bastard which is an interesting move in this moment he tells Jon he's the son of a traitor once again the mark of the beast is on him

telling him he's gonna rue the day he laid hands on Janos Slyth that he's got friends in King's Landing and he tries to make a fucking run for it and then Iron Emmet throws him back in the iron cage. Please clap. Yes.

Is that Emmett from the Notacast podcast? Oh my god. The Source podcast. No, it's not. We are the Source podcast. Well, no, I guess whatever. Fuck this joke. Fuck this joke. And at this point, all of Castle Black has come out

to watch oh man I'm so yeah yeah everyone's watching everyone this is like literally when you get in a fight in the lunchroom

every single person is watching this shit uh uh Eliana yeah Val is watching from her window Stannis is on the steps of the king's tower watching and this is about to be an epic passage

if the boy thinks that he can frighten me an epic passage. You too. If the boy thinks that he can frighten me, he is mistaken, they heard Lord Janos say. He would not dare to hang me. Janos Lint has friends, important friends, you'll see. The wind whipped away the rest of his words. This is wrong, Jan thought. Stop. Emmett turned back, frowning. My lord? I will not hang him, said Jan. Bring him here. Oh, seven save us, he heard Bowen Marsh cry out, the smile that Lord Jan of Slint smiled, then had all the sweetness of rancid butter. Until John said,

Ed, fetch me a block, an unsheathed long claw. By the time a suitable chopping block was found, Lord Janos had retreated into the winch cage, but Iron Emmet went in after him and dragged him out. No! Slynt cried as Emmet half shoved and half pulled him across the yard. Unhand me! You cannot! When Tywin Lannister hears of this,

you will all rue! Emmett kicked his legs out from under him. Dolores Edd planted a foot on his back to keep him on his knees as Emmett shoved the block beneath his head. This will go easier if you stay still, Jon Snow promised. Move to avoid the cut and you will still die, but your dying will be uglier. Stretch out your neck, my lord.

The pale morning sunlight ran up and down his blade as Jon clasped the hilt of the bastard's sword with both hands and raised it high. If you have any last words, now is the time to speak them, he said, expecting one last curse. Janos Slynt twisted his neck around to stare up at him. Please, my lord, mercy, I'll go, I will, I- No, thought Jan. You close that door. Longclaw descended.

Can I have his boots? Asked Owen the Oath as Janice's head went rolling across the muddy ground. They're almost new, those boots, lined with fur. John glanced back at Stannis. For an instant, their eyes met. Then the king nodded and went back inside his tower. I freaking love that line. That's foreshadowing of

Dany and his eyes. Okay. I'm just kidding. Yeah, like, I mean, that was foreplay. We're not entirely joking, I think. I mean, it was. That's why i love it so much this is flirting interesting butterfly interesting

what a fucking badass passage it's so good it's like between this and the whole kill the boy passage i feel like this whole chapter is such a club banger i love it so much it's so hard because it's like what if we just read the chapter from start to finish and then we were like did you guys like the chapter because we love i know right i feel like this is like the only way to handle it sometimes we've been talking about this throughout the episode about john's different choices but what i've been thinking a lot about what happens if john doesn't kill janice slant like if he lets him like if he extends mercy in the last minute or he tells janice that he might kill him if he doesn't do what he says and so he takes him seriously and all these different kind

of things do you think that this was kind of the last straw for Janos and company? Or do you think that he's going to get murdered even if he doesn't kill Janos? Like, is this one of those things that we were talking about? Like, Sam could have saved him from himself almost? Or was he really making the only choice that he had, which is to be a commander? I definitely think Sam couldn't have saved saved him but he could have slowed it down he was still gonna die like at this point it's too late he's made a handful of choices and he knows what he's doing even if he's pretending not to know he's baiting him for sure yeah yeah it's just interesting because i feel like john is put in such a lose situation like either he stands up for himself and does his duty and cracks down on people to

