House of the Dragon - S02E04 Feedback - The Red Dragon and the Gold

[00:00:01] Okay, David, this is where we're supposed to choose a side. Green or black? John, my soul is as black as night. Your turn. I am black for life! So, we're not fighting? I thought this is where HBO wanted us to, like, pick sides and fight and stuff.

[00:00:24] Don't worry, I'm sure we'll find plenty to disagree about on the pod. But we seem to agree on one thing. We both really like this show. The politics, the drama, the lore! It was made for the Lorehounds.

[00:00:35] And since we just finished recapping Season 1, we couldn't be more ready to defend our Black Queen in the Dance of the Dragons.

[00:00:42] And with the Season Pass option in Supercast, listeners can get early ad-free access to each weekly scene-by-scene deep dive, plus our custom show guide with all the characters and connections. See you in the Lorehounds podcast feed each week for our Dragonfire Hot, but Probably Positive, takes.

[00:01:00] The Lorehounds' House of the Dragon coverage is also safe for team green consumption. Side effects may include a deeper understanding of dragon lore, a heartened conflict with itself, and an inescapable urge to read the book Fire and Blood by George R.R. Martin. Dragon seeds may experience burning.

[00:01:33] Welcome, welcome, welcome. All ye who go to Rook's Rest to have some carnage. This is the House of the Hounds, your guides to the Dance of the Dragons. And I'm Jon.

[00:01:43] And I'm David, and this is our feedback podcast for HBO's original series, House of the Dragon, Season 2, Episode 4, The Red Dragon and the Gold.

[00:01:55] We are going to get right into the feedback in a second. However, you can send in your feedback in many ways, David. How can they do that?

[00:02:04] They can get in touch with our Hand of the Pod, Master of Ravens, our Loremaster Nancy M., who is collecting and organizing all of our feedback for us.

[00:02:14] You can send your emails to hotd at the lorehounds.com or you can head over to our website, the lorehounds.com.

[00:02:24] And there, there's a contact page. It's got a contact form. So if you don't want to deal with email and you just want to plug in your stuff, boom, do that.

[00:02:30] Or you can send us a voicemail. And in fact, we have two voicemails this week and we can drop those right into the podcast as well.

[00:02:37] We're kind of scanning Discord a little bit for some messages. While we're talking about the website really quick, we can talk about it later at the end of the podcast. But I just want to mention, we launched our blog, our Lorebrarian. Oh yeah.

[00:02:50] And Brian8063, who's one of our Loremasters, who's our Lorebrarian, we're really playing this one up to the hilt, is starting to take submissions and the blog is open.

[00:03:00] Anyway, we'll talk about that more at the end. I just wanted to mention it because we were talking about the website. You too can be a writer of blog entries. It's very exciting.

[00:03:08] It is. But John, how can people support the community if they want to get involved with the lorehounds? They can click on that fancy tree in the show notes where they can get to our Patreon, our Supercast.

[00:03:21] They could get to the Season Pass where they can just pay $10 flat, get everything that we have to offer as far as House of the Dragon, including our ad-free podcast, early access and our hot takes on Sunday nights.

[00:03:35] And then the show guide, which you do a better job explaining than I do. Thanks. Yeah, and thank you to everyone who has signed up for the Season Pass.

[00:03:44] It has been successful and I believe is accomplishing what we set out to do, which is, hey, I'm a little bit fatigued with subscriptions and everybody nickel and diming me.

[00:03:55] This is a flat $10 and you get, like John said, all of our House of the Dragon coverage and show guide. The show guide is an amazing resource.

[00:04:03] There's this platform called Notion that we're using. It allows us to put in all this information and click a button and publish it to the web. John, you and Aaron and Brian have been doing an amazing job. There's a complete character guide for Season 1 and Season 2.

[00:04:19] You can click on a character, you can see who they're related to, who their parents are, who their children are, what dragons they ride. There's a whole dragon bestiary. There's some location map stuff. And then there are the episode guides for episode to episode.

[00:04:37] John, you go through, you make some gifs. Oh yeah, some people call it a gif. I stepped on your line. Oh, sorry. I'm sorry. We're trying to Ted Lasso it. The show is dead, but not for us. And you write little synopsis of the scene.

[00:04:52] We use that for our outline. So if you want to follow along with the outline, that's the thing that we're using. And it's a really great resource, especially on the mobile phone. Because if you're curious, what dragon is that? Or what character is that?

[00:05:04] Or how does Alan spell his name? You can just scroll through on your mobile and it's all very configured for that. So it's a very cool resource. And John, I'm just so proud, excited, happy to see... I'm just so proud to see Miyagi. Yes, it's amazing.

[00:05:24] We're about to cover Karate Kid, so that's in my head. It's right. It's what we would have done anyway. But now we can make it available to our community and to our subscribers. So thanks for all the hard work on that. And thank you for showing me Notion.

[00:05:38] I was skeptical at first, but you showed me, you converted me into a Notioner. Yeah, we were just goofing around with it and it turned into something. So very excited for it. I'm about halfway done with the Rings of Power show guide, by the way.

[00:05:50] Dude, that's going to be sweet. I haven't even looked at it yet. Let me tell you something. There's so many references I have to make that I am now doing two different character guides, one for onscreen and one for historical. Oh, I like it.

[00:06:01] You know what I'm saying? Because I don't want a drawing of Feanor on the onscreen guide. It just felt disjointed. Anyway, this is not about Rings of Power. No, it's not. But I think that brings up a good point about the show guide,

[00:06:13] which is it's a resource you can use so that you can safely search for what you're seeing in two seasons of House of the Dragon and not get spoiled. Because I tried to go out and find some stuff about some characters and I was like, wait, that person's...

[00:06:26] I just suddenly got down this rabbit hole by just glancing at a page. Yeah, you will get spoiled. And that's the thing with this, right? It's like late stage Game of Thrones, we didn't have any book spoilers to go through, but... Exactly.

[00:06:37] I mean, this whole plot is written, right? There is a version of what's going to happen out there on the internet right now that will be accurate. So let's... I think that's enough on all of that. Should we wrap up and get right into the people's feedback?

[00:06:50] Let's do it. We are regents of the people here on the Lorehowls podcast. You know, David, I've recorded one podcast today already. I think I'm going to let you lead us through feedback here. Fair enough. That sounds good to me. Yeah, Acolyte. What was that, episode seven?

[00:07:07] We're almost there. That's amazing. We're almost there. And now Alicia, I don't know, I think you've heard this already, that she's doing a game show style. Yes, yes, she's done that before. It's very funny. Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, I was there with you on the silo one.

[00:07:19] You were, that's right. But yeah, she's back, she's back, she's back to her mischief. We like it. A lot of mischief that one. That's why she's a lorehound. She's up to some good mischief. All right, season two, episode four, The Red Dragon and the Gold.

[00:07:32] Nancy M., thank you so much again. Thank you to the community for supporting Nancy and really getting behind her and working with her and helping her. It's been really great to see everybody come together because the volume that we're getting is awesome. Keep it up, everyone.

[00:07:48] And it's so good to have somebody filtering this stuff for us. That said, Nancy breaks things up by thematic elements. So we're following her outline a little bit. And if you send in an email that has multiple points, she will have broken up your email across the document.

[00:08:04] And so sometimes the little platitudes and the little bits and bobs get messed up, but your core points are there. But it's not going to be just read as a single email. So just be expecting that. But I kind of like the thematic elements.

[00:08:18] She kind of structures it for us. It has a nice flow to it. So feedback only pod, Wandering Not Lost, old friend of the bot on the Discord. So I really like having the feed. Oh, this is a whole separate, this whole thing about the feedback.

[00:08:31] Yeah, it's meta. It's so meta. I like having the feedback pod separate from the recap. I'll do better to leave some feedback now. I'm sure it's a good bit more work, but I really appreciate it. Also, the lore hounds are allowed to mix up their lore.

[00:08:48] So I like keeping it consistent with the wheel weaves. But just my two cents. The wheel weaves. Yes. I don't know. I don't know. I feel like House of the Dragon. Here's the thing. Yeah, we're allowed to mix lore, but Wheel of Time is just so,

[00:09:05] so much different of a vibe than House of the Dragon. I almost don't want to, you know? In fact, one of my complaints about the TV show, which I have a few, but one of my complaints about the TV show Wheel of Time

[00:09:14] is that it tries to be more like House of the Dragon than it should. Hmm. Hmm. Yeah, it shouldn't. It should be its own thing. It should be what was as, you know, as intended by the author. Right. A fundamentally optimistic work.

[00:09:29] You know, and I was thinking about the other day too, and I was actually editing an Alien podcast that Ron Dawson and I recorded. It's not yet released, but we were talking a little bit about that, how Alien was a genre,

[00:09:43] a movie that was a not optimistic view of the future. Oh, yeah. The 1979 movie where a lot of things were. Star Wars, optimistic. 2001 Space Odyssey, optimistic, right? There's, you know, I don't know. Buck Rogers is optimistic in a way. And you mentioned this whole point

[00:09:59] of optimistic versus pessimistic in our fantasy. I think, was it last episode or maybe last feedback? Yeah. And that kind of stuck with me, and I never really thought about that. But that makes a lot of sense for George R. Martin's. It's very gritty,

[00:10:14] and it's a very pessimistic view of human nature where Jordan is very optimistic about things and people and people rising to the best. Right. Not everyone, but I think the point is the trajectory, the overall trajectory. Yeah. It's like that quote, right?

[00:10:32] The MLK quote that I've heard is not actually MLK, but some other historical figure. Oh, really? It's attributed to everybody. You know, the arc of the universe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it bends toward justice. In fact, let's find out right now who it is.

[00:10:43] The arc of the universe. We're really going off the rails. Is this a Mandela effect? Does this count as Mandela? I don't think so. It could. Let's see. Original speaker. Okay, so I paused the recording for a second so I could get you a real answer.

[00:11:03] Theodore Parker, the Reverend Theodore Parker, who was a transcendentalist and reforming minister who was a reformer and an abolitionist during the Civil War. Year? Era? Civil War? Civil War. Sorry, civil rights. My apologies. No, Civil War. Civil War? 1810 to 1860. We're talking about abolition. Wow.

[00:11:24] And that's when he was saying, you know, the moral arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice. And then MLK took that and then Barack Obama took that. So all three of these people, mostly the latter two because they're the more well-known figures,

[00:11:35] are attributed to this quote, but it's not actually them. Interesting. But it's a good quote. It is. Keep using it. Yep. But anyway, that's what I see these fundamentally optimistic works as being, right? Not every character is going to be on that train to justice.

[00:11:51] But the writer, the hand of the universe, the god of that universe, which is the writer, is saying, you know, this is all going to go somewhere positive in the end even if there are dips. Which is very Tolkienian as well. Yeah. Exactly.

[00:12:07] It's part of that same canon. Whereas I think that Martin breaks that and Martin says, no, this just sucks. It doesn't matter. Humans are mean and nasty. Yep. And dragons die. Given him to have a chance, they'll climb over each other's body to grab the brass ring. Right.

[00:12:24] For all for a fleeting moment of glory and control and power. But we're 12 minutes in. What's next? The prophecy of Song of Ice and Fire. A voicemail from Brandon the Bard. Hail and well met fellow lore hounds. It is I, Brandon the Bard, currently mowing my lawn,

[00:12:42] listening to your Sunfire V Malise. I can't remember the name of that episode. Coverage of House of the Dragon. And you threw some feelers out to fellow maesters. I'm more of a bard than a maester, so I like to tell the stories.

