Girls Gone Canon Cast - House of the Dragon S2E2: Rhaenyra the Cruel

Episode Date: June 26, 2024

SPOILERS: ASOIAF, F&B, KOT7K, TWOIAF, ETC All the world's a stage in Westeros, and our favorite (and least favorite) characters must navigate that stage, whether they like it or not. Join us as we chat about spectacle, the Kingsguard, and of course, pegging. Check out our patreon where all members get early access to House of the Dragon episodes during the season @ patreon.com/girlsgonecanon Sound Effects from Pixabay "Night Vigil" "Big Drumming" & by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ THANKS KEVIN!!

The The The The The Hello, and welcome to Girls Gone Canon Watches, House of the Dragon, Season 2, Episode 2, Rhaenyra the Cruel. I am one of your hosts, Chloe. And I am another one of your hosts Eliana. Yes here we are episode two strong dramatic start to the season. I guess we're like already a fourth

of the way in which makes me super sad. Bring back the 10 episode seasons. Honestly as we've discussed in the past and other things bring back 20 episode seasons yeah i paid for max as the kids are calling it i paid for max even in the off season and have been very loyal so i believe that my loyalty should pay for those two episodes as one user loyal hashtag loyal whoa well well you all have been loyal hashtag for coming back to us after last week. If you're here, if you survived our wild style and controversial takes, quote unquote. I don't think we're controversial. I don't think we said anything very controversial or wild style. DJ Wild Style of the Lego Movie.

But we're only a quarter of the way in, like you said. Yeah. Eliana, what do we usually do on this podcast? All right. Well, just warning you all before you get a quarter of the way into this podcast that we are a spoilers all podcast if you have come here to listen to house of the dragon takes please know we are going to talk about the entirety of what what we know to be the big beats in terms of fire and blood the book on which this show is based and we will be also discussing anything from the five books of A Song of Ice and Fire, Dunk and Egg, World of Ice and Fire, anything that we know that is out there about this

world. I guess Game of Thrones, too. Forgot about that. It is fair game. George literally turned it into a book. Yeah, that's right. How could you forget George literally turned it into a book? Yeah, that's right.

George adapted the show Game of Thrones and made it into five books. Wow. Incredible. The detail that he added is just crazy. Not only that, but in the off season, when we are not talking about House of the Dragons, don't worry, we're still talking about dragons. We're still talking about wolves. We're still talking about wolves. We're talking about A Song of Ice and Fire. We are on a long, beautiful reread of the published books of A Song of Ice and Fire. But here is the catch.

We don't do it chapter by chapter in chronological order. We do it chapter by chapter, POV character by POV. So, before this, we finished John Connington, which was a very fun read coming up to House of the Dragon. And after this, we will be hitting the epilogues with two very special guests that you won't want to miss. But all that will be coming after a final two episodes

of our House of the Dragon Primer Series. Unleash the D. It's not going to be a Primer Series, I guess, now. But we'll figure it out. A posthumous series. Primed. So stick around for that, too. Primed, yeah. Primed series. Yeah. What are we, Amazon? Oh my fuck. Let's talk about

a Fallout. Of course, you can get more details about all that, and you can get these episodes every Wednesday morning, early. Not on Wednesday morning. You can get them Tuesday afternoon, even ET. If you are a patron over at patreon.com slash girls gone canon,

where there are tons of perks depending on the tier that you choose, whether it's bonus episodes every single month, or if you want to hop up in the thunder tier and become a discord member. So lots of choices. Check it out there. And Eliana, can you tell them all at home what they're going to win as a bonus episode this month? This month, we're going to take a little trip down memory road to look at another movie that does involve also a dragon. It's called... And the greens.

Yeah, and greens. Greens and dragons and uh you know complex characters that are like layers that are like onions it's shrek yeah we're getting shrek'd this month june 2024 episode 70 for bonus episodes of patreon get shrek'd we're excited to get shrek'd with you and we're going to talk about all sorts of the movie and silliness and trivia and different fun things about the filming. I might say filming. I mean, you know, recording and creation and visual design of Shrek. Yeah.

I haven't watched, I guess, past maybe the second or third movie. So keep that in mind, you know. No spoilers. Yeah. Perhaps we all need to really discuss the first one and yeah no spoilers for the rest of shrek uh you might be like why are you doing shrek and not a house of the dragon or targaryen or other song of ice and fire episode during the on season subscribe to our patreon we have other episodes that you might enjoy like our king's

guard episode that we will be talking about we have actually a king's guard series so we'll be talking about that later tune in for shrek for fun yeah we've already covered the dance in full from fire and blood uh starting with the question of succession actually right we kind of went all the way back to that to really set the tone. So if you want to catch up on those episodes, they're up there too. They're old, right? We started that I think 2019 post

Fire and Blood coming out. Woohoo! That was a while ago. So we're rehashing that now with you all. That was a long time ago now. I feel like it wasn't. That was a time jump ago now. I feel like it wasn't. That was a time jump ago. Yeah, time skip. Time to time skip up to some tweets and emails of note.

I really like this tweet this week that I saw. It's from Twitter user Pussy in Bios. Nice. They said, bios nice they said raniera finally admitting she never fully trusted her abuser while allison finally accepts her and her daughter are nothing but bodies of grief and pain to be paraded for the men in their lives leaving them tethered in ways one can't even put into words wow i guess i wanted to set the tone today sorry that. That is the tone. I mean, I think that that's a great, great way to open up the episode. I thought you might include your hit tweet.

Let's talk about Chloe's hit tweet here for a second. You know, I've had a good hit tweet both weeks so far. I'm hoping I can go three for three next week. The first week was a beautiful rendition of Good Luck Babe set to Alison Hightower. And this week's viral tweet...

You guys know the Spongebob meme? Yeah. The only thing I could think of when Kristen Cole was yelling at Eric, or sorry, Arik, whichever twin of war, when he was yelling at Arik, and he was like, the white cloak is a symbol of purity. Yeah.

So I had to do the SpongeBob meme to that one. It was all I could think about at all during the episode. It was just the most, like, oh, I can't wait to talk about that. We'll get there. We'll talk about that we'll get there we'll get there we'll get there we got an email of note and i want to thank thunderclap for getting an email in prior to recording i know that the turnaround time is fast if you all want we will maybe share your takes if you send them to us via tweet or email you can find us at girlsgonecanon, that's C-A-N-O-N, on Twitter, or send us an email at girlsgonecanon at gmail.com.

So Thunderclap did just that. Yes, Thunderclap emailed us and wanted to comment on the ritual that the Starks had for selecting one in ten men for the Night's Watch, and they called out the definition of the word decimate, which has been used in the show in the past bit here. And to decimate means to kill, destroy, or remove a large portion of. However, there is also a historical connotation with the term. Historically, killing one in every ten of, you know,i, a group of people originally from a mutinous Roman legion, as a punishment for the whole group.

The man who is to determine whether it is to be necessary to decimate a large body of mutineers, for example. So Thunderclap goes on to point out that in Kang's Landing, the farmer's sheep were taken for the war effort, right? Their sheep population was decimated, you could say. And it does have a root in late 16th century from the Latin decimat, taken as a tenth from the verb decimare, from decimus tenth. In Middle English, it denoted the levying of a tithe, and later the tax imposed by Cromwell. Thomas Cromwell. Yeah. Love that. I like the idea of the tithe as well. In terms of giving to, you know,

all these efforts. Thunderclap also goes on to say that then in episode two, the pair of Blood and Cheese dying along with the twins, Eric and Arik, and the lessening, I guess, of the Kingsguard. Then he says, you know, we're probably going to keep seeing this escalating devastation. So will episode three have, for example, 300 of House Stark's 1,000 troops die or say

three dragons die? Thank you for the email, Thunderclap. I did think that, you know, I will get a little serious for a second, you know, discussing that concept of House Stark troops dying and the dragons dying because this will happen dragons will die as we know based on the hit hbo series game of thrones and what it's true like they were all gone by the beginning of that story we're probably going to see i wouldn't be surprised if we did see three dragons die but towards the end of the season, like Melis, Melis is what I say,

but I guess they say they pronounce it probably differently as well. And Vermax and Stormcloud, the Battle of the Gullet. And I don't know. I think the Tumbleton one. I don't know if that's going to happen this season, but it could. First Tumbleton.

They did mention Darren. If they pronounce Ray-nese, why isn't it May-lease? It might be. I might have heard them say May-lease or May-lease or something, but I'm also like It should be May-lease. It could be May-lease. It could even be, if you think about it, Malice

in a way, if you really wanted to stretch the pronunciation. No, I do think that you have, I do think it might be that. Like a joke on it a twist on it i think malays itself or malays is already works malay it's malaise but it also is like a melee you know fighting so there's a lot going on here there's layers like an onion and and a red dragon. So everyone come back to listen to Shrek. Get Shrek'd. That's what happens.

Last episode. Wait, hold on. So let's talk about someone who's out there in his swamp. Oh my god, just waiting. Just waiting. That was a transition. That was a beautiful segue. Thank you, Eliana.

