Now that some time has passed and we have had some time to grieve for our dearly beloved butchered world of A Song of Ice and Fire, it’s time to dive back in and get to the fat of the matter! That’s right, what you came to GoT (Game of Thrones) for in the first place; the motherfu*$%ng dragons! We take a deep dive into one of the most interesting aspects of the world itself, and most definitely the most interesting creatures to inhabit the world of A Song of Ice and Fire. But how did they come to be? How did someone even get close enough to tame the first one, considering they aren’t puppies? What made the people who rode dragons so special? We provide our theories and more including the history of dragons, the biggest and baddest of all, the riders who, well, rode them, and where the hell they ended up. With the keen ability at waging war, the history is bloody, full of intense moments that shifted the power dichotomy fifty times over. From humble beginnings to power unattainable to the regular peasant, to the descent that led to extinction (kind of), we cover it all!
Read the Full Episode Transcript Below:
Kalvin 0:06
Hello, talk about something where each week we dive deep into whatever it is we find interesting. I’m your host, Calvin and joining me from the smoking See, it’s your co host, Nick Richardson.
Nick 0:16
The smoking see my dog 14 flames, the flying creatures in the sky.
Kalvin 0:23
That is what we’re talking about dragons and people who ride dragons in A Song of Ice and Fire The World of Ice and Fire Game of Thrones, whatever you want to call it. That’s what we’re talking about not dragons in the real world.
Nick 0:39
I’m sure I honestly I could probably talk about Komodo dragons for about an hour. They’re freaking scared. I
Kalvin 0:44
meant more like the mythological dragons of our world. Like King Arthur slate, and all right.
Nick 0:52
There’s a whole lot out east. They really like dragons. Yeah,
Kalvin 0:56
they love the dragons. I know. We’re sticking to the World of Ice and Fire where dragons are 100% real. And we just want to dive into where they come from, what happened to them? who rides them and why? Who’s the first to try to ride them all that good stuff?
Nick 1:15
Pretty much we’re gonna we’re gonna dive into the stuff you didn’t get. I mean, one of the most interesting blogs about getting the show, right? Is dragons. Let’s like one and Wargaming and direwolves. That’s like, yeah, that’s probably gonna happen. We’re
Kalvin 1:28
gonna have another episode on skin changing at some point because that to me, that’s cooler. But we’ll have that discussion at the end.
Nick 1:34
Right But I mean, at the same time, it’s like I wish they would have talked a little more that that’s what they’re going back to remedy with a prequel but we’re gonna get ahead of HBO cuz fuck them and hear but you know what I just thought of
Kalvin 1:48
is holy fuck you, HBO because they’ve got some great content.
Nick 1:51
They do have some great content. But how could you let D and D. cup you by the balls like that?
Kalvin 1:57
Yes, a rough show. It was rough ending to
Nick 1:58
the fucking skinny neck big headed fucks.
Kalvin 2:02
But his old valaria to the east. Obviously, an SOC S is a part of SOC s.
Nick 2:09
There you go. Okay. Just saying, George.
Kalvin 2:13
Dude, you’re gonna want your maps out. Because we’re gonna we’re gonna be going through some like, where places are that you’re gonna need some reference materials. So if you’ve got your westerosi or worldwide, some fire map handy, which I know you all if you’re listening to this, you clearly have one of those just sitting by you at all times. It definitely would be helpful to have. But let’s start with just water dragons in A Song of Ice and Fire. Their scaled reptilian creatures as in most history and mythology. They are said to have lived in Westeros and Essos. They have four limbs, so they have two wings, slash four legs, and two rear legs. They’re not. George RR Martin didn’t like the idea of the six limbed dragons that we usually see in pop culture where they have four legs and then two wings. Yeah, he didn’t. He didn’t think that was indicative of how a dragon would actually look.
Nick 3:09
I guess things would not be agile at all be like an elephant flying through the sky. There you go perfectly.
Kalvin 3:15
We’ve all seen Trek and how the dragon acts there. That’s exactly what he was trying to avoid. I think there you go.
Nick 3:22
Taking it from Shrek, Shrek, you know, I gotta get this shit down. This is incredible work incredible.
Kalvin 3:29
They have strong Jaws, sharp teeth, claws, leathery wings, long necks and long tails. hatchlings are about the size of a cat. So that’s when they’re first born about size of a cat. And super cool. As long as they have food and freedom, they would never stop growing.
Nick 3:48
Which, and one of the biggest things is they live long as shit.
Kalvin 3:53
Yes. Oh, my next point. Oh, okay. I didn’t I mean, go ahead. I
Nick 3:56
went from you. I was gonna say that and then their intelligence factor like their I couldn’t fit in my research. I couldn’t find any like, scale, you know, quote, unquote, of how intelligent they are.
Kalvin 4:08
because nobody’s taught like, really talked to them and gotten to write down their thoughts. So that’s that’s the issue there. They are very intelligent. They’re probably more intelligent than at least a few former presidents as we talked about last week on the presidential race or not last week, two weeks ago, I
Nick 4:27
suppose that was a little more emotionally intelligent than a few of them as well.
Kalvin 4:33
Yes. But balerion the black dread the largest tiger and dragon will get back to him later but he was actually large enough to swallow and Oryx which is like a big ox or a mammoth hole
Nick 4:48
in this was referred to grin grin as yeah
Kalvin 4:54
yeah grant cuz he was he was slow and thick headed like an arcs, arcs
Nick 4:58
in a fucking thug. Dude was swollen shit.
Kalvin 5:01
Yeah, dude was a beast. Dragon bones are black do their high iron content. See dragons and ice dragons are also part of the legends of various other regions within the World of Ice and Fire. But we’re only really going to discuss fire dragons here.
Nick 5:21
I keep thinking of sorry I keep thinking of this tagline from fairy tale which is an anime Fire Dragon.
Kalvin 5:33
If I say Fire Dragon anymore you have permission to just say that like just tagging right after every time I say Fire Dragon.
Nick 5:39
It’s all that’s running through my head and then there’s in the back of my head my daughter says roar. If you’re like what’s the lion say?
Kalvin 5:46
She’s that was my youngest would do the same thing. You get the lion and she would just let that shit out.
Nick 5:54
Kids are the funniest fuck. Anyway, dragons. Yes. So our babies
Kalvin 6:03
or sheep, we don’t know how
Nick 6:07
much wives the dragons eat everybody.
Kalvin 6:09
They have great heat emanating from their bodies at all times. They only cooked me and use extreme they’re extremely hot dragon flame to cook their meat before eating it. So pretty much just in one bite. They cook and eat their food.
Nick 6:25
They burn it to a fucking crisp.
Kalvin 6:27
Yeah, absolutely. fuckin char and and so that kind of that ties into the link that Targaryens cannot be burned. Because dragons will not eat raw meat. Several during the dance of the dragons, which will we’ll talk a little bit more in detail of, but not too deep of detail. Several Targaryen leaders were eaten by dragons. And which means while being eaten they were burned alive also. So this whole myth that no Targaryens can be burned is just that it’s a myth. What happened with denarius is kind of this one off scenario. Perfect Storm of a lot of different shit going on. And we’ve got more on Danny and hatching her dragons and stuff like that a little bit. But I wanted to dispel that notion that like all Targaryens can’t be burned because a lot of them have been burned just on regular shit too. Even Jon Snow himself gets burned early in a Game of Thrones. fighting the the white the whites that attack Dr. Marmont.
Nick 7:27
That’s a fantastic point.
Kalvin 7:28
So it’s definitely possible for Targaryens to be burned. Danny’s just kind of full of shit when she says a true dragon can’t be burned.
Nick 7:37
She just spout and shut off her
Kalvin 7:40
clothes. It’s one of those family things that gets passed down and passed. Now if you were a true Targaryen you wouldn’t be burned. But it’s it’s bullshit.
Nick 7:47
You know, she said that 15 minutes after she was cooking some eggs and went oh shit. That was well she got burned
Kalvin 7:53
in the bath at one point. Not not like her skin didn’t get burned, but it was hot to her. So if you can feel heat you can be burned.
Nick 8:02
That’s fair.
Kalvin 8:03
So that the the fact that dragons only eat cooked meat is something that’s pointed to a lot when people try to dispel the notion that Targaryens can’t be burned. It’s well, dragons don’t eat raw meat. So these dragons are eating Targaryens they would have had to burn them first off, they can be burn.
Nick 8:20
psych that made me immediately uncomfortable. If that was like the legend. And then you find out Otherwise, I’d be a little upset. Like
Kalvin 8:29
oh, this dragon will eat me but he’ll just spit me out cuz. Fuck, you can’t burn me.
Nick 8:33
She won’t even eat me. He looked at me. I’m alive for sure. Fuck me up.
Kalvin 8:36
I’m pretty sure even Alright, so let’s let’s play this out for a second. You’re a dragon. You’re gonna eat a Targaryen dude. You realize you can’t burn him while you’re eating? You’re still gonna chew as the dragon, right? So as the Targaryen Dude, you’re dead no matter what. In that scenario. I can’t burn you but he’s still gonna chew the shit out of you before he spits you out.
Nick 8:56
And as you mentioned, they have strong jaws and very sharp teeth.
Unknown Speaker 9:00
And it’s cool.
Kalvin 9:02
Like to me if if they’re trying to burn you and you’re not burning that’s just grounds for them to even more take you out of their mouth and start ripping at you with their claws. Like they’re not just gonna be like No, I’m good.
Nick 9:14
Yeah, no thanks. I’m not hungry.
Kalvin 9:17
Let me go eat this other dude.
Nick 9:19
He’s just like it’s cool guys. I can’t get burned. Oh, fuck. Just getting eaten alive. Oh, that would be terrible.
Kalvin 9:27
Yeah, two very bad ways to go. I guess. Oh my god getting burned by dragon flame probably wouldn’t be that bad because I’m pretty sure that’s a quick death. Like that flame is superduper hot.
Nick 9:37
Either way, dude, you got like 19 seconds. probably less. Let’s go with 10 seconds where your fucking eyeballs are popping and your skin is boiling.
Kalvin 9:46
I totally conscious. I don’t even think you noticed any of that with Dragon fire. This isn’t like you’re burning live in a house fire dragon fire. It’s gonna be instant.
Nick 9:54
Why are people screaming like crazy and all the shows because people
Kalvin 9:59
always scream,
Nick 10:01
I scream if I’m on fire, you know, if I’m on fire, I’m just like, sure.
Kalvin 10:07
Cuz it hurts all those times I’ve been on fire. Very true.
Nick 10:11
I’ve been around the block buddy.
Kalvin 10:13
So dragon scales are mostly impervious to flame, and also serve as just general protection for the flesh underneath. Scales will grow thicker and tougher as dragons age. The fire breathing also becomes hotter and fiercer as they age as well. So older dragon some older dragons can melt steel and stone with their flames. We see this with balerion the black dread in Heron Hall. Just demolishes that shit.
