The Nerdstream Era: May 2016

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Boiled Leather Audio Hour #50

Aeron, Euron, It’s On

Undoubtedly timed to coincide with our landmark 50th episode, George R.R. Martin has released, or rather read, a brand new sample chapter from The Winds of Winter, and Sean & Stefan are tackling it in our third podcast in a month! Suitably, it’s a biggie: Entitled “The Forsaken,” it’s told from the perspective of Aeron “the Damphair” Greyjoy as he’s held prisoner by his increasingly frightening brother Euron Crow’s Eye. How does this chapter function as prophecy, as plot mover, as horror fiction, as Lovecraftian homage? How far are we willing to go with predictions as to what it all means for the future? What is Euron’s true motivation? Is the apocalypse now? Listen and find out!

Download Episode 50

Additional links:
“The Forsaken” (Aeron I) preview chapter from The Winds of Winter
Poor Quentyn’s Euron Greyjoy posts.
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.

Supreme Court of Westeros, ruling 131

Thursday is court day! We had problems last week, so this week, we do two!

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.

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 131! Our guest judge this week is Anton Jumelet, a philosophy student from the Netherlands, who previously judged on rulings 65, 81 and 104 of this court.

Monday, May 30, 2016

Game of Thrones Season 6 Episode 6 "Blood of my Blood" review

“Game of Thrones” sure seems to have found its footing. After last week’s astonishing “The Door”, this week’s “Blood of my Blood” offers the rest of the picture for a mighty one-two punch. Where “The Door” concentrated quite a lot on the North, the focus this week lays squarely with the South. But let’s unpack this bit by bit, shall we?

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

The banality of evil - Hizdahr zo Loraq

When Adolf Eichmann, one of the main culprits of the horrors, tortures and mutilations of the holocaust, was captured by the Israeli secret service Mossad and put on trial in Jerusalem, the Jewish political scientist Hannah Arendt was there to watch. She expected to see a monster in human flesh. Instead, she saw a middle-aged guy trying to weasel himself out of responsibility by referring to orders and the general “everyone did it”. She dubbed that she saw “the banality of evil”. If there were ever a trial for the masters of Meereen, Hizdahr zo Loraq would be one of the many, many banalities of evil.

Monday, May 23, 2016

The Boiled Leather Audio Hour #49

We Need to Talk About Hodor: ‘Game of Thrones’ Season Six (feat. Poor Quentyn)

Sean and Stefan are joined by a very special guest to talk about a very special episode! Emmett Booth, the ASoIaF analyst behind the widely read Poor Quentyn tumblr and a maester at ASoIaF University, hops aboard the BLAH train to discuss the shocking revelations of “The Door,” this week’s episode of Game of Thrones, and use this mid-point opportunity to take stock of the season thus far. What do the secret origins of the White Walkers and Hodor mean for both the show and the books? What does the current political status quo portend for the future, in terms of both plot and theme? What’s wrong with the Game of Thrones critical discourse? Is the show…evil? We’re answering all these questions and more. If you like what you hear, subscribe, rate, and review us on iTunes to help the Boiled Leather Rebellion emerge victorious!

Download Episode 49

Additional links:
Poor Quentyn’s tumblr.
Stefan’s review of the episode.
Sean’s review of the episode.
Sean’s “halftime report” for the season.
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.

Game of Thrones Season 6 Episode 5 "The Door" review

When I first watched season 3, I was absolutely impressed by how the writers were able to salvage some of the stuff that went wrong in season 2 (like Jon’s storyline) and put it into a coherent new storyline (Jon’s changed reasoning for joining Mance). It seems like season 6 is aspiring to so something similar. At least this episode could be titled “A Game of Payoffs”, because there are a lot of them. It is very concise, concentrated and thematically coherent, provides emotional high-points and incredible tension while also providing some character development, world-building and logically sound time-travel. What’s not to like?

Thursday, May 19, 2016

Supreme Court of Westeros, ruling 130

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 130! Our guest judge this week is David Getty, who runs his own Game of Thrones inspired site A Game of Thrones Guide. You can also follow him on Twitter.

Monday, May 16, 2016

Game of Thrones Season 6 Episode 4 "The Book of the Stranger" review

George R. R. Martin’s last two books, “A Feast for Crows” and “A Dance with Dragons”, have attracted their share of criticism for being overly long and taking meandering and detailed internal monologues and such to new heights. If I hear anyone uttering that critique again, I’ll point to this episode, in which I wanted to shout at the screen “too fast!” all the time. Seldom have the limits of the medium, the tight ten-episode schedule, been so apparent as in this episode, where the story rushes from beat to beat, at times drowning out the emotional highs in the process. This sounds worse than it is, because there were quite a lot of emotional high points in this pretty good episode, so let’s look at them one by one.

Friday, May 13, 2016

Supreme Court of Westeros, ruling 129

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 129! Our guest judge this week is Seth, a member of the community.

The Boiled Leather Audio Hour #48

Arianne Nation

We’re analyzing the new sample chapter from The Winds of Winter available at GeorgeRRMartin.com this week, and it’s all about Arianne Martell! In this episode of BLAH, Sean & Stefan investigate the latest sneak preview of the next volume of A Song of Ice and Fire, which Martin has previously read aloud at live appearances, as it takes us further into the future adventures of the Princess of Dorne. What do her discoveries tell us about Aegon and Jon Connington’s invasion? What do they portend for the South now that it’s torn between so many rival forces: Lannister, Tyrell, Faith Militant, Martell, the Golden Company, potential Targaryen loyalists, and who knows what else? And what do they teach us about Arianne herself? In just under half an hour we tackle everything from the likely condition of the Seven Kingdoms when the Others invade to whether or not releasing this chapter was a subtweet of the show’s handling of Dorne and more. Enjoy!

