Episode 63 was great – thoughtful, good flow, articulate contributors, and thought provoking. Excellent and wonderfullly nerdy debate/discussion!

Please get these gentlemen back together again in the future.

I keep thinking that he’d be a great choice for a champion of the faith at Cersei’s trial, a chance to reunite with his brother… but the timing would be off, since he’s 1) still in recovery and 2) unknown to the priesthood at King’s Landing unless the silent monks’ve already revealed his secret identity.

You can’t argue that Brandon wouldn’t “dishonor” Ashara just because he broke off the relationship with Lady Dustin.

If Brandon didn’t dishonor Ashara, then Ned did. So according to the above argument, Brandon was more honorable than Ned? Does anyone honestly believe that Brandon was more honorable than Ned?

It’s Brandon’s honor against Ned’s and I’ll take Ned’s honor anyday.

You guys are a blast. Keep up the great work.

As to “private correspondence”, I was referring to an item published in the So Spake Martin collection, which we host:

http://www.westeros.org/Citadel/SSM/Entry/1040

Dany was born nine months after the flight from King’s Landing, immediately on the reception of news of Rhaegar’s death, so he Jon was born around the Sack or about a month after… at least, according to George. But as I said, he allows himself room to contradict himself.

Did I refer to any other correspondence in discussing this theory that was not actually published and available freely to anyone interested in looking at it?

The broader point about just sticking to the text and nothing else? That’s cool, if that’s what people want to do, but it’s not how I prefer to interact with the text, and generally speaking I think people are happy to glean tidbits of worldbuilding and history and plot detail from Martin’s correspondence, his appearances at conventions, etc.

1. Elio has based his entire Brandon-rapeface theory around one comment made by fucking Barristan Selmy. I think it’s a little random to belabor the shocking lack of knowledge (on part of the general populace) about events and timelines during wartime, and the fact that most of what we know is hearsay and gossip and then suddenly base an entire theory – which completely contradicts an established character- on a comment by a Selmy. As far as we know he had no reason to be in Starfall (he would have been in Kings Landing as part of the KG) so how the fuck does he know what happened with Ashara ? Further, we know that he is *also* a jilted lover (well jilted is not the right word for it) but we know he wanted the lady for himself – so just the fact that she was with another man has probably been retroactively turned into “dishonored” in his mind.

I also don’t doubt that Brandon Stark stayed celibate for the entire duration of his betrothal. But he had no need to. Thats what brothels, and crofters daughters and millers wives are for. While it is disapproved of in some circles, it is also shrugged-and-accepted that Lords will be lords and wet their whistles once in a while. It *only* counts if the woman in question is also of high birth. So if it was purely a question of needing to get off, BS could have done it anywhere, anytime, without doing it with a high born lady of a very powerful noble family.

Also Lady Dustin nee Ryswell by her own account was just as willing to jump into bed with him as he was with her. That’s just them being highschool sweethearty rather than him using his political power to get into her bed.

2. This seems a little petty and somewhat sacrilegious, but I personally believe the books and stories need to stand on their own based on what we as general readers have access to. Constantly being told that one theory is more valid than another or that the book is actually better than we think it is because of all this *awesome stuff that happened in a private correspondence* is total BS. Elio/Linda may be blessed enough to have access to all this back story and behind the scenes info but the rest of us don’t.

I appreciate the fact that someone brought up that years down the line if you read (a potentially) completed series back to back DWD will have it’s place, but as things stand a rambling world building set up novel is not what the readers wanted. This is exactly what people said about FFC “Oh you can’t have plot all the time, we are just setting up for the awesomeness next !” Well this essentially means that all the characters have been “chess-piecing” for 11 years now, which is a bit much even by Sistine chapel standards.

And yeah not going to lie – the “four lemoncakes eeeee !” circle jerk at the beginning was terrible to listen to. Where’s the snark ? Where’s the hate ? Where’s all the reasons I listen to APOIAF ?

I killed myself laughing.

Fool me once…

About the fat men, I thought Tyrion’s “Hey, is that Illyrio walking past outside the door? No, just a white dwarf elephant” was a bit gratuitous, and the Yellow Whale being four times Illyrio’s size was inconceivable. Those are very minor details, though.