Nick 10:38
Yeah. hosing it with a bomb.
Kalvin 10:40
Yeah. And that was I believe Heron Hall was built out of mostly. Oh shit, what’s it called dragon glass
and obsidian. So it’s, it’s already harder to begin with. Kind of like dragon stone and winterfest parts of Winterfell are built out of Dragon glass. Heron Hall was as well. So the fact that they can burn through that is pretty intense. For sure.
Nick 11:09
Yeah, they’re like, it’s cool, guys. We got you know, we got dragonglass right. All right. And he’s like, No, you’re not.
Kalvin 11:16
And then you come the fucking black dread here
Nick 11:19
will come to me just, I’m going on record and I’m gonna say balerion the black dread is fantastic. What a great name.
Kalvin 11:27
George RR Martin is so good at naming things.
Nick 11:29
He fucking is man. I am insanely jealous. Except for the Targaryen family. He’s he got lazy with them.
Kalvin 11:36
He got a little lazy. He got an anus. Come on.
Nick 11:39
It’s like we got a gun. Damon. tag on. Megan.
Kalvin 11:46
Let’s see Raina raniero Ray, Ella, trainees or trainees? We’ll just throw some values of
Unknown Speaker 11:54
ADA. Yeah. Yeah.
Nick 11:58
He really was like, fuck it whatever.
Kalvin 12:01
Dragons lay large scaled eggs as a way to reproduce. Some believed some masters and other people who studied dragons believe the only way to actually confirm the sex of a dragon is whether or not they lay eggs. And some of the fake historians even argue that dragons could change their sex based on need.
Nick 12:23
See, I saw that in my research, but I only found one mention of a male having to fertilize the eggs and no other explanation outside of that. And this was like borderline cannon. I would like to say
Kalvin 12:37
yeah, so so this is in world historians believe that dragons may be I don’t think it’s hermaphroditic is the proper term. But it’s like produce a sexually. Well, no, it’s not even can reproduce asexually. It’s if there’s a male if there’s two males and no females around and they need to reproduce one will change its sex to female like clownfish do.
Nick 13:01
Right? Okay, I hear what you’re saying. And that’s some shit. It’s like, I guess I’ll lose my dick.
Kalvin 13:08
Although they apparently don’t have a dick, because otherwise, the historians would know which ones were male and female.
Nick 13:13
Well, I mean, that’d be fucking helpful. George RR Martin’s like, I’m not going to talk about dragon dicks. It’s not gonna happen in my books.
Kalvin 13:21
That is bullshit. George RR Martin wants to talk about dragon dicks.
Nick 13:25
You already fucking believe that. He’s at a press conference. And he’s like, you know, I’ve you you’ve all have asked me about dragon digs for too long. It’s a football. Fuck you. God damn, everyone walks off stage has a heart attack.
Kalvin 13:43
So for clownfish that that state where they can switch to females, they call it breeding male exhibiting pro tan dress sex reversal to become a breeding female. So that this Yeah, in world historian believed dragons could do the same type of thing.
Nick 14:03
He really does think of fucking everything that is fascinating.
Kalvin 14:06
So where do they come from? Where Where can we find these majestic creatures
Nick 14:11
and find them up your butt?
Kalvin 14:16
Well, that’s not productive.
Nick 14:19
You can shove it up your butt. Anyway, there’s plenty of myths about where they came from. The valerians came claim claimed they sprang forth from the 14 flames as I mentioned in the intro, which is a ring of volcanoes on the Valerian isle.
Kalvin 14:37
I knew that korf cars not Island though it’s peninsula. It’s a peninsula.
Nick 14:43
You’re just saying that because you live on a peninsula, you peninsula.
Kalvin 14:48
Yeah,
Nick 14:49
I’m gridlocked.
Kalvin 14:50
Oh life,
Nick 14:52
landlocked son. I go nowhere.
Kalvin 14:56
Let’s get that to be the new Crips and Bloods peninsulas. Land locks.
Nick 15:01
She we’re gonna win this shit. We got industry and terrible weather.
Kalvin 15:06
We’re homeless.
Nick 15:10
There’s a lot of segways around here and lime scooters. Home here. All right?
Kalvin 15:16
We got all the old people
Nick 15:18
now fucking dropped like 35 Oh my God, I’m gonna get a call from my grandpa he’s gonna be like, I heard you’re gonna drop. Drop 35 Oh people. Why not making 36 we’re coming for you bitch.
Kalvin 15:36
She is one of the carinthian think about dragons
Nick 15:39
there was these guys are doing drugs. Just say they claimed there was a second moon they was scolded by the sun. He said Get off me You clinky thing. scalded skulls? Well, maybe I misspelled my notes that I understand what’s called
Kalvin 15:58
scolded and scolded.
Nick 16:01
That sounds like hey, you cut this shit out, you fall in your lap,
Kalvin 16:05
I’m gonna burn the shit out.
Nick 16:06
I’m gonna make it happen. And then it cracked under the pressure of knowing the sun was going to school. It was like so can’t can’t have that and then a million dragons were just like, we’re here. Now, what’s up they have also been said to originate from the Shadow Lands but beyond a shy in the islands of the Jade Sea, which just sounds like Eastern mysticism stuff.
Kalvin 16:31
Well, so that’s my thought. I think that that all of this magic and stuff comes from a shy by the shadow, it makes the most sense. It’s this place that nobody can travel to. I also believe that you know the world that we’re looking at in all the maps, they’re all flat maps, but I believe it’s most likely a globe and so at some point that has to wrap around so I believe that there is a crossover between the Lands of Always winter and a shy by the shadow. And you know, I’m not breaking ground here. That’s a common thought among the fandom but it makes sense that magic that that would be kind of the the locus point of magic and then it spreads out both ways. So you get the others in the north spreading south and you get dragons and you know whatever other you know Southern magic southeastern magic ship coming from a shy going north across the world that
Nick 17:22
way. Makes sense? But you know what this reminds me of? Is Ancient Aliens fucking Well, I mean, if you these people just showed up and we’re like, hey, let me you know teach you how to tame these dragons and have at it we’re gonna teach you all of our stuff and then we’re just gonna disappear we’re going to go away not need anything from you ever and you don’t have never heard from again? That sounds like ancient aliens to me.
Kalvin 17:50
Well, so are the other option is there they’re working in concert with the great other and so the the goal there is to take over the world we don’t really know what the goal of the great other is because the show just destroyed any thought of motivation behind the white walkers and the night King and all that but no, so we don’t we don’t know any of their motivations, but very easily if they’re trying to take over the world. You know, they’re coming from the north. And they released dragons going the other way. They’re thinking we’re just going to release these nukes and let people do what they fucking do. Like, they’ll do the work for us if we give them these dragons, and that will just disappear and wait for them to destroy each other and then boom, we rule the world.
Nick 18:30
Sounds like a huge pain in the ass. Because anytime you’re the advanced species and you’re like here, dummies, here’s a nuclear bomb. don’t deal with it. Yeah, just go over there and just attack anything. Have you have had that shot? That’s when they rebel against you.
Kalvin 18:49
Yeah, or, I mean, the Marines did that a little bit. They they set some conquests, but mostly they kind of they try they they kept the dragons to themselves.
Nick 18:58
I would like this is mine, dude. People are trying to kill my dragons. No, no way.
Kalvin 19:04
Yeah. So septon Barth, who is another fake historian within the world, he believed that dragons were created by Valerian blood mages using Wyvern stocks. So they took you know, these kind of lizard, these giant lizard type things and turn them into dragon somehow, with their damn blood magic. It’s always comes back to blood magic with the septons
Nick 19:25
Yeah, I think George has some problems. But honestly, this one sounded the most logical to me. It just sounds like
Kalvin 19:34
how most scientific explanation Right,
Nick 19:36
right, you know, we cross b cross breed and develop dogs and stuff like that.
Kalvin 19:43
And that makes sense. And I would say in a world that we don’t see other magic actually existing. I would say that yeah, that’s probably it but we see actual real magic and things like the white walkers and the others. And you know, the the the way Wood trees clearly have some magical capabilities. There are people who can skin change and see through time through the weirwood. net if you’re looking at Bloodraven and Bran so I just think there’s too much magic in this world for dragons to not have a magical origin.
Nick 20:17
Yeah, I get that. That’s fair.
Kalvin 20:22
But dragon bones have been found around most of the known world have been found as far north as the island and as far south as the jungles of South Torrijos. So this is where you’re going to need your net maps to see where that stuff is. But you know, if you don’t have your map in front of you, because you weren’t listening before when I said to get your maps out, you conquers that it’s more or less the northern and southern ends of the world. So pretty much we’ve we’ve seen them everywhere.
Nick 20:54
Pretty much and they’re not going anywhere, anytime soon. Or are they?
Kalvin 21:01
Well, they were and then now they’re back though. So let’s talk about Ryan these mofos
Nick 21:07
Oh, shit,
Kalvin 21:09
which was the original thesis for this episode. But now we we changed it to be more dragon focus rather than just the riders but we’re gonna talk riders too. So the first historical record of any of people riding them their agent Tales from OSI that claim some unnamed people first team dragons brought them over to blu ray and then taught to valerians their arts before departing This is kind of what you were you were hinting at with your your Ancient Aliens there is that they were just like, Hey, we know how to do this. We’re gonna give them to you. And then we’re getting the fuck out of here. You guys do what you want with these dragons. Don’t kill us. Right?
Nick 21:48
Here’s this angry dog that I need to rehome he’s super cool. Trust me. He’s just, you’re new to him.
Kalvin 21:57
here’s, here’s all the magic spells that will help you. Yeah, just get hands really close to really hot fire. You’ll be good. Yeah,
Nick 22:04
they love it.
Kalvin 22:09
And then Many claim that the hot springs below Winterfell are actually warmed by the breath of a subterranean dragon, which is a pretty cool thought. And you know, I can go into that later. But the George RR Martin wrote another story called The Ice Dragon, which is supposedly not connected to A Song of Ice and Fire in any way. But it does share a lot of similarities with A Song of Ice and Fire. And it’s a children’s book and it’s not very long I’ve listened to it. And that the the little girl has an ice dragon and she lives in a town that’s very similar to Winterfell. And spoilers. At the end, the ice dragon dies and turns into a hot spring in the middle of this town. And you know, Winterfell is a place it’s very much like this town that has a hot spring in the middle of it and water is drawn from that hotspring threw out the wall throughout the town to heat the wall like they’ve got all this irrigation system built within the walls of Winterfell that keeps the the castle and the grounds warm at all times. So a lot of people think that something similar is going on with what happened to the eyestrain either. There was an ice dragon that died there and turned into a hot spring or there’s an actual dragon underneath the surface somewhere. Heating up Winterfell
Nick 23:30
someone was smoking some weed and Winterfell I think it was a fucking dragon here. Sure.
Kalvin 23:40
So let’s talk about the valerians using their dragons. What do you think about I think they were bad.
