Video

Back in 2014 I used to call my supervisor Christina "My Sun and Stars'. Luckily we had both moved on before she watched Game Of Thrones.

Hi, I'm new to watching your content, and I have to say thank you lots for reigniting my love for all things ASOIAF. I gave up on the books a few years ago because of the wait and the terrible ending to the show. But HOTD and then your content has caused me to fall in love with it all again because your content is so imaginative and interesting!

🐲I would love a "Spicy Noodle-Monster" shirt - excellent and entertaining stream👍thx

Did those fingerlike plants, forbidden to slaves, help create dragon bonds?

I have heard that Lord Whent had not the financial strength to hold such a grand event like the Tourney at Harrenhal. That it was believed Rhaegar provided funding and Whent was a front because Harrenal was far enough away from Kingslanding that Aerys, is his then, current state of paranoia and insanity, was believed would not travel so far to attend. Rhaegar then, could meet secretly with the lords of the 7 kingdoms proposing his idea or plans to peacefully depose his father, returning safety and security to Westeros which was the Real reason for a tourney held when the winter season seemed waned. I wonder how the story would be different had Aerys not surprised everyone, most of all Rhaegar, by showing up before this meeting was convened, ho hoo!

Killing it

I like Jacaela

Here's a theory that I've aired before, but this seems an appropriate place to give it another outing: I was reading Dance and Fire And Blood at the same time, and I happened to read the Melisandre POV chapter just after reading about Princess Aerea's horrific death. It struck me was that there are parallels between the language used in both chapters. Both Mel and Aerea are described as unnaturally hot on the outside & "seared" or "cooking" from within. Aerea brings forth (presumably) dragon-related "worms", whilst Mel has dragon-like black & smoking blood on her thigh. Aerea's skin is described as blackening like 'pork crackling' while Victarion's arm, cured with the same R'hllorist magic that Mel uses, is described exactly the same way. Dave has often speculated that in the books, Mel's actual form, underneath her glamour, will turn out to be a 'hot coals' being similar to Vic's arm, rather than the old lady seen in the show. What occured to me was this: what if Mel & other top-level priests of R'hllor have an _actual, physical_ "fire-wyrm" similar to Aerea's inside them, but controlled via magic and/or a psychic bond like that between dragon & rider? Presumably Aerea encountered them in the wild and knowing nothing about them got a multiple, uncontrolled infection which killed her. What if the Red Temple, by contrast, has been secretly exploiting the worms, using a continuation of Valerian/Asshai'i blood magic, to give their high priests unnatural and impressive powers? We know that R'hllorist priests, including Mel, get sent to Asshai. Maybe this is why: to get a worm and learn how to control and bond with it without dying. This would also tie in with Mel not eating: she needs to control the growth of the worm, and she's feeding off it's energy rather than it off hers. As to why she doesn't mention it explicitly in her POV chapter, _perhaps she doesn't know_ . Perhaps the R'hllorist induction ritual involves taking some kind of drug that brings on a mystical state of mind, which the inductee remembers, but which also knocks them unconscious at it's height, during which time priest in charge puts the worm into them. Those who master the magic powers neccessary to form a psychic bond with the worm believe that they're in "communion" with R'hllor, while those who don't die as a result of "R'hllor's wrath". This would make the Red Priest+Fire Wyrm combo effectively a symbiotic relationship, and that made me immediately think of the Trill from Star Trek, as portrayed by Jadzia Dax in Deep Space 9. For those who don't know, Trill are a humanoid race with the ability for a small percentage of them to become "joined" to alien symbionts that live inside them. The symbionts are sentient, benevolent, wise and very long-lived, having anything up to a dozen Trill hosts during their lifetime, so the Trill host gets the benefit of the symbiont's experience (their personalities effectively merge), while the symbiont gets a host to carry it around to see the galaxy and have adventures, instead of just swimming around in a pool in a cave. So is it credible to suggest that GRRM was influenced by the Trill/Jadzia? Well here's three pieces of circumstantial evidence: 1. If you look up a picture of the Trill symbionts, they're wriggly white tadpoles with a rudimentary face and little flippers. This ties in fairly well with Septon Barth's description of the firewyrms as, "Worms with faces... snakes with hands..." 2. Trill in DS9 have mottled patterns of dark spots on their faces and bodies, while in the POV chapter it says of Mel, "Shimmers of heat traced patterns on her skin..." 3. Mel first appeared in Clash in 1998. In 1997, right in the middle of when GRRM must have been writing it, Deep Space 9 aired episode 7 of season 6. In this episode, Jadzia got married to Worf, _in a bright red medieval-style dress_ , with a _ruby_ at the throat. Look up pictures of this episode and outfit and it's very hard for an ASOIAF fan not to be reminded of Melisandre.

