Silmarillion Stories - E11 - The Sindar

[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.

[00:00:36] 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.

[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 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.

[00:01:32] Welcome to Silmarillion Stories. We're the Lorehounds, your guides to Tolkien's world of Middle-earth. I'm David. I'm John, and this is our podcast for Of the Sindar, the 11th portion of the Silmarillion.

[00:01:43] In this episode, we're going to be discussing the Birth of Luthien, the First Battle of Beleriand, and the Hiding of Doriath before answering some listener feedback questions.

[00:01:53] And definitely send us feedback. We save it all up between episodes. You can send us an email to LOTR at the lorehounds dot com or visit us at our website.

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[00:02:38] I can never remember the number attached to it. Beacon 23. Anthony covering Severance. We've got plenty of stuff going on on all the feeds.

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[00:03:05] Well, David, that's enough spiel for now. We have a lot of proper nouns to talk about. Oh, Lord. Without me giving you any lead-in, what's your hot take on this chapter?

[00:03:21] It was, it had my head spinning. There were a lot of names and places, and it wasn't a begot, begats kind of thing, lineage-style stuff, but it really was a setting up more of the world.

[00:03:39] It's a geography chapter. I should tell you a geography joke here, but you had to be there. Are you a dad by chance? Because that's a definite dad joke.

[00:03:49] There you go. Yes, but I agree with you. It is a whole lot when you're not familiar with the story.

[00:03:56] And then there's little drops here and there where you're like, oh, wait, what was that? And then it's gone. And you're like, wait a minute, what? Half a sentence about werewolves or something? And you're like, what? Oh, yeah.

[00:04:07] Yeah. And then he just moves on. So it was a lot to try to absorb, especially on a first reading. I think it's one of those chapters probably on subsequence that there's probably a lot of richness there, but that's a guess.

[00:04:23] I still see it, rereading it. This chapter never sticks out in my mind as significant. And I still feel that way upon reread. I mean, there's stuff that happens, but it's really all set up for future events.

[00:04:38] Like the good stuff is in other chapters. This chapter and A Balerion and its realms I think are the hardest chapters in the whole book. Okay.

[00:04:49] Other than that, it's pretty smooth sailing from here on. But yeah, I forgot how tough this chapter is. And it's really because it is him telling you this city you don't know is near this city you don't know is near this city you don't know.

[00:05:04] And these people you don't know live there. And these people you don't know are friends with them. And it's really tough. And I think that the best way to conceptualize it, here's my advice to you if you're a listener who has not read this yet and you want to read it but you're intimidated.

[00:05:21] It is important to keep in mind that this is an in-universe text. This is elves telling their descendants about the people they knew. And so Uncle Dwarf is living in Belagos, that place that doesn't exist anymore.

[00:05:39] You know, these are all the places I grew up as a kid. It's that kind of thing. It's really, it's grandpa rambling about where he lived. And you just got to kind of go with it. You can have a nickel, go away, don't bother me.

[00:05:52] Right. You just kind of got to go with it. Roll with the, with the little bit of dense reading here. And I think if you do that, there's some good bits in here. There's some nice, nice little things that we can highlight and that and I think that's what we're going to do here. We're not going to go into every nitty gritty detail.

[00:06:09] Okay, sounds good. Highlight the big things you should take away from this chapter. Yeah, just sort of focus on the utility. Right. Yeah, that works. Okay, cool.

[00:06:20] All right. I'm going to bring in the synopsis now. I broke it down into a few bullet points because I just want to individually highlight a few things. Sounds good.

[00:06:30] Again, I think this is going to be a pretty short episode because there's really no narrative here. It's mostly details. It's written like a history book, right? Right. And that's something that this book does all the time. It goes in and out of narrative and history.

[00:06:41] Mm-hmm. It's true. All right. So, we read about Thingol and Melian earlier in The Silmarillion. They fell in love. Thingol is an elf. He was the head of the Teleri. He did see the trees and that's why he was fully Kaliquendi rather than Morquendi.

[00:07:01] He saw the light. He had the holy light within his being. And this was the dude that saw the gal in the forest and was like, I love you. Yes. Right?