Nick 23:46
They were bad, bad people. Because they were shepherds. And then these people gave them nuclear bombs. And then they became evil. Yeah, then they became fuckin al Qaeda. They’re just like, yeah, I’m gonna take shit out. They weren’t fucking around. They just started conquering everything because they wanted slave labor to you know, do what everyone else has ever done that’s conquered and other people’s harvest medals. You know, do stuff of that nature.
Kalvin 24:17
You know, we discussed this in the future movie superlatives last week. But people like to make slaves of other people.
Nick 24:24
It is ridiculous. always
Kalvin 24:26
throw real and fake history. Any chance you get to make a slave like people are gonna fucking ticket.
Nick 24:32
I’ve never had the urge to do this, but apparently is fucking common.
Kalvin 24:36
I mean, you don’t ever make your kid go get you a drink out of the fridge.
Nick 24:40
Dude, if I could I probably would. She looks at me and it’s just like, No. She that’s her favorite word.
Kalvin 24:53
Understandable. And yeah, they the the lions were conquering the shit out of people.
Nick 25:02
Just conquering the shit out of them.
Kalvin 25:05
The first conquered the old empire of guests during the guest Gari war. Apparently the valerians used dragon horns to tame dragons and we’re seeing some dragon horns pop back up in the proper story now. Juran supposedly has one and the Horn of Jarman in the north may or may not have been found and may or may not be blown at some point, but that may be a dragon horn as well. But that’s how they they kept the dragons under control early on. And they used hundreds of dragons to during the reinisch War to conquer the royalists. So now they’ve got old guests and the reinisch they’re, they’re laying waste to most of us at this point.
Nick 25:47
Yeah, they’re shitting on most of the known world, with Dragons with lots of fire a horrible way to go.
Kalvin 25:55
Absolutely. And then, boom, the Doom of illyria. Dude, nobody was expecting it.
Nick 26:03
No. And it was Doom ish, which is not good if you didn’t know.
Kalvin 26:10
Correct. The Doom of Larry destroyed all the dragons except for the five that the Targaryen said fled to dragon stone with a few years earlier. This Cataclysm of an unspecified nature that caused the collapse of the Valerian freehold after 5000 give or take years of prosperity. So no one knows what happened. Really?
Nick 26:33
No, no fucking happened. I mean, apparently the volcanoes blew up.
Kalvin 26:38
Well, that was the that was part of it. But no, no one knows how the volcanoes blew up all all at the same time, all of a sudden, a lot of other natural disasters were going on at the same time. So this all happened about 100 years prior to a guns conquest of Westeros spells knowledge and recorded history pertaining to dragons were mostly lost in the Doom of the only thing that remained was whatever the Targaryens that had fled brought with them, which wasn’t much as you can see later. Targaryen struggled greatly in keeping dragons going.
Nick 27:12
I mean, they weren’t even one of the most powerful houses either they were no
Kalvin 27:15
they’re like this offshoot, kind of middling accounting house. thing even have important jobs.
Nick 27:24
Losers, yeah, let you ride dragons though, which is fucking sweet. And I don’t believe for a second that it just happened all of a sudden, you know, these?
Kalvin 27:31
Definitely something that caused it.
Nick 27:34
It’s smoked for like 15 days, we didn’t think anything of it. You know, it smelled like phosphorus, whatever. And then, oh, no,
all of a sudden,
Kalvin 27:43
yeah, there’s definitely something going on. There’s there’s a few causes that are hinted at in fire and blood and in Song of Ice and Fire proper, and, but nothing has been confirmed yet. And so I think we get that at some point of what actually happened in the Doom, whether it’s through, you know, if a dream for spring ever comes around through the Duncan egg tail, something like that, you know, maybe egg on the unlikely has some vision of what actually happened in the doom and that sets him on a path to try and hatch dragons and eventually leads to the tragedy at summerhall. I don’t know there’s, there’s a lot of space for the story to be told. We just don’t actually know when that’s gonna happen. So what actually happened that historians can tell is every hill for 500 miles exploded, filling the air with ash smoke and fire. This led to earthquakes that destroyed towns and buildings. The lakes boiled and turned to acid. As you said, 14 the 14 flame sent molten rock molten rock 1000 feet into the air. Red Cloud red clouds rain down dragon glass not clouds clouds this fragmented the Valerian peninsula into numerous smaller islands in creating the smoking seat, which is now set to be cursed.
Nick 28:59
No way
Kalvin 29:00
that is going on
Nick 29:03
cursed.
Kalvin 29:05
The common belief is that Doom was a naturally occurring event caused by the erupting of the 14 flames. So basically, all all 14 of these volcanoes decide to erupt at the same time that causes all this other shit to happen, which, you know, that’s possible.
Nick 29:18
It’s like Yellowstone. If that erupted, probably Oh, yeah, about the same effect.
Kalvin 29:23
We’d get some red clouds rain and down dragonglass for sure. I mean, 100% getting that fish out. You know,
Nick 29:29
you can bet on it right now.
Kalvin 29:32
Some of the septons believe that the polytheistic valerians Delve too deep into the Seven Hills so they just kept digging and mining and trying to get more and more dragonglass and eventually they dug too deep you know, substance seemed kind of dumb,
Nick 29:46
but I don’t know I really kinda like that theory. I I listened to this really fascinating videos 25 minutes long, talking about that theory.
Kalvin 29:57
I could see it I just dug too deep into to actual hell, and hell unleashed itself.
Nick 30:03
No. I mean, that’s a belief. That’s, you put,
Kalvin 30:08
well, no, no, no. So, so this this theory is that the septins believe, literally, hell was regurgitating on them that they dug too deep and held it and like it. So Hell is like, fuck you were
Nick 30:22
throw up on you. Yeah, yeah, I get it. Okay. So yeah, I misinterpreted what you were saying. I apologize.
Kalvin 30:29
What were you saying, though, because I think that’s a good point. I think that goes with the the naturally occurring event that that I didn’t get too far into,
Nick 30:38
that goes back to the the slave labor thing, you know, harvesting precious metals. Just go deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper, until you disturb something that you can’t really undo. Because you never know what the fuck is gonna happen. There’s still methane explosions all the time in mines around the world. Something like that could have easily happened and just set off a real reaction. I mean, like South Dakota, you have all that natural gas. So you just have caverns filled with natural gas or whatever. And, yeah, well, I mean, think about it, that pit in Russia, they thought it’d be a good idea to set that on fire. Because, you know, Russia. It’s still burning. It’s been burning for like 70 years. And if, obviously, it has enough fuel to maintain a flame for 70 plus years. But I could be wrong about the timeline. But either way, if that all ignited anyone talking
Kalvin 31:34
about so
Nick 31:35
you’ve never heard of it before?
Kalvin 31:37
Like, maybe when he started talking about the flame that’s been going for so long, I kind of have a recollection of that. But when you just said that pit in Russia, I was like, I have no idea what you’re talking about.
Nick 31:46
It’s a pit in Russia that they set on fire on fire, right? They set it on fire to they thought it would like burn itself out. But it’s been maintained for 70 years, just continuously, no one really understands why. So if they had that, basically just blow up all at once. Yeah, that fuck up a continent that shouldn’t have.
Kalvin 32:08
And so you seem to be gravitating more towards the scientific explanations like what would happen in our world to cause this stuff, right? And I like that. I like where your head’s at, because I like to delve further into the magic explanation. So we’ve got a good dichotomy going forward here.
Nick 32:25
Let’s do it. Here we go.
Kalvin 32:27
So another theory out there from septon Barth, and you know, many others, they believe that the spells used to control the 14 flames had faltered in some way. Like the the mages that were controlling the volcanoes as they dug deeper and deeper, either they weren’t strong enough to control them anymore, or they stopped doing it or they they just got dummied. They’re just like
Nick 32:51
Okay, do this volcano bullshit anymore. I gotta get high
Kalvin 32:55
right there those are the two most widely accepted beliefs of what happened along with just the the natural causes. There are some other less likely explanations within the world. There’s one that’s says it was the curse of Garen the great which I got to do some further research on that I don’t know who Garen the great is and why he cursed malaria but I got a I got a right into that a
Nick 33:20
little bit. Probably shorted him some fries on his takeout order. Fuck you. Mosel area
Kalvin 33:28
Yeah, that makes sense. It’s the fire of little bro lore is another theory which that that’s a solid, if you
Nick 33:36
will in magical theory. Yeah, if
Kalvin 33:37
you’re a follower of the red god of relora then that’s what you’re gonna go with like these guys pissed off or lower. So we got him.
Nick 33:48
But have you ever followed we’re lower on we
Kalvin 33:54
another goes back to the the fire mages that were controlling the 14 flames that infighting among the dragon lords of illyria ended up with assassinating fire mages from different factions. And so that then, because some of these were assassinated, they couldn’t control everything properly.
Nick 34:14
That sounds extremely plausible when you think about it, because they’re assassinating fucking everybody out here.
Kalvin 34:20
Yeah, well, so and then my theory goes back or my favorite theory, which for some reason was absent from the the wiki entry on this. But it’s quite explicit in the books and the show is that the followers of the many face God from the house and black and white, we also know them as the faceless men. They cause the doom because the valerians treatment of slaves and at the basically the Faceless Men, their origins lie in the slaves of the 14 flames, and that one needed to pay their debt to the many faced God and helped cause the Doom of malaria. And you know, that is It’s mentioned briefly in the show, but it’s spelled out pretty well. With the kindly old man at the House of Black and White, who is teaching Aria in the books, which is different, it’s not shocking Hagar when she actually shows back up at the house of black and white in the books, it’s it’s like they call him the kind of old man or something like that. He tells her the story of their origins. And it’s heavily hinted that they were integral in the cause of the doom and maybe they were assassinating these fire mages that controlled it or something like that, but but the beginnings of the Faceless Men are tied very closely to the demo flow area, which I thought it was weird that it wasn’t mentioned anywhere in the wiki for this.
Nick 35:43
I saw that too. I actually heard that on a YouTube video that they were members of the the slave groups that were working the mines and that’s where like the being blind tradition and shit like that comes from because they spent so much time down there. Right and you know, the excess amount of dead slaves around you just cut their face off. Just you know, wear it and go assassinate some people.
Kalvin 36:09
Got it. Boom done. So let’s move on to what it takes to hatch a dragon egg. Do you know how to hatch a dragon egg?
Nick 36:21
I don’t. I couldn’t Where?
Kalvin 36:25
You sit on it for a few weeks and a hatch.
Nick 36:29
It’s a big fucking egg man. I’ve got answers from Epic. Calvin’s been sitting on him for years. Yeah, they
Kalvin 36:36
haven’t hatched yet.
Nick 36:37
He’s like one of these days you motherfuckers but there’s been rumors of you know, blood magic out of wiring a life or a life. A lot of heat. You know, heat heat some necessity. But I honestly went with a theory I found and that
Kalvin 36:59
was theories. Yeah, I have a few more. Let’s call them facts.
