Latest / Nerds of the Old Republic: The Drinking Person’s #Scifi Club / "Diving Deep into George R.R. Martin's Westeros: The Enigmatic World of Dunk & Egg"

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"Diving Deep into George R.R. Martin's Westeros: The Enigmatic World of Dunk & Egg" · Nerds of the Old Republic: The Drinking Person’s #Scifi Club

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Music.
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Hello, and welcome to Nerds of the Old Republic, the nerdy podcast where we
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drink and we know things.
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I'm Adam. I'm Shaun. And I'm Mike.
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And this week we are talking about a George R.R. Martin IP.
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I don't know, the world of Westeros is his intellectual property.
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Incomplete, though, it may be.
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Oh. Yeah, no, I'm going there already. Fuck you, George.
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If you've never listened to the podcast we always
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pair up our media selection with a
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beverage we start with that and then we roll into
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the media so you've got a little bit of time if you want to pause here grab
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a beverage unless you're driving don't do that
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if you're driving it's a bad idea yeah or at
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work i hear they frown upon that yeah so just reminding
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you nerds of the old republic does not endorse drinking and driving now drink
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up motherfuckers that's right
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uh and before we get into
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anything else i just want to give a shout out to our friends over
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at za bills they're kind of like we're becoming a podcast family yeah a little
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bit here brother cast yeah so you know we're watching the bills game as we speak
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so if you hear some like random shouting from us it's because it's going good
1:26
or bad lee but you know whenever i see the bills i think of za bills So check
1:31
them out on wherever you get your podcasts.
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They've been good to us. And I'd like to make sure that you get to hear them too.
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So yeah. Right. It is after the holidays. It's good to see you gents again. Thanks for Sunday.
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Sunday afternoon. We've really, we've really hit peak life here. Yeah. Yeah.
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And watch the bills. And we can also talk about some literature and have some beverages.
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I'm kind of done with it. Not the worst. Yeah.
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If only we could be paid for our genius brilliance, this would be the life.
1:59
Well, I think if you could make a job, then it just isn't the same.
2:02
That's true. Yeah. That's right. We could be paid and we have the talent. Right. Yeah.
2:07
Bill Murray has offered us many, many million dollars to take this thing national.
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We keep saying, nah, we're good. It's just a hobby. Just a hobby.
2:14
You know what it is though? Bill keeps calling me and leaving these weird messages
2:17
like, hey, I want to be your podcast daddy.
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And I'm like, Bill, that's not the relationship you promised me when we first
2:24
started this time. It's a little weird.
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Really? The voicemails I get from him are more like, stop calling.
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Who is this? there's a restraining order being filled out.
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That's what I get from Snoop. He's just got such a sense of humor, you know, Bill?
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Bill, he's got such, he's so funny. Nick Cage's voicemails are just a bunch of dead air.
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You hear shuffling in the background. It's weird. Stop calling.
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He's not dialing you or he's intentionally just trolling you with dead air.
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It's Nick Cage, man. You never know. That's true.
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Every once in a while, he just shouts, get off my piano.
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So you found my favorite chair, dude. if you don't know what we're referencing
2:59
y'all should listen to our jujitsu podcast we live watched a nicholas cage netflix
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film called jujitsu yeah that was something that was a good day it was a good day,
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Speaking of the good days, let's start this one off well here.
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I have one of my favorite brown ales because Night of the Seven Kingdom,
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poor Dunk the Lunk, keeps referencing how he would just love a nice brown ale.
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And I get that. So I brought my favorite brown ale to share today.
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It's from Community Beer Works. Love those people.
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Coincidentally, I'm also wearing their hat from when they used to have a beer box delivery service.
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During the pandemic, they would deliver a four-pack of pints to you and then
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a special beer And then a whole bunch of swag from like local community businesses.
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It's fantastic. The pandemic really was a golden age.
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Honestly, there are some things I really miss, like not seeing some people.
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Yeah. No, no joking or all joking aside. There, there were a few things that were not the worst.
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Yeah. If it wasn't for that, you know, pesky illness, then killing people.
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Other than that, the resilience of people who endured, I guess there's something
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to be said for that. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. We are the strongest.
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The herd has been called. Oh, we're veering dark early. Let's stop.
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Let's stop there because I think we've already stepped our foot.
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We didn't read any dystopian fiction for, oh no, we watched some dystopian fiction
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for our second cast of the day, but we'll get to that later.
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Sean, do you want to do tasting notes or you want me to? Well,
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it's your beer, so your choice. All right. Well, I'll do it only because I happen
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to love this one. And I think we all know what's coming.
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Community Beer Works. The Whale. Brown Ale. 5.9% alcohol by volume. since 2012.
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The Whale. Smooth, drinkable, and packed with legendary notes of coffee,
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chocolate, and toasted grain.
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Not on the label, but it'll get you drunk.
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Alright. That was great, man. Thanks.
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I love 1920s radio, Adam. I am literally a one-trick pony. It's a good trick. One, two, three.
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Can we pour these into our vessels? Oh, my gosh. Dear listeners,
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you can't see it, but I have what looks like a fantastic fucking skull in some
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silver plate. Is that a pewter?
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I picked the most medieval-looking drinking vessels I had, and I have another
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one. And it's a carved wooden mug, but the handle broke on that recently.
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I have an ale horn, which I am enjoying cloughing from.
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Yes, I left the two most medieval ones to you. And then I've got,
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this still feels pretty, like, I don't know.
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I think you should use the horn on the shelf behind you. Yeah,
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I just, there is a Viking horn directly behind me, listeners.
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But I can't set that down once I pour into it.
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I think that's actually a good way. Yeah, you keep using it.
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Oh, yeah. If you want to set it down, you have to chug what's left.
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All right. Let's taste this. Cheers.
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Cheers. Ooh, that's very nice. It's a brown ale. Yeah.
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Very toasty. The toasted grain for sure. Yeah, right at the end.
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It's thick, but it's not too heavy. No. I like it.
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I'm glad to hear it because, you know, two years worth of making your drink
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IPAs. You do a few podcasts. You'll make me. I get them because I know you guys like them.
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What I especially love about this cup, Mike, is because I'm a lefty.
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Every time I go to drink, I have to. The skull is. Yeah.
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Well, just pretend that that's a terrible enemy that you defeated in battle.
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And now you get to, or maybe he's looking at you, like making you feel bad,
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you know, like, what would you do, dude?
