The Nerdstream Era: 2016

Saturday, December 31, 2016

Boiled Leather Audio Hour #57

A Long Time Ago: The Star Wars Prequel Trilogy

This New Year’s Eve, ring in the coming year the old-fashioned way: Listen to Sean and Stefan talk about George Lucas’s Star Wars prequel trilogy for 80 minutes! For the final BLAH of 2016, we’re tackling one of our most frequently requested topics and going long on Episodes I, II, and III of the blockbuster franchise: 1999’s The Phantom Menace, 2002’s Attack of the Clones, and 2005’s Revenge of the Sith. An all but universally accepted punching bag for much of the decade since it brought the curtain down on the early adventures of Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker et al, the prequel trilogy has seen something of a change of critical fortune at since dawn of the Disney era and its crowd-pleasing kick-off The Force Awakens. With another prequel, Rogue One, now in theaters (though Stefan hasn’t seen it, so shhhhh no spoilers), we thought it would be the perfect time to discuss Lucas’s uneven but ambitious auteurist prequel saga in depth, movie by movie. Are they the Fall of the Republic–level disasters they’re made out to be, or do they have an artistic Force worth reckoning with? Listen in and find out!

DOWNLOAD EPISODE 57

PLUS! With this episode of BLAH, our 14th this year, we’re pleased to announce the start of a new series of subscriber-only mini-episodes beginning this January! For the low low price of a monthly $1 contribution to the Boiled Leather Audio Hour Patreon, you’ll receive exclusive monthly podcasts focused squarely on A Song of Ice and Fire (with a bit of Game of Thrones mixed in, we suspect, but mostly the books) and derived from listener questions. It’s our way of saying thank you to those of you who’ve subscribed this year and thus made recording these so much easier for us—and, we hope, a tempting offer for those of you who haven’t yet taken the plunge. Visit our Patreon page, pitch in, and get in on the ground floor! And now back to your regularly scheduled BLAH. Happy Holidays!
Additional links:

Jesse Hassenger’s essay on the prequels for the AV Club.
Roderick Heath’s essay on the prequels for Ferdy on Films.
Sean’s list of the 57 Greatest Star Wars Moments for Vulture (warning: Rogue One spoilers).
Sean’s list of Carrie Fisher’s 10 Greatest ‘Star Wars’ Moments for Rolling Stone (warning: Rogue One spoilers).
Our BLAH episode on The Force Awakens.
Our Patreon page at patreon.com/boiledleatheraudiohour.
Our PayPal donation page (also accessible via boiledleather.com).
Our iTunes page.
Mirror.
Previous episodes.
Podcast RSS feed.
Sean’s blog.
Stefan’s blog.

Thursday, December 22, 2016

Supreme Court of Westeros, ruling 149

Thursday is court day!

Welcome to the Supreme Court of Westeros! Every week, three pressing questions from the community will be answered by the esteemed judges Stefan (from your very own Nerdstream Era) and Amin (from A Podcast of Ice and Fire). The rules are simple: we take three questions, and one of us writes a measured analysis. The other one writes a shorter opinion, either concurring or dissenting. The catch is that every week a third judge from the fandom will join us and also write a dissenting or concurring opinion. So if you think you're up to the task - write us an email to stefan_sasse@gmx.de, leave a comment in the post, ask in the APOIAF-forum or contact Amin at his tumblr. Discussion is by no means limited to the court itself, though - feel free to discuss our rulings in the commentary section and ask your own questions through the channels above.

One word on spoilers: we assume that you read all the books, including the Hedge Knight short stories, and watched the current TV episodes. We don't include the spoiler chapters from various sources in the discussion, with the notable exception of Theon I, which was supposed to be in "A Dance with Dragons" anyway.

Please note that our new ebook is up and available on Amazon, collecting the first 60 rulings and the best comments in one place. It's only 5,99$, so what are you waiting for?

And now, up to ruling 149! Our guest judge this week is Jeff Meehan. Originally from Northern Virginia, Jeff Meehan is a lifelong history buff and political junkie living in New Orleans where he works as an antiques restorer. His pastimes include following DC sports, cooking, and being obnoxious on Twitter where his twitter handle is Duncan Royce or @AtlasRoyce. He is still overly proud of getting GRRM on the record as to who was the influence for Stannis Baratheon. Email address is molskine.grit@gmail.com.

Rogue One review

By Marcus A. Roberts

The metaphor almost comes too easily: the Galactic Empire that is Disney determined to crush the life and creativity out of a small band of Rebel filmmakers . But it is truth, for Rogue One is nothing if not a struggle for supremacy between studio and director, industry and artistry.

