Despite how deep we are into the series, the Starks as skin
changers, that aspect of their story remains fairly untapped,
fairly new. That's particularly true as
individuals, but as a group, it hasn't even been scratched as a
surface right. They don't know that about each
other. They barely know it about
themselves. They don't really know what they
are. Bran maybe does a little more
so, but he's basically the only one being taught how to use
those abilities. He's really The only exception
here. What will happen with John's
abilities when he died? What about Aria?
She's already skin changed into a cat, though she doesn't call
it skin changing. She doesn't exactly know what's
going on. She's figuring out how to use
it. She has lots of dreams about
Nymeria, but yeah, she's never, I don't think, even used the
word warg or skin changer. It is.
The phrase has not been uttered in her presence as far as I'm
aware of. She certainly hasn't given it
any thought in that sense with Rickon, Rob and Sansa, yes, her
too. There are variations and
circumstances and things said directly by George RR Martin
that sheds lights on this. But they are headed to a reunion
of sorts. We've all long predicted that
some or all of the remaining Starks will reconvene, probably
at Winterfell, maybe not, but probably at Winterfell.
And when that happens, what they've learned about who they
are and what they can do will be a matter of at least discussion.
It certainly will be a matter of interest to us.
Now, Vermeer said other skin changers can identify each
other. They can tell like, oh, I can
sense you're a skin changer. Will the Starks have that?
Will they sense each other in that manner?
Will that come up? That would be interesting.
Will this method a mechanism of sorts?
Will it be a way for them to fulfill their father's words?
The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.
Will this be a a thing that unites them?
I mean, the Starks are a pack of wolves.
Yeah, but they're a pack of skin changers, too.
And with wolves that they can skin change into.
So. And not only did he, Stark, get
a direwolf that includes John, he is a Stark.
He's not Ned Stark's son. The genders matched perfectly.
You had exactly 4 male direwolves and two female.
It was perfectly perfect alignment there.
Blood Raven will later say one person in 1000 is born a skin
changer. So how exactly do all 5 of Ned
and Katz children plus John have the talent?
That's peculiar isn't it? Given those stats, it all just
lines up so perfectly. And it starts in the 1st chapter
right? It's all began.
Not counting the prologue, of course.
It's it just happens in Chapter 1 there.
It's a mystery and it's an initial part of the setup and
it's mostly still not paid off as a plot line like this cool
stuff is happening, but we aren't that far along in this
particular aspect of our Song of Ice and Fire journey.
So we're going to talk about that today.
We've got outlook, series details, history.
We want to explore the magic and the impact on their
personalities. In other words, the character
conflict created by this supernatural aspect of their of
themselves and what they're discovering.
And we've got all that and more on this episode of History of
Westeros podcast. Hello and welcome back
everybody. We're so happy and lucky to be
with you here again, talking about our favorite book series.
It is truly a privilege and we've got a great episode for
you today. I believe it's a fun topic
combining mystery and the supernatural and the Starks,
three things that are particularly popular in this
fandom. We are here most Monday or
Mondays. Excuse me.
We are here most Sundays. We're here very few Mondays.
You're. Really out of sorts.
Now I'm like I'm a day ahead, I'm already in the future or I'm
in the past. I don't know which Monday am I
thinking of? No, almost every Sunday at 3:00
Eastern. We are live on YouTube.
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Nina, who as always provides some really great takes on
whatever topic we happen to be dealing with this particular
week. She certainly had some good
thoughts on the Starks and skin changing and the nature of it
all. Basically all the kind of stuff
that I set up here. She had lots of things to add to
that. And the latest blog post on
goodqueenalley.tumblr.com, that's where you find Nina.
That's good Queen Alley with 1L in alley.
And the latest post over there is someone asking about the
accursed kings, which of course that's right up her alley.
Nina loves to talk accursed kings.
A comparison between a character in that story and Melisandre is
what she's talking about on that latest post, so check it out if
you are interested in that or many of the other things she's
written about. I'm sure you will have a good
time reading her blog. If you have questions for us or
comments, anything like that, you can post them live if you're
here and during the live stream or send them to us at
westeroshistory@gmail.com or hit us up on one of our socials.
Here's our trivia question. We will give you the answer at
the end, but there is a clue during the episode which might
reveal the answer if you don't already know it, so pay close
attention. The question is, rumors can get
crazy in Westeros. Well, they can get crazy in the
real world too, but hey, that's realistic, isn't it?
Now, which POV character was said to have been a wolf with
bat wings? Huh.
Yeah. Which POV character was said to
have been a wolf with bat wings? Yeah, a lot of them are said to
be wolves, but which one had bat wings?
All right, let's read you the different sections we have
today. We're going to start with
ancient tales then, which includes the Warg King and the
War of the Wolves. Then we're going to talk about
the current Starks. There's going to be a lot of
overlap because we're going to talk about them as a group and
individuals, but we're going to focus on each one in turn, kind
of in order of how powerful we think they are as skin changers.
That could change over time, but I think that the order is, well,
I think you'll probably agree with it.
Some of you may quibble, but we'll see.
Sansa, most likely the least powerful, then Rick and then
Rob. It's where it gets a little
tricky. Rick and could be more powerful
than Rob, Who knows. John, then Arya, then Bran and.
I think there's a strong argument for Sansa to be higher
than them both. It's possible.
Because of the the the indications that she might be
connecting with another animal, which Rob and Rick on haven't
done, but that's anyway we'll get into that.
Very good point, Shay. Yeah, she's absolutely right.
It isn't simple. You have to make up your own
definitions for how to weigh these things.
It isn't some sort of chart we can refer to like a well, her
power is A5 and his is a six. Yeah, No, we have this is all.
We're just kind of making it up as we go along.
But we're basing it in, I think, logic and detail from the
stories and from what George has said.
So yeah. And then after that, we'll,
we'll talk a little bit about why now, why is this happening
now? Why are so many Starks or all
these Starks getting this ability?
Why is this? What about why did they get
direwolves? A few things on that.
And then at the end, we'll talk about the Stark reunification,
which is something we've all expected at some point and how
we're not going to cover the entire Stark unit reunification.
That's probably a whole episode on its own.
But we're going to talk about how the skin changing fits into
all that, how that's something they can talk about.
That's something they can connect over, how something, it
might be something that separates them from the rest of
society, but they can share with each other because they all have
that. There's a lot of quotes in this
episode that'll be fun. And let's get started with such
a quote, but not from the books, from George RR Martin himself.
This came from a convention appearance in the year 2000.
And the quote comes to us from the questioner, Linda Elaine.
Here it is. I don't know if I want to get
into genetics. This is fantasy, not sci-fi, he
replied. I don't think this is
necessarily a Stark ability though.
All the children have it to 1 extent or another.
They also realize it to 1 extent or another.
Arya doesn't realize she has it. She keeps thinking she has these
weird dreams. And of course, Bran is much
further along. So that's huge, right?
I mean, and it's big for us in terms of like researching, just
trying to figure it out. We don't have to think of it as
genetic. It's not something that's
necessarily passed down from father to son, from mother to
son or whatever daughter, etcetera.
It's doesn't work that way. He doesn't tell us how it does
work, so it still leaves us in the dark a bit.
But we do know one way it doesn't work, and it's the one
that you would probably default to thinking it's probably
genetic, but no, it's not. George says so straight up here.
It's very curious that he says that.
Not only do they all have it, which is again, that's why we're
very sure that Sansa has it. You can't really argue that
Sansa has the skill when George says straight up she does so
that discussion is over. She definitely has it, but to
what extent? That discussion is very much in
play. He also says that they all
realize they have it to some extent, which is also very
interesting because in the next sentence he says Aria doesn't
realize it, but she realizes something she she has in these
dreams and she doesn't quite frame that properly.
And of course, Aria being, what, 11 years old at this point
doesn't exactly prepare her for making these decisions and for
perceiving things the as an adult might.
On the other, on the other hand, it also helps understand things
in a way that maybe an adult would prequalify, you know,
preconceived notions. A child is coming at it fresher,
which is really big for Bran and and Ricken especially.
So the younger Starks have some aspects to this that are a
little unusual. Their age is very important.
You know, they are, they're all getting the ability at the same
time chronologically, but it's hitting them at different ages.
It's going to have a bigger impact on Ricken's personality
than it does on, say, John's because he's already mostly an
adult. He already had.
He's already partly developed as a human being.
So this is something added on to him.
Whereas for Ricken, it's coming along when he's 3.
It's already a big part of his. By the time he turns 5, which I
think about how old he is now, it's already a huge part of him.
He's already lived with it for a more than 1/3 of his life.
Not the case for the other stars.
So it's nice for us to have this clarification from George, but
it it, it asks it, it does create new questions while
answering one big one. So a lot of you are probably
surprised at that, maybe mildly to extremely surprised.
A few of you may have already known about that or has your
suspicions because it doesn't really come out looking.
If you really dig into it. It's like this.
How could this be genetic if all of them have it and John has it
too? John's not directly related to
Ned Stark. He's came from Liana and
Rhaegar. So the genetics part kind of
falls a little bit by the wayside when you think about
that way. Now this is also that quote, as
I said, came in the year 2000. So a Storm of Swords had just
come out. So some of the stuff was new
even for George, like he had just written it, right.
Arya, as we said, it's probably the second most powerful, but
she doesn't really have any skin changing.
Stuff happened to her in Clash of Kings in In a Storm of
Swords. She does.
It comes out pretty big, but in A Clash of Kings, it's really
just Bran having that and the other Starks.
It's more like there's rumors and maybe like people talk about
Rob because he's got his direwolf by him in war and
there's rumors, but it isn't necessarily drawn from direct
evidence of skin changing. It's just that this dude has a
direwolf with him at all times and people are going to talk
about that now as well. John has a major wolf dream in
the Clash of Kings, one that's particularly peculiar, so that's
interesting too. Maybe going beyond the Wall
triggered some things, who knows, but it's all part of this
big mystery. Vermeer expected or wanted some
of his children to have the gift, and he laments that none
of them did now, that neither did his parents.
So he could have maybe figured out that it isn't that.
Passing it down from father to son, mother to daughter,
whatever, isn't necessarily how it works.
But what other model do Medieval type people think about here?
What other idea are they going to have?
Well, where is this going to come from?
Is that the God, some God just going to like point at you and
say you now have this ability and they did that when you were
born. Genetics isn't the word they
would use, but people inheriting the traits of their families,
how most of them would perceive all of this.
And so having it not work that way is difficult for them to
figure out in world. It's easy for us because George
told us straight up. But they don't have the tools to
figure that out some other way. They don't have like, the
scientific method and understanding of these things.
So just yeah. How much is these?
Do you think that it's just like they had the dire wolves that
helped with their bond and other Starks in previous generations
only spend time with a Raven or whatever?
I you know what I mean? Like the animals they're exposed
to. Maybe it helps to encourage
unlock that ability. I think it's a huge factor given
what we know. I think there's very little else
we can point to accept the direwolves as a major factor for
sort of awakening or unlocking that ability in a way that maybe
other animals wouldn't cause. Yes, like a Stark, you'd think
they would. There'd be dogs and horses and,
and in Bran's case, some birds here and there that he deals
with on a regular basis. But they don't have that kind of
bond with those animals that they do with their direwolf.
The direwolf is, is like a special animal in terms of their
relationship, even without the magical elements.
None of them had a pet dog prior to the direwolves, right?
They may have dogs that they liked, but there's no like
highborn nobles in this setting don't really have pet dogs.
They don't really think of it that way.
It's not the relationship that we have with animals in in our
world is different, you know, so the concept of a pet.
Is not. Quite how they think of a lot of
these things, like we have a relationship with animals but
pet owner isn't exactly how it works, right?
More of them. For one thing, most animals are
livestock. It's not.
Most people can't afford to have animals purely for
companionship. And as I said, think of an
example of any highborn noble in all of Westeros that has a dog
as a pet that they keep buying them all the time.
It's pretty rare. I can't even think of one off
the top of my head. There probably is a couple, but
certainly not the Starks. So it would be the first time
that they really bonded with an animal would be these direwolves
and especially for the really young ones like Rickon and and
and Bran. But yes, was that arranged?
Was there something supernatural?
Was there some powers that be Bloodraven or the Old Gods or
something that they send those direwolves in order to activate
these abilities that might exist in lots of other Starks and lots
of other Northerners, if not lots of other people that just
never get awakened. There's nothing that the trigger
isn't there, the teaching isn't there, the acceptance isn't
there. Like none of these Starks want
to be skin changers. They've all been told all their
lives that skin changers are bad.
They're evil old man stories. They're never the good guys.
Skin changers aren't, there's no good guy skin changer stories.
They were told as a kid. They're it's something out of
old man stories and it's they're villainous exclusively in the
real world of Westeros. Skin changers aren't all evil,
right? Clearly not because these Starks
aren't evil and they're skin changers.
That's the best proof you could possibly have.
But cultural belief, South of the Wall, they are shunned, if
not haunted down and killed. That's what Jojen says.
We'll have a quote on that later.
So it's not good that the Starks grew up thinking this is bad.
So it's a difficult thing for them to accept.
And that lack of acceptance, given this cultural BIOS, makes
it hard for them to engage with that part of themselves.
They don't want to. They resist the what they are
and don't use it. That's something that Vermeer
thinks about John. He's like, boy, this kid's
pretty strong, but he's just resisting what he is.
If he was trained, if he was embracing his power, he could be
a real factor. But instead Vermeer's like, but
he doesn't. So he's, he stinks, he sucks,
he's he's powerless. I could take that wolf from him
if I wanted to. That's Vermeer's inner
monologue. Whether that's true or not, I
don't know, but I suspect it might because he has a sense of
these things. But Mance told him not to do it
and and Vermeer listens. So more on that later.
There's other places in besides the north where there's stories
of skin changers. The particular one is Red Lake.
Red Lake. Rose of Red Lake was a skin
changer back in the day. Back in the days of Garth
Greenhand. She could turn into a swan.
I believe there's other queer things about Red Lake that are
interesting, like a certain dragon was drawn to Red Lake at
the end of the Dance of Dragons. You all know what I'm talking
about. It was a crane by the.
Way. Oh, Crane, that's right, Not a.
No, I was her. On how's Crane?
Of course no. I was her on Michael Klarfeld's
map. That's right.
You were. Yeah, I remember that, but I
couldn't remember the which which bird it was.
So. Yeah.
How? Yeah.
The cranes and then that is. Oh, yeah.
It even says here in my notes. I just, it's overlooked the
cranes of Red Lake. It says it right here anyway.
Yeah, Shaya was Rose of Red Lake.
That's cool. She was the model for.
That there's a lot of it down in the in the reach though, because
of Garth Greenhand's kids, right?
Multiple examples. But this is the, this is one of
the ones that's the most prominent and remembered as
such. There's probably other ones.
Maybe they got lost in the shuffle.
But it's very explicit that Rose of Red Lake was a skin changer.
And so maybe something about Red Lake, maybe that region, it, it
drew a dragon, it's got skin changer.
Maybe that's like a hinge of the world.
You know what I mean? Like there's magic in that zone,
kind of like beyond the Wall and other places where things just
work a little differently. Now, if you were thinking, OK,
maybe George was misquoted or maybe there's a chance that that
wasn't quite right, that he wasn't that that was that wasn't
the exact words he used. We have a backup quote from
someone named Oberon. Hey, Oberon.
Yeah. Right on.
In 2000, so the following year, and the question was, are all
the Stark children warg slash skin changers with their wolves?