[00:12:57] But anyway, you were asking about Rhaegar and his... trying to figure out where he decided that he must be a warrior, magical man. I believe it was on Dragonstone. I could be wrong, but something interesting. I think if we follow the chain of custody of this dagger,

[00:13:20] perhaps that is how Rhaegar found out about this prophecy. It could be... I mean, his dagger's already been through some shit with, you know, Aemond recently picking it out of a pile of rubble containing his brother and Sunfire.

[00:13:39] So who knows where this thing's gonna be by the end of the war. But, yeah, I think... Rhaegar was said to be bookish and playful and whatever, a normal boy. And then he emerges from his study with a fresh resolve

[00:13:54] saying that he must be a warrior, magical boy. So I think maybe if we follow the chain of custody of this dagger, therein might be the answer. You're doing good on your show. Very good coverage of House of the Dragon. Thanks, Dad. Goodbye.

[00:14:10] So before we get into the content of Brandon the Bard's voicemail, I just have to say, Nancy transcribed the voicemail for us and it's in... Nancy, you don't have to do that. I promise it's okay. You don't have to do that. We'll just listen to it.

[00:14:25] But the attention to detail is so excellent. I am just... Again, John says you don't have to do it. It's totally cool. I'm impressed, but I am horrified that you had to spend time doing that. I hope AI did it or something. I don't know, some helpfulness. Anyway.

[00:14:39] Let's make the robots do something. I'm just kidding, robots. Don't be nice to me when we have the Matrix. All right? Can I have the nice Matrix? Yes, exactly. I for one will welcome my robot overlords. John, this is an area of lore I am entirely clueless about.

[00:14:55] So what say you to our good friend and co-host Brandon the Bard's voicemail? It completely slipped my mind that it was on the dagger because I should have brought that up last time. And then as soon as somebody said...

[00:15:05] I thought you were... I assumed it was on the dagger. Yeah, it is on the dagger. I forgot about it. I completely forgot about it. Which we just covered season one. I shouldn't have forgotten about it. But anyway, sure. Yeah, I'm in.

[00:15:16] I'm in on the dagger being the key to it. Especially, you know, we know it ends up with Tyrion Lannister so it doesn't get lost. Right. It's around. And by that time it's called... And Lannister was one of the first ones into the Red Keep

[00:15:29] right after Jaime killed the Mad King and he let his dad's forces in. So the Lannisters would have been first in. I bet you Aegon... I'm sorry. I bet you Aerys the Mad King had the dagger and Tyrion was like, this looks cool. And nobody else cared. Interesting.

[00:15:47] Interesting. And by then... He got it from the conquests. Okay. Because then by then, by the time we're seeing in Game of Thrones they're calling it the Cat's Paw. Right. Well, the Cat's Paw because it was given to a cat's paw. You know, the... Ah, okay.

[00:16:01] Yeah, that's why it's called... So it didn't have a... It didn't carry that name prior to that. Right. It was not... No, yeah. This was specifically because of the murder attempt on Bran. Perfect. Okay, got that. All right. Although wasn't it... Now I'm going to correct myself again.

[00:16:15] Wasn't it later said in the trial of Lord Baelish that it was actually Littlefinger's dagger in the end and it was not Tyrion's? So maybe he got it somehow. I don't know. I don't know. Again, I need a maester again.

[00:16:27] I need a maester again to clarify this for me. Maester on aisle two stat. I also have trouble considering anything that happened after season five in Game of Thrones canon. I seem to recall that Littlefinger was also involved with...

[00:16:42] Well, I know he orchestrated the death of Jon Arryn and that was the whole cause of the war and he lied to Catelyn about everything. But I think it was clarified later that that was also his dagger. And Catelyn says, hey, do you know anything about this dagger?

[00:16:53] He's like, yeah, that belongs to Tyrion. Right, right, right, yeah. And Tyrion I think later said, I never saw that or something, right? Right, right. So he wasn't lying. Let's relitigate all of Game of Thrones, shall we? Jon M posted a message on Patreon.

[00:17:08] Imagine if somebody threw the damn dagger in the sea. Game of Thrones goes different if that thing is gone. Yeah, I think Littlefinger would have just done it with someone else. Oh, I guess the question is, would Rhaegar have found out about the prophecy otherwise?

[00:17:26] Because that supposedly is a big part of how the war got started. Right. Although I saw a really good TikTok the other day about how everyone says it was because Rhaegar ended up with Lyanna that the war started. But the reality is the war started because Ned,

[00:17:43] sorry, Ned Stark's brother and father were called down to King's Landing and summarily executed by the king. That's what, and then the king said, okay, now Ned and everybody else from the north come down and come see me.

[00:17:55] You know, come into my office right after I murdered your whole family. So, so it really was the actions of Aerys the Mad King that started that war. It was not just Rhaegar going off and fulfilling prophecies.

[00:18:06] Joan P on the Discord, in regards to whether Rhaegar knew the prophecy, I think he definitely did, but read something one day that implied that it might be him specifically. He later changed his mind and thought it was his son. The quote from Storm is this,

[00:18:23] as a young boy, the Prince of Dragonstone was bookish to a fault. He was reading so early that Minn said Queen Rhaela, is that the right pronunciation? Rhaela? I think so. Must have swallowed some books and a candle whilst he was in her womb.

[00:18:43] Rhaegar took no interest in the play of other children. The maesters were awed by his wits, but his father's knights would jest sourly that Baelor the Blessed had been born again. Until one day, Prince Rhaegar found something in the scrolls that changed him.

[00:18:58] No one knows what it might have been, only that the boy suddenly appeared early one morning in the yard as the knights were donning their steel. He walked up to Sir William Derry, the Master of Arms, and said, I will require a sword and armor.

[00:19:14] It seems I must be a warrior. So this is what Brandon was referencing in his voicemail and what you were sort of talking about as well. That one day he walks out and he has a new purpose. Yeah, I like this.

[00:19:29] I would like some clarification on how Rhaegar learned, but I don't want a full Robert Trebillion miniseries that has been teased. So I don't know how you're going to do that without doing that. Do an animated series.

[00:19:42] You know what we've been talking about on the Discord lately is I'd be down for an animated series in this universe. I think they can do a lot of a lot of justice to the stories. They could fill in a lot of backstory,

[00:19:53] kind of like how Wheel of Time has those lore episodes that are all animated. And we're getting some Tolkien War of the Roharim as well. And wasn't there another War of the Rites? War of the Rites, yeah, indeed.

[00:20:05] Yeah, I do think that animation could fill in some stuff that would be, you know, in well, whether serialized as, you know, in television or as standalone movies, that would be some really cool material to cover. That it would just be hard to do live action. I agree.

[00:20:24] Yeah, it would be sweet. Especially something like the Conquest. Because I was thinking about this the other day. People say, oh, I wanted Aegon's Conquest series. I'm like, you want to watch dragons just burn up humans? Because that's what that was. It wasn't Dragon v. Dragon.

[00:20:38] It was just, oh, hello, I would like your castle. No, brrrr, Dracarys. Right. That's not interesting to watch. That's just a fact, right? Right. And it's a gory fact. That's all it is. Yeah, I mean, if, yeah, there's plenty of good examples

[00:20:55] of good, amazing animation and that could tell these stories. I was thinking about Scavenger's Reign just recently because it got bounced to Netflix. People are trying to agitate for a season two to get made. Like, that's some really good stuff. Some really heady stuff going on in there.

[00:21:12] Yeah, watch Blue-Eyed Samurai next. Yeah, yeah, I didn't get past episode one, half of episode one. Then I know everybody was crazy for that last year. It's fantastic. Yeah. Absolutely fantastic. Team Green battle tactics. Nate, our good friend Nate on the Discord. All right, so battle stuff.

[00:21:30] When they announced the switch from targeting Harrenhal to Rook's Rest, it made sense. Cole is trying to strain together wins and draw local levies to his side while denying locations, armies, and provisions to the blacks. They set it all up with this true discussion

[00:21:47] of how Harrenhal actually isn't that useful despite all the key-to-the-riverlands stuff we've been given all season. By putting it in Laerys' mouth to explain how Harrenhal isn't really that helpful, it made it realistic. So, good setup. Yeah, and we talked about this on the podcast the other day.

[00:22:06] It was sometimes you do have to tell. You can't show, but you have to tell. And it needs to be in the right mouths, in the right circumstance, and this was perfect. They played it perfectly. Yeah, although if you're saying that makes it more realistic,

[00:22:21] I also have another idea with that, which is that was also when Laerys was trying to save his ass from an angry gang. I don't know if I believe him fully. Again, more good motivation for a character. The character acting within the confines of their motivation. Yep.

[00:22:38] Continuing, as soon as Cole said they were attacking during the day, it was obvious something was up. Gawain was right. It was stupid. That close to Dragonstone. Obviously, the plan was to push Rhaenyra. But one key element stood out to me.

[00:22:49] When the dragon is sighted, he calls the whole army back, except the Darkling troops that had surrendered and joined them after taking Duskendale. They were the bait. We talked a little bit about this as cannon fodder on the main, where the term cannon fodder came from

[00:23:07] and how you use troops like this. Nate continues, this immediately made me think of the Mongol tactic, okay, so going back even further here, of taking soldiers or sometimes even just a local population that had surrendered, been captured, and marching them ahead of the Mongol army

[00:23:26] as proper as shields, arrow sponges. Cole knows some of his troops are going to get burned, but engineered it so that it's the Darkling troops' brutal. Drunk, Aegon F's up the plan by appearing on his dragon. I believe his dragon has not seen combat

[00:23:44] because it was hatched from an egg and given to Aegon at birth. There's no way they're defeating the experienced Rhaenyras and Maelys. Note that he heads straight for her and shouts Dracarys and then loses her completely in the resulting fire cloud.

[00:23:58] I think this is an important little point here too. Well, I suppose fire can burn a rider. Targs are not fireproof according to Gurm. What it's going to do against the dragon? Nothing. But Maelys and Rhaenyra know dragon combat and she uses Aegon's disorientation to attack from below

[00:24:18] with Maelys' teeth and claws. That's experience. Same with Aemond and Vhagar at the end. As soon as I saw Maelys flying over the castle, you knew she was going to get ambushed by Vhagar. Chomped. So I think this is a really interesting point about

[00:24:32] if you're flying in a direction and you blow fire out in front of you, you're going to be flying through your own fire cloud. Right, right. That's a problem. That's a problem. And yeah, the Targaryens really are not fireproof

[00:24:46] and that's something that Game of Thrones made a lot of people confused about because it was a thing. That wasn't just a show edition that Daenerys survived the initial fire where her dragons are at, but Gurm has always said it was a one-time deal

[00:25:00] and in the book her hair all burns off. It's not like the show where she comes out like, oh, well my clothes handily burned off so that you can see me naked viewers, but my hair is intact. Maximum attractiveness for everyone.

[00:25:15] Yeah, it would have looked weird if she had no hair on the television show. Yeah, but it also would have made a lot more sense. I do think that there is, you know, it looked cool.