[00:07:12] Yes. Yes. And so, the gal is Melian and she is Amaya. So, she is one of the lower tier demigods of this world. Mm.

[00:07:23] And they fall in love and they have a child named Luthien who is the most beautiful child of Iluvatar, the most beautiful of all the children of Iluvatar. And I don't remember if I brought this up on another podcast, but this is inspired by Tolkien's wife Edith. Correct.

[00:07:41] He really wanted to capture her beauty as he saw it in Luthien. And so, it's a very sweet love letter he has to her basically. Which is then on their gravestones. Mm-hmm. Right?

[00:07:55] Mm-hmm. And yeah, I think it's a widely known fact of this is the stand in for him and his wife. Right. Right. So, they are this weird – they're the only instance we know of an elf comingling with Amaya.

[00:08:18] This is the only time that Maiar blood gets mixed with Elvish blood or any of the children of Iluvatar. And so, the line of Luthien, which ends up being the line of Elrond and Elros and the Numenoreans, this is a unique line within this world. Mm-hmm.

[00:08:36] So, that's why this union is just so important. Right. Right. So, if you want to ground it to something that you've seen in Rings of Power or in The Lord of the Rings, these are the ancestors of Elrond, Aragorn, all these historic figures. Right.

[00:08:56] All these really heroic figures. Heroic, noble. And there's something special about them because they have a little bit of holy blood in them. Right. That gives them that extra plus. They're min plus or elf plus. Right. Right. So, they – because they have this innate power, right?

[00:09:14] You have Amaya and you have an elf that has seen the light of the trees. They are leading a group of elves that did not see the light of the trees.

[00:09:22] And normally, we've learned that makes them a little bit lesser than the elves who did see the trees. The elves that did see the trees had a bit of wisdom and holiness within them. Mm-hmm. That seems to be portrayed here as being a greater form of elf.

[00:09:38] Those are the Kalaquendi, those who saw the light. The people in Middle Earth who stayed in Middle Earth and never saw the trees are the Moraquendi, who never saw the light.

[00:09:46] However, because they have these two leaders that are one, a god and two, somebody who did have the wisdom of the tree, they get sort of secondhand light of the trees. Mm-hmm. And they become the Sindar, the gray elves.

[00:10:01] And so, rather than being stuck on either the light side or the dark side, they're somewhere in the middle. Okay. So, they're a very unique group in terms of how they were formed, what their status is, what their standing is.

[00:10:18] And I think they're one of the most interesting groups in Middle Earth. Also, I should mention Sindarin, the language of these elves, is the most developed of all the elvish languages. So, this is the one that you can most learn like a real language. Okay. Yeah, right.

[00:10:37] So, yeah. That's the foundation of the Sindarin elves. They're very important. They're going to play a big role. Remember, we had the three branches of elves originally. I should reattach my second age elf chart because I think that would help people. Probably, yeah.

[00:10:52] But we had the three branches of elves originally. We had the Vanyar, the Noldor, and the Teleri. The Noldor, remember, that's Feanor's group. The Vanyar, you don't have to worry about them anymore. They're in Amun and they're not coming back.

[00:11:07] But for now, you just have to really worry about those two groups, the Noldor and the Teleri. The Teleri splintered off into a million factions, and that's why we're getting the Sindar here. Right. All right. That's a lot to go through, but I wanted to make clear.

[00:11:25] If you remember nothing else from this, this is the kingdom of Doriath, and the Sindarin elves live there. That's okay. That's all. Okay. All right. They have some contact with another species that they didn't know existed, the dwarves. They come rolling down the mountains.

[00:11:49] They come rolling down the mountains. They come across the Ered Luin, and they are able to make contact with the elves. They can't understand each other, but of course, the dwarves are smart people. They learn the elvish tongue.

[00:12:02] The elves are like, we're better than that, and they won't learn the dwarvish tongue. But also, it's not just that. I should give the elves a little more credit. The dwarves are not wanting to teach their tongue to other people. They're very secretive about it. Right.

[00:12:16] So when Elrond in the Rings of Power speaks the Khazad, he speaks dwarvish. That's a big deal. That really earned the trust of a lot of people in that room. Right. And that's why he's a friend. Right.