I want to talk about before we get like into the episode you know we're gonna go kind of location again like we did last week and generally hop around float around cover whatever comes to mind but i want to start with this kind of you know this thesis question statement whatever we're seeking here starring darren targaryen or the question of do we like this show because we love the world of westeros or do we like this show as a standalone piece without former knowledge and you have a little interesting life going on your partner has read the books except for fire and blood so they don't know about fire and blood as much um so you're kind of watching every week with a show only watcher in your ear saying like the best things

in the world yeah um oh god it's been very funny getting to hear some of them there's a lot of confusion um a lot of a lot of flips and turns coming from them, in my opinion. But I digress. Is it possible for someone who hasn't read this to feel the absolute joy that I felt last night? Because I think I was happy last night for the first time in many years. That's like clinical depression. But like, thank you. No, I want someone to laugh at me um i felt like scientifically physically like that neural link that i've installed in my brain from the a-swath world and germ like i felt serotonin miss serotonin miss sarah hess whoever you want to call her she was in there it was an insanely great episode and any failures like to me feel like overarching failures based on hbo the franchise

and george rr martin failures in general and not actually indicative of individual well i mean we're fucking adapting an outline a wikipedia article aren't you the one who keeps saying article literally it's basically that like it's basically an it's like the Aeswaf wiki up in this bitch, okay? That's about what they have. There's context and subtext, but you have to understand and love the other works of George R.R. Martin to actually get those different texts out of this, which clearly Ryan Condal is doing because he's adapting A Feast for Crows on TV every week. on TV every week. He actually really is. And I think, I don't know. Okay, I also don't know. I don't think I like have the perspective to know if I am enjoying this series as a person

who knows what's happening and is loving this depth and like how they're coloring in this universe and what George did give us. Or if, you know, did I drink the Kool-Aid or is it good? I don't know. And it's also like the other aspect of it is not just like the Kool-Aid. I felt like the last few seasons of Game of Thrones were so plot driven, right? It felt like they were writing backwards from something and there wasn't really much that had to do with like characters motivations and so am i just like thankful for the crumbs that i'm getting are they

crumbs or are they like actual am i getting an actual loaf i don't know i went too far with this metaphor no but i literally agree like especially because they never focused on the character driven plots for game of thrones and this has been so far tons of great character work game of thrones was event driven it was written backwards like you said from events that were given to them in an outline in their defense they also got an outline and in ryan condell's defense he's better at it uh but he you know he's given this list of events because that's literally what fire and Blood is, where Aeswaf is a list of like all these character driven moments are happening in A Song of Ice and Fire. And none of that really tended to make it to the screen unless it was for a spectacle where I feel like they're adapting opposite.

We're seeing real character work before we get some of these event driven. Now, there are asterisks there like could we have had more Helena? Could we have had more helena and her kids for time's sake no we cannot it's tv but it would have definitely made maybe things hit harder for people that weren't happy with last week's execution no pun intended but i think like egg in this episode got great character work and last episode, and that's going to make him melting off of his bone, go down for the audience in such a terribly, kind of a complex way, a conflicted way, right? You're going to watch that and feel really weird about it. You're not going to feel like, die pedophile bitch.

You might feel it a little, but you're also going to be like, oh dude, that's's terrible which is interesting he's gonna get the theon grayjoy treatment right the theon grayjoy to re-treatment in a way i think interestingly you were saying that there are things that could have been fleshed out and would be more enjoyable and i obviously shoulda woulda coulda but like i have this fantasy of what it would have been if we had gotten those 10 episodes instead of the eight because as you were saying last last week when we covered this the studios told them they could only get eight episodes and there was also another great point that you brought up of like when we were talking at your place in meatspace that some of the flimsiness if things like feel feel hastily done is because they had to they were rushing before the writer's strike happened

absolutely there's the wga writer's strike is a big deal they were allowed to work through it but they had to really follow strict rules and they didn't have the edits that they probably terribly fucking needed. Right. Yeah. Like Darren and why I frame this with Darren Targaryen and his big mention. Yes. Allison's fourth son, who's just hanging out in Old Town.

I don't know what they could have removed in season one to make room for that throwaway line, but it's sloppy. It is sloppy. Like, I will say it because I think i've been very much on the hot d drinking the kool-aid but i will say not having darren mentioned is silly and sloppy and they know better they do and also i what i should do i'm sorry i've been only relying on my focus group of one in regards to shonley's i've just been reluctant you know to ask some of my co-workers because i don't want to get in too deep but i should be minding my co-workers for their takes as well and other people i don't know maybe maybe not be happy no they're actually they're pretty nice i like my

co-workers i think that their takes could be interesting i should ask them i'll ask one of them tomorrow wow an ally to the unsullied. Yeah. So I will ask and see what they think. I've also got the perspective of someone who did read Fire and Blood, but I think only once in years ago. So it's like a middle ground, you know? Oh, didn't reread it eight times and cover it on Patreon for an extensive amount of time? Also did not even rewatch season one. And i'm like maybe i should re-watch season one because i actually do think that part of what is adding to the experience of season two is having season one for the context you can see the through line better fresh in your head absolutely i did have a laugh your partner had mentioned something saying you know well i don't remember this or this

going well i didn't't rewatch season one, and we just burst out laughing. It was very cute. Very cute. Well, I do want to call out, welcome back, Fire and Blood, to the table. Today's episode had many characters, you know, shouting out lines from Fire and Blood, leaning kind of into that storytelling aspect of fire and blood right reneara the cruel the pr the propaganda the funeral procession setting all that up even agon saying i want to spill blood not ink i felt like a lot of characters are starting to feel like the historic monuments that we see in fire and Blood. So very cool. I do want to give them credit for last episode in which they did also cite the book,

such as Cheese saying that he knows those tunnels like the back of his dick or something like that, which our friend Mary, I believe, is where I saw that and was reminded of that. And go check out Mary's takes as well on their podcast, Heart of the Dragon, also covering this season. Yes, it was a quote from Mushroom. I love to see Mushroom alive and well in the show, at least in the margins of it.

I miss Mushroom. He's a fun guy. Ha! Get out. No, it's not me. It's literally George. George came up with that. That's why he named him Mushroom. That's not even a joke. Like, I legitimately believe that. It's canon. It's canon. We're going to King's Landing and I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna dignify any of this anymore.

It's not my fault. In King's Landing, let's talk about the reaction to Jaehaerys' death, his funeral procession, the hanging of the rat catchers that scene was great opening with all that chaos confusion the blurriness in the red keep agan smashing valeria so on the nose we knew at some point he was going to break that up let's be real we knew he was going to fuck with his dad's more hammer set but oh my god destroying the legacy? Very on the nose, we get it. You're breaking down his entire dreams and legacy in one go. But it was neat nonetheless. And I loved learning in the House the Dragons built that they made a stunt version for him to smash. And they did keep the original set.

So that's really neat. Yeah. Now I'm like, should I make a... Maybe not me. Someone should make a Warhammer set of that Valyria little train model and is it a Warhammer set is it a train model I don't know but yeah that was what a way to open they really actually opened what with the carrying of the bed sheets which we'll get back to in a second but yeah i have to say i love that that was the same exact path that raniera bled down oh yeah interesting and now they carry jaharis's blood through the hall i think that the writers are having well before the strike

right pay pay your writers pay people who work to make these stories that we enjoy but also they're having fun with some of this wordplay because you know iggin was yelling he's like what about the sanctity of my family right yelling at kristen cole and i'm like ahaha sanctity sanctity i get it it's not just mushroom and a fun guy that we're doing wordplay with we're talking about the irony of this this concept of purity is sex unclean it's not but do clean yourselves your bodies don't have gross sex yes that i i hygiene's important have it with your sister so you can procreate for the line yeah as long as um i must be pure i am pretty sure that like i don't think i should find agan like looking at the grand maester and be like are any of you potentially guilty and he just pauses i'm sorry

everyone's acting amazing this episode but tom glencarty like does such a great job of treading this line that was so funny even though it probably wasn't supposed to be and i am mildly annoyed that they had otto call jahari's his grandson my my companions who are paying close enough attention were also confused they're like is that not his great grandson so you know it's okay i called amand and luke cousins the other day so i don't feel like you know i'll excuse otto they are just once right? Like that's how nephews and nieces work. I don't know. Well, the word great was once removed is all from that sentence. I guess.

I do have to comment that the words, the dialogue in general, so George-esque, so Aeswaf-esque, everything had little, you know, just little bits of the world that you'd expect these people to be saying if they lived in the red keep different sentence structures that felt very much out of the books uh you could just tell like there are rules when you're writing in the world of a swath right like i feel like every show has rules about writing in the world of that but this one must be especially hard to write within yeah but absolutely love the metaphor there of agan smashing smashing valeria and fucking up the family line he was just a pawn i guess he was the little warhammer piece oh my god wow wow metaphors

and the king just dies you know he doesn't do anything special he just ends up dying i mean i guess we all do that right yeah but pawns at least get to become queens usually but oh i see we're making pawn to player jokes what a legendary thread there's that great line that says to agan later on where he says with with your child's blood, we bought their approval. With your mother's tears, we made a bitter sacrifice. And I think that just sets the stage for the entire episode, right, of when you're a public figure and when you have to put on this big, this big charade, right, for the whole city in order to maybe maintain or acquire more rule for good PR,

that it's wrought in children's blood, that it's wrought in children's blood, that it's wrought in weeping women, right? The wailing of women, as our friend Joffrey Baratheon would maybe say. But I just thought that line really just resonated with me the whole episode. Rang in my ears, trading the blood for something. It's a sacrifice, right? like they should they have done it should they not have done it i don't know it was absolutely opportunistic auto is an opportunistic character but i know you have like thoughts on this as well but this is something that we

discussed in in our unleash the d primer series what are the critics saying about it chloe critics are saying that it's innovative bold before it's time everybody should be listening to this before watching house of the dragon season two yes and specifically if you want to get our thoughts fleshed out on this idea of child's blood buying approval mother series this idea of child's blood, buying approval, mother's tears, this idea of spectacle, this idea of performance. Listen to Unleash the D season two, episode two with Glytis, where we really dig into this. And I thought that that was just like such a, it's such a great theme and point because it's something that they were setting up

in season one as well, right? That idea of spectacle, like what happens in public what happens in private and so much of rain nira's reign right now is very much in private because they are so secluded they don't have anyone to be able to perform for but rain nira did not like performing anyway yeah interesting enough about staying at the volcano versus staying in king's landing right i i think when you're in king's Landing, it has to be a performance. All the world is a stage in King's Landing, and living on your little molten volcano with your dragons is an escape.

We see it referenced as such in season one for Rhaenyra, when Rhaenyra's like, fuck, we shouldn't have stayed on this fucking volcano for that long. We should have come to King's Landing, even though it takes your entire soul to have to perform for these horrible people. What is that price we pay, right? The price you pay for it. We saw it take its toll on Viserys the entire first season. Yes. Yes.