[00:25:24] It does create some confusion now that we have a lot more dragons flying around because everyone's like, wait, are they all fireproof? Like, are they just magically fireproof? What's going on here? And that's, yeah, and that's the kind of little thing that can creep in

[00:25:37] and that's okay then I think for a showrunner or the original author to clarify something like that. Yeah, and I'm glad that Ryan Condal isn't just being like, yeah, they're all fireproof. You know, I'm glad that he's keeping with Gurm's original intention of,

[00:25:50] I don't care what Game of Thrones told you about Daenerys. This is what's happening now. Right? Yeah, and we talked about Rhaenys flying over the castle and then how that scene had been foreshadowed. When she turned to come back to get in it with Vhagar,

[00:26:08] she does the same maneuver flying low along the water and then popping up against the cliff face and the castle. And so they sort of tease that a little bit. But then earlier when she tries a strafing run on Vhagar

[00:26:21] and then Vhagar grabs her as she's trying to strafe in underneath, that's the thing about Vhagar. If you're close in with Vhagar, she's going to, she's so powerful that one punch or claw or bite is going to be deadly. Whereas Sunfire or even Maelis,

[00:26:42] they're going to have to land multiple blows to take out another foe. Where Vhagar, she can do it in one punch. Yep, yep. And that's the terrifying thing, right? You know, when you're fighting Vhagar, you have to be perfect every time. Yeah, right.

[00:26:57] And that's just not probably going to happen. And she might be slow to turn and react, but boy, if she's, yeah, if you're in her sights, you're going to be in for a world of hurt. Are you telling me that Nate wrote in about a classical Asian war?

[00:27:10] Anyway, go on. What's the, I was trying to think of a princess, a princess bride joke, but about never invading. What's the, oh, I can't remember the line now. Okay, nevermind. Moving on. Never invade Russia in a land war. Something like, and that's not quite it,

[00:27:27] but you Google it while I read the next thing. Maureen D on the Discord, what was the purpose of keeping the plan secret from the king and council? It works narratively for the viewer to be surprised, but why would Cole secretly conspire with Ament?

[00:27:42] Now he has yet again failed in his duty to protect, protect the king. I can only see it making sense from Amon's perspective as a power grab. This is an interesting point. Uh, thoughts, John? I was trying to find. Land war in Asia.

[00:28:00] A land war in Asia. Sorry. Why don't you give your thought and then I'll jump in with it. Fair enough. I think, uh, Maureen, I think you've got a really good point here that Cole has failed in his duty multiple times, uh, to protect the king.

[00:28:17] And by not involving him, I think you're absolutely right. And I think maybe some of that feeling of desolation that he has, as he falls to his knees, um, in, you know,

[00:28:33] in sort of the pile that is a sun sunfire is feeling like that he did F up. Like this was a bad turn of events. He got his king killed because he was too clever by a half.

[00:28:48] And I think part of the deal with, well, and, and, and, you know, going back to what Otto says, you know, you know, oh, you know, Egon says Otto is a man of action and he's taken action with his little

[00:29:03] twins, you know, uh, parent trap plan that failed or it didn't come to fruition. And it actually, maybe it might've caused a little bit more problems. And Otto says to, uh, a Egon, you know, you're going to regret this.

[00:29:17] This is not going to go, which is not going to work out well because Cole is not all that you think he is. He may be good on the battlefield with some strategy and tactics, but he cannot see the entire situation. And this is that right here.

[00:29:32] He and Amon conspired and by keeping information withheld, it led directly to the death of their cake. So good point. Marine. Yeah. Now that I've read Marine's message, I completely agree. And I think that Cole has never considered collateral damages in his entire

[00:29:52] entire life. Right. Because he's never had to, never had to, he's been a soldier, even a soldier or a protector. Yeah. And so all he's had to do is follow orders. He literally just got his first leadership job,

[00:30:04] which was Lord protector of the Kings guard and I was right. Lord commander of the Kings guard. And since he got his Lord commander job, he's had a dead Prince, a dead Kings guard, and at least very ill,

[00:30:17] very wounded King and down to dragon. I mean, not a good track record, not a good track record. I mean, wait, did you include Eric in that? Yeah, that was my Kings guard. Oh, right. Right. Down against. Yes, you got it.

[00:30:30] I mean, he may as well say to him, victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia. I cut it off. I cut it off because I was one of the land war in Asia.

[00:30:41] Good job. You're quick on the soundboard. I try, I try. So yeah, I just, I just hate Chris Nicole. I actually have a Tik Tok go pretty big about how Kristen Cole is looking up at the dragons going, Oh, that's what dragon on dragon war is.

[00:30:58] It's, it's not good to like watch that one. Watching the blood drip down, boiling on everyone. Bad news. And those are his soldiers, right? Like those are his soldiers. And he completely messed up. He completely miscalculated how severe this war was going to be.

[00:31:11] He started this whole war out of pride thinking it would be a swift thing because he has a big R and in the end it's just blood on blood on blood on his hands. So interestingly though,

[00:31:21] his stratagem of hooking over towards rooks rest and keeping Vigar as a surprise ambush, that's all sound. He's just not thinking in a bigger strategic picture. And I think his ego is such that if somebody else said, okay,

[00:31:40] that is a good plan, but we're not going to do it because we're going to do something else. He'd be like, eh, a little pouty boy and put his hands on his fist and stomp away mad because no

[00:31:48] one's listening to what he says. So it's, it's like that. Yeah, you're young and you're not wrong, but you're not older with a little bit more wisdom to see the entire map and the entire situation. I don't know. He's supposed to be like 40 now, isn't he?

[00:32:05] Yeah. I know he doesn't look it, but he's supposed to be like 40. Yeah. I'm just, I'm just laughing at our, our millennial Gen X boomer stuff. Just like, I'm not saying 40 is super old. I'm saying like,

[00:32:18] he should have an adult head on his head. Right? He showed by, by now as a, as a millennial at 40, you should have some wisdom under. All right. All right. I'm a millennial at 30. So you know what? Y'all are just jealous. No.

[00:32:31] You decided to podcast with me. I think that was a wise decision. There you go. They called me John the wise, John Harris, the wise. What I was going to say was Chris, Kristen, he has a specific definition of a victory that is very similar.

[00:32:51] Even though he thinks that he's different from a gun and he thinks a gun's an idiot. His definition of victory is very similar to a guns, which is we got the castle. It's not, we maintain the morale of our troops. We are on an upward trajectory.

[00:33:04] We are, you know, conserving resources. It is, we got the castle. So sure. They got a nominal victory here. They lost the dragon. They lost perhaps the King. They, they are, they lost most of their soldiers there. Right? Like most of those soldiers did not survive.

[00:33:21] And that's just not a victory in most people's eyes. And you even have pushback. I don't remember which character on the council said it, but they were like, you're talking about the Bracken's nominally winning over the Blackwoods as a victory. Like they all died. It's the same thing.

[00:33:36] And Cole never learned that lesson, which is the, it's not the nominal victory. It is the, it's the war, right? It's not the battle. It's the war. Right. That's my shtick. It's a blunder. Like starting a land war in Asia is, um, is Kristen Cole, Ohio.

[00:33:54] It's the Ohio. Yeah. That's isn't that that means bad in modern slang. Oh, I don't see. I don't know. I had to use a glossary to write some of the recent tech. I think Ohio means bad. I know Skibidi can mean bad, but I don't know.

[00:34:07] Skibidi I believe I, Ohio also is bad. All right. Dragon nukes, Vanessa, this episode really shows off, uh, showed the viewer and book readers, the collateral damage of dragon fights as very horrific, which to your point is, uh, such with the,

[00:34:22] the blood and stuff falling and then when they fall and you know, but they go bang, right? A bomb just fell. What are those little, um, caps? Those little percussive caps that you throw a little paper for the July

[00:34:34] and they land in the snaps. That's what I had snaps. Yeah. It's like a big snap. This is what it is. Abby says it was good that they showed how the battle with the dragons, the men involved, do they be there on one side or the other?

[00:34:47] It's the same. It doesn't matter what color of the banner, if the dragon lands on you, uh, or you're in the way of one, that's it. And Tim ML says there's a very small detail they showed that is in the book

[00:35:01] that I appreciated when Maylis first wounds Sunfire, you can see the dragons by falling into soldiers and ballerinas calling below seems another small example of how once unleashed the dragons just end up destroying in their path regardless of side.

[00:35:16] I really liked them showing when Maylis was raking Sunfire with her talons that, you know, those talons are strong, they're penetrating dragon scale and they're ripping and those are really bad wounds to have. Uh, if you're a dragon,

[00:35:32] let alone for the poor suckers who are down below you. Right. Yeah. It's uh, it's not great when you see that, that boiling blood coming down. That's I think we talked about it, right? Like you'd rather be burned up than have boiling blood scalds. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:35:46] Yeah. That's for me. All right. Athena A says there's a lot of buildup surrounding bastards or illegitimate Targaryens. And I know we have seen several on, uh, on a writer list dragons that have been being set up this season and last

[00:36:03] wondering if it's going to become an arms race, legitimizing and trying to pull in those that can claim dragons to your side. Now with the loss of some dragons in this fight and the precedent for fielding dragons, uh, putting dragons into the field,

[00:36:20] I feel that this would be part of the war equation. Now what say you, John? Waffle waffle. Uh, yeah, that's all I can say. That's all I can say. Uh, Gesundheit. Thank you. All right. So we are on the right track. I think we're finally,

[00:36:37] people are starting to finally the non book readers are starting to finally pick up the threads that are getting woven here. I really enjoyed watching the discourse after I threw a little, I threw a little bomb into that conversation. Right. When I,

[00:36:50] the last episode when I said, Hey, we're on step two of a three-step, three-step Martin reveal. What do you think it is? And I got, it got people talking, got people talking in the discord, which was nice. Got us thinking it was fun. Uh,

[00:37:02] Nate adds listening to the official pod interview with the director and he just now said that even versus Eamon Vagar, Reneese understood how to fight a larger dragon. Her turn upside down is modeled on how birds attack in the air, birds attacked in the air, defend themselves.

[00:37:21] And that she took Vagar to the ground and got away was due to her skill. She isn't defeated in the initial encounter. She held her own and makes a choice to go back and then gets ambushed coming over the castle. Um, and then Sadie adds,

[00:37:37] I haven't been able to figure out where Maylis or Reneese would have battle experience from even went through the wiki to refresh myself. Any ideas on that? See, I don't know anything either. I don't, I don't think there is anything else.

[00:37:52] And Nancy actually answered that one feedback down if you want to read from that. Okay. That one there I see. Well, we didn't see it in season one. Reneese and Maylis may have helped Corliss with the crab feeder battles. That may, that's maybe where they got battle experience,

[00:38:09] just not against other dragons. Yeah. That would be my guess because, because Reneese is the granddaughter of Jaharis who became a king as a small child and what had pieces entire route or brain, right? So there would not have been dragon on dragon war during her lifetime.

[00:38:26] Right. It, so, and I just wonder too, in terms of dragon writer training, that would also play a role. How realistic are your drills? How, how much drilling are you doing? There's a whole, there's a big series by, um, Oh, uh,

[00:38:48] trying to remember the author's name now. Anyway, it's the Aubrey Maturin book series and which was made famous by, the master and commander moved with Russell Crowe. That's like a 20 volume set. I used to have all of them. It was, it's an amazing series of stuff.

[00:39:03] One of the things about that particular sea captain was he would live fire his troops on the cannons on their, on their ship and not where a lot of captains would just run them out dry and run them back.

[00:39:14] They just run their cannon out and then run their back. They wouldn't, and they would go through some motions of loading and cleaning and that kind of stuff. Aubrey had his people live fire.

[00:39:24] He would pack in extra stores of powder and cannonballs so that they could do a lot of live fire exercises and it made their rate of fire extraordinarily, extraordinarily better than anybody else because he was having them,

[00:39:40] he was getting as close to the real combat conditions as he could as a commander. So you can, you can, the more you train and the more realistic your training, the better off you are. We haven't seen any training in house of the dragon, you know, stuff. So,

[00:39:55] so we don't know. It just would feels like a gun wouldn't be the kind of guy who's going to be out there drilling, you know, aim and maybe, but, uh, uh, a gun not and Renease, she's been flying that dragon for a long time.