And George says to a greater or lesser degree, yes, but the
amount of control varies widely. So he he, he had a second chance
to answer this question and answer it the same way.
So to me, that settles it. There's no question here.
Each Stark, all of them, that includes Sansa, that includes
everyone, right? And he uses the word control.
And this is a thing where we talk about the difference
between skill and talent. Talent is inborn.
Talent is something you you, you're born with.
You come with it. You're 2 come preloaded with
abilities. Skill is experience in using it,
your ability to use your talents or creating, learning to do
things that maybe you don't even have a talent for.
So all the Starks have the talent for skin changing.
Very few of them have any skill. Bran has some skill, maybe a lot
of skill. It's it's increasing rapidly.
He's got a teacher. So that puts him in a different
category. He's both the most talented and
the most skilled. So he's really does kind of is
an exception in a lot of ways. But are we supposed to believe
that they won't get more control, more skill over time?
I seriously doubt that. Of course they're going to get
some more. How much more?
Well, that is the question, but or a question, but certainly
more than they have now. Certainly more awareness of what
they are coming to terms with it, things like that.
There's lots of character moments that will fit into this,
the supernatural topic. And one of the biggest topics of
this episode, too, is, yeah, again, that inevitable Stark
reunion, which I'm so fascinated by.
They're going to talk. Can they talk about their
abilities? Like, hey, yeah, we've all had
dreams. Like, hey, Bran, I had dreams of
being a wolf. And he's like, well, I can
explain that to you because I've been taught.
Or will he keep it close to the cup?
Will he not share that with them because it will bring them to a
place that he doesn't want them to be?
Maybe he thinks it's bad for them.
Maybe he thinks the power will corrupt them.
I don't know. But I, I, I, I think more likely
he'll help them and teach them a little bit.
Which? Is John might be like, well, I
was my wolf, yeah. Yeah, I've already been there.
So, yeah. And that's a great example what
a Shaya brings up there. There's these peculiar extra
elements that certain individuals within this group of
Starks have that the others don't.
Like John's going to have been dead and in his wolf
potentially. Like how does that affect all
this? Ari is getting all these lessons
from the faceless men and getting other trained and other
abilities. She's getting training not in
this, but the two can overlap. Like you telling me they're
going to teach her how to sneak into places and be stealthy and
murder people and she can't make use of skin changing in that.
I mean, she already has shown how valuable that can be You.
A cat's eyes like that would be super powerful.
Like she's already done that in the Red Keep.
I got a long standing theory that Ari will return to the Red
Keep and murder or assassinate Cersei or something like that.
Or virus. Maybe not, probably not Cersei,
that's still probably Jamie's ball of wax to deal with.
But virus I like is an idea for for Aria to kill because of what
he's doing because he is a mummer who uses the tunnels and
uses child slaves. These are things that Aria will
hate and he's she's better than him at the mummery stuff now
because well, well, she just is she's getting trained at it and
she's going to beat him in his own game.
I really like how that lines up. Anyway, more on that later too,
getting ahead of myself here. The point is she's being trained
in powerful other disciplines that might overlap her ability
to use her skin changing talent. And it's also very important
into maintaining her identity. So the conversations they could
have about what they've learned, seen, dreamt, and teaching each
other about these things and coming to terms with it amongst
other loved ones rather than out on the out on their own,
isolated and and talking to people that that they don't know
who what their agenda is, who know what what does the face of
man's real agenda with Arya? You know what is what else is
happening in Blood Ravens cave there?
What else is going on? You know that these are things
that they can commiserate on. But let's go way farther back.
Let's go into ancient times and get a little perspective on skin
changers in the ancient past quote.
In truth, the legends of the Skin Changers are many, but the
most common, brought from beyond the Wall by men of the Night's
Watch and recorded at the Wall by septons and masters of
centuries past, hold that the Skin Changers not only
communicated with beasts, but could control them by having
their spirits mingle. Even among the wildlings, these
skin changers were feared as unnatural men who could call on
animals as allies. Some tales speak of skin
changers losing themselves in their beasts, and others say
that the animals could speak with a human voice when a skin
changer controlled them. But all the tales agree that the
most common skin changers were men who controlled wolves, even
dire wolves, and these at a special name among the Wild
Wings wargs. Yeah.
So this is a very ancient thing. This has been around since the
time of the First Men, actually been before that because the
children of the Forest could do this.
Yeah. So somehow the ability was
passed from the children onto humanity.
And perhaps if we ever are given any insight into that mechanism,
it might help explain how some of this works, how the first
human started to manifest that skill.
Is it from somehow interbreeding or was it powers given through
worship or ritual? Who knows.
But it's a it's a fascinating concept.
Did how Stark choose the direwolf as their sigil?
Because it's the top of the food chain in the North, The most
powerful animal in the North, like the Lion of Winter, so to
speak. You know this.
The Lannisters chose the lion 'cause that's the most powerful
animal in their region. The the grey Joyce chose the
Kraken for similar reasons. Is this the is this why they
chose it? Or was it because of the
supernatural elements when maybe the dire wolf or the wolves were
with this tradition of skin changing?
Maybe this is something like that.
Maybe it relates. And in terms of skin changers,
even beyond the wall, Varamir was cast out by his own family.
They didn't abandoned him. They didn't, you know, orphan
him, but they gave him to his kind.
They said he wasn't even called Varamir then of course he first
skin changed into one of the family dogs which got him caught
because, well, he killed his brother with a while inside the
together. This is a very this isn't a good
man or a good boy. So yet it's still kind of sad.
You still feel bad for young Vermeer lump or bump, whichever
he was forget he was either lump or bump and he but being given
away by your parents because of something you're born with that
you can't control. That's that's yeah, I I feel
empathy for that. Even though the particular
individual is awful. He was awful before his parents
gave him away too. So it's not like this is what
made him evil. He says he's a font of knowledge
about skin changing. Even though this episode isn't
about him. It's impossible not to use what
we learned from his POV chapter and and from some of his quotes
because we just have so little else to go on.
And George used Vermeer as a vehicle for that.
Like you very intentionally said, Hey, I'm going to tell you
all about skin changing stuff and Second Life and all that
through this POV, which will then set up what's going to
happen in the Stark POV's the the more important skin
changers. So Vermeer, one of the things he
teaches us is that dogs are easier.
For example, he killed his own brother by slipping into a dog
when he barely had any training or ability.
Now Vermeer was a very very naturally talented skin changer.
He's extremely powerful, was extremely powerful.
But with a dog, frankly you don't need powers to get a dog
to be obedient. It's not quite the same as skin
changing I'm sure, but like dogs are very loyal and obedient in
the 1st place, you know? You maybe don't need that
supernatural. So if you can only be in control
certain amount of animals at once, I can see why you wouldn't
bother with dog because the dog will probably stick with you
anyway. You know, dogs are great that
way. Wolves are pack animals, but
they're not tame or docile or obedient in ways that dogs can
be. There was someone to take him as
he said they somehow his family knew who this community of skin
changers were. They knew how to find them and
hand Vermeer over to them and say, hey, you should you belong
with your own kind. They'll raise you.
They'll teach you the ways of skin changing.
And that's what they did. And it, you know, obviously not
the best thing for a child, but it's it, it worked out OK for
him in terms of that his master didn't work out very well for
his master because he ended up killing him too.
But he did learn ostensibly his family wanted him to learn about
being a skin changer. And he got that he was
introduced to his kind and learn things about them that he was a
gathering of skin changers, right?
That was a thing that that he went to.
And at that gathering, he realized he was already the most
powerful there. Partly because they have a sense
of each other and their powers. It's like they it's something
that comes with being a skin changer is the sense of other
skin changers and how powerful they are.
So other than him, the Stark, compare him to the Starks.
The Starks weren't kicked out of their family.
They weren't given to skin changers to be raised among
their own kind. And for one, I mean, that
wouldn't have happened even if Ned and Kat did know that about
them. But they never did.
Of course. That was never information that
they learned before their deaths.
Although maybe Kat will learn that in her undead state and
that could be very interesting. But that's outside the scope of
this episode. So each Stark individually has
been learning about who they are and having a different
experience on that skin changer journey, whether it's dreams,
whether it's experiences with animals, whether it's what
brands going through, which is far beyond all that.
Compare that to Vermeer. Vermeer had the training, but he
didn't have like the highborn upbringing.
He didn't get to, you know, stay around his family.
So they were the Starks have kind of been effectively
orphaned, right? They've been kicked out of their
home through violence. And you know, there's a way,
there's a path back for them. But this is something that is
really shaping their lives. And now, of course, except
Brandon, he has the best teacher of all, best maybe in quotes,
but certainly the most knowledgeable.
And he has the knowledge base of everyone to draw on, like every
past green seer is part of this, like is part of the Lesson plan
here for him. So it's like it's night and day
what Bran has at his disposal, his fingertips versus what his
siblings have. So let's look at some other
ancient connections here though, too.
This doesn't just it's not just about what the world of Ice and
Fire says. We've got some other stuff here
also from the World of Ice and Fire, from a specific figure
here called the Warg King quote. Chronicles found in the archives
of the Night's Watch at the Night Fort before it was
abandoned, speak of the war for Sea Dragon Point, wherein the
Starks brought down the Warg King and his inhuman allies, the
Children of the Forest. When the Warg King's last
redoubt fell, his sons were put to the sword along with his
beasts and green seers, whilst his daughters were taken as
prizes by their conquerors. Now if it weren't for George
telling us that it's not a genetic thing, many theorized
that this is where the skin changer genes came from in the
Starks in the 1st place. They took these daughters as
prizes and inherited those genes.
But of course that's not the case.
It was a reasonable guess though so.
But this is super curious. He had green Sears and all this
other stuff. His children of the force were
his allies. This is fascinating and and kind
of hard to rectify but nonetheless really interesting
to think about. It could be some genetic element
that isn't passed down. It could be like an initial
mutation, but that would still qualify as genetic, I think.
I don't know. It's, it's the the definition of
what is and isn't genetic is a little tricky here.
And it it's also falls apart because what George considers
genetic isn't necessarily the the hard science.
My counterpoint to you is that that quote does not indicate
there's no genetic quality, but that he doesn't care to get into
the genetics. The genetics are not really that
significant, but I don't think it precludes there being any
genetic quality to this. He doesn't say it's not there.
He just doesn't want to go. I mean that yeah, I can see your
point there. He's he's not explicitly saying
it's definitely not genetic. He just doesn't want to do that.
He. Just doesn't want to get down
into the weeds with it. But I think there is a a streak
of genetics in it. But it's just that's not what
the difference was. The genetics isn't why these
Starks right now have these great abilities.
Yeah, yeah. The, the key seems to be
training, having someone to draw that out of you develop it.
It's a like a, an if you have a talent for something and never
use it your whole life, then yeah, that's going to atrophy.
It's going to effectively be like, you never had that talent
if you don't use it. So yeah, there's probably, we
could probably guess that there have been a lot of Starks and
maybe other people in the North too, probably other people in
the North too that have that were born with the talent.
Never had it developed, never even questioned it, partly
because of the cultural bias. I never would have wanted to if
it was encouraged, if it was treasured, if it was considered
a gift from the gods, a positive thing, then everyone would be
hopeful that their kids would be born with it and they'd be
looking for it. They'd be hoping for it rather
than sort of, we don't talk about that, you know, that kind
of aspect. So the cultural belief is
massive here. And whether it's accepted or
not, and it's not in the South and in the North beyond the
wall, it's accepted but not loved, right?
It isn't shunned, but it's not exactly something they want to
be a big part of. It's not something like, hey,
let's invite the skin changers to our parties, you know,
doesn't really work that way. So but they're not assumed to be
evil. That's still very important in
the South, meaning the South of the wall, it's like all skin.
They're evil, that's bad, they're bad things.
They're they're corrupt and wrong and should be destroyed.
Definitely not like that beyond the wall.
Now Varamir is a model of this type of monarch, this character
who is able to conquer through power.
And maybe because they have all, maybe this particular ward king
was so strong and mighty and could control lots of animals at
once. It says beasts plural.
He had beasts. Green seers, plural.
This blows my mind. It it, it would make sense that
he was a powerful monarch. So again, a micro version of
this is is Varimir right? Varimir ruled some villages
through fear and terror. Here's the quote.
Before Mance Varimir, sick Skins had been a Lord of sorts.
He lived alone in a hall of Moss and mud and hewn logs that had
once been haggons attended by his beasts.
A dozen villages did him homage in bread and salt and cider,
offering him fruit from their orchards and vegetables from
their gardens. His meat he got himself.
Whenever he desired a woman, he sent his shadow cat to stalk
her, and whatever girl he'd cast his eye upon would follow meekly
to his bed. And this is where we learn as
well that he didn't have any kids that are skin changers,
which somewhat confirms what George said or at least confirms
a blood rape and said that only one in 1000 is born with that
way. He didn't have 1000 children.
So the odds weren't exactly on his side.
And maybe he figured it out at some level.
He's like, man, maybe this isn't maybe that's not how it works
because my parents didn't have it and none of my kids do.
So maybe this is just not not where it comes from.
But what what would he think if not that?
What is it? You know, it's pretty hard to be
an atheist in a world where supernatural powers are real.
Not just real, but you have them yourself.
Like, I have powers. Yeah.
But surely the gods aren't real. It's just That would be weird.
So you must think that's where they come from.
Whether it's passes through parents or not, either way, it's
comes from the gods. That's the only thing they could
probably be sure about in their worldview.
So that's really. That's really fascinating.
Like how does a war king enforces rule sort of like this
where the beasts sort of stalk around and act as
representatives. It's pretty powerful.
You have these intimidating representatives of yourself,
these animal avatars that keeps you safe, right?
It's it intimidates other people, but you're not the one
going out into the world and risking your your life by going
to village to village. You could be ambushed or shot
with an arrow, but no, you're sitting home in your castle or
your cave or your hall, whatever it is, issuing orders and
sending your animals out to do things and keeping yourself safe
and warm at home. So that's, that's pretty
powerful, right? Like that's something that a lot
of Northerners would envy. Like I don't even have to go
outside in the cold. You know, I could stay here and
in the warmth and just have people bring me stuff.
So that's really, really interesting.
And you can see how someone with a lot more power than Verimir or
someone with more time, Verimir could have grown in power and
his control over a dozen villages could have been control
over 20 or 30 or 40 or something like that.
Maybe one day he could have been king beyond the wall, who knows.
As far as we know though, none of the other kings beyond the
wall were were skin changers. But there is this example called
that we're another example from the World of Ice and Fire called
the War of the Wolves, which I also would like to hear us
quote. Ancient ballads, amongst the
oldest to be found in the archives of the Citadel of Old
Town, tell us of how one King of Winter drove the giants from the
north whilst another felled the skin changer, Gavin Gray Wolf
and his kin in a savage war of the wolves.
But we have only the word of singers that such kings and such
battles ever existed. Yeah, it makes you think more
and more about how what we were just talking about, about how a
skin changer king would deploy his powers in an effort to
maintain power. Being in two places at once that
we just talked about are multiple places at once with
your animals is a good example. But there would be other things.
And their mirror is a good example of what can go wrong of
a person who's corrupted by their own power and just takes
what they want and just slakes his desires.
It's one of the worst ways that this can go.
And it it backs up the idea that skin changers are malevolent
entities, even though it's not true.
It it, it certainly makes people think that way if this is the
kind of example you're given. He's a tyrant.
Nina calls him basically like a local God king.
Yeah. He has supernatural control over
things that no one else does or few people do.
And he uses that to dominate and to terrify.
Ruling through fear, definitely not ruling through love.