And I just realized another, like, wordplay here of when we're talking about being from pawn to player. What does it mean to be a player not just in a game player is also the term used for a theater company right these are the players in a play they are out there performing and in this game of thrones whoa whoa that funeral procession was beautiful and so sad i loved uh claire kilner i think talks about in the the episode thing the house the dragons built she talks about how the drum beat she wanted a drummer leading the procession to start that kind of drum beat while aegon and helena are being intercut and aegon is beating the shit out of blood with a mace rip uh and i did love the that drumbeat because it's also like the call to war right like this entire episode for aegon especially is like the call to war the

call for him to launch all these levies and armies and do anything just something anything not unlike damon i guess uh to feel like you've done something in this war yeah yeah i love that and i mean it does do something in the war just you know one step forward two steps back i guess but three steps if you're olivia rodrigo fuck oh yeah that's right that's right and i mean the funeral procession was great i know that some people were like oh is like jahari's little head gonna gonna fall off i actually thought the whole body yeah i thought the whole body might slide off it was like so embarrassing and when they cut i really thought it was happening i really thought his head was rolling i was like in fact it was very silly probably of me to think that but i did gasp i don't know what medieval sewing of skin technology is like well and if you look it's mangled i mean he don't speak

but he remembers right yeah they did a they did the sewing job like what intentionally very mangled and by they i mean both the showrunners but also in universe it was kind of gruesome it was meant to be so yeah the synthetic body that they made the cast and especially that it was a small child it's devastating because we're seeing a lot of dead children like out of palestine seeing real dead children all the time hopefully shouldn't desensitize everyone from the horror that that is but even seeing this it made my stomach turn they did a crazy job with it he looked so peaceful and dead and awful and terrible i was very uh it was very sad the whole entire funeral procession had the right tone.

It really made me upset. All of Helena's new stands and the crowd reaching for her and that anxiety and the drum in the background. That was crazy. Helena kind of, you know, just trying to look for any comfort from her mom. There's no comfort anywhere. And the panic kind of descending upon her. Oh God.

Terrible. Yeah. mom there's no comfort anywhere and the panic kind of descending upon her oh god terrible yeah she's having like a meltdown out there and it's a lot i will say something that i kind of forgot to to add here but there's in regards to the parading of the body and not and like egan was i think the only one who's like i will not have my little son's body out there and and i think that the language that's used there shows an actual care and it's interesting that later on in the episode which i'm sure we'll discuss he goes like fuck dignity i want revenge but in wanting to withhold his son's body alicent and helena not wanting to go out there that is them trying to retain their dignity so like there wasn't even any dignity left for them anyway otto was the one

who took that from them otto the chris jenner of westeros as everyone's fascinating which i love interesting i gotta start watching you really it's fun i gotta start watching keeping up i'll restart i'll start at the beginning with you uh we must go back you know oh my god i have to start back oh yeah we should start back there we go fake fan i'm i've slept three hours otto sees opportunity everywhere but he does there's a great reveal we'll talk about soon with him of that inside that molten core that exists with him that he does have a beating heart i think it's also clear and they said this kind of in some of the after show stuff that they set this up kind of like princess diana's funeral you know it's supposed to be a huge to-do and it was a huge influence and it becomes really menacing if you

think about it for too too long, too. Because in retrospect, the circumstances of Princess Diana's death were suspicious, as many know. Potentially, allegedly, I would never say this, but maybe the royals did it. Who knows? Anything could have happened. They did it. And they kind of threw the world's biggest spectacle, which makes it even more obvious that they did it. They had a royal ceremonial funeral for her, including royal pageantry, Anglican funeral, liturgy, full royal guards. The actual procession was about an hour and ten minutes,

and there was a burial after. Elton John sang, 2,000 people attended in person, and then 32 million in the uk watched which was record-breaking at the time and 2 to 2.5 billion people outside of the uk watch dang yeah that's an insane number that's yeah that's big and that is how you do a huge spectacle of propaganda to keep people's minds off of the fact that the city's gonna run out of food and there's gonna be war and also they hate us because we

usurp the throne. We get a lot of reminders about what the consequences will be throughout this episode, which is fun. Not that the consequences are fun. Stories are fun. I love consequences for other people. Misariaria saying i wanted to be

of consequence well watching the people throwing hops something awoke in me i was like i want to be an extra uh not necessarily in this but just just it just seems like it could be fun hopefully i don't know it just seemed interesting i've never felt that way before well no no that's not true sometimes i feel that way when i watch like scenes where a lot of people you know like have to like be zombies or play dead i'm like that could be fun speaking of the throwing of the hops i something that's great about house of the dragon is we are leaving room for the story to breathe right it's not just dialogue and action and things always move there is space for the story to happen through visual story visual storytelling is back hell yeah and i know that

they mentioned they had intentionally filmed in what like 40 frames per second so that they could get slow-mo we got a couple of slow-mo stuff throughout this whole episode and i love how you can juxtapose helena looking at these particles in the air the hops as she is grieving the death of her son juxtapose that with reynira later this episode staring up into the sunlight watching the particles of the dust motes dancing in the light as she is in her own grief as well maybe this is how it felt to me but i also felt like while raniera was watching it denoted kind of a passage of time not like a big passing of time but like several hours like she'd been staring you know off into the distance emptily for hours i felt like that was very

emotionally moving and it really starts to paint like that head space that raniera is in as she's kind of been betrayed and lost so much in the last few weeks like so much yeah she's devastated right and just seeing her kind of hollow yeah i'm worried for that girl she lost her dad she lost her daughter because like i i think you know people keep talking about this sun thing because that's a thematic parallel throughout this the sun for a son but miscarriage is also really sad and painful like it's a very emotional experience for people then yeah she lost her son and now i mean a bunch of people are dying around and in front of her so shit's bad eric and aric as we'll get to that could fuck anyone up that's

all i could think about was like oh my god watching them die with one another anyways but she looks a little yeah she looks a little sad in the you know what you're saying of the passage of time and just to briefly rest on that scene like she's got a lot on her shoulders you know she's sad she's got a rule of kingdom she's managing like her fault like her her crumbling marriage but also she's a mom like she's literally still raising her kids which you know props like she's there watching her kids play which i mean is she there mentally debatable but at least she's she's doing the best she can but at least she's doing the best she can, and at least she's there with her kids. She's trying.

She really is. She's trying. She really is. I have to point out that I'm really loving what they're doing with the sleeves in King's Landing. Oh, interesting. For the costuming. Alicent and Helena both have these amazing little pointed undersleeves. And Helena's almost looks like scales.

Like sparkly sequiny dragon scales arranged kind of into a pointy tip beneath her grieving black dress, her mourning dress. Go back and take a look. I really loved that. I really can't wait to see more of those details through the season. I love. I don't know what it is but there's also something they're doing with the the dresses that are giving very game of thrones king's landing dresses like the southern dresses the way the pleating and the

gathering is at the back and in the waist for allison's dress for example and helena's sleep over sleeves etc um really reminiscent of some of cersei's gowns and sansa's gowns but not in a duplicate way only in somewhat of a silhouette way which is really cool uh i don't know i found that really cool that is cool i'll have to pay more attention but great catch i was wondering what does sleeves mean here sleeves it's just that sleeves is like sleeves i'm also curious about this line i think i know what it means but unsure so in king's landing after blood and cheese in the book fire and blood out of high tower does not get immediately fired because he has one purpose and one purpose alone

which is bringing cats into king's Landing. Hundreds of cats that he brings to King's Landing. So much so that later Viserys II's wife, Laura Rojar, and her maids and friends would all be playing with them in King's Landing in the Red Keep. Very beautiful, very beautiful.

But anyway, this is Cat Erasure. Otto got fired before he could bring all the cats in. I won't be watching this terrible adaptation anymore if there aren't going to be cats. Like, you've given more than enough time to dogs. That's true. More than enough. It's biased. We even saw that dog grieving cheese, which I can't lie.

I was laughing so hard. I was like, the dog is grieving cheese. Everyone else is so serious. They're like, so-and so and so just died this is terrible they hanged everyone and then the dog is like not my one friend uh interesting i don't want to like read too much to the dog scene but i could extrapolate but yeah no wow the dog was there and uh good point auto auto really did something this is we are whitewashing this dog to

as you said sympathy for the dogs it's not book accurate based on the portrayal of the cats that dog isn't hunting rats oh my god actually wait yeah that was supposed to be

that dog's job, wasn't it? That was that job's employment. Wow, talk about hashtag loyal on his headstone. Oh, interesting. That's another thing we could extrapolate into here. No, there's, like, I could, like, imbue that scene with meaning, but

I think that would be stupid. Something that did have meaning here is we talked about the small folk in a bit and that that line right like the mother is hastening because i assume someone has told her like uh what are they doing over at the red keep and she sees juice oh no my son and like it plays into everything else that we're seeing in this episode right that the grief of a mother isn't less just because she's not highborn. Like, this is something that is painful. And we're showing that this is the price that the small folk are paying, which is something that comes up in the Eamon scene as well.

Yeah. We get to that. Yes, there's lots of small folkery we're going to discuss. Folkery? But first, small folkery. We're discuss but first small folkery well we're gonna talk about small council fuckery whoa instead um let's talk otto aegon the small council another hit comedic line from tom glenn carney when when they announced the plan to send Arik to Dragonstone. And he's like, Aegon Targaryen.

So Fopra and Joyer looks at the camera and he's like, he's gonna pretend to be his brother. They're twins. This is brilliant. Funniest shit I've ever heard. Burst out laughing. This is the funniest episode ever. And it was perfect. All the humor was hitting so good.