[00:12:31] And so again, that's why we do these studies is to have more context when we watch something like Rings of Power. And we don't have beyond the original making of the dwarves, there's basically no history of when they woke up, where they woke up.

[00:12:48] Very little, I should say. They woke up in the east. I believe they say it in this chapter. They woke up east of the Ered Luin. That's the mountain range right there.

[00:12:58] If you pull up, if listen, if you are confused right now about where things are, Google Balerion map and you can see the whole map. There's plenty of images of it around and you can pull up.

[00:13:15] You can't pull up a traditional Middle Earth map because Balerion doesn't exist at the time of the Lord of the Rings. Right. So keep that in mind. Because it eventually gets subsumed into the ocean. Yeah.

[00:13:27] So this is a region that doesn't exist at the time of the Lord of the Rings. That's why we are talking about a lot of new locations that you wouldn't recognize. In terms of goodwill hunting, it's not your fault.

[00:13:41] Well, I'm looking at your map here, so I'm good. Right. So we've got this mountain range that is dividing Balerion from Eriador, which is the area that most of the Lord of the Rings starts in. Right. All right. We've got that taken care of. We got that covered.

[00:14:02] So the dwarves come over the mountains, right? And they want to make contact. They have this sort of uneasy relationship with Thingol and his people. But they get some gifts of knowledge from Melian. They're taught some things by the Sindarin. They're taught some things by Thingol and Melian.

[00:14:22] And they build for Thingol the fortress of Menegroth, which is an underground fortress. And this is a cavernous – this is all caves. Wait, doesn't it mean like the thousand caves or something like that? Yes, yes, yes.

[00:14:37] It was on the tip of my tongue, so thank you for saying it. Yes, it's a thousand caves. It is this cavernous fortress that is just for Thingol. Thingol is, of course, the king of Balerion.

[00:14:50] He's named himself the king of this region while the Noldor and the Vanir are gone. So we'll see how that comes into play with the power dynamic as Fëanor comes back into the picture. Okay. So the dwarves help him create that fortress.

[00:15:09] They also stock his armory at his request. I'm mixing different times here because I want to make sure that we keep the peoples together. But just keep in mind, this is all while Melkor is in prison. This is all while Melkor is chained up. We backed up.

[00:15:25] We backed up. And he does that sometimes. He kind of layers over these timelines. So it's easy to get lost. Like, wait a minute, I thought – yeah. Right. So we backed up to when Melkor is still imprisoned.

[00:15:40] And so the dwarves help him sort of prepare for an impending invasion of Melkor if he comes back. And also the dwarves are like, hey, buddy, the Valar might say they solved the problem, but they absolutely didn't. There's still orcs out there.

[00:15:54] There's still monsters out there, werewolves, all these issues. And you're going to need to arm yourself. And Thingol goes, yeah, you're right. I got to protect my kingdom. So the dwarves end up giving him that warning.

[00:16:10] And from across the mountains, some of the Nandor led by Denethor, which is a familiar name but not the same character. Yeah, I was like, wait a minute. Not the same character. Right. He's named after this character. OK.

[00:16:22] And if you'll notice, they say in this chapter that when Denethor dies, the Nandor never took another king or his people never took another king. Think about Denethor being the last steward of Gondor. So Tolkien likes these kind of cyclical things. Right, right.

[00:16:39] End of sort of end of linea. Yeah, it's like placeholder open space. Yeah, their drama can happen in these in these kinds of gaps. Right. This is as far as we know, the first Nandor. So he's he's the actual namesake. So, yeah, they they come by.

[00:16:56] They settle in Assyrian, which is closer to the mountains. It's by a bunch of rivers. And that's where the the Nandor settle. OK, at least this portion of Nandor. I should be clear. They split. So this is Denethor's Nandor. And this is to the west here.

[00:17:16] It's it's to the west of the mountains, but it's to the east of Doriath. Right. Doriath is kind of smack in the middle of Beleriand. Right. Again, pull up the map.