Nick 37:03
There you go. Hit your facts.
Kalvin 37:05
Yeah, quote unquote, facts before we get to theories. There, they did have dragon hatcheries on dragon stone on a dragon Mont, which is a volcano where many eggs and young hatchlings could be found. So it seems like that that’s where you get your heat there right is if you have proximity to an active volcano, you’re going to get some eggs hatching. The eggs were often placed in the cradles of baby Targaryens. And if the eggs hatch, they were said to be true Targaryen so I guess this isn’t really how to hatch them. But this is some circumstances around hatching. And denarius is eggs. As we know, they hatched when she walked into drugless funeral pyre, while Miriam as daughter was off crying out incantations or spells of some sort. She also burned alive and that that’s pretty much it that all that we factually know.
Nick 37:56
That’s true. It is no,
Kalvin 37:59
it is no. I So what was your theory that you found that you liked?
Nick 38:03
That it was entirely based in genetics?
Kalvin 38:07
Okay, I saw that one.
Nick 38:08
I watched like an hour worth of videos that were incredibly fascinating and detailed. The start of the Tiger Targaryen and Valerian bloodline, and how it works, you know, the double XL wheel and stuff like that. I’m not going to go into super big details. But basically, if you had if you were born from a certain bloodline that kind of enabled you to hatch eggs, if you had the double axle wheel. If you just had the one you could be necessarily like a dragon rider. That’s what that telepathic connection, almost same. Same thing with like, enabling you to be able to skin change skin walk, whatever you want to call it, right? that coincides with being able to hatch dragon eggs. And
Kalvin 38:56
in, in your presence, right, right,
Nick 38:59
if you spend enough time with them, and that’s one of the reasons why Targaryens put the eggs in, you know, starting in the crib, because if you get the obviously you get an infant say little, it’s always women that I found, or at least in this string of theories
Kalvin 39:17
that I was on the X gene. And because women have X gene, they have a greater likelihood of you need that you need the double x gene. It’s the same as mutants, right next men, you need the double x gene to to actually hatch and ride a dragon. And so men could only carry the dragon hatching writing gene because they have a single X chromosome. Correct? Yeah,
Nick 39:42
there you go. You explained it so much more elegantly.
Kalvin 39:46
That’s because so that’s because I didn’t dive too deep in that theory, because I didn’t really like it that much. Oh,
Nick 39:51
dude, killer. I thought that I thought it was fantastic. Actually, the way it coincided with the timeline was great.
Kalvin 39:58
I felt it was really convoluted. And like they were making a lot of things fit very well, I mean, but I didn’t read the whole thing, either. So that’s, you know that that’s on me. And I’m not saying it’s a bad theory, I don’t have a ton of details on it. But that’s why I could explain it more succinctly because I read like the tagline of it. And that’s it. So I don’t have all these other facts about it, weighing my brain down. So weighed down, fuck your facts. Most of the things that I saw other than the the double x genes and you know all the science behind that you and your damn science theories and our magic dragon books,
Nick 40:41
a scientist, I’m just, you know, just gravitated towards them.
Kalvin 40:47
They definitely all consider that there needs to be some sort of blood sacrifice and extreme heat. The blood sacrifice may need to be Valerian blood. inbreeding between Targaryens and Bulgarians was important for most of these theories to help with the genetic mix, kind of like what you were talking about. And most of the theories that I found had some mixture of blood magic genetics and telepathic bonds with hilarious but nothing I didn’t find other than that one that you referenced, there was nothing like super fleshed out.
Nick 41:20
No, there really wasn’t that one was. That’s what also kind of makes me lean more toward that is it’s the depth that was put into that theory. It makes sense to me, at least,
Kalvin 41:33
it does until you realize George RR Martin is pretty bad at genetics. I’ve watched other videos from Preston Jacobs where he tries to go into Martin’s genetic system that he seems to go by, and not only A Song of Ice and Fire, but some of his other earlier sci fi works. And it’s never as clean as real life genetics or as clean as even he wants it to be I think, I mean, he goes off the middle school way of learning, which is the mandolin version of Yeah, but it’s kind of a bastardized. maendeleo Well, yeah, I
Nick 42:13
mean, he’s, it’s been a long time since he’s been in middle school, Calvin,
Kalvin 42:17
not 1999 it wasn’t.
Nick 42:19
I’m still that dude. He’s older. He’s like, but I think
Kalvin 42:26
as as the most series, I think it does, it takes some combination of heat, sacrifice and magic. And that magic could include Valerian blood and genetics. As part of that, maybe we’re talking up to magic, but really, it’s science because science and magic aren’t that different in most cases.
Nick 42:45
You know, science beach,
Kalvin 42:47
if you take back science from today to the 1500s they’re gonna think your magic right? Oh, that’s that’s kind of why they’re they’re always intertwined.
Nick 42:55
They burn you second three. Like we don’t have any dragons, but we have a whole lot of fire.
Kalvin 43:01
Yep. So let’s look at Danny for a second and her hatching her dragons what she had and how this kind of fits into she’s a woman, obviously, as we stated, so she has the double x gene if needed. Like if that’s the thing that exists here, that the heat was there from the funeral pyre, obviously, the fact the sacrifice could be considered to be Drogo and Danny’s unborn son, either directly in the pyre or indirectly through Mary’s has Doris blood magic in the tent a few days prior. A lot of people think that Miriam as door was specifically trying to hatch dragons, not ever trying to save Drogo in the baby like she’s there. She knows that those eggs exist. She’s doing everything in her power to bring those dragons back not actually saved. Drogo or the baby like she’s telling Danny,
Nick 43:51
but why?
Kalvin 43:53
There is a very strong possibility that she was a student of arch. maister marwin. I want to say the dude at the Citadel that Sam meets in his last chapter that as soon as he meets him, he’s like, you’ve got a Targaryen on your boat. Let’s fucking go. That guy, I believe it’s arch Meister marwin.
Nick 44:21
So that’s more of a leap of faith than anything genetics related to me
Kalvin 44:25
that she’s trying to bring those dragons back.
Nick 44:27
Yes.
Kalvin 44:31
See if he’s for Crow’s.
Nick 44:34
That’s even worse than just saying magic. Oh, it’s coincidental.
Kalvin 44:38
Yeah, no, that that? Yeah, it’s our tracer marwin who I’m thinking of. Well, it’s not magic. It’s It’s so arguments are marwin is one of the alive historians that knows the most information about dragons. He specifically sends alerus out to Find Sam and bring him to her because He knows that he had Amun Targaryen on his ship, and he needs that ship now to go off to denarius after he learns that Aries has hatched dragons. And so Miriam as door was most likely at some point a student of his and learned all this dragon knowledge from him. So the thought is that she came across Danny with these dragon eggs, remembering what she learned from artspace from our win and tried to apply it and bring the dragons back. And maybe she succeeded.
Nick 45:32
Um, I’m just gonna shut up. Cuz I just want to argue about it.
Kalvin 45:37
No, go ahead. Like, that’s what we’re here for.
Nick 45:39
But why?
Kalvin 45:40
Why is that unthinkable?
Nick 45:45
Because in a time when people don’t carry books, or have any record of knowledge, and it’s all oral history, so much we get confused. And you think a small lesson in regards to
Kalvin 45:56
it wasn’t a small lesson. It was like she studied at the Citadel under him kind of thing.
Nick 46:00
I understand. But if his specialty is dragons in ancient Targaryen and stuff, either way, he’s got a whole lot of other stuff to teach her before he would even get into that stuff in depth, because it’s not entirely
Kalvin 46:13
Well, no. So he so the masters are mostly on a political path to extinguish magic and the idea of dragons and all of that they, they want more scientific pursuits, much like yourself. And so no, any of any of this teaching would have to have been done off site, he wouldn’t be able to actually teach about the dry his knowledge of dragons and magic and all of that he would have to kind of do that as a side project. And so think back to in high school, sitting in history class, the things you learn versus like, side conversations you would have with teachers. What what stuck with you more things that you learned in the book, or things that you learned outside of the book in just having real conversations with teachers?
Nick 47:01
The things I learned from the book?
Kalvin 47:03
I’ll see, I’m the opposite. Well, I
Nick 47:05
mean, I had empirical evidence in front of me in textual form, you know, I had a reference to go to, whereas the teacher if he’s talking off his ass,
Kalvin 47:14
no, no, no, that that’s not what I’m talking about is like, so a history class, for example, in an American history class, you have to learn very specific things, because those specific things will be on a test. But there’s so much more depth to those things that actually occurred,
Nick 47:28
right. Oh, of course.
Kalvin 47:30
So that’s what I’m talking about in the site. Not like he took a side conversation to tell you that he thinks Bigfoot killed JFK.
Nick 47:39
No, I get what you’re saying. Yeah,
Kalvin 47:40
just like you have a basic curriculum. Expect, right? This teacher expanded on the things you learned in the book in a way that made it more interesting and more likely to stick in your brain. And I think that’s what marwin was doing with the people who he kept close with the students he kept close by. Or at least that’s the idea behind people like alerus and Pite and are paid sorry and Miriam as door
Nick 48:08
Yeah, I just I’m not feeling it. I feel like that would be too far in the past Yeah, I don’t know that’s
Kalvin 48:18
but we don’t know when it was though.
Nick 48:21
She’s relatively old. She’s been with the sheep. Yeah, whatever for quite a
Kalvin 48:26
while and I’m confused I don’t remember this off the top my head it wasn’t even part of my notes. I like I’m trying to kind of piece it together as we’re going but it might not be in bed she studied in the Citadel he may have made a trip over there at some point and and taught her things while he was there. And she learned under him while he was there. Because she’s the healer of her group. And so I think he went there as like a missionary type trip right? And he was teaching them the ways of healing and in that must have gotten into some dragon conversation is the thought behind this.
Nick 48:57
I hear you can hear people with fire. He’s like yeah, totally dragons have a ton of it. They do a whole lot of healing.
Kalvin 49:03
So out here he’ll never get back on track. That the sacrifices either Drogo ragle the unborn baby or are not regal rego would have been his name. Or the sacrifice could have even been Miriam as door herself or even Danny when she walked into the fire. And the magic part of it comes from Miriam as door. She is just screaming things but actual words in a different language as Danny’s walking into the fire so that it’s thought that she’s actually screaming out the spells needed to hatch the dragons at this point like she planted the seed earlier in the tent, transferring the life force of rego into the dragon eggs. And that was her goal there is she’s shadow binding inside this tent and she’s transferring life force from Drogo and rego into the Previously stone eggs because when rego is born, he it it’s like this grotesque leathery thing that she says has been dead for months. Which is not true because as Danny walks in the tent, she can feel him kicking inside of her. So he’s alive up until the moment she enters the tent. So there’s trippy shift. Yeah, the thought is the magic started there. She transferred the life force. And then as she’s going, as Dan is finally going into the fire, she finishes off the spell to actually hatch the eggs.