[00:40:11] So maybe she hasn't had a lot of hardcore dragon on dragon battle experience, but maybe she's done a lot of skirmishing and, you know, knocking down a various foes, not only the crab eater, but other skirmishes before.

[00:40:25] And maybe she studied her histories a little bit and understands how to do that. And she says, attack, she doesn't say Dracarys. So at some point she lets go and lets the dragon choose how the dragon wants to engage in that particular moment.

[00:40:39] Right. Right. Yeah. I just don't know. I just don't know. I was even just double checking the wiki to see if there's any mention. I don't, I don't think there is any explicit mention of a melee's fighting

[00:40:49] before this. So must be training. It must be maybe dragon instinct. You know, they are mystical creatures from old Valerian who knows. Maybe they have their own, you know, the humans don't see it, but they have their own training yard. Right. They get,

[00:41:02] they get little bullied by their, by their bastard dads critics and you know, it's all fine. A quick note on Heron Hall from Abby on Heron Hall of it all. I like how they're adding several layers of member berries to the setting.

[00:41:16] Last episode, a bunch of bats house went sigil flew past Damon. I remember that. I remember all the bats flying out this episode. There was a black goat, Vargo, Hote and some dogs house Clegane lounging around hint to future

[00:41:33] occupants of rooms in this castle. That is a really good pick. Abby, you've earned another link in your chain. I was wondering about the goat. I was wondering about the dogs. I didn't make anything of the bats. I just thought it was cause it was creepy castle,

[00:41:48] but all of that is really good. Easter eggs picking up there. Very cool. We love it. Moone T Marine. We should start calling it Moone T Marine. You got to say clearly for the people, Colty, Colty. Oh, Marine.

[00:42:06] Did you see this meme going around that was like the face you make when no one wants to have your baby? And Nancy M exercises some of her privilege and says, hi everyone. I wanted to chime in on Alison and to say that for sure.

[00:42:21] She's a great person. She's a great person. She does include some personal details that she feels comfortable sharing. And so Nancy, thank you for sharing this personal detail with us. And we appreciate and understand that not an easy thing necessarily to share

[00:42:36] about. Anyway, it was two or three weeks since Kristen Cole had left. And by then she was pregnant. And so I just want to ask you to share some of the details that you feel comfortable sharing with us. I mean, I think it's a great idea.

[00:42:48] It's a great idea. And I think it's a great thing to share about. Anyway, it was two or three weeks since Kristen Cole had left. And by then she would have realized that her period wasn't coming and that she was carrying his baby.

[00:42:59] It is usually at the two or three week mark that a woman will notice she has missed her period and realize she's pregnant. The Moone T is not only to avoid pregnancy as when Raniere took it, but also to abort pregnancy as when Alison gave it to Diana.

[00:43:14] On a personal note, and here's the personal note thing. My first pregnancy resulted in a missed miscarriage. At the 12 week mark, I was told the baby had passed but not self-aborting, so I had to have surgery to remove the fetus.

[00:43:28] Well, after the surgery, I had been wearing a long green medieval dress. Had I been. She had not been. Yes. Had I been wearing a long green medieval dress and with my long dark hair, you could very well have mistaken me for Alison.

[00:43:44] I knew exactly the pain and discomfort she was feeling in her, and her physicality in the scene was me. Exactly. Thankfully, I had hot water bottles and didn't have to warm up stones in the fireplace. Thankfully.

[00:43:59] The only difference between us is that Alison didn't care about the child she was losing. Ouch. Perhaps this show, then this is some there was a good debate about Alison versus Cersei and who, and their various characters. And this, I think that's a very interesting point.

[00:44:15] Perhaps this shows how much she doesn't love Kristen. Imagine Cersei aborting one of her children. She got pregnant by her brother and I bet it never crossed her mind to order moon tea. Happily for me, I was soon pregnant again with my now 27 year old bundle of joy.

[00:44:31] So Nancy, thank you for sharing that intensely personal story. I'm glad for you and for your family that everything worked out in the, in the end. And I can't imagine, you know, managing through that, but it's, it's a very real thing. Pregnancy and complications are, are difficult.

[00:44:52] And the human body is an amazing machine, but it also is not, but there's just a lot that could go on. So I'm glad things were able to work out for you. That said, John, any, any comments or thoughts about Nancy's? Yeah. I mean, again, Nancy,

[00:45:09] really grateful that you were willing to share that and, and able to compare your experience with Alice's. And I think you're right. I don't know if she had a lot of love for that baby because she doesn't have a

[00:45:20] lot of love for her babies who actually made it to the other side. So yeah. I mean only Helena. She seems to show some affection towards. I wouldn't even say it's affection. It's, it's like, it's like, it's almost like guilt bonding. Right? Like she's,

[00:45:35] she's just like trying to be like, well, I gotta be nice to one of my kids because I suck to the rest of them. It's true. And yeah, I was just going to say too, about the physiology and the care and all of that kind of stuff,

[00:45:52] you know, that, that, you know, a lot of, you know, that we have modern medicine and that we can do a lot of the things that we can do is, is really a miracle. And so yeah, I imagine at that time, well, we saw it,

[00:46:05] we saw it in episode one, season one, right? We saw the worst of it. So. Well, Nancy, I'm glad you were able to get proper health care and, and thank you for sharing the story. I hope everyone can get proper health care that needs it. Agree.

[00:46:17] And to make the choices for themselves. Agreed. Agreed. John, should we take a break? On that note? Yeah, sure. All right, here we go. We'll be right back with more house of the dragon. And we're back with more house of the dragon.

[00:46:43] All right, John, let's talk a little team green and let's kick it off with Amond. Kyle M writes in by email and says, say what you will about Amond, devious little weasel killed Lucerys because of a dragon of dragon based incompetence kind of stole the dragon.

[00:46:59] He now uses to enact revenge over every real and perceived slight angry at the world in ways usually reserved for people who want to kill Batman, trying to do secret conspiracies with Kristen Cole of all the damn people in the world. Basically daemon with an eye patch.

[00:47:18] Well, didn't we saw something similar along those lines, didn't we? Seems like the kind of guy who would cut in front of you at breakfast buffet and take one bite of the last sausage link in the tray while looking direct at

[00:47:31] you. Roasting his idiot brother with the flames of his dragon does represent the first reasonably successful attempt at an assassination by any character on this show in the first half of the second season. So he gets one point in my book. Good. Yikes. Good. Yikes.

[00:47:51] Did you see this interview with a Amon's actor? I can't recall his name if only I had a show. If you only had a show guide, make sure that I call everybody by the right name. Let's see. Let's see if I can actually find him.

[00:48:03] It's sorted and I still can't find him because I'm looking in team green instead of team. There we go. Okay. So even Mitchell, he did an interview and they said, what's your favorite thing about your character? He said two words, deliciously

[00:48:16] evil. And I was like, that's, that's pretty good. Pretty good. Pretty good. You can tell this guy's having fun playing the role for sure. For sure. And it's a, he's, he's got some subtlety to it. He's got to, it can't just be,

[00:48:29] uh, that's one of the things I hated in a lot of movies where they take the main antagonists and they making, make them this screaming raging thing. And you know, I think it's much more, I think the way that,

[00:48:40] that Amon is being portrayed in this is much more interesting. I think Ewan Mitchell has that subtlety to go from the brothel where he's curled up in that very womb like, uh, image to being, you know,

[00:48:58] assassinating it, trying to attempt to kill his brother, you know, with a, with a gout of flame from his very large dragon. Yep. And you know, you watch that and you're like, he was aiming for him. This was not, he was like,

[00:49:09] I could take rainies on my own, but I need the excuse of them being together to really kill my brother. Yeah, it was perfect. It was absolutely perfect. Little friendly fire situation there. Yep. Question is, is Amon's,

[00:49:23] is he would, I think you did say this on the pod, didn't you? That overall, that Amon might be a better King in terms of a small folk perspective. I think he would. I think he would because he actually has a brain. He uses it for evil,

[00:49:37] but I think he only uses it for evil to suit his own ends. Right. And I don't think he would be served. Right. Yeah. And I don't think he would be served by having a revolting small folk,

[00:49:50] right. To having the bad taste in mouth of the small folk. I think he'd be very fair to the small folks so that he would retain power. I think that's his end game. Yeah. I think you would understand the strategic importance of having the small folk

[00:50:02] on your side. What was that Napoleon quote? Like four newspapers can do more damage than a thousand people with cross with a pitchforks. Oh, that's a good quote. I don't know if I know that one, but that seems very accurate. Yeah. So you're Googling again.

[00:50:16] I will try to find it. I'm trying to find it. You read the next one. I will read the next one. Thanks Kyle. Sid S by email. Hello again, friends. Hello, Sid. I was immensely flattered by your response to my comments on episode three's interesting little moment.

[00:50:28] Alan Amon twirling his coin in his hand during the council meeting as Kristen explains a possible battle plan as his own idea. Well said, thank you for writing in and please continue to do so. I'm currently rewatching episode four and because after that reception,

[00:50:41] I worry I may have set the bar too high for my own input. Don't worry. Keep setting your own bar. We'll keep reading your emails. That said, do you think Amon was disappointed that Agon lived?

[00:50:52] I swear I caught a smirk on Amon's face. When is there Amon not smirking? I know. On Amon's face when he ordered Vegard's Blaze to turn Sunfire into cheese crisp before the gold scale of the news.

[00:51:04] I certainly agree with the idea that Amon was working a bit of a plausible deniability when he was late to the show and ordered Vegard to open fire on both Agon and Rhaenys. Okay. So right here, I absolutely think anything we talked about this in the pod,

[00:51:20] he's giving Rhaenys time to engage with Agon so that he can come in and get his hands dirty. And he's also getting his hands dirty by getting his hands dirty by getting unobserved by either of them. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:51:37] So that Rhaenys is fully engaged in combat and thinking she's only fighting one dragon. He needed them to be locked in. Yeah. Because you see when he comes in, Agon would love to get out of the way, but instead he's held by the claws of Melee. Exactly.

[00:51:51] Continuing at worst, he gave his brother a taste of combat of the horror Agon was so eager to release on others at best. Agon, a brother who has tortured Aemon for his entire life, is dead and Aemond is king. Aemond can't lose.

[00:52:06] He was certainly eager to end Agon before Cole showed up. Crispy's recent actions at the small council may put him in a tight spot. Should Aemond be crowned. Aemond has nothing to lose if Crispy fails as it is just as easy to blame

[00:52:21] Crispy as it is to aid him when you're riding the largest dragon. I don't think anyone except Cole and Aemond knew the pair intended to keep Vhagar in wait for the assault on Rook's Rest.

[00:52:34] And Crispy needs Agon to live if he is to prevent Aemond's wrath from meeting his neck. Aemond is utterly basking in his best self in this episode. He outperformed his older brother in front of the small council. He killed the Black's most experienced rider and dragon.

[00:52:53] And his plans for the war are mostly going as planned. Thoughts? Yeah, Agon is stupid. That's really the moral of the story. He's just a dumb guy and he doesn't think things through and he never was meant to be king. That's why his dad didn't train him.

[00:53:09] Now, would it be a good idea to maybe train the backup heir just in case? You know, just in case anything happens to Rhaenyra. You never know. Sure. Is Viserys the most long-sighted? No. So he did nothing.