[00:17:26] Yeah, I'm looking at Doriath is kind of smack in the middle, a little bit to the north of Beleriand. And then towards the southeast of Beleriand on the edge of the mountains, you'll see Assyrian. Yeah. The land of the seven rivers is what my map says. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:17:44] So, yeah, again, a lot of geography. You don't really need to remember all these regions. It's OK. You can you can relax. Let it wash over you if you need to. Just remember that you have the Sindar, you have the Nandor.

[00:18:00] They are all coming together in this region of Beleriand. So now Melkor Morgoth got freed. He kills the trees. Right. And he returns to Angband. Ungoliant, we finally learn, settles in Ered Gorgoroth. Mm hmm. Which is you'll recognize that as a name that's reused in Mordor.

[00:18:24] So this is this is a place where a lot of spiders end up. Because it's a it's a not it sounds like a not nice place, even just the name. Yeah, it's not great. We haven't seen the very end of Ungoliant yet, but we're getting there. Mm hmm.

[00:18:40] So that's really mostly a footnote, but, you know, Melkor is ramping back up. He's like, all right, well, I killed the trees. Now it's time to reclaim power. I've got the Silmarils in my crown and I'm ready to go to town against the elves

[00:18:51] because I really don't like those guys. So Morgoth, Melkor Morgoth, whoever you want to call him, he sends an army against Menagroth, the fortress of Thingol, and is fought off by the Sindar, the the elves of Denethor and the dwarves.

[00:19:08] And Denethor dies, leaving his people to be renamed the Green Elves. Right. Which caught my attention. Because I always like playing rangers and, you know, half elf rangers in my D&D games. That was like my prime, my first character. Right, right.

[00:19:24] And so, yeah, I was like, oh, green elves. Oh, that's interesting. I don't know if it actually translates at all, but. Right. Yeah. So the most important thing here is that this scares Thingol. This makes him go, OK, we got to do something to keep these forces out

[00:19:38] because obviously we almost died here. You know, I need to protect my people. I'm the king of Beleriand. I need my fortress needs to be secure. So he goes up to Melian, his wife. He says, hey, babe, I need your help. Please help.

[00:19:51] And she uses her mystical maya powers to create what's called the Girdle of Melian. And this is a ring of forest around the kingdom of Doriath that causes confusion to travelers. So it's really like impossible to navigate. Right. And that becomes the greatest defense of Doriath.

[00:20:15] This becomes a hidden kingdom. It's basically impossible to find. And that's really when the kingdom gets named Doriath. I've just been calling it that because that's what I know it as. Right.

[00:20:28] And the last note I'll say is that Fainor arrives in Middle-earth, so that's your setup for next chapter. OK. Actually, it's kind of two chapters from now because next chapter is about the sun and moon. So we're back in Balinor. OK. He jumps around a lot. Right.

[00:20:45] You know, just thinking about the reading and looking at the map, there's so much rich story potential in this. There's so much conflict. There's orcs, there's werewolves, there's spiders, there's big bad, there's mystical, you know, hidden forest kingdoms, caves for days.

[00:21:08] This would be a really rich place to play in, be it video games or be it role playing games or even more stories. You know, like just doing this sort of the thousand voices thing, right?

[00:21:21] Like, wow, there's a richness into this locality and all of the different forces that are coming and going and meeting each other. First contact between the elves and the dwarves. Yeah, it's I think you could really get lost in this Balerian story line. Yeah.

[00:21:44] So I think that's part of why people were a little bit cranky about rings of power is that they felt well, really, it's that they felt it's a missed opportunity because the first age has so much more room to play in.

[00:21:57] And the second age is kind of one small story. You know, the second age is all one chapter of the Silmarillion. Right, right. And that's the only place that they have to play.

[00:22:09] And I think a lot of people would really like to see the early first age like this kind of stuff. But there's a rights issue. They don't have the rights to produce this stuff. So you get what you get when you have the rights, you know? Yeah.

[00:22:21] And it's a shame because there is such a richness in this time and place. And you've got enough story foundational stones that are laid out with all of these things, but there's still plenty of room to to weave narrative between them.

[00:22:39] So you would have your sort of navigational beacons that you could place yourself in quite easily, but yet still have plenty of room to tell interesting story. Right. Tolkien gives you the outline here. Yeah, exactly.