It was brilliant. I mean, until it wasn't. It was brilliant until it wasn't everyone i honestly props to all the actors again like they are actors they are not their characters they are doing a great job again of balancing there's just this really delicate way i think that the actors are performing playing their parts that that toes the line between i don't know all these different emotions and i think tom glenn carney is showing he's able to balance all these different emotions in his delivery as well it's like hilarious earnest horrifying so many things in that tone everything everything he says is like it turns out he's

just really ignorant yeah really ignorant he really is and i think that's why he's like yeah kristen cole what he's doing is amazing even though i just yelled at him a bit ago like and i think part of it's because kristen cole what was like agan's only mentor figure because all the rest of his family members were just like fuck this kid i'm not gonna deal with him not his dad not his mom not his grandpapa they all ignored his brother kind of hated him yeah he had like a weird he has a weird relationship with his brothers right and when we see him having his little tantrum, it's actually a big tantrum. Earlier, he's like calling Rainiera all these,

all these like very gendered insults. And I didn't write them down. I love fire and blood. Right. The smug cunt queen of Dragonstone or whatever. The bitch queen, the smug cunt queen of Dragonstone. There were lots of good ones. And we hear Kristen Cole

use that term the bitch queen in this episode during that small council scene but he also said it in season one so that's where that's where Agen's getting this like very gender misogynist language from and it's really interesting what

Eamon took from Kristen and what Agen took from oh yeah that is interesting you see kristen really he just models toxic masculinity i'm thinking again of uh our friend noah's essay about blood and masculinity in westeros and by blood, I mean not the character. Not that blood. Just in general. And you can see with Christian Cole, like, and the reason that Agen picks him, there's this idea that action, any action

in violence is the right move. And this is so aligned with the way that this all goes down in Fire and Blood versus, you know, the perception. You can see this carry out throughout the series right like during the civil war with the black fires everyone's like i don't know i think darren's a weak weak king and it's just because he's not out there fighting he's just not out there doing the kinds of

big actions people see he's just doing boring ruling shit but that's good until you know the war it turns out aegon the conqueror set an interesting precedent for men in this family it is a big legacy to live up to otto's firing was an incredible scene i'm sure anyone will tell you emmy emmy emmy give him an emmy um and it was almost like a great emotional reveal right of somebody who has been played a little guarded, who really doesn't give us sensitive and vulnerable often. When he does, it's because he's being a weirdo to his daughter. So that great reveal about his love for Viserys, right, that in all of Viserys' quote-unquote weaknesses and trepidations, they were actually good things because it protected the people kept the stasis kept things somewhat even keeled at least there wasn't hunger and fighting and bloodshed in the streets um like we're about to see with the brackens and blackwoods right just

out out by the river just throwing down uh that's just gonna be normal in westeros soon. And Viserys did protect against that in some ways, and so I thought it was really interesting of what he said to Aegon when he said, like, also when Aegon was like, he chose me to be king, and he's like, did he? Are you sure about that? Like, oh, so this whole time you knew, Otto, which we knew you knew, but you knew. You knew what you were doing. Oh, he always knew. So interesting. I loved it. It is interesting. It's very Tywin and Joffrey, but the tone of it is so different, which I think is something that I love because Aegon isn't cowed the way that Joffrey is and Otto does legitimately I think he thought like he knew what he was doing to guide

the realm but pawns sometimes they become players that's what happens and that's what is happening here and yeah when he said when he turned around he's like is that what you think when Aegon was like my dad chose me I audibly said

oh shit he said it I was like my dad chose me I audibly said oh shit he said it I was like that was hurtful yeah he's like no one wanted you as king bro no one your dad didn't believe in you and Agen knows that but I think to hear it confirmed

it's rough to hear that no one wanted you or cared about you it's one thing to suspect it well he knows his mom doesn't fucking like him and we're gonna see that in a second like imagine like your parents just don't fucking like you that does happen to too many people and like that's that's what agan's going through you know i mean is he a great guy no yeah and and that's that's why otto like, bro, what the fuck? Because he goes, they are fathers and brothers and sons.

And again, this is... Ryan Condal loves the books. Small folk are people. He's giving that focus a lot this season. Oh, it's for the Dragon Pit shit too, also. And anyways. Yeah, absolutely. That's why you have to build up these small boat plots.

Themes. Themes. Season three, season four, all has to go off perfectly. Themes are back. Visual storytelling's back. Shit's back. I would even say, like, I was talking with my roommate, poor Quentin. I was speaking with him about how, like, my intimate friend friend for all the questioning at the front of the episode

that I did on like do normal folks that aren't fucking asoiffpilled do normal motherfuckers like actually like this show and I do think some of the themes were a little hamfisted in a way like a lot of it was like

this is a lot of subtext you missed out on in the first season and just in case you missed out on in the first season, and just in case you missed out on it, I'm going to say it really loud, but I'd prefer there be themes than no themes, right? I'd prefer they punch me in the face with a theme than have no direction whatsoever to the thematic and emotional storytelling. So I'm fine with it. I just thought it was kind of funny. I was like, ah, these themes that maybe were just too quiet for some folks to hear.

I am struggling with is, this isn't necessarily like a theme thing, but the choice to have everything be, I love, I love a mistake. You know me, I love my tragic mistakes driven by character choices, but I want to see a little agency every now and then that's about it yeah i want to see them tear some shit up like and i think that's coming to be fair i do think um well and that's what i felt in this episode right like aegon using some of his book lines yeah getting a little angry you know calling people cunts and shit i'm like yeah let's get some of that you know the demira fight we're gonna talk about like i'm like yes yeah, let's get some of that. You know, the Demira fight we're going to talk about. I'm like, yes, more of this.

I want some spice. This is like Targaryen drama. When are we going to get there? And now we're getting there on top of the tragedy. Now the choices are being impacted after the tragedies. And good food. I'm eating good. It's a feast for clothes, you could say.

Oh, for clothes. Clo-ays. Yeah, you can't say that. No one else gets to say clo, but I'll literally slice you alive i hate that you might not be able to say chloe you can say clope that's what i know maybe even then even then i think chloe chloe is respectable listeners true nope chloe jesus all right so coming back to you know folk thing, I think there's a difference between saying it and actually caring about it, right? I think last episode left a lot of people with the idea, they were like, oh wait, Aegon cares about the small folk? No, he cares about being liked and being loved, and he was playing at the idea of being a good king who cares about the small folk no he cares about being liked and being loved and he was playing at

the idea of being a good king who cares about the small folk that's fucking gone we're killing all the rat catchers we have brought no cats the people want cats and he thought he was buying their approval last episode by doing them little favors or being like yeah we'll pay you but as i i did wonder i was like did he agree to pay them 50 up front and then 50 after which hugh the hammer's wife asked i was like yeah bro when are you getting paid and i don't know auto how do you really could have had whatever your vision was for like realm strength because you know he's thinking of his series is dead as he laments the death of these innocent small folk and i'm just like you know who else was sad about the death of innocence or the pain caused to innocence reynira apparently

in this episode i know that you know some of their arguments we made about season one no that's fair i think uh season one no that's fair i think uh yeah something about that replication of attacks on innocence in both places or etc happening it's just uh resounding across the halls of king's landing in the halls of dragon stone it's interesting that otto has such a such a grip on understanding how the economy the economy and the social economics of the small folk work and how it aids his reign, but he doesn't understand how his family is falling apart and he can't even hot glue it together. You know what I mean? Like, if you had put 1% effort from the small folk into, like, thinking about also your family instead of shoving that away a la viserys something he learned from his friend i don't know he may maybe he thought about his family in the wrong way too much right because he had we had a perfectly good air that he could

have just molded and worked with right there and he was like i don't like it because she's a girl and she's not my blood and he compartmentalizes a lot right like his work is one thing his family is another and he can't see that section that they meet at um and it's one of those things too of like you can't change the world and its governments and its governance and the laws and how a world works. You can't do that overnight. You can't snap your fingers and do it. It takes hard work. It takes people, not just one person to do it.

It takes people, right, to change things. So if you had spent some of that percentage of time in strengthening the people that you're bringing on board to rule instead of just hoping to control like a puppet through them yes then the work gets easier and you can accomplish more what if we like work together with people and collaborated instead of just trying to control them as you said as puppets but i'd like to introduce him to socialism no i'm just kidding interesting i was thinking, you know, it takes time, like, you know, 20 years of time skips in 10 episodes. Well, let's time skip over to the brothel with Amand real quick, because we need to talk a little bit about his mommy issues and small folk issues, question mark. I don't know, not issues for him yet, at least.

question mark i don't know not issues for him yet at least this scene was crazy good and before we even get into like the emotion behind it even mitchell wow yeah it was very like such a great unsettling with his eye out showing he was vulnerable like having his eye patch off he feels comfortable enough to be able to have it off here this is what he's paying for he's paying to be vulnerable he's paying to have a mommy for the night because he already knows that allison cannot tend to him as we see happening later that moment where allison can't tend to aegon right it's very it's very much contrasted with this scene and i would even say as we get into this scene the candles arranged around him in that half circle kind of reminds me of the sept candles. Yeah. That Alicent prays to.

So this is Eamon's place of worship. His sanctitude, if you will. His reprieve. This is where he comes to pray. Interestingly enough, he also feels a little guilty about luke as we hear and also has maybe a tiny bit of guilt that isn't explored in full yet and might be as the weeks go on that they looked for him in his chambers obviously sidelined by the glee he feels that his uncle cared about him everything that that madam says to him is mommy coded something that i. He should be afraid of you. The boy has grown into a man.

I am glad you regret the day you killed your nephew. Like these things that she says to him are all things that he would be hoping to hear from a maternal figure in his life. From someone saying to him, Amen, you're doing a bad thing. Amen, good job. You're being good now. A very, very basic elementary kind of things that you'd hope to hear from a parent guiding you. Such an interesting way for Agen to have felt that blow in that last bit,

right, of his dad didn't fucking care about him, to Aemond here knowing, knowing already and looking for it in other places about his family. of course we have that great line from the madam that when princes lose their temper the small folk pay themes obviously i get it themes uh and also interesting to watch that performance not just from the royals but from the small folk right who have to charm their way into the graces of the graces, right? Like, she has to charm Aemond, keep him happy, say enough mommy shit that she still gets her money at the end of the day and gets to live after he's left her brothel. Just even daring, though, almost like a little reminiscent, I guess, of some of the stuff, not in the same class kind of way, but

like that Sansa did with Joffrey, right? Like Like playing around the edges, tiptoeing, eggshells, saying, or maybe he'll give me yours under her breath. This woman here is saying, hey, I'm trying to take a little power where it exists. Like, remember, don't get pissed because I'm out here, the woman that's giving you all the mommy care that you need. Like, and bad things could happen to me when princes get pissed. Speaking of performance, like you can see it in the way she did great acting too you can see that she's delivering these lines and giving him as you said what he wants to hear and she's a little uncomfortable about it she's like okay

what do i say what is it that he wants to hear how do i how do i meet that and then as you as you were saying like bring all this back into her needs i think that there's um she had to roll for persuasion like four different times it was nuts she really did and she landed that last one too maybe it's because of her dexterity you get you get like a probably little text of like amand has heard you but it didn't say like amand agrees with you just uh amand heard what you said, and will take it into consideration or something. Oh, it'll come up in the plot later in Act 2. That's what you're saying. Okay.