[00:53:25] You know, where is it to train a cadre of your kids and your kids' kids in the ethics of governance and supporting each other and yeah, maybe this one's king but you have important roles and duties to fulfill and supporting and

[00:53:42] maintaining our family's legacy over the long term. I don't know. I guess kids will be kids at some point. You know, George Carlin once said that at every funeral there's somebody who goes, you know, I think he's looking down at us from up there and he's

[00:53:59] smiling and I feel like that's Viserys at every family gathering. Like if there's ever a funeral, Viserys is just like, you know, we should all get together again. And that's his whole vibe. He's the drunk uncle who never actually solves any problems but is like,

[00:54:14] you know, everything will be fine if we all get together for dinner once a year. He's in it for the vibes. Yeah. He's absolutely in the vibes. I think this, I think Syd's email points out something interesting too is this precarious position that Cole is in

[00:54:28] between Alicent, between Aegon and between Aemond. Now that Otto is out of the way, he's in a very difficult position because he's conspiring against his king. I don't know. Alicent was on top. That's not too difficult. But then Aemond is not happy with his mother.

[00:54:50] So in that position, Cole is at odds with his war buddy, right? The one who they're making secret plans of. Yep. And of course on the other side, Aegon made him hand of the king, right? So he kind of has an allegiance to that.

[00:55:05] So he's really in the triangle here. He's this, he's in a very precarious position between all of these different power centers. I see. I can't have sympathy for him. You know, like he might be the least sympathetic character in the whole show.

[00:55:17] At least Alicent had a, you know, a dumb, a dumb but real interpretation of Viserys where she thought she was doing his wishes. Mm-hmm. There's no, everybody else around her knew that this was a complete farce.

[00:55:34] And Kristen went in with it because he is an incel who didn't know how to get over a breakup. And yeah, yeah. Nobody wants his babies and I don't feel badly for him. I'm trying to look up the quote about the failure to your level of

[00:55:48] incompetence or something like that. Oh yeah. You fail up to the, to your level of incompetence. That's a whole thing. That's the Michael Scott effect, right? Right. Is Michael Scott's a great salesman. They promote them to regional manager of dendromyphlin and all of a sudden he

[00:55:58] doesn't do any work. Like that's, that's just where he, that's what happens in a lot of places. Not, not in places that manage well, but in a lot of places and boy, the red keep doesn't manage very well. Does it?

[00:56:10] Not at all. Not since auto got the boot. So I see. What's that Monty Python quote if we're going to keep quoting stuff is like, I don't think strange women in magic lakes, strange women in magic stores are any basis to form a system of government.

[00:56:23] That's right. Yeah. Watery tarts, I believe is the, is the correct term. We see. Yeah, I know there's been some talk about Monty Python bubbling around the edges of a, and it would be fun. Well, you know, maybe if we do that thing that we've been talking about,

[00:56:38] somebody will push that as a title forward. There you go. Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets. Oh, I put that in there. That's the, yeah, that's the, that was your quote.

[00:56:50] Yep. All right. Agon, let's do some egg on trash and Kim M by email. Hey Nancy masters whispers. I've decided that's your new title. So it shall be when Alison and Agon are,

[00:57:03] who are we to go against the word of Kim M when Alison and Agon are speaking in his room and she tells him to be quiet and listens, listen to the more experienced people. It reminds me of one of my favorite quotes. You're a house cat.

[00:57:17] You're a house cat. You're very important to, a very important and have little to do. It's from Madman. That's a good point. Well, your cat got out right before this. So, you know, she got, yeah, she came back and she was just walking around outside.

[00:57:31] And then she came when I called her and yeah, just chilling. You were like, I may be delayed. And I was like, Oh no, I will. I'll save it for second breakfast. But our, our cat got crafty and, and you know, your cat just has,

[00:57:43] it's very important and has little to do and just needs to learn to live with that. I will say that our cat has fulfilled its promise and it has rid our house of several rodents from the interior of our house. So nice.

[00:57:56] Do you know what my dog did when he saw a rat when I lived in Atlanta? No, he just looked at it. I was like, what the fuck are you here for? He's here for something entirely different.

[00:58:08] But my, my dog, he would, we don't have many more. He's with my in-laws now. They've, they've adopted him just cause it works better with their house. But he would always kill like possums, which are great for the environment and great for getting rid of ticks.

[00:58:22] And then he sees a rat where he could, he could actually do something for us. He's like, nah, I'm not interested. Sorry. Wrong breed. Sadie, a gun knocks a golden dragon pitcher off the table and it shatters foreshadowing.

[00:58:37] Yeah. I didn't think that it was a gold. That's really good point. It was golden. It was a golden color. That picture. That's, that's very cool. That is cool. I mean, I knew that it was a picture, a dragon on it, right?

[00:58:45] But then I didn't realize it was a gold one. So awesome. Sub-zero. When Kristen walked up to Agon Sun, the, the Agon Sunfire heap, the mound, Amon had a sword out. That's telling me Agon is still alive and Kristen prevented Amon from

[00:59:01] finishing his brother off. We've got a little bit more. We've got a little bit more. Let me go to Severin here. Also says, okay, two possibilities here. Agon is dead. He was sad about his brother and mother telling him how stupid he is and how no

[00:59:15] one on the council respect him. And so he threw a little tantrum, da, da, da, da, flew into a stupid position where his brother who hates him or anyone else really torched him out of the sky. Just classic petulant loser behavior.

[00:59:27] But with the dragon, same as everything in the first point, but he survives with massive injuries. God, imagine how much worse he'll be then the whining will be incessant. I suppose you do deserve some level of grievance after your evil brother tries

[00:59:44] to turn you into a piece of brat jerky. Even then it's tough to feel sympathy for him. So John, we talked about it's clearly ambiguous, but by the laws of plot mechanics of television shows,

[01:00:01] I am saying that he is indeed as with what sets up zero saying here is that he is indeed alive, physically alive. Now what state he's in, that's to be questioned. But if he was dead, dead,

[01:00:16] why didn't you just show us in the episode that he's dead? Dead? Yeah. I got a waffle on this one. I will say on the other point, which is, you know, he's, he's going to be whiny, but also like,

[01:00:25] he's going to be mad at his brother. Let's go down the line of succession here. Right? So he, he, even if he thinks, even if he knows, which I think he does know that Eamon tried to kill him there.

[01:00:38] Next step in succession is Eamon next up is, Oh, there are no other males in the line now. Oh, I wonder who's next. Who's the next oldest. Who's not a male. That would be Raniera. Wouldn't it? So what happens next?

[01:00:52] Do you think they're going to go pass it to her? No. That's interesting. I didn't think that. Okay. So it would, it would flick back over. There's no other males, right? So it's got to do with the next. So there's no yeah. That Rene's is dead.

[01:01:05] So there's no older women, woman than Raniera in the line. Wow. I didn't realize that. That's actually kind of a cool little factoid. Yeah. So whether he believes that Eamon tried to kill him or not, there's going to be no, you know, abdicating. Well,

[01:01:24] well getting Eamon out of the picture, right? There's no going to give, there's gonna be no jailing of Eamon. He's not going to face consequences. And Eamon has no sires of his own as we, as far as we know. Right.

[01:01:34] And Agon's only son died. Right. Wow. Very cool. Okay. Actually I just misspoke that entire time because Darren exists. We have that confirmation in the show. That is Alison's. No, no third son. Third son. Oh, okay. So that was just.

[01:01:51] The baby of baby. So I'm, I'm a liar. Everyone. Everyone ignored. No, I'm going to leave it in till everybody knows I'm an idiot. I did realize my mistake eventually everyone calmed down. Where is he?

[01:02:02] I'm trying to scan the, do we have an entry form? I, but yes, he's in, he's a image because he's a drawing because we don't have a picture of him yet. Green. But yeah, he is, you can see him. He's right under Eamon. Okay.

[01:02:15] Cause I, so I tried to sort it with the siblings together. Right. And. Oh yeah. Darren. And where is Darren? Darren is over in, I actually made a tick talk about him waiting for auto to pick him up from summer camp in old town is in old town.

[01:02:28] And because remember we got that little name drop. Yes. So I think two, it was where he's like, look, I'll go to old town. You have a son there, Darren. And it's just like, Oh, we are going to get this right. Not in this season. Right.

[01:02:43] That we know. I don't know. It's pretty late. I don't know. It is pretty late, but you know, does he have a place to play? Does he have a role to play? Wafo. Did Eamon have murder in his heart?

[01:02:58] Was he going to deliver a crude coup de gras? Yes. I didn't think so at first and then I rewatched it and I was like, yeah, he was going to kill him. And I don't, again, I don't know if he had like a,

[01:03:09] this certainly wasn't a heat of passion murder, right? Like this was, this was a premeditated. I'm going to take the crown. This guy's an idiot. He's going to get the rest of us killed. Right. And I got to clean. Yeah.

[01:03:20] I got to clean the rest of this up and then it gets caught by crispy. In the end, I think that Amon's probably right. Like this is, we're in full moral relativism here, but I think Amon's absolutely right that probably a lot less suffering will

[01:03:36] happen if Amon's allowed to cleanly finish the war and then rule. So the, and this goes back, I don't know, do we have any Renee? Yes. We have some Renee's talk. Had certain characters acted at certain points, we would not be here.

[01:03:51] Yeah. Right. And that's a continuous, that's that. Not only are we sort of stumbling headlong into the war, like we've got a bunch of bloodthirsty members on the council and everybody's, you know,

[01:04:04] on the young one to fight and everybody wants to get it on at the same time at certain key decisive moments when things could have been ended, they did not, that did not happen. And so there's these opportunities to resolve this rather quickly with some

[01:04:19] bloodshed and some violence that quickly cinch this off. If certain people had acted in certain capacities at certain stages. Yeah. And somebody made a really good take online. Somebody had a really good take, which was, you know, people were questioning, well,

[01:04:36] why did Renee's go back because she's supposed to be so wise and why did she go back? Think about how much she got from Damon. When he goes, Luke would be alive. Had you done what you needed to do when you had the opportunity. Yep.

[01:04:51] And I do think that there is some anti-Renee's left that is not, you know, a cold calculating person who's like, maybe I could save someone else if I sacrifice myself taking Vagar down, at least maybe I can do some damage. So Vagar is less threatening

[01:05:06] and Vagar was wounded, but going one on one. So we're kind of jumping ahead to the rainy, some of the rainy stuff, but it was not a smart decision to try to, to take on Vagar one-on-one.

[01:05:19] No, Vagar will be fine with a Snoopy bandaid, honestly. Like he's just, I'm sorry. She, she is just not that damaged. It seems like to me, I feel a little bit of wounded and a little bit wiser. That's what I'm calling it. Yeah, exactly.

[01:05:32] But still there's very little, there's basically no way to take out Vagar on a one V one. It's gotta be two V one. There's a lot of holes in those wings though. I'm just thinking about that. Well, this thing is you get that's if, if Vagar can be,

[01:05:48] Vagar's attention can be focused on one particular dragon. The second dragon can come in and assail from behind, tear up wings, bite tails, you know, work on the underside and the soft underside. So there's, you know, you really got to go two-on-one in this regard. Anyway,

[01:06:03] let's talk about Alicent. Sid continues with their email. How about Alicent's descent into Cersei Lannister territory? Incessantly drinking as she wallows in her own self-pity, later weaponizing her disdain for her circumstances against Aegon. And then she's going to be able to get out of the way of the

[01:06:22] Renir displays resolve as Alicent melted into her cups fitting really, Alicent has never had her resolve put into question. It's an interesting point. I like that. She's never been really tested until now. Like until these, these last few moments when she courted Viserys,

[01:06:38] she believed it was justified when she crowned Aegon, she believed it was justified. And then she's going to be able to get out of the way of the Renir. She's never been really tested until now. Like until these, these last few moments when she courted Viserys,

[01:06:54] she believed it was justified when she crowned Aegon, she believed it was justified when she scorned Renira justified. But now much of that may have been founded on a lie. She dove into her cups, a sinful indulgence. In the face of a defiant son,

[01:07:12] Renir expresses love care and logic to Jace. He encourages him to pursue his own demise while emboldening his grudge against her insights. Alicent lost her ability to exude the grace she showed when she was gifted a repaired stone dragon to Viserys.