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Well, it depends which enemy this is. After Adam absorbed his life force through the quickening.
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Yes. And, you know, secluded it into the mug.
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Of course. Yes. It took a solid two days to do that. And then that's after the
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week it took to dry the skull.
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I don't understand how hard it is to get skin off of a skull.
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Oh, man. But that's serious craftsmanship right there, Adam. Nicely done.
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Flaying the skin off the skull. The Dreadfort. The pewter also took me about
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a month because, you know, I'm shit with pewter.
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Yeah. Whatever. Shit with pewter?
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There's your thoughts you'd never say. I didn't have that on my bingo card.
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We honestly should have a bingo card.
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We should have a bingo game for listeners. Here's a PDF downloadable.
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Anytime one of these like this has happened throughout the podcast,
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like you know just kind of standard you can expect it
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here or there yeah see if it happens today i'll work on that in all the spare time
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i have some dude's been listening to us for three years and he's like i finally
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got shit with pewter i got it bingo what's my what's my thing honestly if we
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did that and somebody was like so dedicated bingo i would i don't know what
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i would send him but i'd send him something that's for sure unlimited free downloads
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of our podcast oh that well,
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well jumping back to the the medieval
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ip we've got here so george rr martin if
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you're unaware is the writer of the entire
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westeros world including the game of thrones that was on hbo still unfinished
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he's gonna die with it unfinished you take that out of your mouth he's gonna
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finish it and it's gonna be glorious sure he's gonna finish it and then he's
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gonna print it out and the file will be deleted.
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He'll be on a train and someone will open the window and the paper will go out
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into the world. A la Hemingway. Exactly.
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But what, you guys have a deeper experience with George R.R.
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Martin than I have. Do you guys want to run through like what you've read or
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your thoughts about him as a writer in the first place? I know I joke about
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him not finishing stuff, but.
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Yeah, I'll go first because Sean will have more to say. I fucking hated it.
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Song of Ice and Fire. I despised it. I thought the first book was great.
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I thought the second and third were drastically going downhill
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the fourth i forced myself to
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finish and the fifth one i quit halfway through and threw the book
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across the room damn yeah yeah so did
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you watch the hbo series then no i have heard
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from a lot of people that the show is while
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true to the i'm just quoting what i've heard while true to the books also it's
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very much its own entity and a spectacle enough that you could hate the books
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and still like the tv show however i'm notoriously bad at watching tv and i
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still have it on my to watch list so maybe 10 or 15 years down the road i'll get to it.
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Mike's had this look of like come at me bro as he's
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like telling me he fucking hated because he knows that i'm a i'm a freaking martin
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stan and it's usually the other way around right like
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you usually get to to just rip people's
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like you know hearts out and hold them
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still beating in your hand while you talk about how much you hate that
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shit they love i i definitely go full
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what the hell was that guy's name oh i don't
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know the priest yeah that guy yeah i think
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that's his credit in the movie i i expect
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it is fully worthy i i get it but i
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am a huge martin fan and this goes back to god
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i was on my way somewhere in the world and we had a stopover
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at a hotel and i was just turned on hbo because i didn't have it at home and
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there's this medieval show on i'm like the fuck is this this is awesome and
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i'm watching i'm like wow this is really it was like an episode where you know
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somebody was brutally killed and there was probably some kind of you know rape
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on that scene or whatever and i was like i've never seen anything like this yeah exactly,
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So I found out it was Game of Thrones and I saw like, oh, this is actually blowing
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up. Everyone's into this. And I found out, oh, it's a book series.
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Oh, there's a lot of books.
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So my wife was, I think at the time, a couple of months pregnant when I discovered it.
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And I just devoured the entire saga up to this point within the time of her
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being like two months pregnant to giving birth.
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I just finished everything. I couldn't put it down. And I feel bad because there
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was probably moments where she needed my help with things.
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And I was like, yeah, right. Just a bit of honey. and the next thing I know
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three hours have gone by and I'm like what happened and she's asleep and I'm
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like you know I'm barely into the book I love it I love the world I think the
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history and the world building and the things he's built into the story are
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even greater than the stories themselves,
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unlike Mike I really did enjoy all of the saga books so far or the song books
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I even feast for Crows and Dance of Dragons.
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They're long and bloated, but I still like where the story is developing.
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I know it's hard for Martin to finish this because it's so unwieldy now,
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and the TV show ending early probably changed a lot of what he was going to
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do based on the critical reception it got, but I love it.
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I love the world of Westeros and Escheros and all the stuff that's in it.
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I think it's incredible an achievement for any writer to have developed such a.
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Wealthy history and lineages of all these families
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and this world it's so cut the complexity is mind-boggling
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so for that achievement alone
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i i am just a huge fan so my
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history with the the world of westeros actually is that
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my wife's cousins told us
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all you should watch this series and we didn't have hbo or
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whatever so we you know i think the we paid for
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the streaming service for a little bit or however we got it we
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watched the first episode which is notorious for the incest
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and the attempted killing of bran off the tower and
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like immediately that turned my wife off and i was kind of like whatever
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sure and then it came over the next year because they
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live in north carolina so you know we talked to
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them but they would always like hype up the show while they
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were with us we're like okay fine we'll give it another go i think
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we watched two episodes that time and it was probably two episodes
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of the first season but they were already on like season two at that
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point and by the third try we had like just started binging everything and then
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we were waiting for the seasons to come out i have not read the books but i
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did read the coffee table book that sean let me years ago oh yeah like the entire
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history of the world of west row so like i knew a lot of the targaryen names in the.
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That book the world of ice and fire yeah the world of ice
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and fire which is a gorgeous book and i like it
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was rigged by martin's team not by him which
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is probably why it was complete now i'm just gonna stop i gotta
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stop there but i mean it was gorgeously illustrated and
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like help me because i always struggle with the high
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fantasy when there's like a thousand characters yeah or
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there's like seven characters but then there's 15
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lineages you have to keep track of those seven characters and
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then you know the titles and stuff get super long so like even
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reading night of the seven kingdoms we get into that
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a little bit with the targaryens and everything so sometimes my
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eyes gloss over a little bit but i love the tv
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series i was not upset with the
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ending as many people were i kind of
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saw it as inevitable like you know thanos like
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yeah thanos like it's just gotta happen yeah and my
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only claim to fame with the series is that when we were in scotland two
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two summers ago two summers ago i we
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drove past the tower on a tour oh cool where they
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tried to kill brand oh nice so yeah it's in
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between it's in between edinburgh and
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loch ness that's all i can tell you okay because i was not driving someone else
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was driving the tour van there's got to be some kind of european game of thrones
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tour that you can take where they'll just take you around all like croatia and
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all the places where they film all those beautiful scenes that's it's incredible
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i'd be really surprised if there wasn't there's got to be there's still the
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rings tours of new New Zealand, right?