Nick 50:34
sounds terrible.
Kalvin 50:36
No, thank you. Yeah. And I mean, your explanation is, Danny stood next to the eggs long enough that they hatched. Yep. But in the last 150 years, no other Targaryen female had the two x genes that she needed and stood close enough to those eggs.
Nick 50:54
How many other Targaryens are there?
Kalvin 50:57
In the last 150 years? There were quite a few.
Nick 50:59
Right? And they had a shitload.
Kalvin 51:02
No dragons went extinct in 152. And our story takes place in about 302. See, I
Nick 51:10
thought it was about 100 years later. 100 150 layer?
Kalvin 51:13
Yeah, right. And 50 years later, after all the dragons are extinct after the last dragon was extinct, but the Targaryens are still in rule for most of those 150 years. And there’s target there’s Targaryen blood all over the place because they be fucking
Nick 51:28
Well, I mean, they absolutely are. But Aegon the fifth did a whole lot of spreading of the bloodline. So I mean, if you’re interested on the cycle, the fifth Aegon on the fourth
Kalvin 51:38
leg, I guess. I’m pretty sure take on the fourth day on where they are. Those are the same people. No egg on the fifth is likely. Yes, yes. And he’s the one in Duncan egg. Right. And he was not one.
Nick 51:55
No one who made his kids marry a bunch of other people. That’s why he had to show Yeah,
Kalvin 51:59
he’s reading the blood. Yes. Okay. I understand that. That’s where I thought you were I thought you were saying spreading the bloodline it as in out there fucking everybody. Oh, no. He,
Nick 52:10
he had a nice marriage. Good guy.
Kalvin 52:13
That was a guy on the fourth who has who had bastards all over town and then on his deathbed. legitimize them all and led to the Wi Fi rebellions.
Nick 52:22
What a dickhead. He’s like, hey, ladies, I got some good news. And then you know
Kalvin 52:29
what you meant by spreading the bloodline? You meant spreading it thin. I meant spreading it.
Nick 52:35
spreading his jelly Alright, so
Kalvin 52:41
now that we’ve
Nick 52:42
got a you know this dude too much.
Kalvin 52:45
We’ve we’ve hatched some eggs. We’ve brought the dragons over from valaria to Westeros let’s talk about what the Targaryens did with these. When did these dragons first come to Westeros?
Nick 52:58
I don’t have a date. Because I’m a I’m a piece of shit. I know. Was it 12 years? I got it. You’re the guy in the front row with the handle isn’t it? Wasn’t it 12 years before the doom
Kalvin 53:08
Yes, it was 12 years before the doom which was about 114 bc before a guns conquest. So everything is bc before the conquest AC after the conquest
Nick 53:20
before Christ,
Kalvin 53:23
conquest. conquest is what
Nick 53:26
I think you mispronounced Christ.
Kalvin 53:31
balerion the black dread, great name. And for unhemmed dragons arrived on Dragonstone when the Targaryens went into their self imposed exile from valaria Danny’s Targaryen. Which again just great naming of these Targaryens Let’s spread the love of names.
Nick 53:48
Fucking flat out blows.
Kalvin 53:50
Danny This is Daniel dreamer had a vision of the Doom of malaria. 12 years before it happened and they were like fuck this we’re getting out of here.
Nick 53:58
Yeah, and they fucking bounced hard.
Kalvin 54:03
So that’s when they got to Dragonstone. And then by two BC is when they made actual landfall on the mainland of Westeros and Megan’s conquest actually began ushered in the age of dragons in Westeros.
Nick 54:17
Yeah, they were fucking tear and shut up.
Kalvin 54:22
Ronnie’s and decennia his Sister Wives traveled from Dragon stone on their dragons polarion vaguer and more axes a lot more thought goes into the dragon naming then the the Targaryen name
Nick 54:33
they sound hard as fuck dude these sound like goddamn you know life sentence prison guys that have killed the alien people. I wouldn’t fuck with anyone name or axes. I don’t give a fuck if I’m ordering coffee sounds
Kalvin 54:45
like it should be a god of war to be honest.
Nick 54:48
100% 100%
Kalvin 54:52
so they land into bc on what would later become King’s Landing with fewer than 1600 men and begin the Wars of conquest.
Nick 55:00
Yeah, I mean three huge dragons because How old’s balerion at this point? Any
Kalvin 55:06
balerion and 700 was when he died in 94. ac. He was just under 200. So he’s about 100. At this point,
Nick 55:14
I thought he was like 202 or something like that.
Kalvin 55:17
Right? Well, so he was one of the dragons that came with them in 114. And now it’s to BC so at least 113 years old
Nick 55:28
when he was the oldest and biggest dragon already.
Kalvin 55:32
So with these dragons are dragons all over Westeros throughout history, the next about 150 years we have dragons. 28 total dragons lived on Westeros with 36 Dragon riders.
Nick 55:46
Hmm, see, I get a different number.
Kalvin 55:49
Oh, what did you have?
Nick 55:50
I had 24 Dragon riders.
Kalvin 55:53
I have 36 there was a good list on the wiki. And I just pretty much counted them one by one.
Nick 55:59
That’s That’s exactly what I
Kalvin 56:00
maybe but it’s possible if somebody was listed twice that I counted them twice.
Nick 56:06
So that could have been a drone was listed twice, but multiple dragons had multiple writers.
Kalvin 56:12
Right, so there should be more writers than dragons. Because dragons outlive their writers. Almost always, because dragons are near and vulnerable, near and vulnerable.
Nick 56:26
That’s fair, but a shitload get killed.
Kalvin 56:29
So dancing dragons, which a shitload of people got killed to do you only have the Targaryen dragon riders and not like all the random dudes that started mountain dragons in the dance of dragons.
Nick 56:40
No, I got Hugh hammer and Oh, boy, nettles and illyrians.
Kalvin 56:47
So 24 to 36 writers of these dragons
Nick 56:52
that’s Yeah, yeah.
Kalvin 56:55
Let’s just go with that. So these dragon riders, they bonded with their dragons in various ways. A lot of Targaryens bonded at birth or inherited their dragon through their genealogy as we’ve discussed. There’s also got to be somewhat of a trust relationship between the dragon and the rider dragons choose their riders more so than riders choose their dragons. It’s kind of a very Dhawan choose the wizard type thing going on here.
Nick 57:19
Oh, yeah, definitely. And if they don’t like you, they’ll fucking kill you.
Kalvin 57:23
Absolutely, they have no problem. killing a dude that they don’t want riding them? Pretty much. Yeah. Most most people believe that a potential rider needed to have laying blood somewhere in their family tree in order to ride a dragon. That’s never necessarily been proven, but it’s also never been disproven because the Targaryens kind of just didn’t let other people ride dragons.
Nick 57:45
There’s some there’s a lot of evidence in regards to the dragon seeds. But,
Kalvin 57:50
but there’s no there’s no
Nick 57:52
necessarily like hard evidence. There’s
Kalvin 57:55
no hard evidence that the dragon seeds are actually bastards of Targaryens like anybody could have shown up and just be like, yeah, my mom’s
Nick 58:08
like, Yeah, I was legitimized by a gun. The idiot.
Kalvin 58:14
That’s a better name than a gun. The unworthy,
Nick 58:17
unworthy idiot. That’s basically calling someone an idiot. Yeah, you’re unworthy you you suck
Kalvin 58:22
so much that you’re in parentheses, idiot. So during the dance of the dragon, both sides of the war, were short on writers and they put out more or less an open casting call for Targaryen ambassadors to try their luck mountain dragon. That’s where you’re alluding to the dragon seeds. A lot of people died. Trying to get like trying to find a dragon trying to get on one of these dragons.
Nick 58:46
I’m sure it’s extremely downplayed, because if you just put out a call right now, live in. Nothing would change in America right now. Like, hey, we have dragons, you have the opportunity to ride them if you’re special. You have to come here. We don’t know. We don’t know if you’re special. Right? You may die 1000s of people. Dude, I bet 50,000 people would flock to that shit. Oh, and they would mostly die. Yeah. That’s the NFL Draft.
Kalvin 59:17
So nettles is the exception that proves the rule here right? She apparently had no Targaryen blood. No confirmed
Nick 59:25
right? But it’s entirely possible she was a bastard child
Kalvin 59:29
or the child of a bastard child or the you know the who knows how far it has to go up the bloodline to actually be considered but as far as anyone right nettles did not have any Targaryen blood but she was able to tame sheep stealer and she did it in kind of an interesting way as opposed to all these other dragon sees that just showed up and try to jump on a dragon. Sheep stealer was one of these dragons there were three that were supposedly untameable and they were they were wild. There’s out there flying around. No one was ever able to mount her.
Nick 1:00:00
But the last one was named cannibal.
Kalvin 1:00:02
So and I couldn’t. I wasn’t gonna use silverwing no silverwing or storm cloud or something. Yeah, storm cloud sounds like they sound like Transformers
Nick 1:00:13
fucking Honda.
Kalvin 1:00:16
So, nettles would bring these bridges how to drag me with every night for weeks trying to green gain sheets trailers, Steelers process should bring your like dead lambs and shit like that. After some amount of time, sheet steel are actually allowed nettles to mount her and they took off never to be seen again. No one ever knows how nettles was able to do it. The legend is that she just brought her food every night and and eventually gained trust. Just like
Nick 1:00:47
that mean he’s like, this is sweet. Yeah, this is tight. Oh, we
Kalvin 1:00:51
can get food.
Nick 1:00:52
Yeah, tight. Well, I mean, she was she did a little bit of fighting before she went off apparently to the Vale and was like a goddess for the Mountain Men. I thought that was dope. Yeah. Shadow dragon was like, tight. I’ll get worshipped I don’t even give a fuck they have a ton of goats up here.
Kalvin 1:01:10
Yeah, as as part of this, we want to each pick one notable Targaryen dragon rider and kind of go into detail. So Nick, you go first with your notable Targaryen dragon right.
Nick 1:01:21
See, I originally wanted to pick Hugh hammer on Vermeer Thor. But he is not a Targaryen
Kalvin 1:01:30
that’s okay. Did you do the research on it?
Nick 1:01:33
I didn’t really Okay, so. Well, I did. You know, I got him pulled up. But I chose Damon Targaryen and ser axes the bloodworm because a holy fuck. That’s the dopest name on. Oh my god. seracs He’s the bloodworm that sounds like a fucking WWE move. They would kill you
Kalvin 1:01:56
wasn’t Damon the original Blackfyre but he’s not. He’s not official blackfire but like, that was his nickname.