[01:07:30] Now all we see is an angry scorned woman reducing herself to hypocrisy. I love this tie in with the stone dragon that, and this idea of grace and this rep and repairs. Nice job, Sid. John, what do you think?

[01:07:47] Yeah, she was all about forging an alliance with Viserys, right? Tying two families together. And now what she's doing is she's breaking the Targaryens apart and she's doubling down on it. All of, you know, the veil has been lifted.

[01:08:00] She is aware of all the facts now and she is choosing to not say anything. Then again, I think she says something right now and they lock her in a dungeon until the war's over. Absolutely. Which I think is the deliciousness of the story is that she's

[01:08:16] trapped by her own thing. And I think when Laerys closes the book and, you know, as, as she says, you know, it doesn't matter what the intentions are anymore. Boom, book close. That's, it's a, it's brilliant. It's, that's why this show is so good. Right. That's what.

[01:08:33] Yeah. Yeah. Alicent just has a lot of things to say all the time and it's never good. It's never good. You ever, you remember it always, not always sunny in, what we do in the shadows. She speaks the bullshit.

[01:08:46] That's how I feel about her. She speaks the bullshit. It's true. Speaking of a little voice missives. We have a voicemail from Michael, AKA dork of the ninjas good friend of the pod. We haven't heard from you in a while, Michael,

[01:09:01] thanks for sending in a voicemail. Let's listen now. Here we go. Hey guys, I just want to get my thoughts on hot G episode four, loving the show so far, but it's really want to give my thoughts on basically the course of a lot of

[01:09:14] people are going to be talking about at the end of the episode. I think it doesn't truly matter whether a gun is or is not alive at this point, either way. And then there's going to be a unchecked power that Christian is going to

[01:09:32] realize he has unleashed this person. He's given him so much power, I like this whether intentionally or not that he is going to realize, Oh shit, what have I done? And he's going to have to answer for that and also is going to have to deal

[01:09:50] with what, see what, if he can even put that genie back in the bottle, which I don't think he can. And I think he's starting to realize that what he falls on his face at the end of this episode,

[01:10:01] I hate the guy just like almost everybody in the show. But I feel a little bit of sympathy for him. And the fact is like, you just realized how bad you fucked up in a way and you didn't even realize that. You know, I think you're absolutely right,

[01:10:16] Michael. And the moral of the story is even with Kristen Cole, she speaks the bullshit. I just, you know, you say you have a little bit of sympathy for him. I can't be there with you. I'm sorry, Michael, you're on your own.

[01:10:32] I think this is a really interesting take that, uh, Amon is now unfettered. And I was saying a little bit as much on the podcast in that with a going out of the way, Amon's and you know, is, is unfettered. He's free to do it.

[01:10:49] I think Michael takes, uh, takes it to the next level, which is yeah, the, he is now going to expand and expand and expand until another greater power checks him. Which I think then is interesting given that Damon is having visions of himself as,

[01:11:07] as a Mond and that this conflict between these two is yet to come. Right. I, I'm excited and interested in that. Me too. I'm, I am excited to see Kristen. I, you know, I'm a guy, it's fun to watch him realize how badly he fucked up, especially,

[01:11:28] you know, at the end of this, this episode, I made the meme and it got very popular because it's true, which is that he's looking up going, Oh my God, this is dragon on dragon war. Oh my God, it is real. It's real. Somebody get a fire extinguisher.

[01:11:41] Like this is just, and now he's going to be like, oh, and now he's trying to, Amon's trying to kill the king. What did I do here? Who did I put in power? And who on the council is going to oppose Amon? If a gun is disabled,

[01:11:56] you know, I don't know how much that armor absorbed the impact of falling. How much of the tree branches and sunfire broke his fall? How much of that armor absorbed the, you know, was ablative to the heat that in the fire. Yeah. We did it melt at all.

[01:12:13] We don't know. Well, I think it's, it's a good question. I think it's a good question. Yeah, but it's not meant to take dragon fire. It's meant to give dragon fire, right? Interesting. Okay. Like the whole point is he,

[01:12:27] he had it forward so he could go conquer dragonless people. Right. Okay. Okay. These are lore bits. I am an initiated with. Well, Egon was born on dragon. So, and he was not from Valeria. The Targaryens were on dragon stone for a few generations before Aegon ever

[01:12:45] decided to become a dragon. a few generations before Aegon ever decided to conquer. Okay. So that would have been forged for him, you know, after they didn't have any dragon enemies anymore. Okay. Got it. Regardless, the,

[01:12:59] the point is is that Aegon is not going to be feeling very well for a little while yet. So who on the council is going to oppose Aemond? I don't think anybody could, right? He's the acting, you know, he's the acting king then, right?

[01:13:13] Even, even if Aegon is just sort of, you know, unconscious in bed and he's acting king. Well, I don't know. What I'm just going to say is that Aemond as he's growing in power is going to

[01:13:23] be harder and harder to resist no matter what other power structures exist around him. Yeah. He's going to go around them. He's going to work with the council in different ways. And I think people are going to be receptive to what he's got. So.

[01:13:36] Boy, how do they, uh, they really need a 25th amendment here. It's called the Jamie Lannister. Yeah. Right. The Kingslayer back over to team black, Rainey's double T from Melbourne, Australia, Melbourne, how things down under, I'm not even going to try an Australian accent,

[01:13:56] even though I spent some time there. Um, it just sounds terrible when I do it. Seven blessings and to you loving the show, but I feel that some poor decisions or badly depicted character choices are detracting from it slightly. Oh, a, a little bit of an, uh,

[01:14:11] a negative take here. This is good. Let's let's hear what you, what a double T's got to say last week we had Raniere risking everything on a fool hardy trip to meet with the King's mother who apart from the long list of

[01:14:26] reasons as to why this was a bad idea has limited influence. Now this week I feel like the best effort has been to get Raniere to come back. This episode of the season was slightly undermined by Raniere's inexplicable

[01:14:43] decision to turn around and go on a suicide run against Vagar. I don't get it. And most importantly, the show failed to make her reasons or motivations clear. In fact, Raniere has only ever been shown to be wise, considered and not prone to irrational impulsive actions.

[01:15:03] She knows that one battle over a minor stronghold does not determine a war. She knows that dragons are a priceless and limited commodity in this war and that Maylis is one of the Black's most prized assets. She saw that Sunfire and the King had fallen.

[01:15:20] She fought Vagar and survived and then had the opportunity to withdraw, which would mean a huge victory for her side. Huge. A fully grown dragon and the King himself likely killed in the first major battle of the war. If Raniere,

[01:15:37] arguably the most rational and level-headed character on the show is to risk throwing that enormous advantage away, there needed to be very clearly laid out reason. There wasn't. All we're left with is a couple of facial expressions to speculate over.

[01:15:53] What adds to the frustration is that Raniere would have known Vagar better than anyone on her side. Vagar was her daughter's dragon for decades. Raniere would have had intimate knowledge of Vagar and would know that a coordinated attack with multiple dragons is required to bring down the great

[01:16:15] beast. Throwing away a priceless dragon on a one-on-one stooge, I guess that must be some Australia-isms, is absurd and something we should only expect from the impulsive, reckless young men in the story. To me, a far better option would have been having Maelys injured to some extent where

[01:16:38] escape wasn't possible. Maybe a wing was too damaged. And so the only option was a final heroic stand against Vagar. To me, that's far better than willingly throwing her life away along with arguably the Black's most potent weapon. Loving the show and curious about your thoughts.

[01:16:58] This is a very good email. I think this is a very well-reasoned with some backing up with some good facts. John, what do you think? It is well-reasoned and I'm going to go poke some holes in it. Okay.

[01:17:09] So one quick thing that I had to check the wiki for, but I was pretty sure was, I don't know if it's true that Raniere would have had that much time with Vagar because Lena only had only got Vagar 11 years before her death in the

[01:17:26] show timeline. And most of that was spent living with Damon and because, you know, cause she got married really young to Damon and then they moved to Esso's for awhile. Okay. So I don't, I don't think that Vagar would have actually been around Raniere that much.

[01:17:40] Okay. Who had Vagar before? Nobody. Remember Vagar was said to be like lost. Like nobody, there were rumors of where she was, but nobody, nobody knew. I believe the last writer was Visenya.

[01:17:51] I could be wrong about that. Let me check, let me check. Let's let's not get the ads Vagar, a wiki of ice and fire. Yeah. So we had, okay. Bailon actually also wrote it. Bailon was the father of Viserys. Okay. So yeah. Anyway,

[01:18:12] the point is I think that it is reasonable to say she doesn't have that much experience with her, but that's kind of a secondary point anyway. So I don't want to linger on it. I think we talked more about this idea before we just talked about how Raniere

[01:18:26] probably had some lingering guilt from the way Luke died because she didn't act when she could have. And I do think that there's a sense of, I know that this war is going to be absolutely brutal and my husband is off

[01:18:41] with his bastards and this council is falling apart and we are screwed. And I have to just try a Hail Mary here and hope that it works. And if not, then at least I don't have to see all this death and destruction.

[01:18:54] That's kind of in my head. You know, she, I don't think she wanted to die, but I think she was at peace with it. Right. My thought was that, yeah, I think the tactical decision to not send a second dragon was all the way to the

[01:19:10] top there. So that's, that's different having not, you know, having a couple of other options to intervene in the war. Yeah. Those are problematic. I think where she screwed up in this specific instance was as she's flying over

[01:19:25] the battlefield and she doesn't see Vagar where she last saw her on the ground. And she's looking around and you can see it in the thing and she's kind of like, well not here. So maybe I'll take off, maybe I'll just get out of here.

[01:19:43] And as she's starting to fly towards the castle and over the cliff, that's where she gets ambushed. So her mistake was not expecting the ambush. Right. Not expecting that Vagar was still a threat.

[01:19:54] She kind of relaxed in that moment and flew over at an altitude where she could not see. Yeah. That was the dumbest thing she did. Yeah. I do agree there were some things that were a little bit like I,

[01:20:06] I'm not, I'm not going to just say you're wrong. Double T. I think that there are definitely nitpicks you can have with the way that her ending was handled. But I was so taken with the emotion and the execution that I'm willing to

[01:20:19] overlook those nitpicks. That's kind of where I am. The feels outweigh. I mean, but that's, that's the sign of a good TV show, right? Is I feel enough where I can suspend my disbelief and overlook maybe some minor quibbles. Right, right. And once we start trying to determine,

[01:20:34] Oh, does this make sense with this? Once we start trying to poke the holes, I think that the show's already not doing a job. So I hope the show can bring you back in. I think, I think, I think double T is enjoying the show for sure.

[01:20:45] Loving the show is that last line. Certainly legitimate criticisms. I'm not here. I'm not here to tell you that you're wrong. You obviously, you know, you got your opinions. We all have ours. I will say that I think that the show is a good show.

[01:20:58] I will say that there is a, there has been a little bit of debate on whether Renisa, what were Renisa's motivations and was this sort of a suicide mission? And you know, at what stage does she decide that she's all in and there's a point where she

[01:21:10] does, right. Cause she clips herself in and tightens up her belt and says, right, I got to do as much damage as I can here. But if we're debating it this much, then the show did fail slightly in setting up the characters final motivation.