Download Episode 48

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

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

BLAH topics needed

Rejoice, everyone! The first Patreon poll is over. 33 people have voted, and the winner topic for us to do is...

The Theory of Everything: Analyzing Popular Theories from a Narrative & Thematic Perspective Part 2

For us that's a step into our classical territory, since that is what we started doing and what we really love to do. So we're really excited to be able to revisit popular theories once again! Of course, that means we actually need theories that you want us to examine. So please, drop as an email, a tweet, a comment, whatever's at hand, and send us your proposals, and we will build an episode for the ages! *needlessly epic theme music*

One caveat, though: given the rapid pace ofdevelopments right now with the show and the new sample chapter, we'll likely push this a little behind in schedule to do the time-sensitive stuff first.

Monday, May 9, 2016

Game of Thrones Season 6 Episode 3 "Oathbreaker" Review

After a bit of a rough start, Game of Thrones finds its footing again with its third episode, “Oathbreaker”. So, without further ado, let’s jump right into the dissection by storyline.

First, we start off in the far North as usual, where Bran sees the long-awaited sequence at the Tower of Joy. There’s not much not to like here: Ned’s band of seven is very diverse – there’s even a Dornishman in it for some reason! – and while the fanboy in me would have wished for more time and Gerold Hightower, it’s still done very well. The dialogue is an abbreviated and clarified version of the original from the first novel, but it works very well. I also like the look of Young Ned, close enough to the original to be believable. Having the One-Eyed Exposition Machine included in the scene also helps understanding quite a great deal. We also get the idea that the past can’t be changed and that Ned didn’t really hear Bran, as well as the clear indication that for some reason, Lyanna is here.

Thursday, May 5, 2016

Supreme Court of Westeros, ruling 128

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 128! Our guest judge this week is Jeff Hartline, the founder of the Wars and Politics of Ice and Fire blog and can be found on twitter.https://twitter.com/BryndenBFish

Monday, May 2, 2016

Game of Thrones Season 6 Episode 2 "Home" Review

The second episode of the sixth season is continuing a trend, it seems. It’s extremely uneven over the course of its running time in terms of storytelling quality, while at the same time being consistently great in almost any other department. This is a trend that arguably started in season 4, when “Game of Throne” finally found its footing, aesthetic-wise, with no scenes left that looked cheap or underfunded, while at the same time slipping more often in the actual storytelling department. So let’s take a minute and simply acknowledge what good work everyone is putting into this. The costumes are great, the camera-work is excellent, this episode especially offers some of the best shots this side of “Better Call Saul”, and the actors continue to put in great work, no matter how stupid the lines they are given. And with that moment of silence, we venture into the plot, where the moments of admiration are farther and more in between.

Sunday, May 1, 2016

Boiled Leather Audio Hour #47

Ice and Blackfyre (A Patreon Production)

What impact did the Blackfyre Rebellion have on the characters of A Song of Ice and Fire’s view of bastards? What impact might the Blackfyre Rebellion have had on our understanding of those views, had these civil wars of succession been introduced earlier in the series? What role will they play now that they’ve entered the story in a relatively big way, via “Young Griff” and Varys, The World of Ice and Fire, and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms? They’re good questions – so good, in fact, that we didn’t think them up ourselves at all. This episode, we’re tackling a topic specifically chosen for us by Rosie Gleeson of Dublin, Ireland, our first Patreon subscriber to donate at the $50 a month level. This earns her an episode of her own choosing, and so at her request we’ll be delving into the Blackfyres, bastardry, and both the in-story and meta reasons for Martin’s treatment of both. Thank you so much for your generosity, Rosie! And if any of you other listeners would like that kind of clout – or would care to pitch it at any level at all – our Patreon page is still accepting donations to make this a better podcast. Thanks for listening, and for supporting us any way you choose! (Moral support counts.)

Download Episode 47

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

The Nerdstream Era

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Boiled Leather Audio Hour #50

Supreme Court of Westeros, ruling 131

Monday, May 30, 2016

Game of Thrones Season 6 Episode 6 "Blood of my Blood" review

A Flight of Links

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

The banality of evil - Hizdahr zo Loraq

Monday, May 23, 2016

The Boiled Leather Audio Hour #49

Game of Thrones Season 6 Episode 5 "The Door" review

A Flight of Links

Thursday, May 19, 2016

Supreme Court of Westeros, ruling 130

Monday, May 16, 2016

Game of Thrones Season 6 Episode 4 "The Book of the Stranger" review

A Flight of Links

Friday, May 13, 2016

Supreme Court of Westeros, ruling 129

The Boiled Leather Audio Hour #48

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

BLAH topics needed

Monday, May 9, 2016

Game of Thrones Season 6 Episode 3 "Oathbreaker" Review

A Flight of Links

Thursday, May 5, 2016

Supreme Court of Westeros, ruling 128

Monday, May 2, 2016

Game of Thrones Season 6 Episode 2 "Home" Review

A Flight of Links

Sunday, May 1, 2016

Boiled Leather Audio Hour #47