Nick 1:02:04
He basically helped start this shit. Yeah, he’s not not necessarily a go with the flow kind of guy. He was he was a little bit not tight. He had he had more experience in warfare than most of his other family members during at the start of the dance of dragons. So he was often referred to as like one of the most dangerous people on the fucking Earth and did a whole lot of pillaging a whole lot of caelin. And he had some axes the bloodworm that’s Nuff said. Yeah. I could go in there’s so much about Damon that you’re
Kalvin 1:02:47
wanting to talk about. That’s why on mine I’ve got like one of the more notable things that this person did. So let’s hear one one. war story from Damon. Says tearing D it sounds like a bad person, I guess are cyrax that’s probably what I’m comparing it to.
Nick 1:03:06
I mean, it’s pretty pretty fucking tight. I’m sorry. I got a little I don’t have the battle that he was in. I’m pretty sure he ended up killing Burma Thor actually. He got taken to his death, but he’s the one who got with nettles during the war, and he created his base and maiden pool and then he started then nettles getting down with it. And regionally Queen Raina renew euro one and nettles dead so he he kind of set her on no
Kalvin 1:03:51
way like nettles.
Nick 1:03:53
Apparently not for the man and in the Vale Yeah, that was about it. That’s That’s all I’m gonna say about him. He was a fucking thug, though. He
Kalvin 1:04:00
really was. Um, he was he was like, you’re on Greyjoy 2.0 or 1.0 your psyche you’re on is like Damon 2.0 Really?
Nick 1:04:12
Pretty much real
Kalvin 1:04:12
real you’re on book you’re on not you’re on that we get in Game of Thrones.
Nick 1:04:18
Oh, yeah, he’s just My Chemical Romance you’re on this guy’s fucking Metallica Juran
Kalvin 1:04:25
No. Yeah, Damon was like, sex pirate with a flying dragon. Kind of dude.
Nick 1:04:32
Well, yeah, with a dude you know strax these two bloodworm Let me say it for the fifth time. It was a badass
Kalvin 1:04:39
military in the black dread is better than the bloodworm but stratasys bloodworm is is a good honorable mention there
Nick 1:04:48
was just a different style and from what I’ve read and listened to about Dave and he was just notorious for like creative combat is so was sir axes like they were just so quick. Yeah he just he disappeared in some clouds and then reappear above you and just fucking wreck you for two three seconds and then you know dip out again and I’m pretty sure Oh yeah, he was fighting vermouths or I believe and seracs is clamped down on Burma Thor’s throat and basically what they were falling to the ground and Damon jumped off sir axes and stabbed the other I forget what it was the
Kalvin 1:05:28
other writer Yeah,
Nick 1:05:28
Damon one eye or something. There’s a lot of demons running around, stabbed him through his blind eye and fucking killed them like that ended up dying. But that’s fucking tight. That’s like going out like Tom Cruise.
Kalvin 1:05:42
If Tom Cruise can ride a dragon and jump off and stab somebody in the eye as he dies,
Nick 1:05:48
I can see the fucking wood. I mean, Matthew McConaughey gave his best shot at it, but there’s just no dragon riders.
Kalvin 1:05:55
I went with the good Queen Alison Targaryen and her mount silver wing.
Nick 1:06:02
So that’s why I did it. I see where you’re at because I wanted to pick silver wing
Kalvin 1:06:07
if silver wings a dope name.
Nick 1:06:08
Silver wings just a dope as dragon. Yeah.
Kalvin 1:06:10
So Queen Alison is the daughter of Prince Amy’s Targaryen, who later become king and he’s the first for a very short period of time, and Lady Alyssa DeLorean. She was born in 36 ac silverwing had hatched from an egg placed in Alison’s cradle after her birth. And after mega crystals death under uncircumcised uncertain circumstances, Alessandra Harris and their sister Reyna flew on their dragons to King’s Landing to take the Iron Throne for Joe Harris, who was the next rightful heir, Mego, or actually skipped him in succession. But they weren’t gonna fuck with Megan, because this dude’s name is mega cruel. So there’s kind of waited until somebody poisoned too many died. And then they went and took it. Yeah, like, I
Nick 1:06:55
guess I’ll go
Kalvin 1:06:56
Yep. Alison and Joe Harris married in a secret ceremony on Dragonstone. After learning of some plots by the faith to marry them into other families, they wanted to keep it in the fam brother, sister, that whole thing
Nick 1:07:10
can’t break apart love
Kalvin 1:07:11
No. But they eventually legalized the marriage and made it public and all that. But most notably, these two traveled to the north and in winter fill in Winterfell. And later the wall. Queen Allison went first and got there kind of schmoozed with the Starks before Joe Harris got there. And then when Jared Harris got there and had to get down to the real man business, she was like, This is fucking boring. I’m going to the wall now. We go piss off the edge of the world, right. So this trip up north that helped Targaryens continue to consolidate their power and make amends with northern houses who would have been ignored by Targaryen leaders because they’re so far away. She as as she’s traveling between Winterfell and the wall, she stopped that a lot of these little towns and stay the night. One of these towns now named Queen’s crown was named after her after she stayed there for a night. So that’s like, it’d be like going to a Hilton and just being such a great guest that they’re like, nope, we’re calling this the Calvin from now on.
Nick 1:08:16
It’s kind of a dope ass hotel name Not gonna lie.
Kalvin 1:08:18
We’re renaming our whole structure because you were such a great guest. Thank you.
Nick 1:08:23
And you paid us to so here at the Calvin
Kalvin 1:08:28
she was just kind of this this entrancing presence that she was she was very good at convincing people to listen to her way.
Nick 1:08:39
I’m pretty sure she was super hot.
Kalvin 1:08:41
There’s a very good chance of that.
Nick 1:08:44
And she had a dragon so I mean, you know, yeah,
Kalvin 1:08:47
I always listened to her pretty well too. But But she she was very good at in using her powers to influence people in the north. And just boobs potentially. There’s no explicit evidence that it was her boobs. Everything hints act. Straight up persuasion. Non sexual persuasion.
Nick 1:09:10
George RR Martin’s gonna come out and be like he was her boobs. 100% 100 he listens. So good. 100 is all about them to these. Wall
Kalvin 1:09:19
she tried several times to fly with silver went north a wall and soloing refused. The troubled Alice saying she couldn’t figure out she didn’t understand it. My best guess is that silver wing had some sense of the magic of the others or the children of the force that was beyond the wall and just wanted nothing to do with them. Shao Kahn who did not have the same luck?
Nick 1:09:42
Yeah, poor guy. Fucking idiot.
Kalvin 1:09:46
So one of the instances of her using her influence. She convinced the Lord Commander of the Nights Watch to close the night for an opening a smaller castle nearby. Just because the night fort was the oldest Ford is in disrepair, really costly. To keep up, she used her own jewels and crown to finance the construction of the New Castle which was named deep lake and then later queens Lake, or queens gate sorry. And then she admired the man of the Night’s Watch so much that she convinced her husband, the king Joe Harris, to double the amount of land in the gift that was technically held by the Night’s Watch angered some of the Northern lords, but she didn’t really care.
Nick 1:10:26
She’s like pitch, I have a dragon and I’m hot.
Kalvin 1:10:28
So she also used her influence to put an end to the practice of the Lord’s right to the first night, which for all your Braveheart fans is a another term for the prima nocta where any Lord can have sex with any maid in under their lordship. The night before they may
Nick 1:10:50
know the night of their marriage, whatever. Right they consummate the marriage basically before the husband can consummate the marriage right it’s fucking bullshit. So she’s she put an end to it, basically. Yeah, she’s like a revolutionary.
Kalvin 1:11:03
Yeah, she’s out there. feminizing The North which is great for her.
Nick 1:11:08
I mean, they needed up there was guys need to fucking shave.
Kalvin 1:11:14
There are many in the world that believe silverwing may have left a clutch of eggs at the wall or at Winterfell during their stay. Never been confirmed though.
Nick 1:11:23
I’m one of them. I believe it.
Kalvin 1:11:25
I think so too. I think there are some eggs that we don’t know about floating around.
Nick 1:11:31
That’s what’s in the dungeon and other dungeons. The the crypts of Winterfell
Kalvin 1:11:35
Yeah. For more on the crypts of Winterfell go back to our old episode, I believe it was Episode 19 919. Her last flight on silver wing was in 92 ac she died in 100 ac after returning Dragonstone there is a sad song named Alison that may very well have been written about the good Queen silverwing then resided on Dragonstone after Alison stuff for a while eventually during the dance of dragons was claimed by the white. And after the light died. silverwing was just wild and made a layer in an island on Red Lake and eventually died I assume.
Nick 1:12:15
Pretty sure she was eaten up or he was eaten up. Yeah, pretty sure.
Kalvin 1:12:25
So let’s talk a little bit about the extinction of the dragons. And this was a last minute note. So if you don’t have much on it, I understand.
Nick 1:12:33
It was pretty much the dance of dragons. Yeah, they so many dragons got fucking slaughtered, and they couldn’t reproduce more at a rapid enough rate. Because these dragon hatches You know, they’re just dying left and right. There’s not enough
Kalvin 1:12:52
Well, nobody actually went in to hatch a dragon. I just got lucky most of the time.
Nick 1:12:57
Right, they threw a lot of shit at the wall. They thought a few things worked and they gave it a shot. So without being consistent and having a consistent amount of dragon eggs a consistent amount of Dragon hatches or females to do so. And all the perfect ingredients. You’re going to miss out on some some chances there exactly.
Kalvin 1:13:18
Before the dance of dragons started there were 20 dragons alive and thriving in Westeros. Then, in 129 ac King says the first died in his reign was over. That’s when the dance of dragons which is the Targaryen civil war began. Because two feuding factions the blacks and the greens couldn’t decide on the succession of the Iron Throne
Nick 1:13:45
where they said we’re gonna find it out
Kalvin 1:13:46
yet with nuclear bombs. We’re not gonna go too deep into the dance of dragons that could be its own episode. So we’ll just gloss over it. But basically the Cirrus claim that his oldest daughter was his heir. And then upon his death his oldest male offspring from a different wife attempted to claim the throne saying because He’s the oldest male he inherits, though, doesn’t matter what Sarah said when he was alive. And this led to a lot of Targaryen uns and dragons die
Nick 1:14:15
Yeah, like most of them
Kalvin 1:14:16
yeah
Nick 1:14:19
99%
Kalvin 1:14:20
most most of them died in the battle but that there’s some died in the dragon pit there was this raid on the dragon pit that a lot of people believe there that there was a secret plot by the Masters to suppress magic. And that secret plot led to the extinction of the dragon so there are masters you know, kind of putting fears and paranoia into the ears of these two leaders kind to egg them on going further into the dragon more like let’s keep this going. Dragons are dying, and they may or may not have actually led the raid on the dragon pit or sparked the raid on the dragon pit where Many of the younger dragons had been kept. And this was mostly common folk, breaking into the dragon pit where these younger dragons are kept and just beaten the shit out of these dragons. The Dragons can get away they’re chained up in
Nick 1:15:15
there, throwing fucking haymakers uppercutting them
Kalvin 1:15:19
It reminds me of something that happened a few weeks ago stoked on by you know somebody who’s supposed to be in a position of power
Nick 1:15:25
I mean it’s almost exactly like that but instead of but there have been beings dying
Kalvin 1:15:31
that right stuff
Nick 1:15:32
right and well a lot of human beings died too because the dragons are dragons
Kalvin 1:15:35
right and also because there are certain security measures and lockdown procedures that spawned specifically from the dance of the dragon like we learned our history from the dance of the dragons. We have lockdown procedures now so that no angry mob can break into our institutions and, you know, kill our dragons.