We talked about the dichotomy. There is absolutely 100% fear.
There is no love whatsoever in this style of of control, of
authority. And but there's no reason why
every ward king has to be awful. Why, like, why would they all be
bad? You know, there's nothing
inherently evil about wolves or any of the other animals really.
So now if you're more animalistic, a human that has a
lot of animal traits that maybe can't control their appetites,
their desires, I could see why that would be dark, maybe lead
you astray a bit as a human being.
That's a big factor being a skin changer.
Jojen and Mira very much lament how much time Brand spends
inside his wolf that it's becoming that he is bending to
summer's will and summer is not bending to his becoming more
wolf like. We have that concern with John
in his second life. So yeah, maybe there is an
element of this that does lead people a bit astray.
I I still wouldn't go so far as to say that skin changing is is
evil or corrupt. But you can see how power, it's
power. Power can corrupt.
Absolute power can corrupt absolutely.
That's remains true even though it's not a Westerosi saying
it's, it's a human thing and you give people these powers and
some of them are going to do really bad things with it and,
and maybe more will do bad than good, but but nobody doing good.
I don't, I don't buy that for a second.
Surely there's been some skin changers that have done good.
The records don't reflect that. Maybe because they didn't keep
good records, or maybe the cultural bias has gotten so
strong that all cultural memory of good skin changers was wiped
out by people who had an agenda or who just refused to believe
such a thing could be the case. Who knows?
It all makes sense though, like things like this would fit.
And we saw it with Robb Stark a bit.
You know, you wonder what the long term would have been like
with him. Like he used Greywind to
exercise his authority over Great John, who was, you know,
testing him. He's like, well, I passed that
test with flying colors, right? But Greywind really helped with
that. And Greywind is huge, literally
huge. But in terms of Rob's ability to
rule and to lead, like people were intimidated by that.
People were like, this, this this boy king with this wolf, it
gave him extra gravitas. It gave him more authority.
It it counteracted some of his youth.
It's like, yeah, this kid, they don't want to listen to him.
But this is a kid with a wolf. This is a Stark.
This is a no one's going to call him a boy in Great John's
hearing anymore after that incident.
Things like this are why, right? So we would have wondered what
in the long term would have looked like Robb Stark, a king
sitting on his throne, dealing out justice, administrating his
Kingdom with Greywind at his side.
What would that have looked like?
Greywind, just like a feature of his court, maybe intimidating
people, maybe just adding some authority here and there, maybe
doing some of the same things these workings would have done,
but with more goodness, more justice behind it.
Like, oh, here comes everybody knows that wolf.
Everybody recognizes Greywind, right?
There's no, no other animal like him.
Even the other direwolf's look different, right?
They're not. None of them look like each
other. Here's a relevant phrase from
Vermeer's Master Hagon quote. A man might befriend a wolf,
even break a wolf, but no man could truly tame a wolf.
Wolves and women wed for life, Hagon often said.
You take one, that's a marriage. The wolf is part of you from
that day on, and you're part of him.
Both of you will change. That's a big deal.
Both of you will change. You take one.
That's his. His marriage analogy is kind of
weird because I don't think Hagon was likely to have ever
been married. So what does he know about being
married? But it still tracks.
Like you can still get what he's get his point, right?
You, you live that closely with somebody every day, day-to-day.
You want to, you know, you take on their burdens, their cares,
their loves. It's part of what you do in a
marriage, right? Or any, any good relationship or
any committed relationship. He's likening it to the skin
changer bond. He's like, there's a lot of
these things that are really similar.
It's a lifelong bond. You're going to be permanently
changed by it. And so will they, Right.
And that's really interesting because, yeah, we know that
about humans. But what happens?
We know that about your pets. Like, do I become more like my
cats? Not really.
I don't think they become more like me.
We, we pick up on each other's habits, on each other's desires
and what scares us maybe, but we're not like they're not
picking up my personality. Like the cats aren't going to
become interested in Game of Thrones because I love it.
I don't care about playing with leaves or whatever I don't like.
It's not going to make me love catnip.
It could for in this case, for skin change, like a human could
learn to start loving catnip because they sense that their
animal loves that and they vibe with those feelings and it
becomes part of their feelings. And John, John at one point
realizes he's hungry for blood. He's like, wait, what the Hell's
going on? He's like, oh, ghost, Ghost is
coming And he, he had been separated from ghost and just,
he's thinking about it. Ghost gets in range and he slips
into his skin kind of subconsciously and he realizes
he's feeling ghosts hunger and and wolf like qualities, which
he did that by accident. He doesn't have the training to
reconcile that or to be like, is this bad, is this good?
Should I hold back or should I not engage in this too much?
Like what Jojen saying to Bran? Don't do that.
Don't stay in your wolf too long.
None of the other Starks have that training.
No one's told them about that. No one's told them about the
dangers of these powers. I'm pretty sure that we can
assume Vermeer believed all this.
He remembers Hagon telling him this and it if he had
experiences that differed from what Hagon told him, he would
probably think about that. He'd be like, yeah, that turned
out Hagon was wrong about that. No, Vermeer is the most powerful
skin changer we know of other than Bran.
He might. I don't know if he was more.
I don't know if he's more powerful than Aria.
That's that's up in the air, I suppose.
But Vermeer, certainly in terms of people who've been trained,
super powerful. And it happened to him too.
He became like some of the animals he's controlling,
including Orrell, the eagle. He when he took over Orrell, he
discovered the hatred residing in the eagle, the hatred pointed
at Jon Snow. Varamir hates John in part
because Orrell hates John. It's part of who he is.
It's so it's not just the skin changer bond, It's the skin
changer bond to other skin changers who are in the animals
that you may control. Now.
It's it's layers here, right? So could John be an example of
this in the long term? Could John be sort of like a
Varamir or a a proto varamir? Not evil, not sending his shadow
cat to steal women, not that kind of character.
I don't really don't see that coming for John.
Even post death, even post Second Life, I don't think it's
going to make him that kind of person, but a war leader and a
skin changer at the same time. In other words, maybe not like a
Varamir, but maybe more like a Gavin Gray wolf for a warg king
kind of guy. You know, maybe a John might be
king in the north for a time, for a stretch, for maybe, maybe
for quite a while. So a skin changer king with a
wolf at his side, but other abilities dead.
What is death going to do to his abilities?
This could be a vehicle for George to sort of sideways
explain how the others work. The other are the others skin
changing into dead bodies. Will John be able to do that
after he's dead? Probably not.
But it's an interesting idea, isn't it?
So imagine John going into battle with the bravery of an
undead being someone who's like, yeah, I can't, it's not so easy
to kill me with his wolf, with whatever other powers he
manifests, possibly with higher rank on top of that.
So that is, that is a lot. That is a lot of things, John.
His list of titles and abilities is is very much Daenerys like,
so very long. Brad, on the other hand, could
be a bit like Varamir in that he could control lots of animals at
once. He could control more than
Varamir, presumably in the long run, if not already, which
enables to him to be in more than one place at once.
Now, what does that do to your personality?
I can see through two pairs of eyes, two pair of eagle eyes or
Raven eyes over here, while simultaneously seeing through a
pair of cat eyes over here, a pair of wolf eyes over here.
How many different realities are you perceiving at once?
That's going to change your brain.
I told the Shaya, once we're playing this game, you know, we
played this game, we played the game Beat Saber a lot, right?
It's really fun. It's good activity.
First time I ever played that game in 360 mode my eye like the
my eyes had and brain had never seen such a thing before and it
like I I swear it activated parts of my brain that had never
been used. It was very exhilarating.
This only existed in 2D scenarios prior to that.
That's right, I exist in flatland only.
Yeah, that's what I was about to say.
I was like it was a flatland type.
I discovered the third dimension only recently.
Y'all, I exist purely on on pieces of paper and books.
Flat things only. That's really fascinating to
think of Bran in the long term, either leading lots of animals
into battle or just in general as representatives himself.
I don't suppose he can be a war leader like John, but but he
could be. Maybe he takes it.
Maybe he goes Master Blaster with Hodor, riding into battle
on Hodor's shoulders, or just controlling Hodor swinging a
sword with Hodor's. Say it also makes me think of
there's a web serial I really like called a Worm.
It's about like superheroes, but one of the characters controls
like bugs, insects, swarms. And as you can imagine, it's
controlling like that many creatures.
That speaks to like a, a crazy level of like processing power,
right? And so they go in, they really
dig into like how that's kind of a superpower in a lot of ways is
being able to multitask. And it's also fascinating when
you consider that like bugs especially have like a very
hierarchical, like there's like the brains, there's like, well,
how does this work? Like, do they, which are you
controlling all of them or are you just controlling the brain
or like, how does that work? Yeah, it's really, really
interesting. Like the, the, the, the
differences in social structure and hierarchical things within a
species. So in the 1st place, though,
it's a bit curious that a skin changer king could even exist in
the 1st place, right, Given that there's a massive prejudice
against skin changers even in the North.
Like how did a skin changer become king if everybody hates
skin changers? Well, we're talking long ago.
Maybe it wasn't quite like that. Maybe they didn't.
Maybe they weren't shunned back in the day.
Maybe it was the end alls coming along that that really pushed
that. Maybe in the time of only first
men, the view of skin changers was a little more muted, a
little more like be on the wall where they're feared and
respected, but not like haunted down and and hated, right.
So a war king could have also just dominated, though, right?
A Gavin Gray wolf could have just conquered and ruled and
than something of a low level tyrant.
But maybe it was something more. Maybe it was they actually
offered something to people that made them want to join their
Kingdom. Like hey, I want to live with
this guy as my king. I like him, he's a good ruler.
But the problem with a warg Kingdom is, well, you can't
count on having an heir that's a warg.
You can't even remotely count on it.
It's not even like a a decent chance it's it's one in 1000 if
not or something like that. So it's just not a very feasible
thing. It's like the Dithraki or a
pirate Kingdom or a king beyond the wall situation.
They're not going to follow Mance's son because he's Mance's
son. They're going to follow the next
leader who's strong enough to unite them and continue that.
Just like the Dithraki, just like a pirate.
Pirates don't pass their kingdoms to heirs.
They either the Kingdom breaks apart or someone strong comes
forward and and keeps it going through that strength.
So family ties don't matter in those cases very much.
And since ward kings can't pass their skin changer talents down,
well the the ward King's air would not be a warg.
So it wouldn't be a warg Kingdom anymore.
It would just be a regular Kingdom.
Well, what happens to the green seers and beasts that were in
control of that king? When that king passes?
What what happens to all those beings?
Like do they just run away? I mean, that's that is kind of
what happened with Vera Mira when he lost control and died,
all those animals just kind of ran off.
Do you think there's any chance that the War King was a king of
wargs? Like he was a warg and he had
his own like contingent of wargs and peoples flocked to him?
Yeah, like he had an army of war.
So I just want to throw that out there.
I hadn't considered that. I like it.
It's a good idea. I mean, like he was like a guy
that that said, hey, you can live under my Kingdom and we
won't persecute you. Or yeah, in fact, I'll recruit
you and and make use of you in my armies.
Interesting. That's cool.
That's a cool idea. I like that.
So again, I come back to the idea that we're looking at we're
looking through a cultural lens that's thousands of years old.
So what it's like today versus what it was back then, who
knows? But still this problem of of
airs and the fact that you can't pass down skin changing is not
reliably anyway is a big problem for a war Kingdom.
But I like I like a Shaya's idea.
Maybe it's something out. Maybe the model isn't quite the
way I imagined it. But we also have cases like Bran
or John where if if John is you're going to be a king in the
North, well, it's going to be in spite of people's belief about
him being a war. They're going to be like, OK,
well, maybe we don't like that he's a skin changer.
But this is Jon Snow. This is the man that defended
the Wall. This is the man that was Lord
Commander. This is his prior reputation
overshadows any sort of prejudice about being a skin
changer. People don't hate skin changers
that much that they would just ignore all of the rest of John's
body of work. And a similar thing like Bran,
where he's a Stark, he's a good kid.
He's Ned Stark's boy. That carries a lot of weight,
too. Yeah, maybe being a skin changer
is a negative in some people's eyes, but it's definitely not
just, well, that's the end of it.
People are like, well, he's a skin changer.
I, I don't, I have nothing to do with him.
I don't think it's that severe when you have a Stark, a son of
Ned, you know that I think people are going to care about
that too. Like, well, yeah, he's a skin
changer, but he's Bran Stark, He's Brandon Stark.
I mean, that matters, right? So, so it's not just as simple
as reducing it to just this bias.
The the you have to keep in mind the things that are pluses as
well. It's also fun to think about the
the rumors and how Rob was accused of being a skin changer
and all these stories just because he has a dire role.
It's an exaggerated accusation, but it's actually not that far
off. I mean, it's they're on the
right track. Yeah, Rob didn't turn into a
direwolf himself and eat a bunch of frays, but you know, it's in
the ballpark. He may have slipped into Grey
Wind and run around in the battle and and killed a few
people and experienced that. He may have sniffed out the goat
track to get by the Golden Tooth and things like that.
He may have, he may have had some awareness of what was
happening. We never got Rob POV's
obviously, so we don't know what he perceived it as.
But we have the other Starks's model.
We have John kind of like what's going on with me with Bran
resisting it with Arya, very stubborn, kind of accepting
parts of it without going all the way and naming what it is or
something like Santa who just we just aren't sure.
Same with Ricken and Rob. So here's a very distinct
example of of how it comes up. This is Bran being confronted by
Jojen about what he is and his reaction is he's he doesn't like
it quote. Warg said Jojen Reed.
Bren looked at him. What?
Warg, shape changer, beastling. That is what they will call you
if they should ever hear of your wolf dreams.
The names made him afraid again. Who will call me?
Your own folk in fear, some will hate you if they know what you
are. Some will even try to kill you.
Old Nan told scary stories of beastlings and shape changers.
Sometimes in the stories, they were always evil.
There you go that last line. The cultural belief, the
stories, they were always evil. Even Old Nan tells these
stories, which implies they've been told for a very long time.
She learned them from somebody. That person learned them from
somebody. All that all that, all that.
Now there mere is evil. So here you go like that one
tracks. But like Orrell, Orrell might
he's he comes off as an antagonist, but like John killed
him and ORL didn't do anything to John.
Just be a wild like be a free folk and be a scout that
happened to be, you know, in his way.
So I don't think we can fall to ORL for hating John.
I don't think we can fault him for even hating the nights watch
if he's if he's done some raiding and and raping and
reaving that sort of thing. OK, that's bad.
But I can't hate ORL for hating John, right?
That seems just human right? And I don't know what evil he
did while alive. Maybe he wasn't even much of A
Raider. I think the show portrayed him
that way. But that's the show.
Don't don't take that for for the truth in the books here and
oral was accepted by his group. He was in a small gang for lack
of a better word, group, sub tribe.
A grit was with him and that other guy that they were with.
They seemed to be cool with him. No one seemed to have any issues
with that. In fact, why wouldn't they?
They're scouting and they're Raiders.
They got an Eagle on their side, don't you?
That seems very valuable. Like, why would we shun that?
This guy is like an amazing valuable scout to us.
But for Bran, a child Jojen, who he sees as an authority figure,
is telling him some very heavy stuff, saying your own people
will want to kill you. What a thing for a 7 year old to
hear. Where did Jojen learn all this?
Jojen isn't some man of the world.
He's lived his whole life in the neck.
He most certainly learned this from his family.
His his extended family, his father, his mother.