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There's got to be. Oh, yeah. Which is like high up on my list.
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I've already got my family signed up to go see, you know, Mount Mortar and everything.
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And have they not like actually physically rebuilt the Shire?
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I feel like I read this somewhere so that you it's now like a permanent tourist location.
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I'm pretty sure that it was always they never took it down. Oh,
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is that? Okay. I got you. I think there was probably the intention to do The Hobbit at some point.
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I think that Jackson had always envisioned it, not a three piece,
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like monstrosity that became, but I think he wanted to maybe leave the door
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open. So I don't think the Shire was ever disassembled.
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There's a lot of craftsmanship in that. Like if you guys look at it,
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it's, it's not just some sets.
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Like they really built a lot of that. So super quick side note.
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Speaking of the Hobbit, I was at a wedding recently and sitting at a table for
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dinner and someone that I, I know very well and, and is a member of the family
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and I love and respect, but they made the comment very casually that the Hobbit
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trilogy was so much better. than Lord of the Rings.
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You can tell a lot about a person's taste. I had to be physically restrained.
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Shout in Fort Aragon. Wow. He's ready to gank him. Oh, wow. I had to be physically restrained.
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Again, you can tell a lot about someone's taste and their ability to truly judge
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media with a take like that. With a comment like that, exactly.
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You can dismiss them immediately from anything in your life.
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So I obviously didn't have... You should cut out that entire wing of your family.
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I didn't... I mean, I'm obviously joking about being physically restrained
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but i i am not joking when i say like i i
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did not speak for a moment because i
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did not trust myself to yeah to not you
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know i mean it was not a crowd that would have been very receptive to a deep
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tolkien conversation so i just let it pass not many are this is probably nits
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yeah it's just so sad my younger son's gotten into it and he'll make a in fact
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he called his feet hobbit feet the other day nice like but they're not as hairy
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They're just really big.
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Everyone's want to call him Gollum.
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That's great. It's good that he recognizes that in his feet.
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Yeah. You know, and he likes to stay home.
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And actually, he loves second breakfasts, three Z's and stuff.
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So he's a hobbit at heart. Just keep him away from the pipe weed. He'll be all right.
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Yeah, it's going to be tough now that that's legal news. Yeah.
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Being younger, I feel like I've got a little time. How is it that every Martin
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conversation always goes back to Tolkien?
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I can't think of any connections. Because I swear that's the source material.
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It's almost like he was inspired. Yeah. Weird. Weird.
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Well, we should probably get to Dunk the Lunk and the Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Yeah.
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So, Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is a collection of three stories. Not quite...
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I guess they're short stories. Yeah, they're not quite. Nobellas.
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Nobellas, yeah. The Dunkin' Egg stories. There's supposed to be more coming, too.
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I would read more. Once he finishes, you know, A Song of Ice and Fire.
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No, he's going to write the Dunk stories and then try to go back to that series.
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But in any case, so we start off finding out about this hedge knight,
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which is, you know, basically a knight for hire.
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Sir Duncan the Tall, he calls himself at the tournament. and
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uh we get three stories after that and he ends up having uh you
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know one of the targaryen king lineage with
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him aegon what's his moniker i got on the unlikely the unlikely there we go
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i got five the unlikely oh five okay i was gonna say i get all the aegons i
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think he's five yeah i'm pretty sure he's five because four was like a real
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womanizer i'm pretty sure yeah yeah i'd have to get out my history of the targaryens
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in order to see and get it accurate but and i will,
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We could talk about each of the stories on their own merits,
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starting with that sick jousting tournament and that whole conversation.
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But that is my only slight against the whole book. I'm just going to lay it out there.
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So many names, as you get with most high fantasy anyways.
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What's interesting is, if I may, Martin developed thousands of years of history of.
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What's the name of the planet? planetos or whatever they people call it now
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like esteros and westeros and all of this,
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and the minutiae of detail that he
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goes into with all of the houses and their castles and
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their vassals and their offspring and their bastard
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children and their legitimate children and and the bastards who are legitimized
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oh my god just the again he based a lot of this on the war of the roses you
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can see where there was a lot of real history that he drew from but nonetheless
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the level of detail that he could take these pretty rich stories that he built
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with the Dunkin' Egg series.
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And that was just one cross section of all the history.
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Like the, um, what's the show that's out now that they're doing house of the
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dragon house of the dragon is based on events that happened a hundred or so
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years before Dunkin' Egg.
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So it's incredible that he's got all these epochs of time and you can tell such
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rich stories in there because of the skeletal framework that he,
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he had to have taken years of his life to develop this this world yeah and just
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that that idea that it's one little slice one targaryen you know he's like a
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fourth son of a fourth son he's got no claim to the throne but he does become
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the king which is part of the story and.
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That gets like he wants to be the squire for some
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hedge knight which they call sell swords and all the other game of thrones stuff it's
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like well they kind of like even realize that it's interesting
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how martin the books he treats these books much more chivalrously than
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he does his other tales which are way more dark and real these
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ones almost have that tolkien-esque green knight kind
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of like oh it's all about high chivalry and being a
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good person and doing the right thing even though
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you could easily do the wrong thing and even the tone of the story changes where
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he calls him a hedge knight instead of a sellsword you know it's like little
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subtle differences that change it tonally from the main series that was something
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i mean you mentioned the similarity or the inspiration of tolkien before and
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that was something that was so brilliant about tolkien is like every.
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Person every character every place every event had like nine different names
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and perspectives on it because he put that level of detail into like developing
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you know like gandalf he has like nine different names right like depending
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on who's thousands of years of history right so i you know Now,
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when I talk about my dislike of the series of Song of Ice and Fire,
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it is not the world building that I dislike at all.
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I love good world building, and he's a master of that. And I'll just get in
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one more quick point here before I throw it back over to you.
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But I wanted to jump off of a point you made about this book being less dark and more chivalrous.
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And that is what I want to throw in at this point, that I loved this book.