[01:21:24] To, to go in for that last pass. And you know, was that fatalism on her part? Had she given up? That's something that's, you know, that's what we're debating. So. Right. Right. All right. Aaron T our good friend, Aaron T are over at radioactive ramblings.

[01:21:39] And one of our co-hosts and discord moderators all around and graphic design kind of pixel bashers. And we're going to talk about how they're doing it. And we're going to talk about how they're doing it. And we're going to talk about how they're doing it.

[01:21:51] And graphic design kind of pixel basher, John, without Aaron's efforts. I think the show guide would have been a lot more work because definitely graphics have been great. All the little sigils and everything. Always a delight. And thank you, Aaron.

[01:22:06] By email hail lore hounds hail hand pod, Nancy, this one hurt. I knew what to expect with the battle of rooks rest, but what I had not anticipated was the old hold the door level of emotion.

[01:22:19] I'd feel when we lost May lease and rainies the look shared between dragon and writer before heading back into the fray for the final time was just too much and points to the visual effects artists for effectively showing the audience that there's something happening behind the dragon's eyes.

[01:22:36] The evident, uh, the evident depth of connection between dragon and writer made this scene all the more impactful, especially when compared to the vagar Arax bout last season in which we saw dragons guided solely by their own will.

[01:22:52] I'm pouring one out for of my finest flagging for the red queen and the queen who never was loving the coverage as always, Aaron, this, I, I, I have to echo his point that they can with CGI ed animation, make me feel something with that dragon's death.

[01:23:10] That's good job guys. It is very impressive and the way that may at least looks back is just heartbreaking, really heartbreaking. Somebody, somebody compared it to like a dog dying in a movie and I was like,

[01:23:21] I don't know if I'm going to go that far, but it's, it's close. It's close. They get, they really got there and it is very impressive. Yeah, it's a, it's super good and yeah,

[01:23:33] I mean like we hardly knew mainly, I mean we knew may at least a little bit. Obviously we know rainies very well, uh, but that you really did feel the bond between those two. And so when one dies and then the other, yeah, it was,

[01:23:44] it was a double whammy for sure. Kim M by email. I'm sad about losing Renee's and may lease and she's been one of my favorite characters. It seems like there was a point when she could have escaped to back to

[01:23:56] Dragonstone, but she chose to go back and surely die. She and maybe these both seemed upset about injuring Sunfire. Maybe she wanted to die. I don't know that she wanted to die, but I think she wanted to leave it like give everything, you know, give it,

[01:24:13] give as much as she could to make as much of an impact as possible. And I think it was, if I die, I die. If I live, I live right. It was just, yeah. It was like I said, at peace with going if she needed to,

[01:24:26] but she would have rather gone home to her granddaughters and you know, sat on the council still. But I also think she saw a little bit, the writing on the wall that this war is going to be brutal and she's already

[01:24:37] lost a lot in the lead up to this war. All of her children. She knows her dragons already wounded. I think her dragon is pretty old by now too. That's like her dragons old and you know, her granddaughter is being sent away.

[01:24:52] Her relationship is a little iffy. Yeah. Everything's just really bad right now. And so she's like, look, what I can do right now, what I have control over right now is serving this queen and trying to take down that other dragon.

[01:25:03] She tries to do as much damage to the others as possible. Kyle in by email, Renee's was one of the few characters on the show who deserve much better, which is probably why she had to die. That's it. Right. That's the,

[01:25:17] that's the germ thing here. Right. You know, as soon as you start to like someone, you got a fear, right? Rob Stark guy seems great. I hope, but nothing bad ever happens to him. There just are not many sympathetic people on this show or at least people

[01:25:32] whose deaths would make you feel things. The show does not let likable characters stick around too long as a rule, which is why I've been worried about this kind of thing happening sooner rather than later.

[01:25:41] Renee's just got off too many good lines and did too many noble things like sending herself into battle in the place of Raniere. I should have known she was a goner. I should have known she was a goner.

[01:25:50] I should have known she was a goner as soon as that happened. I hope she starts haunting Damon in his next visit and his visions next. Sorry. Indeed. Sid, more of Sid's email may lease and Renee's were absolute Queens in this episode.

[01:26:05] Notably Renee's headgear certainly seemed to resemble a crown to a degree. Absolutely. It did. The queen that never was died for caused. She believed in the moment she saw Vagar become player three in the arena. She immediately fastened her seatbelt as if to say, I'm ready.

[01:26:23] I get the feeling that Renee's was ready to depart upon learning a war involving scaled nuclear warheads was the next logical step, which goes to your point a little bit, John. Yeah. She discovered her husband and tired of bastard betrayed in their matrimony.

[01:26:37] She lost her only daughter as well as her only son and she discovered her husband's infidelity. On top of all that, her kingdom is about to be burned worse than immense radar. The King beyond the wall. No. Renee's is very clever.

[01:26:50] Clearly resigned when she fastened her strap to May lease before ordering to ordering the attack on Vagar. I can't help but wonder if she thought about her interruption of a guns crowning just before her end.

[01:27:03] Did she have any regrets about not burning the greens down then and there? Would she have been more wise to partake in Damon's plot to use crowning and may lease against Vagar at the start of the conflict.

[01:27:15] Renee's is glance and response and lack of resistance to Ray Nisa's assertion. Raniera's glance in response and lack of resistance to Renee's assertion that she must be the one to defend the rooks rest was extremely telling. Raniera's face perfectly encapsulated her awareness of what needed to be done

[01:27:35] and her silence exclaimed that she did not want to give the order as always. Emma Darcy's acting was on point as was Eve's best. Eve bests. Bests. Indeed. Marine D not to detract from the valor of Renee's staying in the battle.

[01:27:54] I'm wondering how much of her turning back was a suicide mission in the context of the earlier scene where she can reach Corliss on his son. Was she brokenhearted? Her performance is so nuanced. There are so many things going on sad and brave Marine.

[01:28:09] Yeah, I think I added something in the conversation on the main pod, which was the double language that she uses to Corliss. She's like, you know, clearly this, but he also saved your life so he should be raised up.

[01:28:26] Don't let and then at the same time saying don't hide your bastard in the tides. So she was, it was a beautifully new one. It was beautifully written and a beautifully portrayed portrayal by Eve best. So it is very sad. The whole thing is very sad.

[01:28:44] I miss Renee's already may her memory be a blessing or I, and now her watch has ended. Right? That's what we say on this show. Like that Rocky's him. I think that in the battle before Renee's turned back, she knew that if she fled,

[01:28:57] they would just have to face Vega again. Fair enough, but still I'm thinking she wanted to fight and at least injure Vega for Damon and the others to have a better chance of defeating Vega. Renee's knew that she was what she was doing.

[01:29:10] And I don't think suicide was the mission maybe just to preserve, maybe just to prove that Vega can bleed. So again, yeah, I think sort of dancing all around the same themes here of like how much damage she could, she do in this one engagement to continue to,

[01:29:28] to give the greens or give the blacks an advantage. I wonder if part of it is if I can wound Vigar enough, they'll just kill the whole army underneath them. Like a big acid balloon popping over that army above. Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough. Or crashing to the ground.

[01:29:46] Yeah. Caboose. Yeah. I will say though, the feedback and on this and the whole thing with Renee's and the emotional thing, but in watching the dragons fight really just to get a sense of what's really just a great episode and what a great spectacle to,

[01:30:04] to be able to participate in. It was an enjoyable to a huge degree. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Let's talk a little bit about Damon. Sid's email continues. Admittedly, I don't find myself at all invested in the Damon dream scenes. Okay.

[01:30:21] I certainly think Alice rivers is messing with Damon though. I don't understand to what end, and I'm not sure I care to be honest, but who am I to say a fun mushroom trip here or there doesn't have any value. Damon's meeting with young Tully was entertaining,

[01:30:36] entertaining to say the least once Oscar Tully stumble to sit down under undoubtedly fed Damon's ego as he directly stated, the kid was better off killing the elder Tully speed along. Your inheritance was a martialist statement. It was very funny.

[01:30:55] I'm interested to see Damon's response to the greens disregard for Harrenhal. Will he bite the bait and rushed to Dragonstone? Uh, Dragonstone's rescue from the greens attempted isolation. Will he betray the ever oil Blackwoods for the quick satisfaction of

[01:31:12] enlisting the Brackens his decisions in the next episode will impact the entire war. Good point. I'm not sure he's aware or cares about the impact of his next steps on the war at hand. He seems only to seek glory much like a moment.

[01:31:29] Last thought I have is the juxtaposition of a moment to Damon. It's very clear that a man is utilizing power. The Saris would not allow Damon to wield good point as well. He's succeeding while Damon flounders another good point to tack on another

[01:31:47] commenter's point regarding Amon's internal armor. I love that take. Amon has very clearly internalized his confidence where Damon continues to operate on external validation. Another good point is action show a need for others to acknowledge his power where Amon simply projects it, uh,

[01:32:10] where Amon's simply projects it and steps on those who don't respect his power. So when he gets up in the brothel and just walks out and he's like, okay, cool. I'll see you guys later. I mean, how many of these battles could have been avoided with a hug?

[01:32:25] Right? Like just, just hug your children. Everyone get out. Continuing. I'm not sure Alice rivers mind games would work on Amon. Uh, just in question, Damon lashes out at anyone who challenges him, IE fails to validate him. Whereas Amon simply proves his challenges wrong.

[01:32:42] The dichotomy of Damon versus Amon is interesting dance between dragons in and of itself. The small council backs, Amon where the small council always argued against Damon as always. Thanks for the entertaining and my verbose thoughts.

[01:32:57] Thanks for entertaining my verbose thoughts and thanks for doing what you do. Take care. Awesome humans. Thank you, Sid, for that amazing, uh, set of one email, but a set of points. I love this mirroring. I didn't even think about this, this whole thing with, uh,

[01:33:14] Amen and Amen, and their respective councils and, uh, the inverse of each other. Yeah. Yeah. I do like that a lot at night and I'm wondering where we're going with, uh, Damon seeing himself as Amen. Mm-hmm. Inherently. And what's up with Alice? Because, uh,

[01:33:33] I like Alice rivers a lot. I hope we get to see, should go ask Alice when that should go ask. I'm not a book that everybody was forced to read. Uh, was it, or was it a song? I can't remember now. No, I think it was a song.

[01:33:45] I, well, I think Alice, well, I'm thinking of a, you're thinking about white rabbit. Yes. He's talking about right. White rabbit. I'm talking about the book that was about somebody getting, uh, into drug addiction, which ended up being disproved that this whole thing was pretty much almost

[01:33:58] entirely fabricated by the author. Anyway, let's talk about Jace. Thank you for cutting me off before I go. Rocky's him. Jace is way better off, uh, way better of an air than a gun. A gun could have been nice to Amen and had a better chance at war,

[01:34:07] knowing what was going on. That's a good point. I think it's a good point. I think it's a good point. Quit teasing your brother and maybe they'll, you know, that you're the smarter brother and maybe they would clue you in on to, uh, what's going on. Uh,

[01:34:22] Alice rivers, Kyle M Alice rivers, just hanging out being creepy and making potions to give to the various blonde visitors are perfect television character. Kathy W sorry to say guys, but I, Oh, let's see. Uh, that's about accents. Okay. So Alice rivers, um, randomly passing out potions. John,

[01:34:45] would you, if Alice said, do you drink this? No, no. And I don't understand why the peas are the problem in this house. She's licking her fingers off of whatever it is. And we have no idea. I don't know if it was,

[01:34:58] maybe that's why he was drinking it right. Is that she's looking at her fingers the whole time. It's like, ah, she didn't poison it. Craziness. Okay. Uh, a little bit on the accent issue. Kathy W sorry to say guys,

[01:35:09] but I think you've come up with a good one. I think you've come a bit too far Southwest on the accent search. Oh yeah. My cannon fodder yielded results. I'm pretty sure that Scottish just maybe a softer one than you might be used to.