get people to take him seriously or he bends over backwards and everybody continues to take advantage of him it's like kind of a lose-lose situation yeah it's the car stark it's his car stark situation yeah it is and we see rob's campaign suffer with how that went and i mean there's no there's no winning none yeah and and like there were slightly different circumstances with rob right like at least like some of the people kind of respected him the car sharks did as opposed to here where it's john like how does he assert control over all these unruly people and like i don't know we as normal as people who don't live in a penal colony don't go around killing people in order to assert that control we have hr for that but um i don't know and you asked like is this the last straw for alice or thorn i i don't know i think this is the first for a lot of them right because it's interesting that bowen marsh cries out oh

seven save us because does that mean, like, in this moment, it seems like John's saying, I'm not going to hang him, and then he says, bring him here. Does Bowen Marsh know what John intends to do, having been around John long enough? Like, does the O7 save us? Is it like a

O7 save us? Like, oh, thank God? Or does O7 save us mean O7 save us? I know oh, thank God. Or does oh, seven save us mean, oh, seven save us. I know what he's about to do. It was very mocking. Like, oh, seven save us. Like, Hannah read it really well, in my opinion, that he was straight up just being like,

oh, good. Like, now he's going to not kill him. Like, didn't see that coming. What a dumb bastard. Make up your mind, Lord Commander. But at the same time it's interesting that you pointed out that it's the seven that he calls out about because slint has just been like he's a skin changer he's a skin changer mark of the b07 save us and here's john who's probably

gonna live on in his wolf yeah there's all of that and also it shows their misunderstanding of what's happening in this moment as john also makes that choice right and we've discussed this before that originally actually george did have john hanging jano slant but per a fan suggestion after reading changed it to him beheading Janos per the Northern tradition. So yeah, all of the Southerners being like, oh, that means he's not going to hang him. That means he's going to live. No, it just means like, nope.

Jon has decided he's going to exert Northern justice instead. And so there's that contrast. That's Jon's choice. And this is the old way. It's very much so framed in Ned, right? We talked a lot above about A Game of Thrones and Ned against Jon's nightmares and Ned's nightmares. And you're seeing a bunch of Ned's mistakes played out

in the North at the Wall, right? Giving mercy to people who might not deserve it. Giving his plans away to some of the biggest schemers in Westeros is what ned did right and now alicer thorne definitely has some some vile in him after watching this i'm sure uh and ned chasing the wrong thing that hits so close to home right the seed is strong versus the baby swap uh john trying to save babies and Ned chasing the seed is strong. These are things that obviously maybe weren't worth their energy. Ned pushing away all the people close to him in an attempt to save them and protect them.

The kids, Kat, we saw what happened. They had to learn the hard way and some of them didn't get over it. We talked about how John's going to come back, but what about the people around him? Right. What about Alice or Thorne? What about about Sam how does Sam come back in John's plot how does Sam regard him how does Alice or Thorne regard him I mean is it gonna be like the show where he kills the mutineers uh for justice or you know what how how do the people around him react to him that's what I want to hear about. I think it's a really good question. And I think that like,

it can take so many different paths. Like how is Sam and Gilly going to react to what John did to them in this chapter? And like, how are Sam and Gilly going to react to, as we were talking about earlier, if John loses his ability to like truly love people or connect with people, how are they then gonna find common ground like is it gonna is the irony in all this gonna be that they're gonna follow him

and protect him or be with him because they feel a sense of duty and they no longer no longer feel any of that like familial friendship with him you know i don't know i think i think that's like such a really such a really good i think that's like such a really such a really good i think that's such a good question to to think about that i haven't thought about not everyone wants to protect the realm like that not everyone uh joined the wall because it was the fantasy dark knight duty that they could have. You know, yes, John didn't have a place. He couldn't stay at Winterfell, but had it been push comes to shove, Ned would have added it to his large laundry list of things to get done.