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I found this delightful storytelling. And most of the reasons I loved it have
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to do with all the things that they aren't that Song of Ice and Fire had become
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that I hated and resented.
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It'll be hard for me to talk about why I like this book without veering into
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that. Like, this is what I hated about Song of Ice and Fire so much. But...
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At the most simplistic level, this book was basically, it was an old fashioned,
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like Don Quixote-esque, I mean in the style, not the character is a different
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character. It's a wandering knight.
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And it was just about his adventures as a knight.
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And it was very focused on the plot, which is something that he lost by about
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book three in Song of Ice and Fire.
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He lost the story and this was so tightly
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bound in story and immediate conflicts
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that needed immediate resolutions that i
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found it a page turner it was very compelling there's a lot and i think this
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is the time and place for you to bring up your grapes because that does color
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the conversation but i think there's a lot to be said for he knows where this
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story ends i was gonna say the same thing this series of short stories and duncan's
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you know he knows exactly what happens to them.
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He's already talked about the Summerhall incident and all that stuff that he
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alludes to in these books. He's already mapped that whole thing out.
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It's a song of ice and fire that I don't think he had it completely or it changed
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or something in the process of developing the actual narrative has changed for
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him where it's making it very difficult for him to get through it.
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Whereas this, I think it's just easy because he knows, oh, eventually they're
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going to get to this point.
22:20
Oh, and eventually they're going to get to this point. I'll tell a story about
22:22
this little misadventure they had that led to some other revelation or whatever.
22:26
And it's much easier when you know where you got to go.
22:29
It's that sort of white stripes philosophy of like less allows you to do more. Exactly. Yeah.
22:37
Yeah that's a really good point like working backwards the whole
22:40
song of fire and ice is like
22:43
the world building and everything the world's already built he doesn't have
22:46
to do that you know someone who is reading
22:49
this book probably isn't walking into westeros for
22:52
the first time right and there's no tv show dictating people's
22:55
expectations yeah now that he has to play with because well there will be i
22:59
think within a year or so there's going to be a dunking egg series coming out
23:02
which can't believe he's letting this happen but there was the well i very much
23:08
wondered how they're going to approach that are they going to keep the tone
23:11
of the book or are they going to.
23:13
Deliver on probably fan expectations and make
23:16
it more in line with like what the tv show was and
23:19
there better be a hot and passionate tansel too tall moment because if there
23:22
isn't then i think don't gets he gets he gets misused poor
23:26
guy no i want to see him misused in the tins of
23:28
too tall moment i you
23:31
know i'd be really surprised if hbo changed
23:35
the tone i mean they didn't with house the dragon
23:38
right like yeah i've seen clips i haven't even
23:40
seen an episode of it i'm just waiting for the whole thing to be done so yeah it's
23:43
much less salacious i think that that game
23:46
of thrones was at times it still has you know plenty of you know
23:49
intrigue and things that you want to see in a game of thrones property but they
23:54
they tone down the incest and the rape a lot i mean
23:56
it's so incestuous because she marries her uncle and all this stuff yeah and
24:00
that that part of it is a targaryen thing that even
24:03
in world they talk about how weird it is but yeah don't does
24:06
that a little bit yes talking about again right family
24:09
how he's probably had to marry his sister or whatever and it's just weird right
24:11
that's how they are like egg finds a weird way to like back out of that conversation
24:16
right yeah almost like defensively yeah for sure defensively he's also a kid
24:20
yeah it's true but he's he's precocious for a kid too which is part of his charm
24:24
but the i don't know where the hell I was going with this,
24:27
I had nothing tied to my belt, which is the style at the time.
24:31
Yeah, I lost my thread there.
24:32
But, oh, no, the TV show, I don't think they'll have to change the tone because
24:36
I think it's its own tone. It's its own thing.
24:40
And I don't think just because it's on HBO necessarily means that they have
24:44
to, that they can't just do it. Like HBO also had Sesame Street for a while.
24:48
Like, not to compare the two. There's still a lot of violence.
24:50
There's still a lot of stuff happening in this that people want to see.
24:53
Sesame Street is so very dark. Yeah.
24:54
Oh, yeah. Yeah, because I'm thinking, I mean, I guess I'm thinking to go back
24:57
to, especially that Quentin Tarantino Sesame Street. That was fucking cool. Oh, my God.
25:03
Elmo's going to pop a cap in your ass.
25:07
I'm good. Baby, that's a kind of bitch. What does Snuffleupagus look like?
25:12
Does he look like a bitch?
25:15
But to go back to again the lord of the
25:18
rings and hobbit whole thing you know the the tone of the
25:21
hobbit movies was in the
25:23
tone of the lord of the rings movies and not in the
25:26
tone of the hobbit book so that's what i was curious
25:29
about with this book is will they keep
25:32
the tone of this book
25:35
which is more of like a adventurous chivalrous night
25:39
story or will they be like we're gonna
25:42
try to make it of a piece with game of thrones because
25:45
that's where most of the audience will be coming from i think
25:47
if they pick a different director then they could have all
25:51
the reason in the world they want to change the tone of match book but i
25:54
hope they will is i hope they will keep the tone of the
25:57
book and not just try to do game of thrones part three or
26:00
whatever more than like a disney or something else i trust hbo
26:03
to make good decisions either with their their tentpole
26:06
properties it's rarer than hbo show completely flops right
26:09
maybe i'm just missing something but i just feel like they are a
26:12
little bit more on point with making sure something's gonna
26:15
land with their fired audience yeah the quality control is better so we
26:19
want to go through them talk about the hedge night the first story you know
26:22
that is yeah you know i don't i we kind of did like a big overview maybe we
26:26
kind of zoom in just for a little bit that's the um it's interesting the tournament
26:29
right that's the first tournament before he's got a squire uh you find out about dunk and sir arlen.
26:36
Of the Penetrate, right? Sir Arlen of Penetrate, yeah. Penetrate, yep.
26:40
And I kind of like, you see one of these characters trying to make themselves.
26:43
Yeah. Which is not what you got in Game of Thrones. Everyone was already titled
26:46
and named for a lot, again, just the TV series, not the book series.
26:51
So, yeah, I appreciated that.
26:53
I was, I mean, I had no idea what to expect coming into this.
26:57
And I came into it with very low expectations because, as I said,
27:00
like, as Song of Ice and Fire went on, my...
27:04
And disappointment had grown into disdain. And I was like, you know,
27:08
whatever, I'm going to read the book and the cast had agreed to do it.