[00:22:52] You could absolutely be a screenwriter and write a really great story around these events. Hmm. Shame. Shame. Yeah. And there's if the Tolkien estate has never let go of these rights, then yeah, it's completely locked out. Yep.

[00:23:09] Because I think a lot of the rights for a lot of other stuff to our derivative of those initial rights that he signed away. Yes. So. Yeah. So that's basically where we're at now. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. So let's talk about what we learned today.

[00:23:26] You know, just the very basic points here. You've got a new kingdom to remember. Doriath is the big kingdom, the hidden kingdom of Thingol and Melian. That's an elf and a Maya. This is a very important union of elf and Maya in Middle Earth.

[00:23:44] They have a child, Luthien, who you'll need to remember for later, but they'll remind you who she is too. Right. And that's a famous. It's like one of the most famous stories. You've got the Cinder and elves that are a new faction.

[00:24:00] You've got the dwarves of Belagos and Nagrod. That's a new faction. You have the first battle of Beleriand. So this is there's going to be a chapter coming up called the fifth battle. There's like a specific chapter called the fifth battle.

[00:24:17] There's no battles called the first or fourth. So it's just funny. You can keep track of it if you really want to, but it doesn't really matter. And so then you have the girdle of Melian. That's really the most important thing here, I think. Okay.

[00:24:31] Is that this kingdom is set up and you have a sort of force field around it that's causing confusion to travelers. Right, right. That's going to be very important going forward. Okay, good. Good things to keep in mind. Yeah. Keep in mind of.

[00:24:46] So that's not that many things to remember, I think. No, I think I'm good. I think that's helpful. That's a lot of information and it's all boiled down to just remember the girdle. Just remember the girdle.

[00:24:57] All right, David, this only been 25 minutes since I started recording and we have no feedback today. So it's a weird one. It's a weird Silmarillion story because we could have probably combined this with of the sun and the moon. But I think it's it's a good thing. Yeah.

[00:25:14] But I think it's nice to have a short episode when we're doing something this dense because it is, you know, it's hard to track. Right. So remember Doriath. That's what we'll end. Rip Denethor. Okay. Yes. One out for poor Denethor. Pour one out for Denethor. Great.

[00:25:34] Well, I guess if we're going to wrap it up, we can just talk a little bit about the story. Well, I guess if we're going to wrap it up, we can just talk a little bit about what else is going on in Lorehoundverse. I believe Alicia is.

[00:25:49] Oh, and let's give the assignment for next month. Oh, yes, of course. We're going to talk about of the sun and moon. Okay. And the hiding of Valinor. It's one chapter. So we're going to go back to Valinor for one chapter. It's a pretty short chapter, too.

[00:26:04] I think it'll be a nice way to end the year with it. Okay. Sounds good. So in Lorehoundverse, Alicia is busy. She just did all that stuff for Fall of the House of Usher, which I think you guys really enjoyed. You guys had a podcast about it.

[00:26:22] She talked to Anthony about it. She did some live readings. She did a little radio drama stuff. Yeah, we were gushing about it that whole podcast. We both were really, really infatuated with that series, I think. Very cool. I have not finished it.

[00:26:36] I think I got to the third episode and then other stuff was just happening. Right. I think that show, more than Mike Flanagan's other shows, ended on a really satisfying note. That's good. Because other shows have kind of not stuck the landing sometimes.

[00:26:51] And this one, I thought, ended really satisfyingly. What was the one about the island? Midnight Mass. Yeah. It really didn't end great, especially in the visual effects. Oh, I love the ending of that one. But the visual effects were. They ran out of money.

[00:27:07] But it's not about the visual effects. I'm watching Doctor Who, so my visual effect floor is at the rock bottom right now. So she and Luke are about to pick up a new show called Beacon 23. It's on the MGM Plus streaming service.

[00:27:26] If we need another streaming service, you get that one. And I think a couple of episodes are out and they're going to chunk up the episode. So it's not going to be an episode by episode coverage, but she's going to do that.