Nick 1:15:53
I’m not here, not gonna fly.
Kalvin 1:15:59
The dance of dragons ended in 131 ac only four dragons were left alive sheep stealer who again nettles had taken off with the cannibal was still out there being wild silverwing my girl still alive and kickin and the morning. There were However, a lot of dragon eggs that remained around after the war. We only know of one hatching the last dragon that ever hatched was stunted, sick and misshapen, and died young in 153 ac so it took almost 20 years to hatch it and then it died almost deleted immediately after laying five eggs that also never hatched. So so since then, there have been many failed attempts to revive dragons by the Targaryens between 153 ac and about 300 ac when denarius finally hatched her so 153 is the last one again I think it was about 302 ac when dinner saboteurs Aegon the third the dragons been had nine mages across the Narrow Sea to use their magic in an attempt to hatch the remaining eggs didn’t work. Baylor the first the blessitt attempted to hatch the egg by preying on it obviously didn’t work. On the fourth the unworthy as we mentioned before he ordered the pyromancers to build seven mechanical dragons that shot jets of wildfire now this isn’t actually trying to hatch the dragons This is just a cool side plot
Nick 1:17:19
like mecha Godzilla
Kalvin 1:17:20
Yeah, I’m gonna need this in one of these new HBO series that they’re putting together
Nick 1:17:25
fucking die
Kalvin 1:17:26
Oh shit. I’m thinking like in the the Duncan egg series maybe early in that I’m pretty sure Aegon The fourth is still around and kicking at that point because the Duncan egg series mostly deals with the black the early blackfire rebellions. And on the fourth is what kick those off when he legitimize all those bastards, so I could see let’s let’s get some mechanical dragons with wildfire.
Nick 1:17:48
100% HBO so
Kalvin 1:17:50
I know you’re listening. George,
Nick 1:17:53
I know you’re listening.
Kalvin 1:17:54
Here’s the dumbest instance Aaron bright flame, as he was nicknamed attempted to drink wildfire thinking he would actually transform into a dragon. He died screaming
Nick 1:18:06
There you go.
Kalvin 1:18:08
So no, you can feel it. The tragedy of summerhall also most likely resulted from Aegon fifth, the unlikely egg from Duncan egg novels, trying to hatch dragon eggs as well. And egg may or may not have been attempting to sacrifice baby radar at the time, but was saved regard was saved by Sir Duncan the Tall as was everybody else. Eris, the Mad King was in there, he was a visor down here, this hall also, and that not too much is known about tragic summerhall it’s most likely because it’s being saved for the end of the Duncan egg novellas. It would just that would be an amazing and heartbreaking way to end the Duncan egg stories is to see what happens at the tragic tragedy of summerhall to see kind of inside what egg is thinking, why he thought he could hatch an egg all of a sudden, why he needs radar Eretz or whoever he’s trying to sacrifice in that castle with him when he does because he wasn’t necessarily close to Eris at that time. I believe Eris was his grandson. So
Nick 1:19:20
I think so.
Kalvin 1:19:21
Yeah. So it’s not he didn’t have this close relationship to him. But for some reason, Eris and reg are war epic castle and sir Duncan the Tall had something going on. He’s like, I gotta get these people out. And he did and he died in a tragic summerhall and the whole place fucking burned down and break our soda dunk. Yes, dunked it as well. And Ray Gar would often visit the ruins of summerhall as he grew older, and it was a place where he liked to go and make songs and just kind of be solemn. summerhall is an interesting place.
Nick 1:19:56
Yeah, I’d love to see that brought to life. That’d be great.
Kalvin 1:20:00
Okay, real quick let’s talk about how Game of Thrones handled its dragon riders starting with denarius first Aparna she was the queen of vandals first man the Reiner unburned. fear of man Breaker, breaker of chains. Kalisa easy on the green, grassy.
Nick 1:20:26
Yes. That’s all other dragons. Dragons. Yeah. How do we forget that one all the way to the end.
Kalvin 1:20:32
Sure. titles, titles, titles,
Nick 1:20:35
titles, titles titles house. I thought they did a relatively solid job depicting her her ascent to being a dragon writer, especially without all the background information in the show. You know, obviously the we have in our minds now. Right? So I was pretty happy with it. I liked her. The bond she developed I was a little off put by the magic, but they handled it well. You know, they handled it pretty solid until the end. When she’s just like, I’d love people and I’m gonna free all of them. psych. I’m gonna be you’re all gonna get burned. Yeah.
Kalvin 1:21:18
Yeah, I agree that the hatching of the dragon was an amazing moment. And at that point, I was all in on Team Danny, because it 100% but by the time she was ready to actually ride dragon, I had kind of soured on her a bit. But it was still incredible to see her actually mountain. That first flight scene was rough with the CGI and everything. But it was cool to finally do that. Yes, the The score is set up to it was was great that that ride in the books is far from as satisfying as in the show. So just for people who are listening that maybe haven’t read the books, they drove on strands, Danny out in the middle of the desert. She kind of just wanders for days suffers from dysentery, and potentially her first period since Mary Master, quote unquote, cursed her, but more likely has a miscarriage and that she had become pregnant either by Daario, or his daughters alaric at this point. So it seems that her reproductive system is up and working again either way, which is important to note there. Then Drogon just kind of takes off and goes to find their special rock that they would hide under. And the last we see of her is that scene we see it in the end of Season Five of Game of Thrones as well, that Dothraki callus are kind of closing in on her. But we don’t know how that plays out at all. gone and she hasn’t seen him for like a couple days.
Nick 1:22:48
That’d be terrifying.
Kalvin 1:22:49
It’s it’s definitely harrowing. And it’s also one of the more interesting plot threads that I that I’d like to see how it plays out how it differs from what happened in the show what we got of that callus are taking her back and things like that. And also the other two dragons have been released with a marine and are kind of wreaking uncontrollable havoc around town. just a smidge. Yeah. Shout out the Syrian or Eagle.
Nick 1:23:15
Kill him, everybody.
Kalvin 1:23:18
Now, john, he’s the second rider. I liked that john got to ride his dragon. He deserves it. If anyone deserves this job, right?
Nick 1:23:25
I mean, yeah, he gets a fucking dope ass direwolf
Kalvin 1:23:31
who just completely disappears in the last three seasons? So fuck that guy.
Nick 1:23:36
It’s not John’s fault.
Kalvin 1:23:37
No, no, it’s not. They had the CGI mostly figured out by the time john got to ride it. So he always kind of looked cool riding it whenever Danny would ride it, you’d still have that vision of her first ride and how stupid it looked.
Nick 1:23:49
Right? It looked like he was riding on a carpet.
Kalvin 1:23:52
Yes. And in the show wood frame gave him regal the green one because Ray Gar was his father. And that’s the connection. But in my mind, it’s always been thematically more appropriate that he would ride for the white one. Because john is the White Wolf. His last name is snow. He lives in the north and beyond the wall where it’s mostly always winter. He gets an albino direwolf named ghost. JOHN is just constantly draped in white imagery. So it makes sense that he would end up riding the white dragon. Right? Doesn’t that make sense? Right.
Nick 1:24:26
killed a bunch of white walkers. Yeah,
Kalvin 1:24:28
just everything surrounding john is constantly white. And I think so there’s a possibility. And I kind of just thought of this yesterday while I was putting the notes together that by Syrian follows him his same path and john still gets to ride right? So by Syrian dies on the other side of the wall. JOHN at this moment is still dead in the books. We don’t know that he will actually come back to life or how he will come back to light. So what if while john is dead, he learns what’s going on with the others. And he ends up sympathizing with them because maybe they have an actual motivation. That makes sense, right?
Nick 1:25:05
Oh snap, they could actually be,
Kalvin 1:25:09
right from a certain point of view. And so he ends up helping them with whatever it is their goal may be, you know, the show didn’t help us at all in this regard. So at that point, he either is or isn’t resurrected, doesn’t matter. But he’s now on the other. He’s on Team others. And he helps them capture Vissarion, or kill Vissarion, and turn him whatever needs to happen. And then he mounts him. And eventually, he can still follow his same path. JOHN camp, is he mounts, he fights against Danny, and he retires on the other side of the wall, as he did in the show.
Nick 1:25:48
I like your train of thought,
Kalvin 1:25:49
yeah, I think all signs point to the main characters, mostly ending up where they ended up in the show. But I think the narrative path to get those places is gonna be a lot more rewarding.
Nick 1:26:01
To see the least. I mean, you could fucking do, literally anything you just
Kalvin 1:26:06
talked about, it’d be more writing. And I just think it would be an excellent role for john, like, we need somebody on the side of the elders, we need to understand what’s going on with him why they’re fighting. So it would be really cool to, you know, Benjamin was lost beyond the wall. Maybe he’s out there with them still brand is lost out beyond the wall. He’s already drinking the Kool Aid, almost literally, of the children of the forest. So there’s a world where john joins forces with them as well.
Nick 1:26:35
That makes sense, because we have to have an organic Avenue into finding out what the fuck is up with the others anyways, right.
Kalvin 1:26:42
And I think one of those dragons has to turn on Danny at some point. So wouldn’t it make sense that john doesn’t actually fall in love with her and then steal her dragon and try to fight her with her own dragon, but he’s always diametrically opposed to her, because his viewpoint is coming from somewhere where he understands something else and he understands her. wielding her dragons in the way she’s wielding them is going to destroy what the others need. Or what the world needs. I don’t like the idea of john and Danny falling in love ever.
Nick 1:27:15
No, I fucking hated that. It
Kalvin 1:27:16
was so rushed in the show anyways, so it might as well not exist.
Nick 1:27:20
It felt painful and awkward. Yes. But I mean, that’s like Targaryen destiny is to have infighting like that a new Civil War every couple 100 years. Right.
Kalvin 1:27:32
Did you have any other thoughts on john writing? regal?
Nick 1:27:37
Not really. I was sorely disappointed with it. Honestly.
Kalvin 1:27:41
Yeah. He didn’t get to do a whole lot. What about the night King? With my man Vissarion
Nick 1:27:48
stupid. Yeah, stupid. A if he? I mean, it had to happen, right? The
Kalvin 1:27:54
bad guy would have to stand a chance like there’s no way. Danny and john with three dragons are gonna lose to the night King. So they needed a drink.
Nick 1:28:04
It just seemed way too simple. Yeah. You know,
Kalvin 1:28:08
we throw this spear at them.
Nick 1:28:11
cobalt, totally get him. Yeah.