So it's probably true, right? I'm not saying he's making it
up, but it's interesting to think about where he got his
information. It seems to be just a pervasive
belief in the North, even perhaps even more so in the
South, maybe in the South farther S meaning they don't
even think about it as much. You know, like the word skin
changer probably doesn't come up very often.
So yeah. And in or L like, put yourself
in his place. He doesn't want to be shunned.
Very few people want to be shunned.
Very few people want to be isolated.
Most people don't choose the hermit life.
They would rather be accepted by society.
They'd rather find a place within whatever culture they
exist in. And so he's or L's probably very
happy to exchange his skills, his scouting abilities, his
talents in exchange for a place at the fire acceptance among his
fellow humans like, well, they don't shun me, even though I'm
something else, you know, So that's a big deal, right?
So that's, that explains a lot about why skin changes are
treated the way they are, why they would find more of a home
in the North because it's the one place that doesn't hunt them
down and kill them. Even if Jojen's exaggerating a
little bit, which is possible, it's possible.
It's a bit it's it can't be entirely made-up.
I don't think it's just make pulling that out of nowhere.
So again, it comes back to Bran is resisting this.
He's resisting his power. He's resisting admitting what he
is, which in turn limits and inhibits his ability to use
those powers. You know, Brad overcomes this
later. He accepts what he is.
He's got a lot of evidence. He's got a lot of burden placed
on him. He sees a lot of stuff.
He's got the green series, he's got the children.
So there's a lot of people coaching him, telling him,
teaching him. But at this point, when it's new
to him, it's it's such a shock. It's just a blast of cold water.
It's such an unpleasant thing. Anyway, let's start to get into
specific Starks. That's a lot about Bran.
We'll come back to Bran near the end, but let's talk about the
specific Starks here. Why don't we hear about other
Starks being skin changers prior to this current generation?
That's a peculiarity, isn't it? Maybe it's just that they had
the talent and it was never developed.
Entirely possible. I think the picture we painted
so far absolutely supports that conclusion, that many Starks
were born with the talent but never had any reason to develop.
Never knew they had the ability. Never wanted to because it would
they they don't want to have that ability.
They don't want people to find that out.
It would be like, I don't want anyone to know about this.
I don't want to have this ability.
So I think that's it. Like maybe like a lot of senses.
Maybe, you know, like people who have the ability but have maybe
have don't really know they have it.
Or the thing of share brought up earlier about not having the
thing that brings you along like an important animal connection.
And we are introduced to this concept very early on you.
Know, can I just say I can I, I think of like a someone who has
a, a natural musical talent, like maybe like you notice like
they're always on beat when they hum, but they never have an
instrument put in front of them and they never learn they have
that talent, right? Yeah, it happens.
All the time. Yeah, someone has a naturally
good voice, but like there's a lot you can learn about how to
sing, how to project your voice, how to be louder, how to not
hurt yourself, how to yeah, I like singing lessons for a good
person who's good at singing is maybe the most simple because
your voice is already there. But for an instrument, Yeah,
you're at you make a great point.
The catalyst I'm referring to that I share brought up earlier
is is a is a direwolf. A direwolf might be a great way
to draw the skin changing ability out of a stark youth.
But we were told in chapter 1 that well quote.
It was bigger than his pony, twice the size of the largest
hound in his father's kennel. It's no freak, John said calmly.
That's a direwolf. They grow larger than the other
kind, Theon Greyjoy said. There's not been a direwolf
sighted South of the wall in 200 years.
I see one now, John replied. Presumably Theon is not some
independent expert on direwolves.
He probably learned that from Maester Lewin.
But no one like, challenged his number.
No one's like, Nah, it's been less than that.
Like Ned was there. Jory Cassell was there, there's
people with some knowledge, people older than Theon around
there. So if he had been wrong or
speaking out of turn, they probably would have corrected
him. So it's probably true.
It's probably about right because we have no reason to
doubt it. So a couple 100 years.
So there's that's a couple 100 years where no direwolf
triggered any Stark's latent skin changer skill.
If assuming that's a, a method, I'm not, I wouldn't guess that's
the only method, but it's probably a method to draw that
ability out to, as a catalyst to show the, to reveal to the user
to the, to the person holding the ability that they have it.
And again, I want to point out and remind you all that John is
not the son of Ned. So he has the ability without
actually being in the same sibling group as the others
here. So does that make Ned curious?
I wonder if Ned thought about that.
He's the only one who might have realized it, because he's the
only one who knows who John's parents really are in that group
or almost anywhere. It was the appeal to the Old
Gods by John that got Ned to accept the direwolf.
He's like, no, we can't take them.
They should just be left to die. And.
And John goes, my Lord, remember, He says, my Lord, he
doesn't say father. He doesn't say yeah, he says my
Lord or Lord Stark, isn't it? You know, the direwolf is a
sigil of your house. Look how many?
There's 5. Exactly.
They're the right gender. Like the Old God sent them.
Ned's like too much of A, he's too much of A believer to just
ignore that point. He's like, hmm, that's a good
point. All right, you all can keep the
direwolves. That's fine.
John's appeal worked. His appeal to a higher power.
Ned was the authority in that situation.
He's the Lord Stark, Ned. And so the only move John had
was to appeal to a higher authority, something above even
Ned, which is the old gods. And it worked beautifully,
brilliantly, and may have actually been John may have been
more right than he thought. Maybe the old gods did send
those direwolves to activate their abilities.
So Ned knew though, he's like, well, if the old God sent these
direwolves for these kids, he didn't.
One of these isn't my kids, but there's still six of them.
So that's interesting. I wonder what he thought about
that. And like one of these direwolves
is going to Liana's child did. Did that matter to him?
Did he notice that? It's it's pretty curious.
And George pointed out as well, outside of the books that the
loss of Lady is very important for Sansa, very important for
her, her lack of development as a skin changer.
So given he said she has the talent and given he said that
the loss of Lady is is a big deal, what conclusion can we
reach other than the direwolf is a very important tool slash
method slash, just way to bring the power out of somebody and to
help them develop their talent. It it seems pretty
straightforward, like they're a guide of sort, a spirit guide of
sort, just an anchor to their abilities.
I don't know what word works, but it wouldn't happen with just
random dogs, cats and horses. It's not an animal they have as
close of a bond with. Maybe it would have happened for
Bran in the long term with his horse Dancer, his one solo horse
that only he can ride because it's trained to work a special
way because of his disability. So maybe these things would have
manifested. I mean, Bran is just so powerful
that it's hard to imagine that that would have been kept under
wraps. But maybe maybe Rick and and and
Rob would have been more like Sansa where they just just never
got going. Well, like like a Shaya's
musical instrument example, Like they never, no one ever handed
them an instrument. No one ever handed them a
direwolf. So that never never came up.
So again, it isn't just Bran who thinks about old man and the
stories of wildling or of, of skin changers and how they're
evil. John thinks of that too.
And I don't think Sansa does, but it it probably comes up in
their minds, maybe off page Ricken and Rob probably thought
about maybe not Ricken, he's too young.
But Rob probably had to summarize some of that.
Yes, definitely you have to have ability, you have to have some
knowledge, you have to have some training and you have to have
some, some opportunity. Something has to come along to
to activate that trigger. Given the cultural scenario in
the North beyond the wall, it's simpler because they just have a
method. They think, well, well, if you,
if your child is displaying skin changer skills, give them to the
other skin changers, give them to the skin changer community
that doesn't exist South of the wall.
There's no adoption program for skin changers in the South.
So what do they do? They just live their lives and
have hidden talents that never get developed.
So it's not, it isn't it isn't also thought of as something
that's a matter of the past. It's like, you know, this is the
whole thing that can happen. This isn't like, oh, that's a
skin changers were a thing from centuries ago.
No, I think pretty much everyone still accepts that they're real,
even if their numbers have declined.
Even the World of Ice and Fire, which as you recall in world
isn't a very old book. It's written, you know, within
the last. It was started within the last
20 years. And yeah, so even it mentioned
skin changers and as a thing that we're historical matter of
historical record. So you have to have an
opportunity to practice like any skill, if you're not developing
it, yeah, it's not going to happen.
And where is someone like, again, Arya or Sansa, when when
would they have practiced it? Even if they kind of had a sense
of what they were, right. It's it's given they were like
trying to hide it, they'd be like, I don't want anyone to
know I have that. I don't want anyone to find out
I have this ability. So again, it's very peculiar
that it's a one in 1000 ability that rests in all six Starks.
That implies something else is going on.
Either it's a talent that's more widespread than we thought, or
it can be the the method for transmission is differently so
yeah, and Varamir had his first experience with a dog.
But as I said before, none of them had pets.
None of the Starks really had a pet before they're direwolves.
So that that's that's an idea. If you want to get more tin
foily, then we should consider that the direwolves were sent to
the Starks because yeah, someone knew, but the old gods knew
Blood Raven knew that this would awaken their talent is the best
way to to get that ball rolling. He's not just going to appear in
their dreams of like you're a skin changer.
You know, this is you got to be a little more subtle with it.
Bring them along slowly. It's hard to accept you are
something that is shunned by your entire culture.
So you can't just like dive in, like jump into the pool and and
learn to swim. Bring them along slowly.
We've been using Magic Mine for quite a while now, which I think
gives us perspective that we didn't have when we first
introduced it to y'all that we can actually say we have an idea
of what the long term is like. Just as we were discussing the
long term for skin changing, we have something a little more
mundane in the real world here to talk about.
A mental performance shot doesn't give you the ability to
communicate with animals, but it does give you better
concentration and perhaps some other benefits.
For me, one of the great benefits has just been having a
nice routine. I am really bad at work life
balance. Working in a position that is
also something I'm a big fan of. It's really hard to separate the
two. Sometimes that can be a problem.
It's a good problem to have. I cannot even begin.
I would never complain about what I do for a living, but it
is still something that I deal with.
Separating work from life and having little disciplines.
Having routines like drinking magic mine in the morning really
helps me settle these things a bit, really helps me establish
these boundaries because it helps me focus a little more and
helps me stay on top of the need for that separation.
I'm going to keep harping on that because it's it's a real
powerful thing. You, you've got a drink that can
actually, it's actually proven to help your concentration
focus. It will work on most people.
What else do I need to say? magicmind.com/VIP?
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20 Once again, magic mind. As I said, we're doing topics
moot over on our Patreon page, which is a yearly event now.
This is the second year where we gather and I make a bunch of
polls and you all vote in them. And those polls determine
episodes that we're going to do this year.
This time, 16. Last year it was 12.
This time we had such, so much fun with it, we decided to
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this year will be determined and topics moot.
It's super fun to get involved with the voting and discussing
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So sign up for Patreon and join the fun and also get your
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If it's not, well, never mind, let's move on.
We're going to Sansa now. So she lost lady really early on
when a bond was formed in that short time.
I think probably like it. Maybe not a skin changer bond,
but it, it looks like just like a couple of chapters.
But remember, we're actually talking several months.
She had Lady for months before Lady was killed.
I mean, that journey through the Neck from the Winterfell, that's
a long trip trekking down there. They're moving really slow, the
speed of the Queen's wheelhouse. Remember, it was not a quick
trip. That's part of why I already had
so much time to wander around and check out swamps and forests
and all the other cool stuff. So that is important in
understanding what Sansa may have experienced.
Because yeah, like, that's that's a lot, right?
Just a couple of months with Lady and you can form quite a
bond with an animal in a few months.
So she has thoughts on dreams. Like Sansa thinks about dreams
sometimes, but not wolf dreams. She doesn't specifically have
wolf dreams. Nothing of substance in this
regard that you can say skin changer, but it still makes you
think. And she has a symbolic bond with
the hound. The easiest animal to bond with
is a dog. They say interesting.
You know, of course there's no skin changer bond there, but
it's still strikes these same notes more through symbolism
than through supernatural elements.
And he calls her a little bird, which that's kind of neat.
So you've got this. The animal elements are present
in their relationship, whatever their relationship actually is,
but it's it's something and she has like there's a dog that she
bonds with at the at the Erie that's just an old dog, you
know, whatever she bonds with an old dog that's very human.
That's a normal thing to do. There's no magic there.
But still, like George wrote that he chose to give her the
scene with this animal and it's it makes you think about this
kind of thing. So I wonder about that.
At one point, Arya thinks how Sansa knows songs, not spells,
but the singers, the children of the force are called singer
songs and spells are very much you LinkedIn this concept in
this world. I know Ari didn't mean it that
way, but I reading that sentence that way.
There's another way to think about it here.
I'm like, yeah, those two those two aren't as distinct as maybe
Ari's making them out to be. Here's a a fun moment that that
Aria and the Hound over here about Sansa that also touches on
very vaguely the notion of them having animal qualities or skin
changing abilities. Maybe quote?
The Northern girl, Winterfell's daughter.
We heard she killed the king with a spell and afterward
changed into a wolf with big leather wings like a bat and
flew out a tower window. This is what triggers Ari to
think Sansa knows songs, not spells.
She certainly doesn't know how to do that.
But again, pretty curious, right?
It's like a fun way for George to be a little subtle or to
deliver a message that makes us think.
Now, what about if Santa reunites with her family and
they all have these powers and she doesn't?
Or she just has like the slightest inkling of it, just
the barest touch of it? Is that going to make her feel a
little isolated? Will she be a little bit outside
the group because of that? Or maybe she'll have enough of
it to feel apart. Maybe it'll be something that
she's like, oh, yeah, no, I have had those feelings, those
thoughts, those instincts. I never knew what it was.
And maybe that brings her closer to them.
That's kind of more what I'd be hoping for.
But I mean, it's up to George, obviously.
And why would George even bother to say she has the talent?
Why would he point out that all six of them have it?
If it's irrelevant, if it's not going to matter, Why did he make
that call? He seemed very ready for it to
say yes, all of them have it. He was quick with that answer.
He's had that answer since at least the year 2000.
So he decided that she's had this ability a long time ago,
quite possibly since the beginning.
So that probably has a payoff at some point, even if it's small.
But small could be big in its own way.
It could be a small detail that turns into a big deal, like a
small little aspect of her supernatural ability that makes
her able to bond with her siblings in a way that others
can't. In a way that puts them in their
own unique category, that helps them become a unit.
That makes them more of a pack. Because they have this unique
thing that other people kind of shun.
But for them, it's a source of strength.
They're the pack. They're the direwolves.
They are the Starks. That's the way I hope it goes.
I hope it's a thing they bond over that brings them closer
together with sense. I could maybe see it going the
other way if the power isn't strong enough or manifested
within her, if he doesn't fully realize it.
But George said she on some level she realizes it and maybe
that'll grow. So I I'm pretty optimistic about
that. What about Rickon, it's hard to
be too specific with him, right? He's a case 3 when we first meet
him. He's maybe 5 now, maybe 6.
I don't think he's quite 6 yet. And Shaggy is so wild.
How much of that is just his owner is a four year old?
How much of that is the bond? Both.
Making each other wild is Rick and making Shaggy Wilder?
Is Shaggy making Rick and Wilder?
Is it both? Is it a two way street?
I think both so. And in a way this is the
opposite of Sansa. If Sansa losing her wolf is a
huge detriment to her skin changer abilities, but maybe
maybe a boon to her personality because she's not going to
become too wolf like that might be the opposite here for Rickon.
He spends an outsized amount of his time with his wolf and has
been parented the least of any of the Starks.
Remember, Rickon had that same dream as Bran.
He knew that Ned was dead. He went down into the Crips.
It's very creepy. I wouldn't say this is directly
related to skin changing, but it's certainly magical.
Certainly in the world of dreams.
Which absolutely touches on skin changing.
Wolf dreams is a relationship to that.