[00:27:36] And then I think, did she have anything else for the rest of the year? I know we're going to have her on some. We've got some Marvels coming up. We just finished Loki. We're going to do a recap of the Marvels movie.

[00:27:49] And then we've got some other MCU stuff that we're going to do before the end of the year. Well, I think she and I are going to talk about the Doctor Who special. Oh, that's right. I just sent you a DM, David. What is that?

[00:28:02] That is one of the monsters from the season I'm on, on Doctor Who. Oh, lordy. That's what the special effects floor. If you want to Google this, it's Lazarus from Doctor Who. That is some bad. Not from the faint of heart. That's some video game.

[00:28:17] That's like B-grade video game. That was in a live action TV show. Oh, my lord. Okay. There you go. All right. Yeah. But Anthony, Anthony is over doing Severance. Yes. Anthony and Steve are doing Severance. They finished up their season of remake movies.

[00:28:34] And then we'll post everybody when they're ready with their next round of movie review slate. And then once Severance comes on, Severance season two, we're expecting it early next year.

[00:28:48] All four of us, Anthony, Steve, you and I are going to be doing a week by week, episode by episode coverage. So that's going to be a lot of fun. I'm really looking forward to that. I'm going to call it now. Fall 2024.

[00:29:03] No, I think we're okay, man, because I heard it was pretty. It sounded pretty good early 2023 from sources. So they would know that would not be right now. Not with the SAG strike just ending. Yeah, they were close, though. So we'll see. We'll see. We'll see. We'll see.

[00:29:19] All right. We'll see. Yeah. What else? There was something else I was going to mention about coverage that we had going on. Oh, yeah. The Star Wars Film Festival. Because right after we finish recording tonight, I'm going to go watch the 19. Was it 1977? Was that the holiday special?

[00:29:39] I don't I doubt it. Oops. I got a Star Wars holiday special. Let's see. 1978. OK, so I'm going to go watch the 1978 holiday special and then we're going to be recording that. And that will be our December special edition Christmas holiday, whatever, for our Star Wars Film Festival.

[00:30:04] So it's 98 minutes. It is long. 98 minutes on this. Wait till you see this thing, man. Oh, my God. I got to watch. Right. It is a riot. Oh, boy. All right. Well, covering solo before that.

[00:30:19] Yeah, it's going to be a lot of fun. It's going to be a lot of fun. We're covering solo before that. And yeah, I don't know what else we got. That's all for now. I think so.

[00:30:30] We got plenty going on, but you all know where to find us. All right. Patreon shout outs quickly. Sure. Yes, we have a Patreon. Join it. We sure do. We'd love to have your support.

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[00:31:35] We really appreciate it a lot. And we have a lot of fun. I think we did a two hour, 45 minute second breakfast last night we recorded. So plenty of content in the Patreon feed. Yes, very, very fun.

[00:31:46] And we're working on for patrons, we're going to be doing an end of year ranking system. We've got some folks on the Discord who are going to put together a top 10 list.

[00:31:56] So anyone who's a patron can, a patron subscriber can put in their top 10 movies of the year and we're going to get a community ranking going. And yeah, we've got some other stuff on the way. So good stuff.

[00:32:09] All right, David, next month we're reading Of the Sun and Moon and the Hiding of Valinor. And I'm excited because we're getting into the meat of it. Okay, I'm looking forward to it. See you then. The Lore Hounds Podcast is produced and published by the Lore Hounds.

[00:32:23] You can send questions and feedback and voicemails at thelorehounds.com contact. Get early and ad free access to all Lore Hounds podcasts at patreon.com slash thelorehounds. Any opinions stated are ours personally and do not reflect the opinion of or belong to any employers or other entities.

[00:32:40] Thanks for listening. 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.

[00:33:09] 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 Lore Hounds. And since we just finished recapping season one,

[00:33:23] 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 ad free access to each weekly scene by scene deep dive plus our custom show guide with all the characters and connections.

[00:33:38] See you in the Lore Hounds podcast feed each week for our dragon fire hot, but probably positive, takes. The Lore Hounds 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,

[00:33:51] and an inescapable urge to read the book Fire and Blood by George R.R. Martin. Dragon seeds may experience burning.