Kalvin 1:28:13
Colby. And then they just made him look so incredibly goofy. When the night King was taking down the wall on the backline on dead this area
Nick 1:28:23
was just like a it’s like, I don’t know, Godzilla nuclear blast. And the way he’s bobbing up and down. It’s just like, Jesus, dude. That is not a not a nice ride. Hopefully you don’t feel your nutsack
Kalvin 1:28:35
you’ve got this amazing set piece of the 700 foot wall that stood up to all potential intruders for 1000s of years. Finally coming down in the guy making it happen. Looks like he’s writing a hippity hop in front of a TV screen.
Nick 1:28:47
Yeah, with this, this exact smile. You would have writing a hippie hop in front of a TV screen.
Unknown Speaker 1:28:53
I did I liked
Kalvin 1:28:55
the I liked undead Vissarion outside of that scene. I thought all of the scenes in the actual battle that followed them taking down the wall were amazing.
Nick 1:29:08
thematically, yes.
Kalvin 1:29:09
Well even like the so the battle between Vissarion and the other two dragons, I I thought looked incredible. I still have the scene where the two of them they kind of crest over the clouds into the night sky and they’re just floating there. Ready to attack each other. I have that set as my phone background, because it’s such a beautiful scene. And it was so amazing to look at and to see. But then the night King just goes out like a bitch with no protection and really no purpose.
Nick 1:29:39
I mean, fuck I mean, are
Kalvin 1:29:40
you kidding? Shout out to art Yeah, I don’t want to take around Aria, but like the night King didn’t do much to save themselves.
Nick 1:29:47
Fuck no, man. He should have just slaughtered brand immediately. What was he doing? Where’s
Kalvin 1:29:52
this fucking spear that he throw it a dragon 800 feet away.
Nick 1:29:56
Right a fucking dragon yo. That he could throw hard enough. To go through its goddamn throat and break through its scales. It’s cold enough he could just why don’t you just freeze Brandon to death?
Kalvin 1:30:07
Yeah, a lot of things you can throw there. So man and Kay. All right, so here’s the final question that we’re gonna touch on. If you had to choose, would you be like to be able to ride a dragon or skin change into animals?
Nick 1:30:23
One arm can change into animals.
Kalvin 1:30:26
I agree.
Nick 1:30:28
That would be so fucking cool.
Kalvin 1:30:31
To me, it’s the same thing as like, when we talked about the flying cars last week. There are too many things in the sky that can go wrong, and just instantly kill you.
Nick 1:30:40
Well, you immediately become a target because everyone else isn’t in the fucking sky. Right? And Chelsea’s a bear, they
Kalvin 1:30:46
got those big crossbows that they’re shooting at you. They got
Nick 1:30:50
weapons of war to kill you.
Kalvin 1:30:53
And you’re just not in full control of yourself. You’re still at the mercy of another sentient animal that, as we alluded to earlier is probably smarter than a lot of actual people.
Nick 1:31:03
Right? And it’s hardcore emotions. Yeah, it does not fuck around. When it’s hungry.
Kalvin 1:31:08
I would take a ride if someone offered me one. But I like I don’t want that to be my magic thing.
Nick 1:31:14
No, no, definitely not. I’m
Kalvin 1:31:15
on I’m on the skin changing. If you’re good at it, like your brand or Burmese bear mere six skins, you can become lots of different animals experience the world through different points of view. You can still fly if you skin change into like a raven or an eagle or potentially even a dragon someday. Dragon Yeah,
Nick 1:31:36
you’re listening because we know you are. But there’s
Kalvin 1:31:38
so much more you could do to and it reminds me a little bit of the Sword in the Stone. early on. When Arthur King Arthur is a child he’s studying under Merlin and Merlin changes in into all these different animals to learn and understand how each of the different animals governmental structure works. And so he learns lessons about how to be a true and just leader. And I think that Bran is kind of on that same path. And I think in putting these thoughts together, I just kind of realized that brand may actually be King Arthur, or at least a few years into him.
Nick 1:32:12
He’s just like, will cripple him. So yeah, no one will think he’s King Arthur for real well, so
Kalvin 1:32:16
let me pull on this thread for a minute because because I thought it and I went down the rabbit hole in my own mind a little bit. There. There are already a lot of illusions, two or three legend throughout A Song of Ice and Fire at any fantasy novel with knights and things like that you’re going to have Arthurian illusions. That’s just what happens. The most popular version of the Arthurian legend is five separate books compiled into a single collection called the Once and Future King written by th white. I don’t know that there’s a better way to explain brand’s journey to being king because let’s face it, he’s probably going to be king because that’s where the show put him
Nick 1:32:53
better than fucking hope not
Kalvin 1:32:55
well, just let me let me spin here for a minute. But there’s nothing better to describe his journey then something like the phrase the Once and Future King. Right? Because he has this this mental ability to travel through time and and learn from the past. To to view what previous kings did and what they were good at, and to become a good and just future king. brand like Arthur is a child destined to become king. Again, I 100% I think he’s going to be the king at the end of all this. I think narratively is going to be a lot more compelling than the show did. I fucking hope so. But he’s only going to be able to be a good king by learning his lessons through experiencing the waves of light through others through his skin changing and also his eventual, for lack of a better term. I’m going to call it time traveling through the wherewith. net, but he’s not really time traveling. He’s just witnessing moments in time through what the trees witnessed
Nick 1:33:55
this time experience right.
Kalvin 1:33:58
And I mean, that’s literally as I explained in the Sword in the Stone. Arthur’s whole thing is Merlin is taking him to different moments in time to live as different species and to learn and grow through shared experiences. Arthur and grandfather sacrificed themselves so that their progeny could live on. Brand literally pulled a sword from one of the stone statues of the dead starts in the crypts of Winterfell fell again go back to Episode 99 about the crypts of Winterfell For more on that Arthur very famously pull the sword out of a stone not named a whole book the leadership role is going to be thrust upon a brand even though he’s not going to want it same as King Arthur he never wanted to be king. He was perfectly happy being this right there ship they’re taught under a magical wizard with bird friends. I don’t know that Merlin ever actually like lived as part of a tree but you know what? Well, you probably fucking do it, it’s Marlin.
Even the way Merlin experienced his time could be a parallel with how Bloodraven and now brand can move through time using the weirwood. net. Making these mentors appear to be all seeing all knowing. And I would bet good money that there are a million more parallels between brand and Arthur, and even Bloodraven and Merlin. This This isn’t really the episode to go too deep into it. And I tried looking up some more things and I couldn’t actually find too much that of anyone making that connection.
Nick 1:35:33
Really, you better get started? Well,
Kalvin 1:35:35
I know I haven’t read A Song of Ice and Fire or the once and future king in a while so I can’t recall everything off top my head. And the Once and Future King is absolutely bonkers. It’s extremely hard to follow along with because it’s constantly shifting, shifting between viewpoints and characters and all the names sound super similar to one another. And the narrative is messy, just right out of the gate. There are some just amazing parts that are so great that it redeems itself every time it kind of goes off the rails. And was I just describing A Song of Ice and Fire there.
Nick 1:36:13
I think you may have another parallel snap.
Kalvin 1:36:18
Yeah, I did try and Google around I didn’t find much that the only thing that I found that that laid any credence to it is a lot of people claim it because George RR Martin had this quote one time in an interview that said people think Bran is King Arthur something like that. But the full quote is from an interview and I got this from a Tumblr account. Nobody suspects the butterfly so shout out you I’m sure you’re listening. Random Tumblr user. The interviewer asked it’s a shockingly brutal story that you tell the first major jolt comes when night Jamie Lannister pushes the child brand star through window because child witness Jamie and Jamie sister Searcy, the wife of Westeros, King Robert having sex. Great cliffsnotes version of the first chapter there.
Nick 1:37:01
Yeah, pretty much that the throat
Kalvin 1:37:03
so George responds, he said I’ve had a million people tell me that that was the moment that hooked them where they said, Well, this is just not the same story I’ve read a million times before. brand is the first viewpoint character in the back of their heads. People are thinking brand is the hero of the story. He’s young king arthur. So that’s what people always grab onto is. George literally said he’s young king arthur, but the context of the quote is much deeper than that. So he says we’re going to follow this young boy and then boom, you don’t expect something like that to happen. So that was successful. And he laughs at himself because he’s so tickled by his own stuff.
Nick 1:37:37
I imagine he laughs like Michael Jackson. Oh, absolutely.
Kalvin 1:37:39
And so the thesis of this quote is actually that maybe brand is not so much like King Arthur, in in that right away, George RR Martin knocks the kid you’re supposed to think as the hero out of a window. But he also could have compared him to any sci fi fantasy hero from the past that that came up as a child. He chose King Arthur specifically to make the comparison to because he he wants readers to draw those parallels, I think brand getting pushed off a tower just isn’t one of the parallels that he wants you to draw. I think the readers are supposed to think of Bran as sort of this story when they pick it up. And George RR Martin doesn’t want to tell just another generic hero story because that story has been told a million times. So it mixes up what the expectations of our parent King Arthur has to go through and he kicks it off with a bang, or a shelf
Nick 1:38:33
in a crippling
Kalvin 1:38:34
and a crippling, so I think there’s probably a lot more there. And if anybody else like if there’s any Arthurian scholars listening, like hit me up, I’d love to pull on this thread further. But I’m just like, I don’t have that mythology in my brain good enough to make all the comparisons that need to be made, but I think there’s definitely something there and that he is actively trying to parallel the two.
Nick 1:38:59
I’m sure he is.
Kalvin 1:39:01
It’s almost impossible not to when you’re telling any hero story to parallel with King Arthur anyways, especially one that starts off as a child.
Nick 1:39:09
Yeah.
Kalvin 1:39:11
Do you have anything else on brand as King Arthur or actually dragons, which is what we’re talking about? I don’t, me neither. Game of Thrones. Song of Ice and Fire always goes along to possible Yeah, that’s it.
Nick 1:39:25
That’s all right.
Kalvin 1:39:27
I think I mean, I think the people that want Song of Ice and Fire content they want a lot of it. There’s just so much depth there.
Nick 1:39:34
You’re getting a lot of Yeah,
Kalvin 1:39:36
that’s why you show up to a podcast about something. Thank you for showing up to a podcast about something you can follow us both on twitter at APA something at alone underscore podcast. We will have a newsletter launching soon. Hopefully we’ll have like links shipped for all that. By next episode. I have like all the templates bill and ideas for it. I just it’s just not fully fleshed out yet, but it’s coming. The first news letter will be sent out in February, late February so once the link is live get signing up for it if you want extra stuff from us gonna be doing including giveaways who yeah I love kids. You can all your will not qualify for them Nick can also check us out on T public comm you can now actually just search for a podcast about something or APA something and it’ll bring up our whole storefront by searching that, which is kind of cool. I think that’s all we’ve got the music for podcasts about something is provided by those cats. Guess it’s acid. Stay classy
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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