[01:35:25] If you watched everyone's favorite, a wildling Ygritte in the BBC mini series vigil, which is a clash show by the way, she's got a very similar accent. Abby also, uh, chimes in responding to the call out during the hot takes about Alice's Alice Rivers accents.

[01:35:41] I don't mind it. She is from West Rose and a witch reportedly. So it's totally her choice to pretend to be from wherever her accent points to, to me, it pointed North in world. This points to an old God's connections, which seemed to be the intent.

[01:36:00] There is no America nor Galway in planet toes. Good point. Abby, totally different from Miss Aria, who is a foreigner to these particular lands whose life took her here and there and all over the place that might influence her accent in West Rose.

[01:36:18] However atrocious it might sound to our world. I like this idea that using this, um, uh, this particular, uh, um, accent codes as being connected to the old gods. Like we do a lot of that with Scottish and Irish accents. Like it,

[01:36:40] it reaches into some sort of North American Northern European English connection mythos mythology thing. Yes, I agree with that. And the more we can bring the North into this story, the more I'm happy, but I don't think it's going to happen for a while. Hmm. Yeah.

[01:37:00] We've got one little visit to the wall and that was, uh, that was it. Dragons. Okay. We're wrapping up here. We're coming to the end. Uh, Sid S O we've got another sip it from Sid.

[01:37:12] I have to say this episode gave me the same feeling I get when a dog is killed. So that's the email. So that's what reminded me of it. Okay. Thank you, Sid for letting me plagiarize you. Uh,

[01:37:22] when a dog gets killed in a movie or show a small toddler having his head hacked away by two brutes par for the course, zoom in on the dying gaze of a CGI dragon to our master. Give me milk of the poppy.

[01:37:32] I'm ready to leave his plane of existence. It's too much absurd. I know Karen V, uh, Vermith or obviously someone is going to ride him, but who my bed is one of the new small folk characters who sure as fuck have Targaryen blood. See, see smoke. It's it's,

[01:37:52] it's the end of the night and we're getting to the bottom of the emails and things are funny. Yup. See smoke. Can I hold on to the hope that lane or will return when he learns of Rainier, Rainey's is a rainy. Oh my God. Rainy, rainy, rainy, rainy,

[01:38:12] John help. I can't. Rainy's is death and right again. Or will Alan and his little bro ride see smoke in a poetic moment as the only remaining sons coreless. I can't wait to find out. And Jean, our good friend and cohost, uh,

[01:38:29] on the discord says proclaiming behold the traitor dragon may lease signified how dragons are not considered mere pets, but, and pets are tools, but to be viewed as intelligent creatures who can make decisions really dope in my opinion. Indeed show him very dope. Um, yes, John,

[01:38:52] there are bastards and dragons a plenty, and we have yet to see, um, some of that unfold, but I'm sure it's coming cause you don't have all these. The power of waffle. Now I'm doing, now I'm doing acolytes stuff. Yeah, exactly.

[01:39:14] I'm going to say is the power of the power of many, you know, power of many, the wheel weaves. Let's stick a pin in it and call it a day. Shall we? I think so because it's 80 degrees in my recording office and I,

[01:39:29] my brain starting to melt a little bit. So perhaps we should do an outro. Nancy, thank you so very much for this outline listeners. Thank you so very much for your emails. Keep them coming and your discord comments. The discord has been a great place.

[01:39:44] It's been a fun conversation. Your emails and voicemails are great. Keep them coming. H O T D at the lorehounds.com or visit us at the lorehounds.com. Go to the contact page, use the contact form or leave us a voicemail. Uh, John,

[01:40:02] what is going on in the land of the lorehounds? You know most of it by being here because we are doing three hot deep podcasts a week. If you're a patron or supercast subscriber or a season pass holder. Uh,

[01:40:14] and then we have a one shot this week with interview with a vampire. Oh, such good vampire. This is the most boomer I've ever sounded is that I can't say interview with the vampire. I keep saying interview with a vampire and it's like when my parents used to

[01:40:30] say Pokemon, it's really like the most boomer I've ever felt is with this show. Neither you or John have watched interview with the vampire. Alicia has been on about it. Just saying how, what a great show it is.

[01:40:45] So I listened to the podcast with Alicia and Christina from this other vampire podcast and it is such a good podcast. Those two are having such fun. You can tell that they love the material. They have a whole pre spoiler section, right?

[01:41:04] The whole first but half hour or something like that. It has no spoilers. It's big. Yeah. It has no spoilers and it's fascinating and stop what you're doing. Go put that in a podcast in your queue. If you can't listen to it now, listen to it later.

[01:41:18] It's really, really good. And if you're a fan of Alicia's, you will enjoy the heck out of that podcast. You don't have to have watched any, you don't have to be an Anne Rice fan for nothing. Just listen to the beginning of that podcast. Very cool.

[01:41:31] So other things we have on the network, the acolyte weekly coverage, Alicia and I are doing that. We've also had to split off the feedback on that episode because. Bravo. A lot going on and we were recording for about, I think two hours sitting where we're like,

[01:41:44] I think we need to split this off. I looked at the feedback doc and I said, Nope, can't stay for that. So here we are. And then, and that's by the way, that season is really good. If you're at all into star Wars or that kind of genre,

[01:41:58] go watch it. It's fun. Yeah. The last episode was really good. And then just make sure I have everything radioactive. They're on break for a week. They're going to take a catch up week. Okay. Me and Aaron chatted. Okay. So they're taking a catch up week,

[01:42:12] but there'll be back with more coverage of the boys. Rings and rituals though did have an episode with me. Yours truly talking about the music of rings of power. And I was, I was listening to it while I was editing and I was like,

[01:42:22] this is a good shit. This is a, you know, this, this guy knows what he's doing going on this podcast. And also we had our old mics back then. I was like, I'm glad we got our new mics because they sound better. Oh, yeah. But yeah, yeah.

[01:42:37] It was a really good conversation. We talked about light motifs and Wagner. We talked about, you know, all the, all the themes of rings of power, how ritual comes into it. So really good stuff. And Marilyn, I didn't even know Marilyn majored in music in undergrad. Oh wow.

[01:42:51] And was a violinist. Okay. Is a violinist. I did not know that either. Well now you can find out more on the podcast. That's right. All right. Anthony on. He's on a break. He doesn't even get a mention anymore. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Anthony,

[01:43:06] probably Howard and we'll shift dust are both on breaks. They fit properly. Howard just finished their season. But I was going to say we got word on severance. We did. That's true. That's true. January 17th. Yeah. Remember when this was in November and you guys were like, guys,

[01:43:17] it's coming right now. It's coming. And I was like, guys, this is not coming. You won that one. Everyone patted me on the back. I was like, I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do this.

[01:43:28] I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do this. And then panic and panic released eight podcasts. We'll have to re-release our coverage. When that comes around, we're going to do some crossover coverage with Anthony Steele before we head home. That'll be exciting. It will be.

[01:43:43] We've got some Alien coverage coming up the Bayer. We are promising some content on the Bayer. I watched episode two. It's a start. I'm moving. It stressed me out a lot. I won't spoil anything, but I think it's the peak of the stress.

[01:44:00] of the stress. I think from there on, it's fine. I was really like, I don't think I can do this right now. No, it's, it's, it's the rest of the season is not at all like that. It doesn't build in the same way.

[01:44:13] I will say that I have rewatched season one and I'm just starting my wife and I just restarting season two so that and then I'm going to rewatch season three and go all the way through. And I

[01:44:25] will say it's really interesting. The DNA of the show is spread across all of it. That's very cool. Very cool. You want to give some shout outs? Yes, let's do it. Should I do? I have music. Yeah. Get your, get your document up.

[01:44:38] Where's my doc? Did you hear the shout outs on the acolyte podcast? No. Yeah. Cause it only just came out. Oh, that's true. It dropped like minutes before we hit record. But you gotta, you gotta, even if you skip to the end,

[01:44:47] just to hear it first, at least she loaded up music. She didn't know what she was putting on and I just went with it. Fun. Is that what you're doing to me now? Absolutely. I am.

[01:44:57] Okay, here we go. Roll with it. You ready? Ready. Get my groove here. Seeing where the beat drops. Our discord server boosters, Narls, Aaron K, Tilo the Thriller, Dork of the Ninjas, Doof71, CaptainJinji56, and Athena Agilea. Thank you all so very much for supporting our discord

[01:45:24] server and making a better place for all. I find you adorable. I'm sorry. I'm Star Wars, I'm Star Wars holiday special. Oh, are you doing? I find you adorable. I don't like sand.

[01:45:38] Loremasters, Samartian, Michael G, Michelle E, David W, Brian P, S C, Peter O H, Patina W, Adam S, Nancy M, Doof71, Ryan, Frederick H, Sarah L, Gareth C, Eric F, Matthew M, Sarah M, DJ Miwa,

[01:46:02] Ondra B, Klong U, Deadeye Jedi Bob, Nathan T, Alex V, Aaron T, Subzero, Aaron K, Dally V, Mothership61, Narls, Kathy W, Stuart B, and forever last, never least, Adrian. Thank you all so very much for your support. We couldn't do this without you.

[01:46:26] Thank you to everyone who listens, both our subscribers and our public. Oh, John, you just cold cut me off. Oh, I'm sorry. I cut you off there, but here's a more intense one

[01:46:37] for you to finish up on. Okay. Thank you everyone for your support and for your listens, whether you're on the public feeds or subscribers. We're just glad that you are here. Join us. You can

[01:46:50] subscribe, supercast or Patreon links in the link tree. And even if you can't, we're just glad you're here. Join us on the discord. We have a great community, great mod team. We have a lot of

[01:47:02] fun talking about all the things that we love. John, until next time, thank you and good night. Now intense music. The Lorehounds podcast is produced and published by the Lorehounds. You can send questions and feedback and voicemails at thelorehounds.com slash contact.

[01:47:21] Get early and ad-free access to all Lorehounds podcasts at patreon.com slash the Lorehounds. Any opinions stated are ours personally and do not reflect the opinion of or belong to any employers or other entities. Thanks for listening. Okay, David, this is where we're supposed to choose a side,

[01:47:42] green or black. John, my soul is as black as night. Your turn. I am black for life. So we're not fighting? I thought this is where HBO wanted us to like pick sides and fight and stuff.

[01:47:58] Don't worry. I'm sure we'll find plenty to disagree about on the pod, but we seem to agree on one thing. We both really like this show. The politics, the drama, the lore. It was made for the Lorehounds.

[01:48:10] And since we just finished recapping season one, we couldn't be more ready to defend our black queen in the dance of the dragons. And with the season pass option in Supercast, listeners can get early

[01:48:20] ad-free access to each weekly scene by scene deep dive plus our custom show guide with all the characters and connections. See you in the Lorehounds podcast feed each week for our dragonfire hot, but probably positive, takes. The Lorehounds House of the Dragon coverage is also safe for

[01:48:36] team green consumption. Side effects may include a deeper understanding of dragon lore, a hardened conflict with itself, and an inescapable urge to read the book Fire and Blood by George R.R. Martin. Dragon seeds may experience burning.