Maybe. But, um, I'll be curious how they play it all out, right? Yeah, parallels between Amon and Damon, and it's kind of funny because he's like wow someone finally recognizes my worth it's damon but i'm like there is a kind of an irony in that yeah i guess damon sent people does that mean he's afraid of him but also he sent people to kill amon because rainiera was like i want amon targaryen that's also very funny that he thinks it's about him that his uncle is like, you know. Noticed him? Yeah.

Yeah, but it actually, his uncle just was doing what he thought his wife wanted, which is not true. Not what she wanted. You mean she didn't want dead kids? Well, well, no. Not really. y'all gotta communicate in your marriage we'll get to that i love that uh this was shot kind of like a renaissance biblical painting right like like lamentation from peter van maul oh yeah the pieta the pieta all the all the different pieta pieta style um arts where dead jesus laid over mary's lap yes yes yes yes exactly i was thinking a lot of those

uh giulio cesare procaccini not peter malark not peter malark yeah i definitely would love more scenes like this. Why not? I really just think like that. The baptism of Christ. Why not? Why not just have him painted like Jesus? Also, I wasn't sure like is because it's HBO. So we got to we got to throw in some titties every now and then.

Was one of the dancers meant to be a dragon seed of some sort? I was wondering if she was a nod to sarah targaryen at all like maybe one of her possibly but i could see just a dragon seed it made me think of sarah i also like appreciated seeing someone that could be like laizini or yeah some sort of offshoot with a drop of dragon blood in general, especially considering that's what Daemon liked to see at the brothel. It was kind of cute to like, it was cute, I say. The show was fucked up. It was kind of a cute little parallel for Aemon being there.

But, of course, choosing his madam instead. And they're dancing, because this is the dance. Oh, Hugh. Hugh, Hugh, Hugh, Hugh. Hugh, we learned some great stuff from the family man hugh the hammer he's not a bad guy after all his kids sit

and also a food shortage is coming i wonder if this could be set up for the season for something that's going to happen we'll find out what could it mean yes you get it it all links up with the madam and then mizaria's plot all these things are happening we're probably going to get more on that eventually

but let's talk about kristen cole now star of the episode allison and kristen in this episode is just cersei and jamie and the sap changed my mind just kidding that's a joke legal reasons that is a joke you're not wrong thank you i know isn't it great we got twin sass twice in this episode oh my god twins and then once from non-twins like they want to be twins so bad alice and kristin oh my god uh kristin's anger and projection and guilt uh and it constantly being the death of brave men right even brave men that are on their own staff or in their in their own league like these are allies that you have killed that are sworn to protect your team due to your ego and your pride and your lack of getting the glory and honor that you want uh and just his hypocrisies were just glowing this episode and

when he fucking stooped to say that shit to Arik I just couldn't believe it I was like really really Jamie Lannister welcome back to TV I mean it's not even Jamie Lannister here's what I think it is it's not a controversial take but it's a somewhat controversial Lannister. Here's what I think it is. It's not a controversial take, but it's a somewhat controversial take. Maybe I don't think it's, uh, we're talking about Ryan Condal actually adapting the books. And I don't remember if they did this in the show because I actually don't

remember game of Thrones. I'm going to be real with all of you. I legitimately, I remember the first season cause it's the only one I've rewatched more than once even, but I just do not remember the rest of Game of Thrones. And this, the projection of Kristen Cole's anger and guilt felt a lot to me, like when Robb Stark and Brendan Tully are bullying Edmure into marrying a fray because they're like, why did you win the battle at Riverrun?

You weren't supposed to do that. And he's like, uh, I wasn't supposed to protect my people and lands. And they're like, no, you were just supposed to hold it. I said, hold. It was very clear. And it's like, bro, was it? And it feels a lot like that to me. Okay, yeah, I could see that.

I could see that a little bit in those tensions of like, again, with like a misinterpretation, obviously your favorite thing in the world. It wasn't even like a misinterpretation, right? Like they're twisting the whole situation around to be like, go do this thing. I want you to do this thing. So I feel better about the part where I married a person

who was not part of the Frey family. Yeah. Where I biffed it. Where I totally fucked up. I biffed it. Obviously, like, if there's one thing, whether you're team black, team green, team no one, team I'm the writers, whatever. One thing we can all agree on is that Kristen Cole sucks. I really love that for us.

That's the one thing uniting conservatives and liberals across the world right now is how much Kristen Cole sucks I'm serious uh now that I've been Twitter famous for a couple days I can tell you that I've stayed really humble it's incredible you should be really impressed but now I'm famous maybe like one percent of the commenters and tweeters didn't or that they did like kristin like one percent of them 99 of people hate that bitch so i really appreciate that that was an interesting statistical those are made up stats but that's how it felt reading everything that was coming to my notifications so interesting but i also like i think it does take me back especially to when jamie and feast comes back and in storm and storm and feast when he comes back and like with loris for example when loris kind of mouths off it's a little young to him and jamie tries to school him or when he

meets the Kettleblacks and he doesn't like their fucking behavior because they're nuisances. Those Kettleblacks are shit stirrers. They be They really are. The pot called the Kettleblack. Yes. Yeah. You don't know them because George added them into the books after the show.

But I felt very much like it had that essence of Jamie who has come back after maybe seeing, you know, the bad things in the world that his family or the people that he works for are doing, been a part of doing those things and then realize I don't want to do bad things. That's terrible.

And the guilt that he's feeling obviously from both reneara and alicent and the king's guard itself is kind of the issue right like it turns out the king's guard is a little toxic and what was originally established by visenya right because visenya in 10 AC was like, Agen, you're a weak bitch. I could fuck you up. You need bodyguards. She's like, you weak son of a bitch. No, that's literally

how it went. No, really though, it literally was. Yeah. There's this bit in Fire and Blood. Many kings had champions to defend them. Agen was the lord of the seven kingdoms. Therefore, he should have seven champions visenya decided thus did the king's guard come into being a brotherhood of seven knights the finest in the realm cloaked and armored all in the purest white with no purpose but to defend the king giving up their own lives for his if need be visenya modeled their vows on those of the Night's Watch. Like the black-cloaked crows of the wall, the White Swords served for life, surrendering all their land's titles and

worldly goods to live a life of chastity and obedience with no reward but honor. I mean, sure, no reward but honor, but where is the honor in being a Kingsguard? It becomes tainted over time, and we're already seeing that, right? Like, where is the honor in being a king's guard it becomes tainted over time and we're already seeing that right like where is the honor in serving on aegon's king's guard where is that honor you're serving i mean you are serving a usurper even his great no even his grandfather now you got me fucked up even his grandfather is like bro we, were you servers? Do you not get that yet? Like, you didn't figure it out? Like, your claim sucks.

Your claim is shit. You suck. You are shit. You suck. Yeah. And as it goes along, you know, we had just in the last episode, the Night's Watch, where we see it thriving. We see that, you know, there is honor still in it. We see that, you know, there is honor still in it, but that gets torn down over time.

These institutions that are created by the government do not continue to get tax dollars poured into them, and they fail on their own. They are not sufficient on their own. And it turns out that this idea of honor for the Kingsguard is not enough. Where is honor in dead children, right? In children being killed as warfare. Where is honor and glory in watching a king rape his wife and you have to stand vigil outside it? Serving but not being allowed to love. Not being allowed to have emotions.

Not being allowed to live life, right? Where is honor and glory in those things that are so anti-human, the opposite of being a human, the opposite of feeling love, as Emond is cradled by the madam in the brothel, right, because he doesn't feel love and he doesn't know what it feels like to have someone care about him, to slap his hand when he does bad things, right, to tell him that i love you whoever you are i love you whoever you've become like what he seeks it to he seeks it even if he

feels it might be a different version that he's finding everybody wants love how do you deny a human that you think of like the unsullied right And what they put the Unsullied through to train and the slaughtering of the puppy and that you could just walk up to them and slice off their body parts and they can't move, right? And you look at that in the terms of the others, right? Which is one of the biggest overarching bits of the story, which I'm very glad we're not going to see any of them in this show. But that said, it's this whole overarching idea of like

where is love where is duty where is sacrifice that's not always the question to ask where is the heart of it yeah they they know duty and no sacrifice i guess in that family but not love and i'm not saying i support kristin i'm just saying that there are reasons he's like this right and you can see that Eric he he maintains in my opinion like when in this discussion of what honor is Eric does arguably the honorable thing by going to the heir that that was supposed to be crowned right and and bringing that and that's the thing that Kristen is saying that's what makes you dishonorable Arik that your brother did that but they had love they they loved each other until you know Kristen was like I'm gonna shit all over

this and I don't know like am I supposed to be reading it as like Kristen super jaded because one time maybe he did feel love and then he was spurned and like became a weirdo incel after that but he's not allowed i'm sorry they revoke your incel card once you start having sex like i legitimately believe that and he's having sex so like he can't be an incel anymore that's just how the term works in my opinion um i'm not part of the culture so jesus christ where did I just go with this thought? I don't find him sleeping with Alicent a necessarily bad thing. I think that both of them are doing it for negative, toxic reasons, right? Like, Alicent is not treating herself respectfully. She's looking for love too, right? We're talking about all these characters

that are searching for love, which, believe it or not, that is the title that Claire Kilner titled the scene with Eric and Art. Yeah. Searching for love as, you know, this kind of brotherly... Philadelphia.

Knowing all about brotherly love. Yeah, like Philly. This brotherly love, seeking it and trying to find those moments and that kind of tenderness. And everyone in this episode kind of is. Yeah. Kristen Cole is a total jackass. And what he did because of that, like, I don't know.