And would he have finished it? Maybe not, but he might have sent him off to Starfall or found a place for him. You know, it's the same idea that there were other options and the easy options and the not so easy options were the ones they had to choose to protect their secrets. Hannah, you've talked about this chapter many, many moons ago, many years ago. And now that you have reread it together with us, how do you feel about it now? Great question. Well, I mean, you guys asked me what chapters I wanted to do. And when I was going to join you on your guys' show. And so I picked this chapter for a reason, because it just my favorite john chapters because i think it's i think it's just such a good summary of the internal struggles that john goes through and not only dance but just all of a song a song by some fire and so this chapter continues to be

one of my faves and it was really fun chatting about it with you guys. So it might've been my favorite reread yet. Oh, Oh, now I'm all soft. I'm like, Oh, sad about John, happy about Hannah.

I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. I think you're right that this has like basically a lot of the things that happened in John's chapters and a lot of those struggles though and encompasses all of it yeah and janna and janice slant dies so you've got gilly you've got sam you've got the amen passage which ties in great with the last chapter when you hear a bunch about how you know amen says good men you know make bad mistakes all the time good rulers f things up all the time. Stannis could still mess stuff up.

And then you hear him talk about Aegon. And oh, your heart's sad. And then Jon gets rid of all his friends. He gets rid of Amon. And you don't even get a real, like, this is Jon's visit with Amon. You just get a memory, just like Ned's chapters, right? You start in the middle of a memory and work your way back. And then you come to reality and off with the head which is the best part because i mean you can't it no matter how morally

wrong or right it is you can't sit there but be like yeah you get him get him johnny boy every time i'm getting rowdy just thinking about it i'm like yeah for ned you do this shit for ned because when that wormy ass little shit just sat there in a stupid gold cloak with a stupid new gold clasp that he got from house Lannister because they gave him money for, you know, betraying Ned. we talked about it again in third person. Yeah.

He acts like he's so big. Like how dare you kill the only patriarch that was almost good. Yeah. God. Such a weirdo. We should start doing that about ourselves. Yeah. Oh, Chloe doesn't think that we should do that.

On the podcast? Oh, God. I would actually maybe fire you. I hope so. I feel like I'd want to fire myself. Yeah. I'm glad you got to choose the banger yeah this is what you wanted to come in on and you did the damn thing you were very fun to have on hannah thank you for joining us

it's a dream come true oh it really is please tell everyone where we can find you on the internet doing things um you can find me at game of bones on twitter on instagram not really on facebook because i don't really use facebook you can try to search my personal handles but i don't tweet almost at all so good luck if you want to like scroll back to 2008 that's on you um and then you can also find, Zach and I have a new podcast too, that you can find us on Instagram called it really makes you think. So lots of hashtag content coming at you from me. Hell yeah. Tell us about,

tell us about it really makes you think. It really makes you think is a show where we talk about nothing. So it's kind of just we were talking about this a little bit before we started recording uh with everything else that you guys are doing on girls gone canada side of a song of ice and fire it's just an opportunity to kind of talk and hang and get outside of the ice and fire-ness you know that you can kind of feel like you get stuck in a rut a little bit and not necessarily in a bad way but we just wanted to try something different so it really makes you think yeah it really does it does make you think truly he's given us so much to think about

i know i know so but seriously you guys i love what you do I love both of you as human beings and so I'm really glad that you guys invited me to be on here today we love you you're the best thank you again this was a long time in the making so thank you so much for joining it's always fun

as you know you can find us also on social media. Find us on Twitter at Girls Gone Canon. Or maybe you would like to also ask us about one of our favorite sports teams. Oh, my God. You can shoot us an email at girlsgonecanon at gmail.com. Don't forget to subscribe to us to find out right the moment podcasts get uploaded get them push notifications you can find us on podbean on google play on itunes on spotify on stitcher on overcast on a cast i'm sure i'm

leaving something off but we're there too yeah probably and of course you can also find this on patreon we have content there and for patrons who are five dollars and up we just released our september patreon episode about forgotten characters in the winds of winter as suggested by patron shadow fox yes it was a fun time and we talked a lot about characters not strong bell laws and not h r i'm not allowed to say his name so i just won't say it who exactly as always i have been your hosts chloe i just you just got it yeah because they weren't they weren't forgotten all right and i'm eliana another one of your hosts goodbye