Are there any good channels like yours that you can think of that cover the red rising series?

Commenting on the re-rewatch, Awesome content and insight per usual from you and the mythfam ! P.S that Foreigner/ATHF reference was .."cccccold as ice" lol

So question. If Victarion goes into Viserion what happens to the spirit of Viserys? I thought you said Viserys went into Viserion earlier in the stream.

Why does everybody forget about Jaehaerys daughter Saerah, who liked to have any man she wanted, who ended up going to Lyse. She became a whore had many children.

They've already been my two favorite characters in Fire and Blood.

If Cregan Stark and Jace don’t fuck i’m gonna be so mad. You cannot convince me that Sara Snow is a real person 😂

All Cersei had to do was not kill melara that night, like if she lived another day she would have successfully avoided one of the prophecies and it wouldn’t have been so worrisome if they knew that the witch could be wrong, but instead she made the prophecy come true on purpose. she wouldn’t have needed to wait to see if the witch was right because she could just say ‘see she said you would die and you’re alive’ and then dismiss the others

In GoT, when Valyrian steel was shown to be the dragonsteel blade, Lightbringer, it basically confirmed Alabastur's theory: that the Singers are the one from the Shadows who made the Valyrians dragonlords. The Singers sang a secret song to help ending the Long Night, as Bloodraven said "for every must have its balance", to balance the song of ice, the Others, the Singers sang the song of fire, the Dragonlords. That's why Valyria rise around the end the Long Night. HoT D is already pointing out at more connexion between the Singers and the Valyrians as you've shown the Jaehaelor's book, wriiten by Martin's assistant, with the mentions of that weirwood and the Valyrians' gods being connected to the Singers' gods. Condal also said on his podcast that we would learn why the dragonkeepers have dragonglass daggers, the Singers used to gift dragonglass daggers to the Night's Watch. There were no dragonriders before the Valyrians, there is absolutely no mention of such people which make sense because otherwise it would diminish the importance of the Valyrians.

Night gathers and my watch begins .

I don’t think things would have been so different if Joanna was alive, people assume that she would somehow be a loving mother and completely unlike Tywin, but honestly for her and Tywin to fall in love, she’s probably just as bad as him

Baela getting dark sista seems silly its daemons sword lets not embellish for woman power. There are plenty of strong women in asoiaf we don’t need to give daemons parts away

You said alan and i immediately pictures aemond sleeping then having vhagar say "aemond" jurassic park 3 style

Is the sword “Dawn” described in the same way that the Other’s bones are described? That’s interesting….. there is SO MUCH to these books. I am grateful to have you to be our Mythical Astronomy and Symbolism Tour Guide and we journey through Planetos and those who inhabit it. Appreciate you!

2:07:14 I think you might be missing something here (and you might have brought it up later idk I haven't watched the whole thing yet) but notable that Jae-man was potentially chill with executing a slave and using her blood (and considering she was a bed slave, also being a slave master who raped his slaves) but AFTER the Doom, was willing to throw himself between a slave and a whip. You posit that he was an abolitionist, but could it be that he discovered that the destruction of all he knew was revenge for the horrible slavery of Valyria? Perhaps when he saw a slave getting whipped like that, he was overcome with survivors guilt as he had carried out similar punishments on slaves and that was the cause (in his mind) for the Doom, or he was terrified that the punishment of slaves would cause another extinction event. It does seem strange to me that a supposed abolitionist would 1) own "bed slaves" 2) execute a slave for a crime seemingly no one else witnessed and 3) record this for seemingly very little reason. Like sir, this is a wen(series of records containing tons of otherwise lost information on ancient plants)dy's

Cleo as Godzilla 😂

Yay!