I don't blame them for Damon hiring dudes to come try to kill Aemond and then kill Jaehaerys instead. Like, I don't blame them for fucking and having that happen. How would you know? He's also like the only, I think, well, it's not supposed to be, I guess, the queen and he was supposed to be doing his job, right? Like, do that shit on your off hours, Kristen. Do that on your off hours. Because honestly, Kristen is bad at his job. Like like he's just bad at his job we saw it in season one you are a king's guard your job is to keep the royal family from harm and we see him literally like beating up or like encouraging the beating up of jake and luke jason luke and and then joffrey's death, right?

Like, beating the shit out of Joffrey. Yeah. And he dies, and letting his anger, letting his emotions take the better of him. And I think something that our friend Manu from Not A Cast pointed out on their podcast tonight, I have insider info. Ooh, sneak peek. Something they pointed out, too, is too is like he keeps failing up yeah which happens to men sometimes and he's not qualified aiken turned to him was like you're the hand of

the king now and he's like but why um he keeps failing up and manu kind of talked about imposter syndrome right and that's interesting feeling that bigger ego and that bigger performance, right? It's something that I don't think about because I just hate Kristen Cole. I was going to say men, but I just hate Kristen Cole. And I might not think of it in that way. I haven't experienced that kind of toxic masculinity myself, so how could I? But interesting, right that he has this huge ego that he's constantly trying to fulfill somehow in his search for glory honor etc

and how that comes off that he you know gets riled up kills a guy because it threatens his entire honorable persona make that make sense and here you know where he completely projects on auric and is like your cloak is dirty because you're bad at your job and it's like maybe you should try getting your cloak dirty bitch yeah actually though because you're talking about this imposter syndrome i'm remembering now his walk with rainiera in in season one right when they're out in the woods when she runs away and And for fucking once, he's out here protecting the heir. Good job. But he...

And he saw the white heart and he knows that Rhaenyra's the one. That's true. But he was telling her about how he just comes from this very humble beginning. So you can see that he does feel a little like, wow, how did I end up here because

the honor in the king's guard is like you were you're basically you know you get hall of famed as one of the greatest fucking like sports players ever right i assume it's like that and but you aren't allowed to have sex but let's be real as we've discussed in our king's guard episodes on patreon a lot of them do have sex and I think what's really interesting about Kristen Cole is frequently Kingsguard don't hold so many different jobs. Every now and then some of them do. There's like this scope creep of their responsibilities and one of the most prominent Lord Commanders, because he's also Lord Commander, one of the most prominent Lord Commanders that we see in the main storyline who is also a hand is barrist and salmi and he's like a very

different kind of dude and and boy is it not going well shit's going bad for him but uh he he came into a tough thing you know he he pulled a little eric thing too and the white cloaks are interesting because he's like it's a symbol of like our purity and i'm like i don't know like i know they call it purest white but it isn't really like that's your job uniform and yeah maybe you should like keep it clean but that man was actually doing his fucking job and but i do like again visual storytelling you have the contrast of like the cloak dirty it's supposed to be clean with the stained white sheets of jaharius's cradle which is what we opened the whole episode on they are pure white sheets with blood and that's not gonna come out you're never washing that out and

there's there's a status symbol also behind the cloaks being white versus the black of the night's watch like you don't get dirt you don't see dirt on black clothing in the same way you you definitely can as a person who is messy you can see it but I remember once a manager that I had when we were at a work event and looking at other people she was telling me like you can tell if someone obviously people of all different classes wear the color white but if someone's like out here wearing an all-white outfit or they always wear white it's a signifier of wealth because it shows that they have the means to constantly get this thing cleaned and dry cleaned and not have to worry about it was like that's really interesting

yeah you find so many night's watchmen in the main five books that have like out in the sun or have been out in the sea have weathered pinkish red robes instead of red but you don't find king's guard without the yeah the gleaming rich white of the king's guard and you can see that he wants it to be like this washing out of sin because i love that allison's line of one who seeks absolution that's what she says kristen is and um coming back to that in a second but it doesn't have to be a fucking white cloak like it's not about the purity right because renly had the rainbow cloaks to honor the seven and then also one of one of the greatest not kingsguard queensguard but whatever jonqu-Claude Dark.

Scarlet. Scarlet color actually did her fucking job. Interesting when you give your employees freedom, what they're able to do. Yeah, so just pointing that out there. Scarlet. So I thought the one who seeks absolution was really interesting in regards to the cleansing of sins. She knows him. She read him because she's like yeah that's

why i asked if you told anyone because you spilled fucking everything to me all those years ago because you felt bad and you felt guilty so he finds a different outlet now for his for his guilt by displacing it onto someone else and the word absolution is just like really interesting it's very i think laden with religious connotation and i don't know if i feel that inherently or because i always see it from faith kind of characters in the from software games so well no like being absolved of your sins that's yeah that's the thing being absolved. Before we move on from King's Landing to Dragonstone, let's center Alicent for a minute, right? She is such an interesting character this season so far.

She is living in her own personal prison in hell. Things are not going great for her. That very haunting scene where Aegon is in his grief and she almost, almost reaches out to him but then she leaves it was just painful it really brought all of these scenes with amand aegon her helena all of it together it was it was a good scene especially because you can see like she has recreated this toxic dynamic she has with her father which will which will i don't know i don't think it's supposed to be funny but it is funny because she's seeking

she also is seeking absolution she's like father i have sin and he's like i don't want that it's like i know trust me i fucking know girl he he wants to see he has this idea of her as pure, not a whole person. Anyways, fraught relationship. Allison can't see her son fully. She sees her daughter and her daughter's pain, but I kind of think, does she see Helena more as, like, a reflection of her own pain? But still inflicts the same shit on her and is like, yeah, I know that you don't want to go out there and perform your grief for everyone but that's just what we fucking have to do that's our job yeah we have to sell our flesh right now is really what it was yeah it was she's she's doing to helena in the wake of this death what otto did turn is like go go see the king go see the king and that was a performance as well for continuing everything from last season and her son her son we've seen it twice already once in

the throne room last episode here again he's picking at his fingers as he sobs which is the same thing alicent does when she's distressed so i love this uh this kind of mirroring again of the visuals of the hands and and it and you get this power when it comes to Agen especially like when you think about his grief and Rhaenyra's there's this conversation here going about power and the push and pull of performance like Rhaenyra's grief is because she's all the way on Dragonstone it's far away it's private she doesn't have to sell it for sympathy she could have maybe she should have I don't know that's that's me being a little opportunistic versus how otto turns the narrative he's like yeah everyone's saying that maybe your kid died because you don't have the mandate to

rule and you turned it against reynera but reynera as ruler she could choose to do her grief in private aiken as a ruler also gets to have that private grief I don't know if that's what he wants or not but he does get to have that private grief whereas Alicent and Helena do not and Alicent's like I don't know I'm not gonna comfort him I'm gonna comfort the fuck out of my daughter though yeah and I love what you've said that like she's recreating the exact same situation for Helena and and she's seeing the situation through same situation for Helena and she's seeing the situation through her own eyes, right? When she speaks to Otto at the beginning, there's that ragged breath that she takes

and she says to him, she says, my grandchild's suffering is over, but what they've done to my girl. And it's not just Helena that she sees that in. She sees the grief for the girl she yes exactly like she says to viserys right i just wanted someone tell me that they felt sorry for me that they were sorry for what happened to me and she can't do it for agan is there a part of her that feels like she's not sorry she wanted to see him knock down a peg and wanted to see him hurt i wonder maybe in a way of what he represents

right yeah that's true shall we sail we could fly we could fly we could fly we could take a quick dragon over to dragon stone uh let god the library with those kind of that diamond hex kind of shape uh for the queen bee if you will but amazing beautiful uh nerding out seeing that gothic style come to life imagining stannis silking through these halls i feel like we've been given a giant meal like the runes and the walls oh my god and i did think about you i was telling my roommate that i knew you were somewhere out there getting a boner when they changed the candles beneath the painted table i was like i just know eliana's got a visual design boner right now yeah and i also thought almost like a nod to the azura high imagery interesting um very sword in the stone the fact

that like okay come with me on this journey the table itself is mother westeros mother earth right maternal word a woman and the candles yeah go into a slot yeah god is a woman and the candles go into a slot within the the table yes that is kind of shaped in a tunnel format and it goes in and comes out so like, it just felt very like that was Westeros as Mother Earth. And the sword is like a penis or a sword going in there, you know? So like Nysa Nysa, basically, and Westeros, who's about to be bludgeoned by war. So like Nysa Nysa and the sacrifice of the nation. And I don't know, it just felt like as the fire soared the fiery sword of azura high as the candles going in and out and changing that light and the changing of prophecy and the

prophecy and like fueling that prophecy and fueling the sacrifice and i don't know the imagery was there i don't think maybe it's not what they intended they just wanted to fucking move the candles but for some reason that was speaking to me and i had to put my words out there to you today yeah that's really interesting thank you for sharing i thought we were gonna be like there's all these candles no one's gonna smell anyone's shit and bathroom candle discussion but yeah it's it's that and also like they're gonna set this fucking nation on fire literally just like what Agen did but like only a few times

they're gonna do it a lot ah they will um coming back to babies to Rhaenyra and her babes baby Agen the Younger and viserys someday viserys the second they were so cute what a tender sad moment oh it was just tender and sweet and sad and also i was trying to understand but is their dollhouse king's landing because it kind of almost

looked like it could have been interesting weird but probably and i couldn't quite tell and that might be bullshit just pure speculation but it was interesting take a look at it there's not enough to really tell though um maybe we'll get some like behind the scenes stuff that clears it up for me so she hands Agen the Younger a black dragon. Hmm. And I thought that was a cute nod that he, I mean, a couple things, right? Like, that's very poignant. Agen accepting the black dragon moniker from his mom and that fact that, like, the legacy that comes from her death, that he has to carry that trauma and his throne's sake on his soul, his shoulders, the rest of his life,

and, of course, the dragon bane, right, and the end of dragons. I wonder if we'll see more of that in this show than just the dragon pit, but I'm like, I'm a believer that, well, duh, you killed all the fucking dragons in the dragon pit and all of them in war, so I don't know that it's really aegon three's fault because he was a baby boy uh agreed also loving that she the choices between the toys that she held out stood out to me handing him the black dragon she held it out first and aegon takes

it viserys doesn't take it then she holds out this kind of really cute it's almost like a wooden rattle uh shaker with like flowers in it or maybe even coming back to the hops that were being thrown you know it kind of reminds me of that foliage that has some foliage wrapped around it a medieval rattle uh and viserys takes it from her aegon doesn't accept the rattle. And it's interesting because it's like a laurel wrapped around it. And Viserys immediately starts shaking it, like, very hard and playing with it aggressively. Which I think is such a very loud action to show from Viserys in comparison to Aegon, who's quietly playing with the dragon. And says so much about that too and i'm like they're just i mean that's probably not the direction it just worked out but it just was very interestingly framed that he specifically took that toy and he took the other and i don't know

reading too much into it but it just felt like nods to their futures in some ways yeah yeah it was yeah i love that they that they did him the little Gintwine agreed. Like, he was just a kid. Like, how's he supposed to care for, I don't know, magical creature? Right? And... And everyone's dead that knew about them.