Even though technically wolf dreams aren't dreams, they
happen at night. They aren't exactly dreams.
More on that later. And related, John has a dream as
Ghost of Shaggy Duck. So he's having a wolf dream
which isn't really a dream because Shaggy is awake or Ghost
is awake and in that dream of ghost, Ghost is in Shaggy dog's
world and seeing through his eyes.
So it's like inception. It's very much skin changer
inception here. It appears to be an enormous
goat that Shaggy's just killed, which by the way, is a theory
that that's a Unicorn. That's a separate topic though.
But he also senses and sees Nymeria in that same dream.
It's like he has a like a wolf, full specter, everyone.
He dreams of all the other direwolves and their connected
owners, and that's John 1 to Dance with Dragons.
It's really interesting. So we've referred to the
direwolves as teachers, right? They are the ones that activate
the ability within the Starks. That's our one of our working
models anyway. So Ricken is perhaps the best
example of this because he's like effectively homeschooled by
his direwolf, right? Because it's it's his main
teacher. The other kids all had other
various educations growing up. Bran had hours with Maestro Lew
and Aria, Sansa and John and Rob far more.
Ricken is again, he starts his story as a three-year old.
He's very unparented. He's he's stuff happens right.
All these things that happen to the to the Starks.
Robert shows up brands almost murdered.
Ricken is lost. He's under parented.
His dog is his wolf is his parent.
That's the constant companion he has.
That's who he's learning from. That's who he's bonding with.
So he's his best friend. It's it's the boy and his puppy
growing up together from a very early age.
But with this like orphaned aspect to them, right?
It's it's far more impactful to Rickon than it is to any of the
other Starks because it's just been the biggest portion of his
life. He can't understand it.
He's too young to grasp what's happening.
So he's figuring out that he's a skin changer from an early age
before it can be weird. He hasn't learned all these
things about, he probably hasn't heard old man's stories, or if
he has it's a couple times. Like how knowledgeable can he
possibly be about what the world thinks of skin change?
To him, this is normal, it's unnatural, it's supernatural to
everyone else. To him it's just he's a
three-year old boy, 4 year old boy and this is what he can do.
To him, it's just what he can do.
Just as natural as him having a dire wolf as a pet, which
doesn't seem weird to him, probably seems weird to
everybody else except his siblings, and probably seems a
little weird to his siblings. They recognize that no one else
has dire wolf pets. So Rickon's example, Rickon's
life is so different. It's really hard to grasp all
this unless you've really put the thought into it like we're
doing right now. So it's a big double whammy.
He's effectively orphaned from his family, underparented and
extended family. Like he loses Mickon and Lewin
and all the other people that live at Winterfell, just all the
the cast and crew that he grew up around.
Like they all liked him and he liked a lot of them and he lost
all that. But he still has Shaggy, the one
constant unlike his, the rest of his family, their constants were
the rest of them. Rick Ricken has spent more time
with Shaggy than he spent with his family.
That's a big deal. Again, I repeat, Bran is told by
Jojen, don't spend too much time in your wolf.
You'll become too much like him. No one's telling Ricken to do
that. They don't even know.
He's already fierce and wild, and I bet he feels better and
safer when he's in Shaggy, just like Bran and Aria do.
They feel safer, stronger, fearless, powerful when they're
in their wolves. It's still it's not strange that
they would want to do that. They're alone and lost and
scared. If you can take some refuge in
your wolf and feel powerful and mighty and not scared, you would
do that. Especially if you didn't know it
was bad, which only Bran does know that Shaggy has been very
wild. How much of that is the him
sensing Rickens upset or or how much of it is the other way?
What how much of it is a two way St.
Shaggy has hurt several guards. He hurt Lewin, he hurt little
Walder, he almost hurt Tyrion. And I mean hurt.
I mean he like bit them pretty hard, like drew blood right?
He fought with summer at one point and summer was strong
enough to overcome him and and calm him back down.
So if we go back to the knowledge that skin changers
often become more like they're animals, Rickon is number one on
the list. Maybe besides John, who might
live inside his wolf as a dead person.
So we'll, we'll, we'll give John a little bit of a a carve out
possibility here. But other than that, Rickon is
wolf boy. His all his life is pointing in
this direction. He's getting parented by his
wolf and now by Skagosi I guess. Instead of by his own parents.
And so his wolf is his dad basically.
It's crazy. It's really weird to think about
and a little sad. And how is it going to play out
in the long run? Well, he could be very wolfish
or he could just die. This all could end by his death
and we just won't ever see what kind of person he turns into.
But if he's reunited with his siblings and he's like just
wild, super wild, violent, angry, like that could be a
problem or an omen like they could be like, well, let's not
let's not do that. Let's not become like our our
brother here. Like, Yikes.
You know, this is what can happen.
So he could be a cautionary tale.
He could be a tragedy. He could be both of those
things, but he's very unique. Let's talk.
Rob clearly had a bond with Greywyn.
Perhaps as early as the great John scene.
All he did was like whistle and make it like a simple hand
gesture and Grey Wind jumped forward, bit two of his fingers
off and then backed off. Like did he train him to do
that? It was so specific.
Like he really none of that was like Rob is like communicating
what he wants done through the skin changer bond and maybe not
fully realizing he's like, oh, this is a very obedient dog.
This wolf knows exactly what I want.
No, no, you told him through your mind what to do.
I don't know if Rob is just perceived that this command was
understood so directly, or if he just thinks my wolf is very
smart. He's really good at
understanding what I want. Rob was like, man, I really want
some chicken fingers right now. Those are bare fingers, giant
fingers. And of course, when he when Rob
rather Gray wind, maybe Rob led his army past the golden tooth
they snuck by this really important Fort that's supposed
to hold the mountain passes. But Greywin sniffed out a track.
Did Greywin sniff the track? How did Greywin communicate this
to Rob? Unless Rob was seeing through
his eyes like follow me to the track like was, hey, he wants us
to follow him. You know, I mean, maybe that's
possible, but it feels like the skin changer pond would make all
this flow a lot more easily. And Rob could just keep it quiet
from his men. He's like, I'm not going to tell
them how I know this, but we're going to use this information.
Here's a quote about it, Sir, Lancel said.
Rob LED an army of wargs. The imp gave a disdainful bark
of laughter. Sir Lancel's a wineskin warrior
who wouldn't know a warg from a wart.
Your brother had his direwolf with him, but I suspect that's
as far as it went. The North man crept into my
uncle's camp and cut his horse lines and Lord Stark sent his
wolf among them. Even war trained destriers went
mad. Those who survived are spreading
wild tales and swearing that the old gods of the North marched.
Then there was no sorcery. Lannister snorted.
Sorcery is the sauce. Fool spoon over failure to hide
the flavor of their own incompetence.
This is a great example of why not both Tyrion.
Tyrion's not wrong that Sir Safford goofed.
He should have put guards out. But sorcery isn't really the
right word. Maybe.
But absolutely there was some magic involved here.
Yeah. So it probably did go farther.
Tyrion's probably have. Tyrion is half right, but he's
wrong about the magic part. There probably was magic
involved. There probably was skin changing
in play here. Tyrion is a notorious skeptic.
Throughout the first few books he's constantly saying all this
is total BS and he's he's just wrong and it's kind of his
journey is that he learns he's going to be wrong.
I love it because he's he comes off as a as as someone who's
knowledgeable and like he's, he's an authority figure.
But yeah, he's just 100% wrong or 50% wrong here.
So there's a case to be made. Rob got kind of far before his
death and being self-taught, like if he figured out how to
use Greywind in his campaign so effectively, that's something
that's very much something. So and he still wonders that
Tyrion still was like, man, even though even though he's like
downplays the sorcery completely more than downplays that he
throws it out the window and spits on it.
But he's still like, yeah, but how did you get around the
golden tooth? I was like you bro.
Yeah, maybe you should be a little more open minded about
these possibilities. So that and he gets that from
his father too. Like obviously Tywin also has a
similar attitude towards sorcery and and things being involved
here now. I wonder as well what Rob felt
in that moment before his death. Like when Greg when warned him
at the twins, did he just downplay that and then regret it
in his final moments? Or then he had a second regret
in his second death. Yeah.
Yeah, that's sad. As I laugh, I get that sad.
Laughing at you, stupid Rob. He deserved it.
What an idiot. What an.
Idiot. No, I I don't think that, but I
do think he died twice probably. Yeah, it it gives it, it makes
his death even more tragic. If he had this realization at
the end, he's like, oh, I should have listened to my wolf.
Damn. Yeah.
Tragedy. Tragery, as they call it.
Yaki Niko asks. Do inhabitants of Gagasos and
the Basilo Skiles have an equivalent version of skin
changing? I need to know.
Someone at some point tried to do What would someone try to do?
Creatures in Sothorios, which are totally dinosaurs?
Yeah. Did we have dinosaur skin
changers? Yeah.
I hope so, because that's bad ass.
You know, we got to have that probably.
Or maybe there are skin changers if they they don't have skin
changers born in those places. Well, there's nothing stopping
skin changers from leaving Westeros and traveling around
the world and seeing what sorts of animals they can control.
Yeah. You know, that's actually an
interesting concept. Like a guy like Vermeer, like,
why don't I travel the world and try to control whatever else is
out there? Do.
We know any lizard skin changers.
No, Yeah. What is it like to be a Rep?
Because that's like not not many reptiles would live in the
North. Right.
Yeah, yeah. Very good new army.
For them in terms of us talking about like how a bird brain
would affect you or wolf brain or.
Reptile brain is. That would be really something,
yeah. That would be really something
because reptiles are like, really like, because.
It also makes you think of Dragons, which is the the thing
people always think about. Bringing people.
To work or, or connecting the, the bond to the skin changer
bond or whatever. And and they're obviously kind
of. Is the dragon bond like a a
lighter version of that? Is it the same?
Does it originate from the same source magic wise?
Or is it just something that's similar but developed
separately? Yeah, these are all related
ideas. Very cool to think about and I
love this thought by Yaki Nikko. That is, you got someone out
there like some skin changer, some enterprising skin changer
went to the jungles of Zauthorius and got themself a a
Wyvern or a Raptor. A ride.
I can ride a Raptor around like I'm a Raptor Cavalry.
Bring the Raptor cavalry. Watch out y'all.
I think, yeah, it was Christina Kay, I think who said, sorry if
I attributed this wrong, but I think she said if elephants are
coming to Westeros, I think or or skin change rather into an
elephant. Whoa, that's really powerful,
cause an elephant never forgets. So you get into an elephant's
brain and you get all these memories.
Yeah, that's cool. That's cool.
Yeah. And you wonder, can Bran, like a
Bran can go into Hodor? Can you go into a giant?
You know? Yeah, it's it's lots of
possibilities here. Speaking of Bran, here's that
Jojen quote that I jumped the gun on.
Here it is. The wolf dreams are no true
dreams. You have your eye closed tight
whenever you're awake, but as you drift off, it flutters open
and your soul seeks out its other half.
Power is strong in you. Yeah, that's why it's not a true
dream, because the wolf is awake.
Even if you're asleep or in a state of reverie or
unconsciousness or something like that, if you're in that
flow state, maybe that's a good, decent word choice for this.
You can kind of accidentally get there.
You can kind of the skin changer ability that you're trying to
develop can happen through these states of mind.
You can accidentally, like he says, like Jojen says, your soul
seeks out its other half. When your soul is at rest, it
seeks to reconnect with what it's bonded to.
Arya does it accidentally as well.
There's a scene in Dance with Dragons, I believe, when she's
serving the gathering of faceless men.
She's got a, you know, a flag in and she's just pouring drinks
for them. She's gets really bored standing
there waiting for people to drink and just starts to drift
off while standing there. And she has a wolf dream while
standing there. Again, no, not a true dream.
She wasn't actually asleep, and neither is Nymeria.
She's not. It's like she goes into
Nymeria's head while Nymeria's asleep.
She's like a wolf. Wolf dream.
This is what the wolf is actually dreaming about.
We don't have that. We have the the wolves are
always awake when they go into their eyes, right?
So it's the same thing that happened with Ari.
Apparently as she drifted off, her third eye opened and her
soul sought out its other half, which was Nymerian.
So this is a good reminder that the skin changer rabbit hole is
a lot deeper than just what we're covering today.
We're covering the Starks and how we're we're spending as much
time on how it affects them as people and characters as we are
focusing on the magic. And we're really not touching on
some of these other ones as much.
There's other characters out there.
Let's talk about John. Though we wouldn't rate John as
powerful as Ari or Bran, there's confounding factors which might
change our view of that in the long run.
He might have been the first, though, to use his abilities.
Let me explain. It's one of my favorite moments.
In the early parts of the book, he seems to have formed a
connection to Ghost. Before he even saw a Ghost,
before he even saw the white pup, he seemed to have bonded
with him, which might imply a third party encouraging these
bonds, helping them, fulfilling them, facilitating them before
the final connections are made, something like that.
Here's what I mean. Let's recall that at first John
said, hey, 5 pups, one for each Stark trial.
He left himself out of the count to make it work.
And then he, as they're riding away, John pause and says, hey,
did you hear that? No one heard it.
Theon didn't hear it. Bran, whose POV it is, doesn't
hear a thing. John turns around, goes back and
finds Ghost. In that moment, it seems pretty
straightforward. It's like, OK, John just has
sharper ears. He heard something that no one
else did. But.
And that's not unreasonable, right?
So John has better ears. Big deal.
But later, again, George doing that trick where he gives us the
question, the answer, rather, he gives us the answer to the
Riddle before he gives us the question or even gives us the
Riddle. Ghost is an extremely silent
animal who never whimpers, never growls, never makes a sound.
Benjen calls him a very quiet wolf.
John responds. He never makes a sound.
That's why I named him Ghost. That's a direct quote.
How the heck did John hear him then?
He doesn't make a sound. The skin changer bond, That's
it. That's the only thing I can
think of, right? That's the only thing he could
have heard that no one else heard.
How could John be the only one to hear it?
Big moment there. Very subtle.
That's why I love it as George is hitting us with this kind of
stuff in freaking chapter 1. There's only one alternative
option there for me. What's that?
And it's that Blood. Raven reached into John and put
that into him. Okay, which is kind of the same
thing. It's it's a magical L it's a
magical thing, kind. Of a statement on blood raven's
power, if that were the case, versus statement on John's
initial connection. So I think they are distinct,
but I think, yeah, I, I probably lean towards your idea, but I
just want to throw out the blood Raven of it all.
Yeah, that's a good call. Absolutely.
Fair to point that out. And yeah, I think there's a very
good chance that's the case. Either way, it's huge for John's
character as well. Regardless of the mechanism
here, it shows that he is a a a little bit of an outcast.
He's the bastard. Ghost is separated from the
other Starks. I mean from the other direwolves
is a very symbolic moment. So immediately they have a lot
in common and John and Ghost have bonded because of their
similar circumstances. And there's nothing like the
actual opinion of a real skin changer on matters such as this.
Quote Merrimere. He had known what Snow was the
moment he saw that great white direwolf stalking silent at his
side. One skin changer can always
sense another. Mance should have let me take
the direwolf. There would be a second life
worthy of a king. He could have done it.
He did not doubt The gift was strong in Snow, but the youth
was untaught, still fighting his nature when he should have
gloried in it. Exactly what we were talking
about earlier. Barry was like, boy, if, if this
kid just, like, accepted what he was and embraced it, he would be
a force. But he's fighting his nature.
He doesn't want to be it. He doesn't accept it.
He resists it. He was taught that this is a bad
thing, so he doesn't want to be it.