27:12
So I was going to obviously read the book, but I had low expectations.
27:16
I just for me personally, I didn't expect to like it. And right off the bat,
27:20
I mean, within a few pages, I'm like, this just feels different.
27:22
Like it doesn't, it doesn't feel like sensationalist, which is how I felt Song
27:27
of Ice or A Vice and Fire become.
27:28
I felt like there was real attention being paid to character development rather
27:33
than character destruction, which is another beef I have with that series.
27:36
I was waiting like to shoot a drop. Right.
27:40
Both Egg and Dunk to be killed. Like, oh, you like, you like Dunk.
27:42
We're just going to kill him brutally and Egg's going to get raped. And like.
27:46
Yeah, honestly, that would not have surprised me if that happened. Okay.
27:50
But to be fair there are some unexpected like
27:54
big time deaths like on the first tournament like Baelor
27:57
Breakspear right at the end yeah his
28:00
head falls apart which was handled in a way like
28:03
that it wasn't so salacious it was sensitively
28:07
gone and I don't have a problem with that stuff in fact
28:10
I told you I loved the first book in the Song
28:13
of Ice and Fire series and I remember when they killed this was
28:16
before the whole series had like really blown up and
28:19
so i had this was early enough that i
28:22
had no idea what was going to happen to ned stark that truly
28:25
was a shocking surprise to me i'm with you on that yeah and
28:28
i loved it i thought like wow that is so bold that'd
28:31
be like killing frodo baggins right yeah it was fucking so unexpected i thought
28:36
it was so bold i thought it was great but i i think now i'm going into the rant
28:40
i was trying to not go into but like it's gonna happen that's our i think i
28:44
think I think what happened with Song of Ice and Fire is that the author took
28:47
all the wrong lessons from the first book.
28:49
He was like, oh, people love the sex scenes. People love not just the sex scenes,
28:54
but they love like the, oh, well, there was like so much like nasty incest and
28:58
rape and like people pissing in the woods.
29:01
We can't just describe them walking in the woods. We have to describe them like
29:04
pissing in the woods over and over and over again, as they do with the one Stark
29:07
girl who's wandering in the woods for like an entire book.
29:10
I don't even remember the names, to be honest with you. But I feel like people were like this.
29:15
They praise certain things about that book because they were like,
29:17
well, that was refreshing for fantasy at the time.
29:19
And so the author lost track of what the story was and what was valuable about
29:24
the characters and decided, I'm just going to keep bashing people over the head with this stuff.
29:29
I'm just going to keep killing characters that they like or changing characters
29:33
that they like, but not for the better in ways that make them less interesting characters.
29:37
We're just going to keep having sex, but awful sex. It's going to be,
29:41
like, rape or incest or... Waffle sex. Yeah, exactly. Just the worst sex.
29:45
And that's all that book became. And by the time you get to the fourth or fifth
29:50
book in the series, it becomes...
29:53
A whole different cast of characters you're not
29:55
even sure what they're doing anymore and it's just like
29:58
here we go here's someone's getting raped again you know like that's what
30:01
it had all become anyways i guess i wasn't trying to talk
30:04
about all that i was trying to say with this book i'm not
30:08
opposed to the unexpected death and i didn't see that what was that character's
30:12
name when his takes the helmet off and they are like i mean that totally surprised
30:17
me i was like oh this so this is how dunk like ascends right like because he
30:21
was the guy said something like Like, I need good knights, right?
30:24
Like, and I was like, oh, so this makes sense. This is his ascension.
30:28
He's going to become this guy's, like, right-hand man and blah, blah, blah.
30:31
And then all of a sudden it's like, wait, what, what? Like, something didn't
30:33
look right. And, like, he took the helmet off and he was faint and they noticed.
30:38
That was great. That was so well done. His brother, too. Right. Yeah.
30:42
Messed up. Which was, that was a cool moment because he didn't have to fight
30:46
in that fight, right? But he was, like, he was the honorable guy and he was
30:48
going to do the honorable thing.
30:50
And so it still does what Martin, like you're saying, Martin. he
30:53
took like the subverting of your expectations and
30:56
he went too far with it yes almost ryan johnson asked
30:59
i get that but at the same time
31:02
that's part of what makes this story so great is you expect oh
31:05
the good and honorable prince is going to be fine he's
31:08
going to do the honorable thing it's going to prove that dunk is innocent
31:11
blah blah blah and yeah it does but
31:15
not without a cost right the monkey's paw curl then it's
31:18
like yeah the guy died and now the brother is like
31:21
in disgrace and he hates himself because he killed his good brother and
31:24
all this stuff right yeah it's like that morally
31:27
gray thing that martin nails and i get your
31:30
criticisms and i felt a lot of that same thing
31:33
when i first read the last two books in the series i thought the first
31:36
three were incredible and i flew through them the last two
31:39
get to be kind of a slog because he sort of begins
31:42
to meander and just sort of like a boat stuck in the without a
31:45
way or without a wind it's just sort of like right what are we doing here why
31:49
are we doing this why are we we keep you're developing the characters enough
31:51
make them do something now right and i feel like part of it is he's sort of
31:57
fuck where was i going with that damn it i'm like moral gray zone yeah i just all the like he um.
32:05
He's really good at it. I read it again. I read the last book again in anticipation,
32:09
thinking that Winds of Winter might be coming out soon. Boy, what an idiot I was.
32:13
And honestly, on a second read, I feel a lot better about those last couple
32:18
of books than I did before, because I feel like a lot of it is,
32:21
again, developing these characters for some sort of denouement that's coming.
32:26
I don't see it the same way you did, but I understand where that opinion comes from. I totally get it.
32:31
But if you're ever bored one day and you're like, oh, what the fuck?
32:34
I mean, I have I have wondered.
32:35
You got 97 hours to kill. Because I've had the experience many times of you
32:41
don't like something the first time. And it's because it's not what you expected it to be.
32:46
And you go back and look at it a second time expecting it to be that and like it much better.
32:51
So I have been curious if I were to revisit the series knowing some of the directions
32:56
some of this stuff goes in, would I appreciate it more?
33:00
And I'm sure I would. I mean, a lot of my maybe a lot of my disdain the first
33:03
time was like, he just keeps fucking his own story up. Yeah.
33:09
And I stayed with him for so many books like, you know, OK, all right.
33:14
Jamie Lannister, badass swordfighter. Maybe there's gonna be some kind of.