Also true. So... Like, all of these moments of damon climbing to to sing to the dragons right or um mounting the dragons or the valyrian uh the the dragon keepers all of these little bits of lore and things the prophecy hell it all gets lost right because everyone fucking dies and it might have been being poisoned there's i know that there's a theory that the maesters are poisoning it maybe true maybe not true but also i mean they're not like dogs right everyone knows how to not everyone but a lot of people know how to take care of dogs you can go out there and find common knowledge from the people of how do i raise a dog dragon much more rare

that's what i have for you i thought you were gonna say everyone knows how to poison dogs what the fuck no but you didn't say that i mean never mind let's not go there speaking of poison things let's talk about rainiera and damon's relationship wow i'm on launching right oh did you not want to launch are we not ready no no i'm ready we need to we need to i can't believe this scene was everything to me i was like sitting there gripped my entire body was gripped and this line was so loud when she said to him i see now that your heart belongs only to yourself when i was a child i saw this as a challenge i am older Again, excellent dialogue writing. Yes, snaps.

I was like, holy shit. Targaryen realness is happening on the screen. This is the drama that I've been waiting for, the tension that I've been wanting to build. It was such an intimate fight between them they were straight up shouting about all the issues that were bubbling beneath the surface from season one till now she finally got to yell at him wow yeah and all that stuff it reminds me of this uh creator that I watch on tiktok called madeline

pendleton i don't know if you follow her chloe and i send each other tiktok videos sometimes but she was talking about like you know not realizing what it meant when like men who were much older than you were like there and trying to like make you see them a certain way and she saw like she was talking about seeing these girls like at a party who were like teenagers and trying to like make you see them a certain way and she saw like she was talking about seeing these girls like at a party who were like teenagers and they're like they're in their 30s she's like what are they doing here and like how can you you know what's going on here why have they been brought here and that's kind of what was happening with rainera and um love that you called it out society our society let alone westerosi society our society like instills and trains young girls to seek that attention right i think it's like an

internal validation thing right and then you add on top of that like all of the many years of incest of house targaryen dripping on through like poison and you add like these crazy fucked up dynamics of the throne and of what being an heir means and what being important means in your family and what that duty sacrifice honor whatever word you want to throw in in the gumbo that is this sentence but like whatever that is how you live up to it how you fulfill it what it means to live up to that vision to that dream it's pretty it's a lot it's a lot for a person like of course that was raniera from a young age was looking for that validation and love from her uncle and you see how it would have affected like something you and I call out a lot in our Dance of the

Dragons episodes that it's been given a lot more fun context in the show but like Daemon groomed her he brought her little treats he isolated her as soon as their partners died as soon as their husband and wife died. They get married six months later. Like. Quote unquote died for one. Yeah. Not.

Yeah. Not a lot of refractory time there on the relationship. And. Toxic. Lots of toxicity in that relationship. And that dynamic. It is. Because.

I mean. I love that she calls it out. like and as you said like she realizes as as reyniera says him you're pathetic like that was pathetic what he did and and so it pairs well with the Misari stuff later on. But I do love the fight that they did. Like, it was incredible. It had so many emotions. There's this terrifying tension, you know, as he gets up from the table. And then she flinches. And then he starts to reach toward her. And you're like, oh, God, is he going for her neck again?

And then he cradles her head as he's done several times throughout season one. But what I really want to call out is this exchange. And I'm going to take out some of the details that are in this except for like a bit because I want to keep it vague but they have this dialogue between them in that argument where they're like didn't I do this for you didn't I do this and she's like yes but where were you for this this thing that I actually wanted you for where were you when I was giving birth when I was in pain and then how he walks away and then just exclaims and then he goes you you know, I think and then she says, I think you did X thing. I don't know what to think of you. Like, why did you actually do this? This was for you,

not for me. And in the context of that relationship, and then he says, you're like, I'm doing this for you. Am I not on the way to Herrenhalde to raise an army in your name but like the the way this is all delivered if you take away the details this is i think a very real fight within a couple like within a relationship a romantic relationship it can be like non-romantic but this feels so real to me and i just thought it was great i actually re-watched the scene with my partner and like we discussed it and he's given me permission to to tell you all like he got the same thing as well he was because when i was re-watching this and like relaying that to him he's like oh yeah and he's like i felt the exact same way this is a very realistic structure for a fight of people not being able to communicate and being like where were you for this thing am i aren't i

doing this for you and that it was just so great and also contrasted with like the next scene um the the encounter between another incestuous couple question mark question mark question mark aegan and helena where they just like don't even interact they don't fight they just don't fucking talk yeah and i think about the performance of it all to some of your points other than bella who comes into the room and sees the shattered vase on the ground or mug or whatever it is on the ground and the guards um no one knows yeah that reneara and damon had this balls out fight right and damon will now take off and go to harrenhal and take the riverlands for her because this is i mean that is something he can do his martial talent and like we were saying with kristin cole and like we were saying with some of that stuff with aiken and amen like martial is how they prove themselves right they can prove

themselves by their martial ability so he's gonna go do the one thing he can do which is take a castle levy an army turn people to their side because of the dragons and the threats of the dragons um and it'll probably be seen in history as him being daring and adventurous but he has done that in sulking yes right he doesn't answer the question of if she is his queen and if he supports her as his queen and not as a conduit for him to use loopholes in the law to do what he wants for vengeance he did it for him not for her she told him what she wanted she told him what i need to feel supported and he didn't fucking do it and coming back to like bela and jace another incestuous couple kind

of here quote unquote on the screen i was trying to actually i was trying to explain their relationship especially if lanor had been his father t-bones like yeah so they're related this way they're also related this way. If Lainer had actually been his dad, they'd also be related this way. And it was just, I couldn't even do it. It was too hard. First of all, I have to add, Bela, don't be wielding that crossbow so near Jacaerys, okay? I'm very sensitive about seeing crossbow bolts near that boy.

I'm worried. I was like, like girlfriend what are you doing um raniera and bayla i thought that scene was a much needed yes right very much needed we need bayla to get some screen time and b i found it really really sad uh that their mom died they were in a foreign place their mom dies both of them are very young and then Damon shacks up with Rhaenyra um which is you know that's fine and you know Bela is probably a bit ignored and her and Jiserys have such a such a beautiful conversation and they talk about Harwin and it's the first time we ever get to hear jace talk about his real dad you know and that line of i think he loved us and her kind of saying he did

i'm sure he did um the opposite acceptance of agan right what agan's not getting his dad didn't love him he doesn't know that his dad loved him. Yeah. And Bela kind of having that quiet suffering. Rhaenyra sending Bela to do the job that she won't let Jace go do because she's afraid of Jace dying. Right? And the rules for Bela and her dad being a dick. She can't talk about Daemon being a dick like that. She doesn't have that vulnerability to be able to kind of talk about it more than she did in this episode. Jace is still the heir.

She's the heir. Rhaenyra's still the queen and Daemon's still married to Rhaenyra. And that Bela has to go patrol. But it's not safe for Jace to do so because she is afraid of losing her heir. And afraid of losing her son. It's just so interesting how you're starting to kind of see that that shell of who Rhaenyra is and her fears. Yeah. Yeah, Bela and Jace are step-siblings,

but also related in other ways. They're really taking blended family to a different level. And it was a really nice scene, though, between the two of them. It's like one of the, what, few scenes in which people who are kind of romantically involved with another have a healthy interaction. We have another one later on. But, yeah. I like that they're pointing out it's complicated. The relationships that we have with the people that are close to us are complicated.

It adds a lot of much-ne needed dimension to the Team Black storyline. Very much needed. But their relationship isn't as complicated as it's about to be for these two twins. You know, Eric and Arik was beautifully done and I think the passion from the actors obviously filters through. I loved learning that they give them the same injuries throughout the battle. So if you think you're smart enough to be following at home,

you're not. You're basic. They fooled us. But it is Eric that is left standing at the end for his queen before he takes his life. We had this discussion with Glytus when he came by for Unleash the D, season two, episode two, about brothers and what it would take to murder your brother would you kill your brother

yeah that's when I famously asked him if he'd kill his brother but I really just meant I don't have siblings so I don't understand the dynamics but it came out as would you kill your brother ever um but how it was a little unbelievable, right? And how, for me, this has to live up to a lot more infamy than Blood and Cheese kind of does. Because this is, I mean, we see this in Bran, right? Is where we first learn about the two Kingsguard brothers that killed each other on opposing sides. It's a story. It's a song that were told very early in A Song of