At Tuesday night's special IMAX screening you didn't even need to wait for the movie to start for the laserfire and lightsabre slashes - the director and studio boss on stage in the pre-movie Q&A were locked in verbal conflict from the outset.

The road ahead

As you may have noticed, posting has become a bit infrequent on the blog these days. That's due to some real life concerns on my part that take up too much of my spare time right now to regularily write about Nerdstream topics, and a general exhaustion on part of me and Amin with the Supreme Court of Westeros. Therefore, I have to anounce two changes to the blogs.

First, the Flight of Links section will not be continued for the moment. I simply can't find the time anymore. I might take this up again at a later date.

Second, we will pause the Supreme Court of Westeros with issue 150 until "The Winds of Winter" comes out. To give it a proper farewell, we thought that it would be nice to answer seven questions with seven judges in one mega-ruling. So, if you have any questions worthy of such an undertaking that elicit different responses from seven different judges (which is certainly not true of all questions), then please submit them to us via the usual channels.

Supreme Court of Westeros, ruling 148

Thursday is court day!

Please note that our new ebook is up and available on Amazon, collecting the first 60 rulings and the best comments in one place. It's only 5,99$, so what are you waiting for?

And now, up to ruling 148 ! Our guest judge this week is Daniel Huigsloot, a member of the community.

Boiled Leather Audio Hour #56

Election Special
Sean and Stefan discuss the election of white nationalist Donald Trump as President of the United States of America.

DOWNLOAD EPISODE 56

Additional links:
Our Patreon page at patreon.com/boiledleatheraudiohour.
Our PayPal donation page (also accessible via boiledleather.com).
Our iTunes page.
Mirror.
Previous episodes.
Podcast RSS feed.
Sean’s blog.
Stefan’s blog.

Monday, November 21, 2016

A Flight of Links

- Best Graphic Novels of all time
- Watchdogs 2 review
-The Wire style hitlist

Wednesday, November 2, 2016

How "The Banner Saga" conveyes a sense of doom

It's really hard to tell stories of downfall and doom in a video game, since so many games revolve around fulfilling power fantasies, at best creating a sense of ludo-narrative dissonance when trying to reach for that feat. It's even harder to tell a story by gameplay mechanics as well as written dialogue. If all this succeeds, you get a product like "The Banner Saga", the first part of (currently) two tactical roleplaying games.

Boiled Leather Audio Hour #55

We’ve tackled the North and the lands of Essos. Now our popular series of podcasts predicting the events of The Winds of Winter returns with a look at what Northern partisans such as ourselves would call “the South” — aka the rest(eros) of Westeros! With our usual emphasis on thematic and narrative resonance — and our usual caveat that this is all just fun speculation — we’re offering our theories on the fates of every major player and region. What does Book Six hold in store for our POV characters Sansa Stark, Cersei Lannister, Jon Connington, Arianne Martell, Brienne of Tarth, Jaime Lannister, Areo Hotah (hey, blame George), Samwell Tarly, and Aeron “the Damphair” Greyjoy? What about key supporting cast members like Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish, the Tyrells, the Faith Militant, Doran Martell, the Sand Snakes, (f)Aegon Targaryen, Varys, Catelyn “Lady Stoneheart” Stark, Brynden “the Blackfish” Tully, Tommen and Myrcella Lannister, Walder Frey, and so on? What fates will befall King’s Landing, Oldtown, Highgarden, Storm’s End, Sunspear, and Casterly Rock? And of course, where and when will the Others and the dragons strike first? We’re taking our best guesses. See what you think!

DOWNLOAD EPISODE 55

Additional links:
Forecasting The Winds of Winter, Part 1: The North
Forecasting The Winds of Winter, Part 2: Essos
Our Patreon page at patreon.com/boiledleatheraudiohour.
Our PayPal donation page (also accessible via boiledleather.com).
Our iTunes page.
Mirror.
Previous episodes.
Podcast RSS feed.
Sean’s blog.
Stefan’s blog.

Thursday, October 27, 2016

Supreme Court of Westeros, ruling 147

Thursday is court day!

Please note that our new ebook is up and available on Amazon, collecting the first 60 rulings and the best comments in one place. It's only 5,99$, so what are you waiting for?

And now, up to ruling 147! Our guest judge this week is Rick Davids, a student of Linguistics from Berlin who currrently resides in Bielefeld. He's been a fan of the books for well over a decade now. He's honored to make his second appearance on the court.