It's a little unusual for John because John is very good at
accepting tough truths. It's one of the first things we
learn about him when he's on that, when he's walking with
Tyrion and Tyrion's like, yeah, the wall is full of miscreants.
And John's like, no, it's noble. And he's like, yeah, right.
And then John's like, all right. If that's what it is, that's
what it is. He accepts it like after like a
very brief list of arguments. So and John is a little slower
to accept this. But especially, you know,
earlier on one of the wolf dreams John has, he's has a big
one in Clash of Kings with Bran, seems to be talking to him
directly. But he also has that one I
mentioned earlier where he's pretty much having a dream of
all the direwolves. He's in Ghost's mind and Ghost
is casting his. We got that example with the
goat on Skagos. But we also he also recognizes
the loss of Lady and the loss of Greywind and that he can't sense
Summer. Why can't he send some?
He knows Summer's alive. He can't sense him.
That's because summer's on. The other side of the wall.
That's why he can't sense him, just like John can't sense
ghosts when they're on. Opposite sides of the wall.
And he remembers. He remembers John does ghost
crawling. Off.
To be alone to get away from the other direwolves, like for
whatever reason, he crawled away from their dead mother.
He has that memory. That's a big deal.
He he has a memory that from his direwolf as a pup that he wasn't
bonded to at that point, or was he already bonded without
knowing it? So that's that's peculiar and
very interesting. When he tells Corin and the rest
of the Rangers he's with about what he saw about what happened
with Orrell and Ghost and seeing the army, Eben says skin
changer. And John still doesn't clock
exactly what's being said. He's still stubborn about he's
like, is he talking about me? Of course he's talking about
you, John. But John is just he's just not
ready to accept that even John, who, as we just said, is, is
pretty good about accepting tough truths.
So the again I want to come back to this point.
That skin changers can tell each other.
Like Evan's not a skin changer, he just figured it out.
But with Varamir being able to tell what John is on site again,
if the Starks are reunited and they're all like, Oh my gosh,
you're a skin changers like me. It's not something they figured
out about each other in the book, in the first book before
they were separated. So it's going to be it's going
to be enormous. But how it can play out, I have
no idea. They're going to.
Is it going to bring them together?
That's. Something they all share.
I talked about maybe they, they, they're all worried about being
shunned or they are shunned, so they they unite.
So here's John's thoughts on what Werimer said to him and his
own some of his own musings on what it means to be a skin
changer. Quote the wildlings called Jon
Snow a warg, but if. So he was a poor 1.
He did not know how to put on a wolf's skin the way Orrell had
with his eagle before he died. Once John had dreamed that he
was Ghost, looking down upon the valley of the Milk Water where
Mance Rayder had gathered his people, and that dream had
turned out to be true. But he was not dreaming now, and
that left him only words. You cannot come with me.
John said, cupping the wolf's head in his hands and looking
deep into those eyes. You have to go to Castle Black.
Do you understand? Castle Black?
Can you find it the way home? It's a good question whether or
not this worked. Ghost did go.
Back to Castle Black, he found him.
It. Worked.
Whether Ghost just sniffed his way back because he knows where
home is, he's got the good nose, or because John was able through
this to maybe communicate a little bit.
He doesn't have the ability to. Like he says here, he doesn't
have the ability to slip into his skin like he wants to, but
maybe he's still able to get a little bit of a message through.
It's kind of a sad and scary moment at the time, but we all
know that. Ghost does make it back.
So that's nice. And John, John hasn't been
taught how to do this. He could theoretically go in and
out of ghost whenever he wanted, but he doesn't hasn't been
taught to do that. Maybe he'll figure it out on his
own, but now he's dead. So he's going to figure it out.
He's going to figure it out as an undead person.
And who knows what kind of changes that will make within
him as a person and as a, a, a user of magic.
So that's something to think about.
But also it's not exactly unknown like Varamir clocked him
but other people have as well. People who have nothing to do
with skin change or even magic. They kind of know what he is or
at least they accuse him of it. For example, pretty much all his
nice watch brothers probably have thoughts on this.
Maybe it's kind of rude to talk about, but some people are rude
and they are willing to say the quiet part out loud.
Such as Jano Slint quote look the beast that tore the life
from half hand. A warg walks among us, brothers.
A warg this this creature is not fit to lead us.
This beastling is not fit to live.
Beastling seems like a derogatory.
Term. Well, let's remember, that's the
word that Jojen told Bran. He would call it.
He said they'll call you. Beastling yeah, yeah.
So I think we can be pretty definitive about that, that
they. Creature is not a good term
either. This creature is not fit to
lead. Yeah, he's saying he's.
Not human. Yeah, he's trying to dehumanize
him. But very, very directly, but it
no one really reacts the way Slint wants.
It's it's an uncomfortable topic for them probably to be like,
yeah, Jon is probably a skin changer, but this is still Jon
Snow. This is still the guy that saved
them, that led them against the the free folk attack by the
Magnar of then. This is the man who led them
against Mance. This guy was elected Lord
commander. It's well, he wasn't actually
elected Lord Commander yet. He.
Was about to be elected Lord Commander.
In this scene, this is the scene where that comes.
This is Jano Slim trying to stop that from happening.
He's like desperate to prevent John from being Lord Commander.
It doesn't work because the brothers know who he is.
They're like, they've seen his worth.
They're not going to judge him purely based on being a skin
changer. Especially because Ghost has
been good to them. Like it's been a boon.
Maybe they don't like it, maybe it was they were brought up to
distrust it, but the actual fact of the matter is John and Ghost
have been good for the wall, the good for their survival,
everything. So this is an example of a
highly prejudice man expecting others to be as prejudice as he
is and backfires. It's very much like that scene
of No brother, Where art Thou, where you get this two mayoral
candidates and the one guy Pappy reveals he's in the KKK is he
thinks people are going to like that.
He's like, actually, I'm in this organization that I don't have
to say the name, but you all know what I'm talking about.
And why would you vote for this group that has a black man in it
when you could vote for? It's like he's expecting.
Everyone to be as. Racist as he is and he's like,
wait, you guys aren't as racist as me.
Yes, So it's very satisfyingly backfires on the racist some
like somewhat like it does here for sling.
Now this isn't race, but it's still prejudice.
It's still like he's trying to other eyes him and it just
really doesn't work. So maybe like Gavin Gray Wolf,
if we cast our minds back to some of these ancient figures,
maybe this is what people did. Maybe this is how?
The cultural bias began, it was like, well, you got 2 political
factions and well, we can denigrate them because they're
unnatural. And this is how we can get more
people on our side by casting them as villainous because they
have these unnatural powers. And over time that took hold,
especially maybe when the Andols came along and the Andols were
really terrified by all that. And we're ready to just more
than willing to shun all that. You know, there's a form of
power that they have no control over or they don't have access
to. They don't want that around.
It's very antithetical to their seven worshipping beliefs as
well. So yeah, maybe Gavin Gray Wolf
was not villainous, but his enemies made everyone think that
maybe Gavin Wolf was a Stark, like the Night King was a Stark
probably right? Maybe something like that, or
maybe just had Stark blood. And maybe this is like, you
know, a competing claims was the core issue here, but propaganda
and politicization happened to make other things be broadcast
as the real reason they were fighting.
Like Nah, the Starks were just. Trying to.
Get rid of the unnatural beastlings.
But that's just something they said.
Maybe. Maybe the beastlings were
actually decent folk, at least at that time.
Who knows? So here's something we mentioned
earlier. Let's get into it.
A. Little more deeply.
While. Pondering Stannis.
'S offer of Val plus Winterfell, which is admittedly an extremely
tempting offer for John or for anyone really.
He's pondering, he's thinking, he's like imagining what that
would be like. It seems like putting himself in
that state of imagining that reverie.
It seems to kind of like open himself up for his abilities to
just do their thing. Quote He wanted it.
John knew then he wanted it as much as.
He had ever wanted anything. I have always wanted it, he
thought guiltily. May the gods forgive me.
It was a hunger inside him, sharp as a dragonglass blade.
A hunger, he could feel it. It was food he needed pray.
A red deer that stank of fear, or a great elk, proud and
defiant. He needed to kill and fill his
belly with fresh meat and hot, dark blood.
His mouth began to water with a thought.
It was a long moment before he understood what was happening.
When he did, he bolted to his feet.
Ghost Yes, this is the moment where Ghost returns to Castle
Black, where John had. Earlier we saw him part with him
and this is when he returns. And this is happens to the very
important moment while he's thinking about Santis's offer.
But wow, like then we're talking about like what dark animalistic
qualities might come from living a second life inside his wolf or
from spending too much time inside their wolf.
If we're talking about a Rickon or, or or a brand, this is what
you get. This, this, I need to kill and
eat blood and meat and all that. And he's like, whoa, wait, what?
What's going on? What's happening here?
Hey, what was I just thinking about?
So it's really neat how these two things bleed together and
how maybe this is what helps him realize that this is a hunger,
not an honor. He's like, I want Winterfell.
I desire it, I lust for it. And then maybe that's what makes
him realize that's a bad thing. I shouldn't be if I'm lusting
for it, it's not a good thing. I don't have a honorable desire
for it. I don't have a, you know, he
doesn't have a good feeling about it.
It's a, it's a desire. It's, it's, it's inward, it's
uncontrollable. It's animalistic.
And that's not, it's not what he wants to feel.
He doesn't want his life to be guided by his animal instincts.
He doesn't want to be that kind of person.
He doesn't want to be driven. He wants to be driven by
calculation and rationality and, and honor, especially honor
above all those other things. And if he's not taking
Winterfell for a noble reason, if inwardly he realizes that he
hungers for it, that's not good. That's not he.
He doesn't want to fulfill that because he's a good person.
And desiring something, lusting for something is something that
should be shut down in his mind. Like, no, I'm not.
I don't lust for this. Or if I do, I'm not going to
allow myself to go through with it.
And it so it's it's neat that ghosts return his skin changer
bond being more fulfilled is teaching.
Him it was a teachable. Moment for him that John
recognized that was a really powerful moment and it's what
enables him to say no. Stannis, I reject your offer as
badly as I want it. I want it for the wrong reasons.
And we'll see a bit like I said, or we'll see a bit of an example
similar to this in Ari's experience too, when when the
realization is much different, but it's the the state of mind
they're in that causes them to sort of accidentally slip into
the wolf dream. So again, just to summarize some
of the questions with John, what what's going to happen with his
powers after his second life and resurrection by Melisandre,
presumably. And how will his personality
change, which will also in turn affect how he uses his
abilities, like what he thinks is ethical, what he's willing to
do, what's honorable and what isn't might change in his mind.
Also, Melisandre is has shown the ability to interfere with
his connection. Remember when he's like, don't,
don't talk to ghosts like that. He, you know, he, he doesn't
necessarily trust you yet. And she's like ghost and ghost
comes to her and is very loving and, and like dog like and
John's like, OK, how did you do that?
And he's like ghost come back and he won't do it.
He's a ghost doesn't obey and he's like, well, that's weird.
Melisandre's powers are interfering with his connection
to ghost. So this tells us that her
abilities can interfere with skin changing or can do
something like we know she we saw her just blow or L out of
the air, just turn him to a ball of flame inside his eagle.
And it was and it was from within.
He felt like his soul was burning as if the magic, the
skin changer part is what mattered.
It's almost like she couldn't have done that to a regular
eagle. I'm not saying that for sure,
but it kind of like the way it's described.
It was the skin changer part that in the person in within the
eagle is what caught fire. It's kind of the way he wrote
it. So I wonder about that is what
else can? Melisandre do what?
Else can she? Can she interfere in other ways?
Can she help in other ways? She does offer to help John with
some things the offer comes with though.
But along with me teaching you, I'm going to bang you and make a
shadow baby, which he's like, yeah, I pass, you know, so.
That's it wasn't a completely straightforward.
Offer. Let's move on to Aria.
Here's what appears to. Be Aria's first wolf dream.
Quote. She must have slept, though she
never remembered closing her eyes.
She dreamt a wolf was howling, and the sound was so terrible
that it woke her at once. Arya sat up on her palette with
her heart thumping. Hot Pie, wake up.
She scrambled to her feet. Woth Gendry, didn't you hear?
She pulled on a boot. All around her, men and boys
stirred and crawled from their pallets.
What's wrong? Hot Pie asked.
Hear what? Gendry wanted to know Ari had a
bad. Dream.
Someone said no, I heard it, she insisted.
A wolf. Ari has wolves in his head,
Sneered Lami. Pretty much though Lami, Rude
but man accurate has wolves in her head.
Yep. Well one at least.
Must have slept but never remembered closing her eyes.
No one else. Heard the wolf like John in
Ghost in that opening scene. Very similar, right?
I don't think she did fall asleep.
She just doesn't know how to describe the sensation she just
had. She's like, well, what?
I mean, she's not going to go oh, skin changing.
I must be a ward. There you go.
That explains it. No, she has no idea.
She's like, what? Why did no one else hear it?
But she's so sure she heard it and she did.
She's right. But it wasn't heard through her
ears. It was in her mind.
So. It really was.
A wolf in her head. Now she has a lot of wolf
dreams. We could do a whole episode of
just. On Aria's Wolf.
Dreams, she has the most of them.
I mean most that we see Bran maybe actually has more, but in
terms of described on Paige, there's so many.
I mean she also has way more chapters than Bran so.
There's that. She has another one later in A
Clash of Kings. Nothing of description, it's
just a. Wolf Dream with just vague
hunting, chasing and Jo and Jockin wakes her up and she's
like oh there's another one in A Storm of Swords right after she
flees Harrenhal with Hot Pie and Gendry.
Some of the Brett Bloody Mummers come after her and Nymeria
kills. Some of them for.
Her for her or because of our like where is the how is the
bond exactly working here? Is is did Nymeria get the
message from Aria's subconscious that she needs help and Nymeria
showed up? Or is Aria just so powerful that
she's able to control her wolf without being super conscious of
what she's doing? I don't know, but it's awfully
direct. Like there's four brave
companions coming for her and Nymeria and her wolves slaughter
them. After that, it's like a
recurring montage. Like a bunch.
Of Ari's chapters, just like start with just like a paragraph
or just two sentences about she had another wolf dream, she
wakes up. It's usually very vague.
It's just again, just wolf stuff, hunting, smelling,
sniffing, leading her pack, howlings doing wolf stuff.
It's not specific. You don't see people, you don't
get names just, but it's very frequent, very constant.
There's other dreams that that Ari has that we're not sure if
they're wolf dreams. Like maybe she's remembering one
from before. It wasn't what she just had.
Like she didn't wake up and isn't remembering a wolf dream,
but like later in the day she's remembering something that she
dreamt of maybe a week of before and it might be just echoes from
Nymeria. Her power.
It's like what Jojen said. Her power is so strong it's
trying hard to manifest. It's constantly seeking out its
other half, more so than anyone else except Bran.
Here's how, or here's an example of.
How she perceives it. Quote.
That was the best part. The dreaming she dreamed.
Of wolves most every night. A great pack of wolves with her
at the head. She was bigger than any of them,
stronger, swifter, faster. She could outrun horses and out
fight lions. When she bared her teeth, even
men would run from her. Her belly was never empty long
and her fur kept her warm even when the wind was blowing cold
and her brothers and sisters were with her.
Many and more. Of them, fierce and terrible and
hers. They would never leave her.
It goes from like amazing and intriguing to sad with that.
Last line, they would never leave her like that's this is a
huge shadow hanging over all this is Arya.