Ice and Fire, so they did have to nail this one, and I do think they did. I think they did an amazing job. The passion was there. We're soft-launching Alinda Massey, Rhaenyra's youngest handmaiden. She has a role. She is gonna be around. We saw her in a trailer, actually,

in a red hood. Looked like going to King's Landing. So Alinda Massey is being soft-launched in this episode. She was there with Rhaenyra round we saw her in a trailer actually in a red hood looked like going to king's landing so alinda massey is being soft launched in this episode she was there with raniera she'll be there at the end with raniera yeah fascinating i just don't wear red if i'm not trying to stand out but anyway as you said wounds are the same which is a great metaphor for you know the blows that each side are taking and how they mirror one another and also i don't know they clearly had so much fun filming it if you watch like the house that dragons build auric rolling high persuasion sneak other other other checks constantly and then also

i you mentioned this earlier but like renera watching these two people square off and fight in her bedroom. Wild, wild, traumatic. They're coming to kill you. Oh, my God. They're killing each other. And then someone's killing themselves. Like, you know, the way that she reacts to this show of blood and fighting and you contrast that with the way that she watched the tourney for Balon's birth, like when her mom died. And like, it's a very different reactions

but also like i i kind of figured that maybe it was eric that was left standing because he calls her your grace i'm like you're not calling her your grace unless you think she's your queen it would be interesting if it had been aric yeah and like you know it would have it really would have would have been interesting what What the fuck? Definitely Eric. Yeah, it was actually, it was really moving. If I had really cared about it, like if that was like the thing I was looking forward to seeing the most in the story, I can imagine I would have been like decimated emotionally. But I was very emotionally moved for someone who doesn't care about it that much does that make sense like i don't mean that in a negative way it's just like it wasn't my most

looked forward to thing and because of that they went above the bar completely i think it was a poignant part of the episode did a great job my companions loved it they're also kind of sad they're like i don't know i like those guys rip mizaria is in dragon stone and is teaming up with girly pop queen renera targaryen um i had to kind of refocus i zoned out a little it's hard because this is going to be very important for the future this entire relationship is with mizaria andhaenyra and I can already see the foundation being laid for a possible betrayal of Misaria to Rhaenyra or Misaria feeding her things in her ear and whispering things in her ear and starting to really toy with her and I can see

where they're going to wedge Misaria against Daemon even further for Rhaenyra and Daemon. So I could really see just that foundational look at like Misaria's power and maybe how it'll come to be. And I think we talked about it last week or maybe before on Unleash the D. But there has to be build up. There has to be kind of someone there who is going to see reneara's grief and maybe potentially manipulate her through it for her own goal which we know mizaria has her own goals she does have her own goals but i'm i'm curious to see what they will be especially in regards to daemon but like there's an there's a part of her that does have very noble goals as well not in like the high high status kinds but noble like you know commendable

but yeah their their interactions were very interesting i think they had pretty good like chemistry in terms of playing off one another with acting but also there were looks between them and i was like korasami oh my god in terms of two exes two exes how could i get together spoilers legend of korra also part of me wonders are we supposed to contrast the way that aegon treats blood a prisoner versus how reyniera treats mazaria and she's like i'm gonna fuck it you know i'll let you go i'll honor this and mazaria is moved by that to the extent that she's like, well, if you see something, say something. Which saves Rhaenyra's life. I'm very charmed by the end of this episode, I think it was well done, but the Misaria stuff feels a little clunky.

It's a little, yeah. it's a little um it's a little clunky it's a little clunky and they're doing the best they can with it and i'm hopeful that it'll all pay off so i'll be okay with it but i don't know my brain just went dead during the scene twice don't know but i i know what they're doing i just i don't find it compelling yet and i like the angle of raniera being like okay well we're gonna free her yeah i think and i like the idea of her whispering in her ear and becoming her mistress of whispers, et cetera. I just need it to be executed a little cleaner. And I'm not liking it as much so far for that. I like the idea, not the execution. Yeah, I think they're doing pretty, they're doing the best they can with their Wikipedia

article and the impending strike that came after so there was an interesting thing where you know she goes oh you remember me now and i will say in renear's defense i also would not remember my uncle's exes from over 20 years ago and if if that were my partner's husband like hypothetically like maybe i would remember their ex i don't know but I think it's hard if it's 20 years ago and I didn't have social media and it was like a second so uh clunky yeah but you don't remember me now you do

aha yeah it was just a little it was it was it was nice I like the idea of it but I'm also like I don't know I'm not remembering a lot of people from 20 years ago also Misaria's stained white dress. I was noticing her costuming as well. And she passes Arik.

Her white dress, right, her moniker was the white worm there for a bit. It's fucking filthy, right? Because she escaped and also she was in a dungeon for a bit. Now she's been freed. And I think that's really fun. Interesting because Arak has this very clean white cloak. Her white dress is dirty. And she notices it too.

And her white dress is dirty. So more brothers. We like the dirty team, you know? We're on the dirty side of things. Stained clothes. I'm sorry. I'm thinking about the Frasier episode we watched at your place with the dirty girl thing. And now I'm also

thinking Futurama with Dirty Boy. Anyways. Oh no. Oh no. Alright, let's go to Driftmark to close out today's episode. Thanks for hanging in with us, guys, as we get to the exciting bits of the episode that we've been dying to talk about. Oh my god. Alan

and Adam Velaryarian uh eliana's everywhere are gleeful i know this i could feel it through the states i love him he's so beautiful and handsome in fact i i was talking to zach from game of bones and he was like i don't know it was kind of disney-ish the whole scene with him in sea smoke and i was like maybe I don't know, it was kind of Disney-ish the whole scene with him in Seasmoke and I was like, maybe Disney Prince Adam Valerian is what we deserve, first of all. It's what I deserve, he has such great energy

Amazing cheekbones. My son Adam Valerian and it's not bad if it's Disney, you know it's a fantasy they're all fantasy my fantasy maybe i don't know i liked the sea smoke scene and this is as somebody you know you know me i i do think they're actually going to explain it now but like i've also resigned myself to the idea that they might not explain how he gets sea smoke and it works.

We'll see what happens, but I think they might explain it. And I just thought it was very beautiful seeing sea smoke, cute and gay, flying overhead. Adam, I feel like there's a lot already of his character we can kind of take from how he played those lines. He almost seems like he could be a little more naive and young in a sweeter way than alan and it makes me wonder if especially from the framing adam has no fucking idea that corley's could be their dad and alan suspects i couldn't tell because like the line of he owes us like

made me think does do they both know that that is their father like he fucking owes us because he wasn't there, especially when you look at it in the context of other discussions of fathers, like Bela and her father, Jace and his father, Agen and his father. So I'm like, are we supposed to, like, take that they know? But I also understand what you're saying of, like, they don't know. And it's interesting because then you have Alan parallels with jace and being the older brother protecting the siblings

oh yeah yeah yeah i assume yes i really do love that alan is taking that protective role i don't know how siblings work in totality but could kill each other i'm very excited to see how this all rolls together especially with Corliss and Rainey's yeah let's talk about them I loved the Corliss and Rainey's scenes so much for so many reasons but I love seeing folks in their 50s shown being intimate and hot on tv and beautiful like they weren't you know it's usually played like a joke when old people, and when I say old people, I mean like 30 year olds, you know, parents that are in their late 30s or early 40s in a sitcom have sex. It's like played as a joke, like, oh, mom and dad having sex. But Corliss and Rainis are shown and they look beautiful. They're sexy.

And they're intimate and you can tell that they can talk about anything together. And I love that they're kind of that commentary for the viewer still, right? When you look back to Balin's nameday tourney that you talked about, they kind of play this commentary track for the audience where they're talking about the nights of summer and how they've never seen war, and none of these people understand they're just hungry for flesh and they really don't want it.

They wouldn't want the war if they knew what to do with it. You know? If they caught it. And here they are now discussing kind of what's going on. And being that narrator again to the audience. Yeah. As the almost normal couple. Holding hands so gently and lovingly in bed.

And every scene with them was so hauntingly beautiful because she's gonna fucking die she's gonna die uh it's so sad it's really sad and i think they're doing a good job setting that up and building it up for that loss but also i mean as you said they're discussing anything and everything. And from them, we get an idea of what it feels like to have the crown taken from you for both Damon and for Rhaenyra. And what that means and like the dynamics within their relationship, right? When it comes to power, which ideally, you know, like there isn't a power imbalance in your relationship. But how can you avoid that when like, I don't know, y'all are like fucking literally fucking royals and but they they've navigated it and they haven't always had a great relationship as we saw in season one right like corley's went and fucked off and he's like i'm mad i'm going to

war like they they weren't necessarily there for one another in the grief at times but they reconciled and you know my partner pointed out it's a great contrast with reynira and damon's relationship and how this relationship has stayed strong over the years despite those challenges and i mean like uh we just talked about two other potential challenges yeah not just that but then also his you know his slight greed for pride and glory for house valarion and for his name yeah and her crown her shadow of a crown being something he always focuses on you know that was such a big block between them but it's almost kind of a relief that this war is going on and that they can just hand over to raniera like that's very much the feeling of the conversation that she's like glad

it's not fucking oh yeah that would i understand that feeling um so and and also you know corley's being like it's true i do love being stepped on a little oh my god she totally pegs yeah i agree so they're having fun in that marriage They're having fun in that marriage. They're having fun in the marriage. I think that's a great place to end the episode, you know? Yeah, we ended it on a really optimistic and high note. Thanks everyone for being here. Thank you for being here to talk about Corley's getting pegged with us.

We will be back next week for season two episode three i can't wait to find out what that title is oh i'm excited i'm excited uh moon dancer is in the episode so you know my bitch ass is so fucking excited yo moon dancer my favorite dragon because we aren't gonna see dreamfire who's my other favorite dragon yeah i mean maybe dream fire will get a mention just like darren you know when we're gonna see in our dreams no when she dies i liked my joke sorry pegging pegging pegging everyone just like get rid of that mental image come back to pegging we'll'll be back to peg you next week. Whoa. Thanks for listening. If you want to check us out

online, head over to patreon.com slash girlsgonecanon where you can check out not only all of our episodes but also bonus episodes if you sign up for the stranger tier or above. Our discord if you head into the thunder tier and above or just early access

to all hot D episodes during the season for any membership tier. Happy Hot D-ing. Indeed. And you can find our podcast in, I don't know, most other places where podcasts are. So goodbye. That's it, right?

I've been one of your hosts. I've been another one of your hosts, Eliana. I hate when you change it up like that. Things are different. Things are different. It's House of the Dragon. I was like not, I hate when you change it up like that. Things are different. Things are different. It's House of the Dragon. I was like not, I wasn't a podcast host for a while.

I was a special guest. I'm trying to understand how it works. We'll talk to you guys next week. Goodbye.