Going off aircraft analogues: Ground Attack Dragon: bred for thickest scales to resist arrows and spears. Fighter Dragon: bred for speed and agility to take down Recce Dragons from rival houses. Recce/Patrol Dragon: similar to a High-Endurance Messenger Dragon, but with different equipment: dual saddles with a secure means of carrying and using a glass candle. Couple of other things: Eye-protection: any motorcyclist, let alone pilot, will tell you that travelling fast through the air can rapidly make you blind, whether by bugs, rain, or even just cold. We know they've got small amounts of (doubtless expensive) glass, so it's hard to believe that a pair of goggles wouldn't be amongst a dragon-rider's most prized possessions. Navigation: again, any pilot will tell you that it's VERY easy to get lost over unfamiliar terrain, even when you can see it, never mind cloud, rain and darkness. Dragon riders going any distance should have map pockets strapped to their legs. How you keep them dry and swap maps in-flight is interesting without velcro and clear plastic pockets: maybe you'd have special dragon-rider maps drawn on leather with waterproof dyes, and some kind of clever system of cords to keep them attached, but allow you to at least flip them over if not turn pages.

A propos, messenger dragons.They sent 300 messenger dragons to bring a message to the Rhoynish.

I guess it's the last moment to have another reread of F&B before the new season! Time is running out and my Max provider where I live has some issues so I might be going off of internet for a while to avoid spoilers We call it game night, my husband plays his game and I read to him F&B out loud, and sometimes he asks me to explain something cause he is only half listening ofc, and every few minutes he asks "Where's my man Mushroom? Where's my gay bro?". I try to read unbiased and with a flat tone, but still he loves Mushroom and he kept asking me during the show why there's no Mushroom and will he be in the next episode 🤣 Hope this useless long comment helps with the al gore rhythm

One of my favorite things to stream as I drift unconscious

The dragon eggs at Winterfell could be foreshadowing Viserion’s resurrection if they fight at Winterfell, and Jon’s resurrection in Winds of Winter

I'm so excited to be watching this stream, I'm OBSESSED with this topic!

54:37 So why we never got a vid about Rickon??? That's a bummer cos I really wanted to see a discussion about the purpose of the lil guy in the story and how he might be brought back from Skagos.

I think it’s not necessarily third reich but more like the Japan empire during Ww2 but more specifically unit 737 And it’s stuff.

🤙🏾🤙🏾🤙🏾

just curious for no reason, are there any sulphuric lakes somewhere around Glasgow? and perhaps a cottage on an island there that the worldcon organizers might rent for a prolonged period? I mainly kid, but it'd be at least rather funny if they prepared and presented GRRM with that 'option' when he arrives so I hope someone's on it ^_^ Also, you seem to have exactly one, but very persistant troll, like its always the same exact M.O., and with zero subtlety, completely obvious. And I think I've seen that same creature appear on really old live vids as well.

Caraxes and Sunfyre vs Smaug who wins?

I feel like half of the fandom forgot that the answer to most things is going to be magic, and George hates hard magic systems.

I’m so glad they’ve fixed the wigs, I couldn’t take the sisters seriously last season

Do you think the amount of valyrian blood and dna a person has, it will positively relates to the strength of the bond between the dragon and the dragonroder? Or if a dragon rider whose dragon hatches to them has a stronger bond than a person that claims it? Do the first rider of a dragon has a stronger bond than the other riders of that dragon? I have so many questions and no answers to these questions.

I always assumed the wounds on balerion were from him clawing the worms out of his skin. As we know, there isn't much that can harm him, but we know he's strong enough to hurt himself

Hearing the meaning of fire and blood makes how D&D made Dany even sadder - they took this message of something worth fighting for and the importance of it to some wishy washy centrist nonsense about if you’re violent in securing your liberation, you’re as bad as your oppressor

Will Bran and Dany meet? Probably when DANY gets turned into a burned/light other? That could be a very interesting interaction with lady Stoneheart (revenge Babe) and Jon (the king promised to the others) being undead... and bran being the greenseer/Druid.

Them: listening to music while working Me: listening to the 4 hour iceberg on dragon lore (we are not the same)

Awesome Iceberg. Very cool, thank you.

So PISSED that I missed this! I have so many ideas!

Coordonating is a mess nowadays, lest of all in medieval fantasy times where birds are the only way to reach others. Like it's an interesting idea, and fun fanfiction sometimes...but it's taken to extremes too often for my taste.

1:49:00 If Jon's gonna be a firewight, shouldn't he be able to skinchange Eurons dragon?

Excellent stream thank you!

“All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Valyrians ever done for us?” “Brought peace?” “Oh Peace. Shut up!”