Why I don't like Grimdark

On his tumblr, Steven Attewell was asked what he thought of Grimdark. His answer deserves being quoted in full:

Let me just say at the outset, I used to LOVE grimdark. Huge fan of Warhammer (both 40k and Fantasy), read all of the “groundbreaking, adult” graphic novels of the late 80s/90s, bought as many of White Wolf’s RPG books as I could, even if I almost never got to play them, and so on and so forth. But, and I don’t mean this at all in a condescending way, I matured out of it. This stuff that had spoke to me when I was a teenager was less appealing now that I’m in my early 30s.
A lot of this of this comes from the way that my personality works. I’m fundamentally an academic and a policy wonk and a reformer, which means when I see a bad situation either in real life or in media, my mind immediately goes to how it could be fixed, how it can be improved - I look at Westeros and start thinking about economic development plans, after all. Grimdark, however, requires stasis in order to maintain mood and atmosphere and setting:

“Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war.”
You can see the contradiction there.
Another big part of this is my realization, after a while, that grimdark is ultimately just as as sterile and fomulaic and predictable as its opposite. If the universe is always doomed, if the bad guys are always going to win, then there’s no dramatic tension, no possibility of surprise or innovation beyond a point.
One of the truths I feel I’ve stumbled across over the years is that the essence of good storytelling isn’t found in extremes, but in variation. No matter whether it’s grimdark or its opposite, too much of the same thing leads to habituation and a decrease in effectiveness. The result is either apathy or a constant arms-race of intensity that eventually becomes ridiculous.

Thursday, October 20, 2016

Supreme Court of Westeros, ruling 146

Thursday is court day!

Please note that our new ebook is up and available on Amazon, collecting the first 60 rulings and the best comments in one place. It's only 5,99$, so what are you waiting for?

And now, up to ruling 146! Our guest judge this week is Bobby, who is a member of the community who occasionally posts about ASOIAF at whereoldgodsrule.tumblr.com.

Supreme Court of Westeros, ruling 145

Thursday is court day!

Please note that our new ebook is up and available on Amazon, collecting the first 60 rulings and the best comments in one place. It's only 5,99$, so what are you waiting for?

And now, up to ruling 144! Our guest judge this week is Johnny from Philadelphia. He began reading the series after the 1st season of Game of Thrones and began listening to BLAH and APOIAF shortly thereafter. He is on the forums at APOIAF as The Smiling Knight. This is his fourth time as a member of the Supreme Court of Westeros.

What is bad dialogue?

I just finished watching the first season of "Jessica Jones", and I mostly kept going to get a full picture, not because it was an especially joyous ride, so you maybe shouldn't follow in my footsteps here. What really egged me about the show, beside some other points of course, was the baffingly bad dialogue. I wanted to share an example of that with you and explain why it is so bad and try to get a bit more into the question when dialogue is to be considered bad. If you want to watch "Jessica Jones" spoilerfree, you'll have to stop reading here, but what I tell you about the plot here is really very light on spoilers, so you might just go ahead anyway.

Boiled Leather Audio Hour #54

We’re turing the podcast Upside Down this episode with an in-depth discussion of Stranger Things, the hit summer thriller series from Netflix and the Duffer Brothers. Wearing its many, many genre influences on its sleeve so proudly that said sleeves might as well have had “STEVEN SPIELBERG” and “STEPHEN KING” directly embroidered on them, the show gave its fans an ‘80s nostalgia fix like few others. But is there more to the whole than the sum of its parts? Sean and Stefan explore that question at length, touching on related issues such as the nature of horror, the hegemony of nerd culture, the ever-increasing prominence of the ‘80s in contemporary entertainment, and of course the show’s similarities with and differences from the approach to genre taken by A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones. Grab your D&D dice and roll for initiative with us!

DOWNLOAD EPISODE 54

Additional links:
Sean’s essay on Stranger Things for Vulture.
Emily Yoshida’s key tweet about the show.
Chris Ott’s Shallow Rewards podcast, featuring a two-parter with Sean.
Our Patreon page at patreon.com/boiledleatheraudiohour.
Our PayPal donation page (also accessible via boiledleather.com).
Our iTunes page.
Mirror.
Previous episodes.
Podcast RSS feed.
Sean’s blog.
Stefan’s blog.

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

What "Stellaris" told me about the dangers of technology

In case you never heard of "Stellaris", you're either living under a rock or really aren't that much into really complex and heavy strategy games that need real effort and time to learn. Damn, that came out wrong. So, I'll take it you don't know Stellaris. It's a game by renowned studio Paradox Interactive (Hearts of Iron, Europa Universalis, Skylines, among others) in the 4x genre, allowing you to guide a civilization from its earliest FTL days to a sprawling intergalactic empire. As you marrily colonize new planets, research new techs and observe strange phenomena, you're range of options grows and your empire gains in strength, eventually resulting into First Contact with other civilizations and even war. So far, so good. But the game also has some really interesting other features, among the "crisis". And that one's a real bitch.