Like all the rest of her family, they're separated from each
other. But the wolf dreams are a source
of strength and they remind her of who she is, which is very
important for her because Arya of among all the characters, has
identity struggles or at least has become other people to
survive. And then now she's specifically
being taught how to be other people as a means of advantage
in life or whatever the faceless men want from her.
So it's been a constant part of her story of changing her name,
changing her identity, pretending to be someone else.
But constantly throughout all this, the wolf dreams have been
there, reminding her who she really is.
And she would they would never leave her, right?
She's always part of it. And.
She. Understands even if she doesn't
fully clock what's happening, she understands that her pack is
hers and this is a model for her family.
The pack. The pack survives.
This is it. It's happening.
This pack is really powerful because they're a pack.
They're not individuals, and Aria, of all of them, is the
most isolated. The most.
Individual so maybe? She most of any of them needs
that lessons like yeah, you can go back.
You can be reunited with your family by the way out.
Fight lions in this quote really did.
Is that something? That she experienced.
As in a wolf dream, like Oh no. Or she's talking about
Lannisters. Yeah, it's a Lannister I I think
definitely meaning towards Aria. 'S future and the idea of her
fighting off the Lannisters and thinking of the Lannisters as
being like their their predators etcetera.
And it's interesting too, how Nymeria knows things that Arya
knows. Like when Nymeria finds
Catelyn's body, she's like get up, run with it.
She has these thoughts like you can get up and run with this bee
with the pack. It's very wolf like.
But it's obviously would only happen with Arya's persona being
part of this. Like, I don't think that
Nymeria. The Wolf.
Alone has these perceptions, maybe recognizes Catelyn as a
friend, but wouldn't have these thoughts of you know who she is
and this identity stuff. So yeah, that's interesting.
So this is another example of of the bond being a two way St.
And again, if I return to the example of when she's pouring
drinks for the Faceless man and just slips into Nymeria because
she's bored and her mind is wandering.
And again, it kind of gets us at the like the mind state you need
to be to to slip. Into to do that change.
Something that she hasn't figured out how to activate on
her own, like John, but I suspect it's coming.
They will learn how to do that. This is like Aria is slowly
getting enlightened on this, the realization of what she is.
She's so stubborn though. So stubborn.
This is an incredibly stubborn person.
I do think she's more powerful than John.
They both lack a teacher, but she doesn't even have someone
telling her what she is. John has had people be like
you're a warg, Vermeer's like you're a warg, Evans like you're
a warg. People are like you're a
beastling. John Slint is called that to his
face, right? And when John, even though that
backfired, when Slint said that people didn't say no, he's not.
They just said we don't care as much as you.
This isn't such a big deal. It's not a reason to hate him.
They didn't deny it though, right.
So he at least has people telling him he's that and that
can help him come to terms with it and he can slowly accept that
in his own mind. He he has these experiences
through ghost. It's it's harder and harder to
deny. Even though he doesn't want it,
it's there. Aria does not have this.
Aria doesn't have people telling her what she is.
No one's ever told Aria she's a skin changer.
The closest we got was Lami saying you have wolves in your
head. Right?
The Faceless men haven't taught her about this.
They're not like you need to get rid of this power.
They don't know she has it, I don't think.
And she doesn't have the corroborating evidence that both
Bran and John have had. What I mean by that is they have
seen things in their dreams that they then they later see with
their eyes and ears. They can.
John saw Orrell attack Ghost and then he saw a ghost, you know,
12 hours later, a day later with the exact wound that he saw in
that dream. OK, so I saw something that
really happens. It was very convincing.
Bran has similar experiences where he sees something through
the wolf's eyes. Well, Bran is different.
He's just he's got a bunch of examples of proof here.
Bran at one point thinks though Jojen told it true, I am a
beastling. He thinks of himself as a
beastling, which is pretty negative, but still, we're not
on brand. Let's keep it focused on on on
Aria here. Aria's never corroborated
anything she's seen in a wolf dream with her own two eyes
because she's so far away from Nymeria, hasn't seen Nymeria
since very early in Book 1. So her experience does not
include the corroborating evidence of wolf dreams seen
through her eyes, her regular eyes.
So that's very different. On top of that, the Faceless Men
are actively teaching her to forget who she is.
She's like, they're like don't be Arya, which means don't be a
Stark, which means don't be a skin changer.
But it's not working. They're they're unable to teach
her to not be Arya. Not only does she refuse to give
up Needle, she still has wolf dreams.
And I think that's more important.
Needle. A big deal is made out of
Needle. But let me explain why I think
the wolf dreams are a much bigger deal.
Starting off with this quote, I dreamed I was a wolf again.
She could remember the smells. Best of all, trees and earth,
her pack brothers, the scents of horse and deer and man, each
different from the others, and the sharp, acrid Tang of fear,
always the same. Some nights the wolf dreams were
so vivid that she could hear her brothers howling even as she
woke, and once Brea had claimed that she was growling in her
sleep as she thrashed beneath the covers.
She thought that was some stupid lie, till Talia said it too.
I should not be dreaming wolf dreams, the girl told herself.
I am a cat now, not a wolf. I am Cat of the canals.
The wolf dreams belonged to Arya.
Of how Stark. Try as she might, though, she
could not rid herself of Arya. We all recognize that hiding
needle was a definitive sign that she would.
Never give up her Stark identity.
That was one part of her that she wasn't willing to give up,
and that she would reclaim it one day.
That Needle would be symbolic of her getting back on the journey
to be a Stark. Her reclaimed Stark identity is
tied to that. But Needle isn't anchoring her
to herself. She doesn't think of Needle.
She's like, Oh yeah, I got that sword hidden away.
I'm going to get that one day. No, she dreams of Nymeria almost
every night. Nymeria is her stark anchor, not
Needle. Needle is symbolic of it, but
it's not the active bond in her dreams almost every night and
sometimes when she's awake, reminding her of who she really
is. Reminding of her of her
heritage, of her ancestry and of her powers that are very
different than what the Faces men are trying to teach her.
Even from so far away. Even though Ari doesn't
understand what's happening, it's happening.
She doesn't perceive it correctly.
She doesn't understand. She's too young, but she
understands enough of it to reach this conclusion that she
cannot get rid of Aria and she's never going to.
In fact, it could be some sort of epiphany regarding Nymeria
and or skills that sparks a breakup with the Faceless Men
because that's coming at some point she's going to break up
with them. She's going to who knows how.
Who knows why exactly the the impetus, the catalyst, but this
could be it. The fact that she's like, Nah,
I'm still Arya. No, nothing's ever going to get
rid of this. I'm Arya Stark, that's who I am.
I'm a wolf. I'm not a faceless person.
I'm I'm not a person with no identity.
You're not going to take that from me.
Or maybe she discovers we're doing some evil stuff and that
makes her turn on them. Whatever.
Some things they're going to have a breakup.
And Nymeria is, I think, a bigger part of reclaiming her
identity being what she is, what she's meant to be.
The needle. The needle is part of that too.
It's not like one or the other kind of thing.
It's a why not both thing. But personally, I rank the wolf
dreams way higher than the hidden sword and the the
growling in her sleep, the great detail.
It's again, it's just another, it's more evidence of how that
the wolf bond like they're big, they're merging.
Their brains really are kind of merged in some way.
Like she is being Nymeria and when she wakes up and she can
still hear the howling, that's because the bond is still there.
She's still like connected to Nymeria until like she wakes up
in the shock of it all. And then it falls off and she's
no longer in that correct like mind state to maintain the bond.
Or again, I'm just don't exactly know how to describe it, but I
think you understand what I'm saying.
And if need to, because she's like embracing it.
A part of her is embracing what's happening.
In some ways it's more it's Rickon like because she's doing
it, She's not like turned off by it.
She's not thinking of it as skin changing because if she did, she
might remember old Ned's stories and be turned off be like, no,
this is bad. Like I was taught this is evil.
But but it's sort of like her stubbornness is both protecting
her. The ignorance is almost helping
her a little bit. Like if she she, it'd be good
for her to admit what she is and embrace it.
But at least she's not like thinking of herself as bad or
tainted like Bran is. Because he's like, I'm a
beastling, you know, he's negative.
He's very negative about himself.
He calls himself Bran the broken.
Like all these these things that are make him, that make him feel
like he's less than human. Aria isn't as bothered by that.
She's just a little more self assured that way and a little
more comfortable with these things.
But also, still, despite all that, she wants to be reunited
with her family. She wants to be a Stark.
She. Wants to go back.
But also like her brother, maybe like Rickon, maybe like Rob.
She likes the wolf dreams because the alternative are
human nightmares. Quote The wolf dreams were the
good ones in the wolf dreams. She was swift and strong,
running down her prey with her pack at her heels.
It was the other dream she hated, the one where she had two
feet instead of four. And that one she was always
looking for her mother, stumbling through a wasted land
of mud and blood and fire. It was always raining in that
dream, and she could hear her mother screaming, but a monster
with a dog's head would not let her go save her.
In that dream. She was always weeping like a
frightened little girl. Cats never weep, she told
herself, no more than wolves do. It's just a stupid dream.
Clearly the monster is Sandor and she's remembering the Red
Wedding. That's pretty straightforward.
And she? Remember, she had found her
body, her mother's body with Nymeria.
And Arya has all these pieces in her, in the in her head about
all the puzzle pieces to what just happened.
You know, she knows what Nymeria saw.
She knows what she saw. And she's got news about the Red
Wedding from elsewhere. Rumors of all over like that
spread like wildfire around Westwood.
So she has all the she has the corroborating evidence even, you
know, she was actually there, unlike some of these other
situations. She was at the Red Wedding, at
least outdoors and saw a lot of it.
And but you can see her stubbornness here.
She's like, no, I like the wolf dreams more.
I want to be like that. I don't want to weep.
I don't want to be a frightened little girl.
This is part of her stubbornness and her strength, but it's also
just very human. Like who wouldn't want to have
dreams where you're powerful and strong and and doing great
things and making your own destiny?
Versus. Screaming and weeping and.
Your mother dying and monsters. With dog heads and yeah, like.
That's not a good dream. It's trauma, of course.
Like regardless of what's going on, what the deeper meaning is,
we all want to have good dreams. As compared to.
Nightmares. That's one of the most
straightforward things I could possibly.
Say. Right.
So Aria's. But the effect of that is that
it's pushing her more into her dreams, more into her wolf side,
which, as we've heard from people who know better, you need
to maintain your humanity. Don't become too much like the.
Wolf. Or well, you'll be too much like
a wolf. You know wolves are savage and
violent. You know whether they can't be
tamed, right? Like like Hagan said, it's a
marriage. You're not, you don't, you're
not control. You don't tame the wolf.
You're married to it and it will make you part of like it is.
So she doesn't seem to remember Old Nan's stories like Bran
does. And so she's not thinking of.
Herself as evil, which is an interesting exception and an
interesting difference here, at least for now.
Maybe she'll learn and that'll make her feel bad about it, but
we'll see. Now we of course with John we
have that question about death and skin changing how it's going
to affect his powers. For Arya we have a similar but
lesser question. Like what is her faceless man
training going to do to her abilities?
Like will it give her more focus, more discipline?
Will she be able to spin some of that into what she needs to be a
better skin changer? Will it, will it impair it?
I kind of doubt it, but maybe just curious of the effect.
Like she's basically multi classed if you want to look at
it in a role-playing game situation.
And here's a curious example where the faceless men's magic
or alchemy or chemistry, whatever word I don't know what
fits here. Her dreams seem to be impacted
by the potion, the blindness potion that they gave her quote.
She dreamed she was a wolf again, but it was different from
the other. Dreams.
In this dream, she had no pack. She prowled alone, bounding over
rooftops and patting silently beside the banks of a canal,
stalking shadows through the fog.
When she woke the next morning, she was blind.
This one. 'S.
Different. She's dreaming of herself as a
wolf. But not as Nymeria and she still
feels like it's a wolf dream it. Has that.
Vibe but she thinks specifically it was different from the other
dreams and being alone instead of part of the pack.
That's very interesting. Is this like a a vision of
herself being separated of of the path that she's?
Currently on rather. Than the path that leads to
rejoining her pack. Because prowling alone, bounding
over rooftops, that sounds like a faceless man.
This is what what an assassin does.
Someone stalks their prey from rooftops and by the canal and
through the fog, rather than in an environment where a wolf
would exist, like the forest or or the riverlands or something
like that. So this is really interesting
and it's a unique thing for Aria.
Even Bran doesn't really have this.
At least we haven't seen it. And she's also the only Stark
besides Bran who has skin changed into a different animal.
She's used at least one cat. The cat followed her when she
was blind, Followed her now. Did the cat follow her because
she's blind now? It's a cat.
Cats are weird that way sometimes cats just like a
person. But this really feels like the
cat followed her because of some connection that Arya, like her
subconscious, reached out, connected with this cat.
She doesn't fully realize what she's done, but she used the
cat. She looked through its eyes to
be able to see what the kindly man was doing.
And there's another scene where she's in disguise as the ugly
little girl. And the Seal Castle, the trained
seal recognizes her even though she's wearing a face.
This isn't just a regular disguise.
She's got one of the magical faces on.
So is that supernatural? Is the Seal just smell her?
I doubt it. It's a crowded Plaza with lots
of people at the Wharf. Like, can the seal really smell
her? I mean, she's not just a lot
like, she's like standing right next to her feels supernatural,
feels like Ari has reached out to this animal because they've
got like a little bit of a connection and the.
Animal is like, well, that's. How I know who you are, your,
your, what your face looks like is irrelevant.
I can feel the bond. I can feel the, the skin changer
magic. Of course, who knows how the
seal actually perceives it, but it's the fact that the animal
recognized her that is a big deal.
I think that's really telling. So it's remarkable again and and
a sign of just how strong and powerful she is in this talent
that she hasn't learned to use it.
She hasn't consciously admitted what it is, but she's still
doing it. She used the cat, she looked
through his eyes. That happened.
And it's like the last thing we get from her.
So like she might be where we've left her, not counting the mercy
chapter. It's like right at the cusp of
understanding. She's like just able.
She's so close to being able to define herself to be like, OK, I
can do this. I can see through animals eyes.
I can jump into Nymeria. These aren't just dreams.
I feel like she's really close to having that realization and
what a turning point that will be for her.
And I think This is why I relate it potentially to her break up
with the Faceless Men, which seems to be incoming.
Having a revelation of who she really is, of what she is, could
really change her outlook and her willingness to be a part of
this whole weird death cult. She's like, hey, teach me how to
do some things. Teach me to be sneaky.
Teach me how to kill. Teach me about poison.
I don't want to get into this whole religion, though.
I'm not into this whole becoming no one.
Like screw that. I'm Arya Stark.
I'm the Night Wolf. Let's talk Bran.
We've already said a.
Lot about Bran because his some of his examples sort of trickle.
Down to serve as examples for the rest, as this is the
ultimate, this is the exception. This is the powerful, the most
powerful. That in itself is an inescapable
part of who he is. He cannot escape his massive
power. He is.
He wanted to be a knight, but he's a warg, but he's also a
green seer. But the warg stuff almost has a
bigger social impact. Yes, the green seer stuff is way
more powerful. The fact that he's some sort of
chosen one, that's way more important, but it's the skin
changer stuff that people recognize.
People aren't out here going ah, we shun green seers.
They're just way too rare. People don't have an opinion on
green seers. Old man didn't tell him spooky
stories about green seers. It's the beastlings, it's the
skin changer, the warg. That's what he grew up hearing
about. That's the one that's negative.
That's the one that has the social negativity associated
with it. That's the bad one in his mind.