33:17
Oh, no, he lost his hand. And now we're going to follow him for like several
33:20
books as like he doesn't sword fight, but just tries to like still be something
33:25
in the Lannister family. I love that complexity.
33:28
This guy who was irredeemably bad, who's trying to find himself.
33:31
To me, that's not complexity when that's all you do with your story and your characters.
33:35
There's like Thane Greyjoy. Like maybe he's going to be like,
33:38
I'm going back here. So you can tell me if I'm remembering things wrong.
33:41
But he was going to be like some kind of interesting, like Viking character from the sea.
33:45
And then like he got thrown in a dungeon and like turned into this like creep.
33:49
And I'm like, literally, I'm looking for any kind of character that I can be
33:53
like, all right, this character. I like this character.
33:55
And he just keeps fucking him up or killing him. What about John?
33:59
What doesn't he die like yeah but up until
34:02
that point and then does he come back i feel like i've heard things
34:05
like no yet and the books it hasn't gotten that okay i got
34:08
you i'm like i don't know some of the stuff just started i
34:12
could almost see the author sitting at his
34:14
keyboard being like nobody's gonna expect this and it's
34:18
like it had become the thing you expect like
34:21
another one would be tyrion is that how you say the name
34:24
tyrion like he was such a fascinating character
34:27
and then all of a sudden he like fell out of
34:30
favor with the Lannisters and he ended up on a boat saying like
34:33
where do whores go and like that's all that happened for
34:35
like a thousand pages and I'm like that's another character ruined okay now
34:39
and that's why I won't read the books the tv series does it fine but to get
34:43
he comes back to push back a little bit one more I want to throw in here go
34:48
ahead what's her name the the Targaryen Targaryen Targaryen Targaryen but what's her name.
34:54
Yes yeah she was super cool for
34:56
like a couple books and then she finally arrives and it's like thousands
34:59
of pages of her like i'm so tired of what leadership actually
35:03
involves and i don't want to you know and it's like it's you
35:06
know do something with the character i don't want her to like be mid
35:09
it's like the trade disputes and phantom menace it's a
35:12
valid criticism i get that but i also feel like a
35:15
lot of especially modern fantasy and sci-fi storytelling
35:19
ignores the fact that it takes time for things
35:22
to happen and martin i don't think is shy about sticking
35:24
with the fact that it takes tyrian a long time
35:27
to get across essos to find daenerys
35:30
it takes literally makes it real life time though well i'm gonna say that it's
35:34
not that bad on second read it really wasn't that bad but it takes daenerys
35:39
a long time to learn like hey you can't trust people people are shit right like
35:42
it's he's developing these characters and yeah it's a slog to get there And
35:46
I get a lot of it's probably him just like trying to find some way through for these characters too.
35:51
But like Aria pissing in the woods is like, like the first through 10th time
35:55
that happens, you're like, well, yeah, like she would have to piss in the woods.
35:58
Like there's, there's not going to be plumbing out there in the forest.
36:01
I get it. I think that's his answer. But then by like the 11th or 12 times and
36:04
he used, what was the phrase he kept using? It was like, make water.
36:06
I'm like, come on, dude. That's just weird.
36:11
That's his way of like saying, oh, you expect in Tolkien, no one ever uses the
36:15
bathroom. Well, I'm going to make them use the bathroom.
36:16
So you're going to know me. But that's exactly what I didn't like,
36:18
is that whole thing. I can literally see him grinning to himself.
36:22
Like, this is so like real life. I overlook a lot of that stuff because...
36:26
For me, it's more about the overarching thing that I like a lot.
36:29
The minutiae of it sometimes bogs down, but I try not to get trapped by it. But to each their own.
36:35
You're used by their... What happened for me, I'll readily admit this,
36:39
is I got to a point in the series where I was so frustrated with it that it's
36:46
not unlike watching the Buffalo Sabres nowadays.
36:48
Where there was nothing I was willing to forgive. Like my frustration had become
36:56
so deep that it was like, like Ari is pissing again.
37:00
Like, you know what I mean? It was like, fuck. Jack Quinn is fucking up. Right.
37:03
And it's like, I I'll admit, like I was, I was focused on the minutia because I was so annoyed.
37:10
You know what I mean? I get it. I get it. Yeah. I mean, it's like when,
37:13
you know, you're in a bad mood. So everything just right.
37:16
Right. You pick like, caught me at a bad time. Yeah.
37:19
Yeah. Take all those criticism and you look at like the hedge night,
37:22
you've got a lot of the same narrative moves but
37:25
it's a much more tight focus and you've got like the
37:28
unexpected character deaths you've got the morally ambiguous ending
37:31
and you've got the oh he gets the girl no he doesn't she's gone right
37:34
like a lot of those identity and a yes so there's a lot of that stuff that he
37:38
puts in but it's a lot more of a quick like let's just get it going kind of
37:42
thing and i think you're exactly right and and because i was thinking about
37:45
that in the i think it was the second book where he goes to sworn sword oh yeah
37:50
you're talking second story Yes, the second story.
37:54
And what's the Chuckie Water? Oh my God. If I saw. So if I see Chuckie Watermore one more fucking time.
38:00
My Chuckie Water. Say Chuckie Water one more fucking time.
38:03
Chuckie in the culture I ever heard of.
38:05
But they want to show. He wants to demonstrate the length and the arduousness of the journey.
38:11
And so he works in the whole thing about like, well, I can't wear my finery
38:16
or else it'll be all sweaty and disgusting when I get there.
38:19
And that would be disgraceful. And they're like, well, just change when you
38:21
get there. And he's like, how silly would that look on the drawbridge?
38:24
You know, so like then, you know, I mean, like to me, that was a great way of
38:28
showing like, OK, yeah, like this isn't like you could just call an Uber and pop over there.
38:32
You have to actually undertake the journey during a drought when it's hot.
38:36
And these are some of the you know what I mean? And it didn't need to be them
38:40
stopping 100 times to piss in the woods or to stop at, you know.
38:45
Try not to be raped or to rape, you know, like along the way. Yeah.
38:49
You know what I mean? And like, so, and I think this is to the point you're
38:52
making about like, it took what he does well, but because of the tighter constraint
38:57
for me as a reader, it worked better.
38:59
Like I just, I stopped getting so, I wasn't annoyed at all with this.
39:02
I found this absolutely delightful. It's a smaller story.