(I'm so sorry, I started typing and suddenly this) (also you converted me to dracomorph theory in my own comment) I guess you give people magic tapeworms until they evolve too big and then you breed the tapeopleworms with each other. unless the magic tapeworms are, like, tadpole-babies who effectively nurse on human blood and then grow huge, breeding them big enough would take a hot minute. if "people" + "fireworm" = "worm with a few people parts" is the scale of each generational change, that's still going to take a long time even with magic. similarly, if it took hundreds of years for targs and dragons to regress as a result of no blood magic, that implies a long creation process most likely, there hadn't been enough human sacrifice in the dragons' recent ancestry to keep up the whole magical balancing act of soulbinding/lightspeed evolution/maintaining enormous size. if the magic is involved in making the dragons big, effectively super-promoting a recessive trait with wizard bs, you'd probably get dragons from the first several pairings and then they'd start getting wormier as the magic ran out. better cook a new batch ("come over here, uncle timhaerys"). on the other side of the breeding program, the people would also start getting wormier. I think I recall the number of creepy wormy targ babies rises over time, which would track with the targs interbreeding with "normal" humans and also time since the last blood sacrifice (delayed by the incest - boy would that be some motivation for incest, "we'll all have creepy wormy babies if we don't preserve the bloodline." better than incest for the purpose of weird murder science or keeping power consolidated I guess). the faceless men could have taken out the volcano wizards directly and/or significantly reduced the worm population, which if the breeding process is habitual, would be catastrophic. like the obvious candidate for a volcano wizard is the freshest biped hybrid you can come up with. did the faceless men literally assassinate volcano wizards, or did they cut off their source, resulting in a delayed doom with many participants (but a less dramatic story)? some fire worms or close relatives would have probably survived the doom, because key word "fire," so there would be wild worms in the area. pun unintentional. or is this another "hodor" where a phrase morphed in grrm's mind until it was a whole person?) (speaking of metaphors, much like "dragon on human tapestries," I think the soulbinding is more a metaphor. you had to kill someone to end up with the dragon, yes, but the soul isn't bound literally. and there's a lot of metaphor in trading life for life. kill ALL the valyrians/dragonlords to buy the lives of the slaves and make yourself better than other people on a wildly different level? how deep do the metaphors go? is uncle timhaerys actually the one getting sacrificed for the dragon breeding, or are a bunch of slaves getting murdered with his participation? ("his soul is forfeit because he's murdering"? holy horcruxes, batman) are the dragons and valyrians diverging from a single common ancestor (per cycle), or are there 2 almost completely separate initiatives? planetos is full of weird critters and humanoids. breed you a water breathing dragon with fish men! fun for the whole family!) because like. if the wizards are messing heavily with genetics to make dragons on one extreme end of the process, the other extreme end of the breeding program would actually be superhuman (wizards? dragon dreams? perpetually perfect hair? "other memory" a la dune, which would explain the conga line of bejeweled ghosts? psychic connection ability that would explain why swinging a whip in your right hand makes the dragon go right?). besides the possible familial bond based on the sacrifices involved in the dragons' creation, I'd think that any such program would be looking for improvements in every line, otherwise why bother breeding the valyrian biped peopley lines? just breed you some walking talking lizard people and call it a day. so the valyrians did in fact deserve on some level to be arrogant as heck to other humans while they were still keeping this cycle up (just don't worry about the morality part). but specifically because they were so gross with the blood magic and the slavery, someone finally had enough of their ethics and caused the doom, because gotta have that hubris lesson was this entire science exercise originally for the purpose of defeating the bad ice things, but this secret knowledge was forgotten and they went on making blood sacrifices for their own benefit? people as a group do keep forgetting things, such as the whole heckin existence of magic. or did the valyrians decide "yeah, greatx100-grandpa, we know you organized this whole thing for altruistic purposes, but we like the empire we have and we don't want to leave sooooooo we're just gonna keep murdering but for selfish reasons" or even "we'll do that after we get strong enough" but no one ever thinks they're great enough to save the world (see: sam the slayer etc) so that's never happening, better sacrifice even more people this all straight up reminds me of a thing I say when I get drunk and people get me talking about the wars of the roses, that infamous inspiration. "people kept doing something absolutely outrageous and hideous, because it would finally stop the war and be worth it. but it didn't and this turned into a bad behavior arms race" p.s. gemstone eyes e.g. amethyst like hers/"amethysts from asshai" like how many times does that exact phrase show up/dragons stirring under asshai/the progenitors of both dragons and valyrians- hey look we went in a circle there (this novel of a comment has been brought to you by the letter p for prescription amphetamines)

Excellent stream David! Can’t wait to see you get to 200k subs this season of hotd