Green seers, people don't talk about that.
That's just some. Yeah, it's it's vague and lost
and done to to most humans. They don't.
Even they think that's the thing of the past.
Skin changers, it's different. It's a lot more present, a lot
more there. Being a green seer doesn't make
him an outcast, being a war does.
He didn't really have a prior opinion of green seers.
He did have a prior opinion of skin change before realizing he
was one, and he already feels isolated and different because
he has a disability now. He's a really powerful being
that can't relate to people. On top of that, A Song of Ice
and Fire among other things. But.
At the core. Has a lot to say about power and
power corrupting. And Brad is massively powerful
in a unique way, in a way that has already corrupted him in
some ways. Like look at what he's done to
Hodor. That's not good, right?
He's stolen Hodor. Like Hodor don't even want that.
Hodor's quiet and shy and scared.
When Bran does that to him, Bran knows he's doing a wrong thing,
but he's able to like, make himself feel like it's not that.
Wrong. It's not.
That bad, right? He deserves to be.
Able to walk around a bit. You know, Hodor's bend his legs
all the time. What's the big deal in his mind?
You know why? Why can't I do this?
Well, we said Bran's getting an education.
We said Bran is being. Taught the powers.
He's being educated. By the children, before that, By
Jojen. By Bloodraven, they're not
telling him how to use his powers for good.
They're not telling him how to be a good person.
They're not. They're not teaching him the
ethical use of his powers. They're teaching him how to save
the world, which means like whatever you got to do, you got
to do. There's no like caveats here for
well, don't do that. No, do what needs to be done.
They're teaching him to be like nature, ruthless, uncaring.
It needs to do what needs to be done.
It needs to save humanity from endless winter.
If if you have to innocent kill innocent people or innocent
animals to accomplish that goal, it's worth it because otherwise
we're talking about total extinction.
What a burden to put on a 7 year old though, or an 8 year old or
whatever he is. So he's not being taught what's
right and wrong because that might slow him down.
They might, they might not want him to have that sense.
They might be like, Nah, he needs to be willing to spill
blood because that's what it takes to save the world here.
So yeah, it's sad. He's isolated because of his
extraordinary abilities, because of the burden put on him to save
the world, and because he's got a disability that people shun
him for. So he's becoming less and less
human in that sense, because he is not a being that can be
accepted by humans. He's two different, and that's
sad. Obviously that's tragic, but
it's also going to have a trickle down effect on the rest
of the Starks when they become reunited.
His abilities will put things in perspective maybe.
For the rest of them like, well, I feel like.
Maybe a little bit of an outcast for this, but at least I'm not
like bats, you know? And they wouldn't.
That's not something you would voice.
You don't say that to your brother, but it might be
something that flashes through your mind and make you feel
guilty about it. How many animals will Bran
control at once? Will he control entire flocks
of? Ravens will he control?
Giants. Will he control Bears?
Will he control a dragon? Will he control the undead?
Will that help us understand? The mechanism between the dead
and skin change how that all works if Sansa is our vehicle to
what happens with just a sprinkle of skin.
Changing talent, Bran. Is what happens with an
abundance. They're on the opposite ends of
the spectrum, but you can still see how it affects their
personality or might affect their personality because it's
such a thing that makes you different from all the other
humans. Like Arya and probably Rickon.
He prefers to be in his wolf because it makes him feel strong
and less afraid or less hungry. Bran escapes into summer at
times because they're starving. So it's a, it's a, it's a way to
escape that feeling and to have working legs.
Quite frankly. He likes running around and he
can do that as a wolf. He can't do that as a person.
So there's all these temptations to escape starvation, to escape
bad feelings, to feel powerful, to run.
And he's so powerful within those places.
He can do so much in his mind with his powers that he can't do
with his body. There's a little quote here.
He meant to do the things that Jojen asked, but once he was a
wolf, they never seemed important.
What that refers to is Jojen's trying to get him to be more
aware when he's in summer. He's like, all right, I want you
to remember this when you're in summer, push some rocks in a
row, scratch the wood in a certain way to show that you
have that control, and it never happens.
Bran is. Unable to remember what his
instructions were when he goes into summer.
Is he going to eventually learn that?
Well, maybe. But it goes to show how it's a
two way bond. But in a lot of ways, the animal
bond half is more alluring. More corrupting isn't the right
word, but it's less yielding. It doesn't have as an animal
brain. It it's kind of it, it, it
doesn't change as much It's it doesn't have consciousness or
the same type of consciousness. It doesn't have like the ability
to go against. Its own desires.
Right It's it's the difference between human, human and animal
minds Is is being bridged here and you can see why it'd be
important to keep your humanity because if you become more
animalistic, well then you get into the things we're worried
about with John. Like maybe John becomes really
savage, really violent, really ruthless in in ways that make us
uncomfortable, make that make us think this isn't the Jon Snow of
before. Bran might go down a path like
that as well as he becomes less human, as he becomes bears this
burden as a savior with all these powers.
And if he's in the minds of so many other animals and in the
past, what's that going to do to his his actual mind?
Right. Well, that's got to change him.
So, yeah, the good-natured young boy is being taught all these
powers and grand things without any sense of right and wrong.
Only what? Only his own sense of right and
wrong, which as a 7 year old, yeah, he's a good-natured kid,
but how far can that go? Meanwhile, Vermeer, a horrible
man, was taught that skin changers have a code of of
ethics. And Vermeer actually somewhat
adhered to it, which is. So that's a.
Strange dichotomy. Bran unable to adhere to it
because he's not aware of it. Vermeer, awful dude did actually
stick to the skin changer code of ethics for the most part.
Definitely not all of it. Definitely not all of it.
And what we learn is some of these codes.
What some of these codes of behavior for?
Skin changers are. We learn it through Hagon and
Vermeer. Bran ends up violating nearly
all of it. One of the things is don't mate
wolf with wolf, don't be in don't skin change into a wolf
and bang another wolf. I don't think Bran's done that
one. But the other ones, you're not
supposed to eat human meat while in an animal, or at all.
Bran does both. He eats human meat while a wolf.
And he eats human meat. While Bran he doesn't know he's
doing it but he did it. Cold hands fed him meat from
human and told him it was pork. He also isn't supposed to take
over a human, which he has done a.
Lot with Hodor. He is taking Hodor and he's and
he knows it's wrong. He doesn't tell anyone he's
doing it. It's a part of him realizes it's
wrong. And again, he just kind of
justifies it by saying it's not that wrong.
But according to Hagon, it's the biggest abomination of all,
which is interesting story wise, conflict wise, ethics wise, and
somehow it's also the least gross, which is weird.
It's like, yeah, definitely voyeuristic human beastiality is
gross and eating cannibalism, that's gross.
But it's the skin changer prohibition of body snatching
that apparently is so bad. That's the worst.
Where did they come up with this idea that it's the worst?
I don't know. Where did this develop?
I have no idea. You can kind of see why that,
you know, like it's a basic function of human society in the
modern world. Yeah.
You shouldn't be controlling
other people's brains. That seems.
It's like murder. Yeah, you shouldn't do that.
Like, that's. It's pretty basic.
We don't need to really get into a deep explanation of why that's
wrong. But Bran, 7-8 year old person,
well, we don't need to get into a deep explanation of why that a
brain of that age with all the everything he's been through
wouldn't necessarily process it that way the same way the rest
of us would as adults who live in a society where these things
are very well established. Also on top of that though, it's
a skin changer prohibition to seize another human.
It's a power that most of them don't even have though.
Like they can't do it. Like brain can do it kind of
easily. I Vermeer was unable to take
Thistle. He was unable.
To take her body even. Though he's a really powerful
skin changer. I don't think Hagon could have
done it at all. Hagon probably was like, you
shouldn't do that. I can't do that, you know, like
I don't think he was capable. Like it's, it's it's it's a
weird. It's like a prohibition.
Against a power that most skin changers don't even have.
So that's kind of curious It's like well let's not get too
powerful with this. Maybe it's like, yeah, if we do
that, that's where rumors were evil comes from.
If if you start body. Snatching people then.
All of us skin changers are going to be haunted and killed.
Maybe that's why it happened. Maybe that is why they all get
so many of them were haunted down because they started body
snatching or maybe a couple examples of that happened and
word got out and people started thinking that all skin changers
can do that and it just terrified everyone and that's
why people started killing them. Why now?
Let's talk about that for a minute.
Why now? Why are so many stark skin
changers now versus earlier in history?
Why haven't we heard about this happening?
Is it possible there's plenty more?
Like we said, we theorized that maybe there have been plenty of
Stark skin changer genes out there or talents out there.
They just never, never developed.
They didn't get direwolves, they didn't get that catalyst.
They didn't nothing started them off on that journey.
So it just rotted. That skill was atrophied.
All of them in. One generation though.
Peculiar. It's a question we asked at the
beginning and I don't know that we're that much closer to
answering it. So if it's mostly or not
entirely not genetics. Is it related?
To the rise of. Magic.
Is it related to the return of magic?
The comet, the Dragons and all that?
Maybe corn. Half Hand seems to think that's
a strong possibility. Quote Skin changer, said Eben
grimly, looking at the Half hand.
Does he mean the eagle? John wondered.
Or me? Skin Changers and Gorg belonged
in old Man's stories, not in the world he had lived in all his
life. Yet here, in this strange, bleak
wilderness of rock and ice, it was not hard to believe the cold
winds are rising. Mormont feared as much.
Benjin Stark felt it as well. Dead men walk and the trees have
eyes again. Why should we balk at wargs and
giants? Mormont.
Feared it, but Benjin Stark felt it, he says.
A Stark. Feeling it, Interesting.
Interesting for sure. What does that mean now?
Honestly a lot of people think Mormont was a bit of a skin
changer or had a little bit of that talent given the Raven.
On the other hand, that Raven could just be blood Raven, you
know like chilling with him, just keeping an eye on things.
Either way it fits. If magic is more powerful right
now, if the old powers are waking, then more people are
able to attune. With their own abilities.
Maybe you have the maybe the latent talent exists in some
people, but if the magical forces aren't properly primed or
flowing that you can't interact with it.
If old powers are waking, then imagine there's a cell phone in
your head. You're born with a cell phone in
your head, but there's no signal.
You exist in a world with no cell phone signals, no second
cell phone towers. Then all of a sudden one day
there's a signal. Your brain is activated.
You're like, oh wow, I have. I can sense things that I
weren't there before. I don't know that that's really
how George thinks about it. But I, you know, I feel like
this is a reasonable way to perceive it, that it's a, it's a
latent ability that you had nothing to use it on.
Like you have, like you have a computer, but no power.
You know, you have a, an iPad with no batteries.
You know, you, once you plug those batteries in, all of a
sudden everything works. Once the proper elements are out
there to complete the mixture, everything starts working.
It all turns on the signals that are available.
So changes in the magical currents of the world or in
certain places could impact the skin changer population.
Perhaps there's a pervasive energy that waxes and wanes, and
when it's. At its height.
The more skin changers are more powerful, they can detect their
own abilities and in this this waxing and waning can be years
at a time like winter or maybe it's on a different timeline,
but you get the get the point. Last but not least, the Stark
reunification. As mentioned at the beginning,
this isn't the most. Exciting or mysterious, but
definitely the part that matters the most from a character and
story perspective. Meaning how their reunion will
be impacted by their supernatural abilities and how
they discuss it, how they perceive each other and how
others perceive them. And of course, I'm going to
repeat that this is goes well beyond.
Skin changing and skin changing goes well.
Beyond this, these are bigger topics than than this moment,
but it's a rather unique aspect to it.
It's a important part that we think is coming.
It's something that they all share, that few others and no
one else around them has in common.
Will Brand teach them all how to use their abilities?
Will he decide it's not a good idea?
Will he decide it's very necessary to fight what's coming
that. Seems more likely.
Because what's coming is so, so big and dangerous and and dark,
you need all the help they can get, right?
I think ultimately it will unite them and it will make them
stronger, but there's room for some some downsides.
For example, maybe Sansa is isolated by not having these
powers, or maybe Brad is isolated because he is so, so
much more than a skin changer and so much more powerful.
Even if we only count his skin changing ability, which there's
no reason to only count that because he has so many other
abilities, supernatural, it just makes him so much different.
And yeah, it could be a very key point in them reidentifying with
each other. It's like this is a thing that
links us in a way beyond our name.
And the Stark's succession crisis hangs over all this.
Like they may not want to fight each other, others may try to
use them in that way, and perhaps the skin changer bond
will have an impact in that. In regard, maybe some people
won't want to follow a certain. Stark because they learn.
About that power, maybe Jon Snow's death and return is.
Combined with his. Ability to control animals and
that just like scares people or intimidates them and makes them
think things about other Starks. So many possibilities, so many
great ideas, so much to look forward to.
And let me remind you of something I.
Said very early on in the episode, at the very beginning.
While we've gone a long way with a lot of these characters, five
books, lots of discussions, videos, theories, blog posts,
whatever, as far as skin changers go, we've barely gotten
started with this part of who they are.
Only brands really gone that deep with it.
John's got involved. He's, you know, got lots of
interesting things going on with Ghost, but he hasn't even
learned to control it. He can't voluntarily join jump
into Ghost. Arya can't voluntarily jump into
Nymeria. She doesn't even know what's
going on. She doesn't even doesn't.
Even again the. Word war skin changer.
I don't think is popped up in any of her chapters.
It's going to matter. We're going to get more
explanations, full explanations. No, of course not.
Absolutely not. Much mystery is going to remain
no matter what. That will in turn fuel future
questions and future theories. Future fun.
Dornish Dame asks I or says. I also think Ghost makes a noise
during the clash dream. His cry echoed through the
forest, a long lonely, mournful sound.
So I think Ghost can make a noise when John is.
John can make a ghost make a sound.
Interesting. Ghost maybe doesn't make sounds
on his own, but when someone else is controlling him, like
maybe Blood Raven is. Your theory is very good Shay.
That's very possible. That could be the explanation.
That's a good point. That's a good point.
Our trivia question was which POV character was said to have
been a wolf with bat wings? Sansa.
That's right, Sansa, pretty much all the Starks are described as
wolves. At one point and I think.
Even Rob may have been described as having some other parts, but
bat wings specifically? No, only Sansa's described that
way, and that's a good good little subtle nod to her Went
ancestry. Because Catlin's mother was
Manissa went and the Went sigil is bats.
There you go. So she is a wolf with bat wings.
Her grandmother was a bat there you.
Go. Thank you everybody for hanging
out with us today for. Listening to this.
Podcast and for sticking with us all the way through because if
you're hearing this part well, this is the end of the episode,
which means you must listen to all of it.
We appreciate that means a lot to us.
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right? We, we don't have some of the
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fee every month, because that really adds up.
It's very gratifying, very motivating, and we'll keep the
episodes coming. Thanks to Nina for her great
notes. Really helpful.
Thanks to Joey Townsend and Jesse Koval for our music.
Michael Klarfeld, who is coming to visit America this month.
We're so excited to show him all around.
Thanks to him for his great maps that you see behind me and the
video intro that he did for us. Until next time everybody, you
know what to do. Valar one second.
He will be here in. Atlanta at the end of February
and then we're going to Chicago if you're.
In the Atlanta area or Chicago area and would like to meet up
with Michael. Send us an e-mail at
westeroshistory@gmail.com. Yeah, either Chicago or Atlanta,
or if you're near close enough to either, the city's come by
and talk to us. About it.
We'll, we'll, we'll give you the the details.
Now you can say goodbye, Valar. Really, Reedus?
I'm messing with you.