39:05
Yeah. And, you know, the sworn sword does the political intrigue on a small,
39:10
much smaller scale. You know, Dunk gets tricked.
39:14
He gets lied to by the, I guess, the landed nobility that he's serving.
39:19
He's not king or anything like that.
39:21
Eustace or? Yeah, Sir Eustace. Sir Eustace.
39:25
You know and so i thought that was good like okay so here's the political intrigue
39:30
back and forth he's serving this guy gets played by the guy because the sir
39:34
eustace knowingly sends him over,
39:37
knowing that sir eustace fought for the bastard king or
39:40
the right the which dragon was it the black
39:43
dragon he definitely works he definitely works in that
39:46
rebellion like which is another part of his deep deep
39:49
history with you know the the bastard son who
39:52
gets legitimized and he gets the sword and all this is like oh really the war
39:55
of the roses yeah essentially i i thought it said in beautifully i
39:58
thought it was all so well handled in this book because that
40:01
another criticism i had of song of ice and fire is that you get
40:04
to a certain point in that series where you're like they're they're all just creeps like
40:07
they're all awful they're all motivated by selfish things and
40:10
there's there's really nothing to like granted i
40:13
like my great literature i like my complex literature but that's
40:16
different than i i felt like song of ice and fire had just become like sleazy
40:20
literature like the world's full of bad people who are all motivated by bad
40:24
things and in this book he has a much more nuanced look at that like the part
40:29
you guys are talking about is like you know you're completely understanding
40:33
of eustace's side until you talk to the lady.
40:37
Red widow the red widow right and and then you're like oh shit like this is
40:42
a whole different perspective and then he goes back and you hear eustace's side
40:46
again with some new details and And you're like, they both kind of have valid points here.
40:51
I thought neither of them came off as good, shiningly, very moral characters.
40:57
But neither of them came across as sleazy, these are dirtbags who just want
41:01
power characters either.
41:03
They both came across as real people.
41:05
And the one thing I liked about, another thing I liked about that story is the
41:09
fight in the water between the two knights.
41:11
Like, that was a gritty ass fight. It was. Don't drown the guy. Yes.
41:15
I love that you stabbed him while drowning him. That was cool.
41:18
A couple of high watermarks for me, and no offense, or no pun intended,
41:21
but a couple of things in that story that I loved was the development of the Red Widow.
41:24
I can't think of her name, but she sews a guy into a sack and then she's got this edgy backstory.
41:30
Right. Every municipality has their own way of murdering traitors.
41:34
Yeah. And then you find out, no, she's this hot little redhead that she's only
41:37
a couple of years old and Duncan, you know, she kind of wants to get with them
41:40
and it's like, oh, but she edges them and he's too good to take advantage of a lady.
41:46
And she's doing all the cruel stuff that she does because her position is very
41:50
tenuous. Yes, she's in that.
41:52
Again, Martin does a really deft job of maneuvering a woman's role in this world,
41:58
especially one that has power,
42:01
quote unquote power, where she's like hemmed in by her father's will and this
42:06
knight who wants basically to force her in a certain way.
42:09
And just the way that they're able to rid themselves of all of that.
42:13
And it's kind of gross in the end when she marries a 60 plus year old dude.
42:17
Right. Well, she had to marry anyway. Yeah. She had to. But I thought that was such a great twist, too.
42:23
You know what I mean? I think, like, George R.R. Martin had started to annoy
42:26
me with his twists. But this one I thought was great. Like, when he wakes up
42:29
and they're like, oh, the wedding.
42:30
And I'm like, the wedding. And I'm like...
42:33
Did like because i kind of expected like dunk
42:36
was gonna end it was just like the same fake out from the first story
42:39
yeah like he's gonna become the honorable knights like right hand man
42:42
and this one it's like he's gonna end up with this girl i'm like and then
42:45
it was like oh no eustace of all fucking people she
42:48
marries sir use sir useless you know like the
42:51
guy she was going to kill and when she explains it it
42:54
makes sense and she tells dunk like doesn't she say
42:56
grow up or something like that to him like basically like this is the
42:59
way it's right yeah i was like dude that that shit was great i thought
43:02
that was but then they had they also had that great moment like
43:05
in the stable where she's trying to give him the horse right yeah and he.
43:08
Like just pulls her hair down and then sort of like rough
43:11
smutty kind of way yes okay let's any no
43:14
you're not gonna get any doesn't rape her which is she
43:18
was a willing participant that's true it might not have been
43:21
not looking for rape i was looking for i think she was
43:24
definitely he wanted she was dtf oh
43:27
she was one of the people she was one of the several people in this book
43:30
who said like i bet you're big everywhere aren't you what i
43:33
like about the story too is the the mirroring between dunk and
43:36
the bad night that she had in her sir i can't think of the guy's name sir
43:39
no bennis was something along i don't know long
43:42
inch long inch so long inch oh my god come on
43:45
now yeah but the fact that he's only an inch or so shorter than
43:48
dunk who's like seven feet tall right martin's got this
43:50
obsession with like basketball player sized guys but honestly
43:54
he's an inch less than seven feet right quitting the dunk and
43:57
uh martin himself looks like a hobbit yeah you know
44:00
it's just like wish fulfillment but uh yeah but duncan
44:03
or uh yeah duncan this guy or like going toe-to-toe in that battle in the river
44:07
or the pond or whatever the hell or whatever it was creek creek and just the
44:12
fact he just barely beats the guy that's that awesome like parallelism between
44:16
those like he could have been something like this but he's the honorable hedge
44:20
knight you know it's a rarity in that world. That's great.
44:23
He is also, he's not someone who comes across, he comes across as.
44:28
Like smart in a very like what's the
44:31
word i'm looking for here like sort of blue collar-ish like
44:34
earthy kind of way but not like uh yeah
44:37
in a worldly way but he otherwise yeah exactly
44:40
yes that's a great way to put it like he's always just
44:43
like he never outwits anybody he never has any
44:45
grand strategy he's not a schemer he's not like but
44:48
just trying to do good is what gets him through right
44:51
yeah right contrast him with bennis of the brown like
44:55
who's like right what he could also wind up being like you know
44:57
it's like the same like all these like oh you could be like this you could
45:00
be like this you could be like this and it's like how does he wind up being
45:03
lord commander of the kingsguard you know
45:06
eventually that's him yeah and like basically saving the
45:09
like the targaryen dynasty from utter disaster if
45:12
you guys look at the history what happens afterwards so that was a question i
45:15
was gonna have is it's been so long since i read song of
45:18
and fire is i imagine there's
45:21
a lot that i've forgotten that there was
45:25
probably like in this book like you
45:28
know is mentioned or alluded to tyrian alludes a few times yeah king agon the
45:32
fifth there who tries to bring dragons back okay for all and the experiment
45:36
was completely wrong and burns the castle down yeah yeah and dunk or sir duncan
45:42
the tall yeah saves the child of agon so that the dynasty continues.