Supreme Court of Westeros, ruling 144

Thursday is court day!

Please note that our new ebook is up and available on Amazon, collecting the first 60 rulings and the best comments in one place. It's only 5,99$, so what are you waiting for?

And now, up to ruling 144! Our guest judge this week is Ryan Hodges. He goes by Kinglayer on Tower of the Hand and sardonicsmirk on reddit and the Nerdstream.

Supreme Court of Westeros, ruling 143

Thursday is court day!

Please note that our new ebook is up and available on Amazon, collecting the first 60 rulings and the best comments in one place. It's only 5,99$, so what are you waiting for?

And now, up to ruling 143! Our guest judge this week is Beat_Train, who started reading the books upon a recommendation from a lanky friend with the goal of staying ahead of the show, which he finally convinced his wife to watch. Mostly a lurking member of the community, Beat_Train has taken part of the TOTH re-read series and has been a two-time guest judge before for the Court. His Beat_Train pseudonym comes from his time as a runner at the University of Notre Dame.

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

Supreme Court of Westeros, ruling 142

Thursday is court day! Sorry it's so late, we had some issues.

Question Call: If you have any interesting questions, please tell us!

Please note that our new ebook is up and available on Amazon, collecting the first 60 rulings and the best comments in one place. It's only 5,99$, so what are you waiting for?

And now, up to ruling 142! Our guest judge this week is Dan Pepper, who has been a Song of Ice and Fire fan since 2009 and has appeared on several Vassals of Kingsgrave episodes and guested on A Podcast of Ice and Fire. He dressed up as Hosteen Frey this year at his second Ice and Fire Con. In real life, he's a newspaper reporter who lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Boiled Leather Audio Hour #53

The Theory of Everything: Analyzing Popular Theories from a Narrative & Thematic Perspective, Part II (A Patreon Production)

One of our most requested episode formats is back, thanks to our loyal patrons! Subscribers to our Patreon have selected the topic of this episode, a sequel to a much-loved previous installment in which we took a look at prominent fan theories not just in terms of whether they’re possible or even plausible, but whether they make sense in the framework of the kind of story George R.R. Martin is trying to tell and his overall vibe as a writer. This time around, the individual topics have been pitched in by our patrons as well, and there’s a wide range, from what we think happened at Summerhall to whether we believe Bran is essentially a godlike figure to which fool we like best. Give it a listen, and if you like what you here, become a Patreon contributor so you can select future podcast topics yourself!

Download Episode 53

Additional links:
The Theory of Everything, Part I
Our Vulture article on the biggest fan theories
Our Patreon page at patreon.com/boiledleatheraudiohour
Our PayPal donation page (also accessible via boiledleather.com).
Our iTunes page.
Mirror.
Previous episodes.
Podcast RSS feed.
Sean’s blog.
Stefan’s blog.

Monday, August 8, 2016

A Flight of Links

- Jared Leto's bad method acting
- The making of the antihero
- Indiegames and the small child in a scary world

ASOIAF meta
- Davos I

Thursday, August 4, 2016

Supreme Court of Westeros, ruling 141

Thursday is court day!

Question Call: If you have any interesting questions, please tell us!

Please note that our new ebook is up and available on Amazon, collecting the first 60 rulings and the best comments in one place. It's only 5,99$, so what are you waiting for?

And now, up to ruling 141! Our guest judge this week is Michal Schick has been an ASOIAF fan since 2003, and currently covers the books, as well as Game of Thrones and other nerd-friendly properties for Hypable.com. She is a regular host on Vassals of Kingsgrave, and hangs out on Twitter as @inkasrain.

Saturday, December 31, 2016

Thursday, December 22, 2016

Thursday, December 15, 2016

Monday, December 12, 2016

Monday, November 28, 2016

Monday, November 21, 2016

Monday, November 14, 2016

Wednesday, November 2, 2016

Monday, October 31, 2016

Sunday, October 30, 2016

Thursday, October 27, 2016

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Monday, October 24, 2016

Thursday, October 20, 2016

Monday, October 17, 2016

Thursday, October 13, 2016

Monday, October 10, 2016

Thursday, October 6, 2016

Monday, October 3, 2016

Monday, September 26, 2016

Saturday, September 24, 2016

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Monday, September 19, 2016

Monday, September 12, 2016

Thursday, September 8, 2016

Monday, September 5, 2016

Thursday, September 1, 2016

Monday, August 29, 2016

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

Monday, August 22, 2016

Monday, August 15, 2016

Monday, August 8, 2016

Thursday, August 4, 2016

Tuesday, August 2, 2016