Hello, and welcome to the Nauticast podcast, the one true chapter-by-chapter podcast going through a song of ice and fire.

I'm one of your hosts Emmett, also known as Poor Quinton.

And I'm your other host, Manu, also known as Manuclear Bomb.

And welcome to the 226th episode of the Nautcast titled To Be or Not To Be, an analysis of

of a Storm of Swords, John 12, in which John faces an agonizing, difficult, life-changing choice,

and he makes it pretty quickly, too. Suck on that, Hamlet. To be fair, Hamlet doesn't have a giant

wolf to help him make decisions, although now I kind of wish he did.

He would have sorted out Polonius and Laertes really quickly if he did.

That's why it would be a much shorter play.

That's why Shakespeare wrote out the wolf.

That's why he's the best.

So our spoiler warning is always prepared to be spoiled for all five novels, the three Duncan Nick novellas, any histories, interviews, wins of winter sample chapters, as well as Game

of Thrones and House of the Dragon the TV shows. Anything and everything.

We want to welcome our special guest for this episode. He's been on the Natacast before,

so happy to have him back. Grant, aka Heathen King. Welcome back, sir.

Thank you for having me so much. I'm so happy to be here. Not surprised to have you on for a John Snow chapter. I know he's your boy. And this is one of the definitive John chapter. So I wanted to sum up his character in one chapter. This might be the one. I am a guy who dresses in black a lot and I have a dog. I used to have a little white dog that used to follow me around everywhere.

So it was much more on the nose.

But I also consider, you know, John Snow was a teenager in the 90s, so he was clearly a big 9-inch Nails fan.

So let's...

George knows his type.

George knows.

I imagine, because of the 90s, I imagine him with like Final Fantasy emo here.

...