45:48
But there's a tragedy, like they all died and he died in the attempt and all
45:52
this, but he saved the baby.
45:53
Gets cooked in his armor. Yeah, something really horrible.
45:56
And there's also the idea that, and I think it's been confirmed by Martin,
45:59
that Duncan is a somehow great-grandfather or whatever to Brienne of Tarth.
46:04
So he's got like a connection there. That makes sense, of course.
46:07
Super honorable, wants to do the right thing all the time. Huge. Yeah.
46:12
And people try to link him with a mountain, but there's no connection. like they're
46:15
not yeah i kept waiting for even in the first tournament for
46:18
someone to be like the mountain later on or i
46:21
think that's the long inch is basically that same kind of idea like
46:24
this like unstoppable huge guy well i was thinking like who becomes the mountain
46:28
who or the is it the hound which one gets the hound is sandor he's the good
46:32
one okay so it's the mountain that that turns into a zombie yes yeah he becomes
46:37
sir gregor gregor the tall or whatever stone or whatever they may like it. Yeah.
46:43
I feel like this is a good place to wrap up actually, because we've talked about
46:46
where the book is, where the book leads into the, the whole world of Westeros.
46:50
And the third story is a lot of political intrigue. It's another,
46:53
it's another tournament and Dunk finds himself stuck in this, like bore of the roses.
47:00
That's kind of like usurping usurption thing. It's good. The whole thing is worth the read.
47:04
If you are interested in this kind of stuff for sure. And I agree too.
47:07
Like I would absolutely recommend this book maybe as the starter into the series,
47:11
but knowing that I haven't read the whole Song of Ice.
47:14
I mean, I'll say again, like it's, it's stunning to me.
47:18
What this book was because it is even as
47:22
there are so many things that we've talked about where we're
47:25
like oh yeah this is martin does this martin does this martin does
47:27
this and song of ice and fire so many similarities just the
47:31
tone the tone is so completely different
47:34
from song of ice and fire it is utterly like
47:38
defied my expectations of what this book was
47:40
going to be it completely like
47:43
restored my interest in this world and saying
47:47
a lot considering where i was yes yes and
47:50
i i don't i don't know if they're already
47:53
out or not but i feel at the end of my book it says
47:56
like this is not the last dunkin egg story like
47:59
as far as i know he has not written anymore but so maybe in
48:02
the next 30 years like then martin doesn't
48:05
have respectfully 30 years my hope is
48:08
that martin doesn't leave everything with this sort of
48:11
like well that's it i'm dead you're all fucked you'll never get closure i at
48:15
least like let the property live on with ghost writers like dune kind of like
48:19
the same kind of thing i would love to see more at least with competent writers
48:23
in this world because it's such a beautiful world it'd be a shame for it to
48:26
all just go they finished wheel of time with brandon sanderson yeah that's another
48:29
one yeah i was actually going to say it'd be.
48:31
Good for sanderson to pick up the ip if george
48:35
r r martin like wanted to just they'd have to get someone someone grittier
48:38
i feel like sanderson is is definitely like the old school
48:42
i was thinking
48:45
of shoot who's the guy i don't have it up here because i never finished the
48:48
book but oh fuck there's a and kate yemisin she could
48:51
totally oh yeah oh yeah the westeros yeah
48:54
i was gonna say the banner we became but sure
48:56
could you imagine do you
48:59
guys ever see that video of martin and king talking on stage no
49:03
but that sounds oh it it's incredible martin
49:06
asks him he just goes point blank how do you write so much
49:09
and king like laughs just do
49:12
it yeah he's like well he didn't really answer him it's it's
49:15
really worth a lot they're two completely different writers i mean king is very
49:19
much like how do i keep you turning the page and he's not really terribly worried
49:24
about depth or complexity or prose whereas martin doesn't give a fuck at all
49:29
if you turn the page but he's super interested in all those other things.
49:34
But they're both great in their own way. Yep. Yeah.
49:36
Agreed. And speaking of opposites, if you're interested in sticking with us,
49:41
our next cast, we're going to start in a couple of minutes and we'll,
49:44
we'll share in the next couple of weeks is a ghost in the shell.
49:47
So we're going from high fantasy to cyberpunk because we don't like to do middle
49:51
ground. This is a hard shift. Yes.
49:54
Well, this actually also came from, I think my suggestion of doing cowboy bebop.
49:58
And we realized we didn't have time to watch 26 episodes and 13 hours of TV then.
50:04
So Sean, I think, suggested Ghost in the Shell. Oh, God. Don't put that on me.
50:08
All right. I'll take Ghost in the Shell.
50:10
So I can already see we're going to be returning to our...
50:13
So listeners, we are... If you were thrown by this episode with me in the role
50:20
of hater and Sean as enthusiast, fear not. It sounds like the world is returning.
50:26
Normalcy is being restored. All will be right again.
50:29
In a couple weeks with Ghost in the Shell make sure you watch
50:32
the 95 version don't accidentally watch the 97
50:35
or I think maybe 2000 version that's got CGI that I
50:38
did there's a 2017 Scarlett Johansson live action
50:41
one too I did not watch that one but it got very bad reviews like neither the
50:45
critics nor the fans liked it are you have you seen it Sean no but I heard it's
50:49
not worth your time oh okay I mean anything with Scarlett Johansson is worth
50:53
my time yeah but if you're just talking strictly about the quality of the movie
50:57
I understand the point you're making. I like her cameos on SNL now more than anything.
51:01
Make sure you watch the 95 version. You can do the English dubbed over version,
51:07
which is what I think all three of us have watched.
51:09
Yes, that is indeed what I watched. It was very good.
51:14
I don't know what you're talking about. Mike's mouth is moving and no words
51:18
are coming out. And then all of a sudden, language happens. It's crazy.
51:23
And we'll see you in that couple weeks for Ghost in the Shell.
51:26
Until then, stay nerdy y'all and cheers cheers cheers.
51:30
Music.