Supreme Court of Westeros, ruling 101

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.

Casting Call: If you want to be a judge, please email us!

And now, up to ruling 101! Our guest judge this week is 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 third time as a member of the Supreme Court of Westeros.

Supreme Court of Westeros, ruling 100

And it is there! For 100 rulings, Amin and I have delivered verdicts on questions from the fandom, aided by alternating guest judges. To mark out 100th anniversary, we have looked way back to our humble beginnings, when this little endevour was still "Stefan's Theory Hour" and I invited Amin, Steven Attewell and Sean T. Collins to maek its 50th anniversary with a podcast about the topic. So, we're doing that again - Sean T. Collins, Amin and I dissect questions that have been collected exclusively for the 100th ruling, and we do so in a massive podcast. You find it here. 

Correction: Contrary to what was stated in the episode, Steven Attewell was not part of the last anniversary. Sorry for the mixup.

Boiled Leather Audio Hour #42

Fire and Blood: The Third Reich

We’re traveling from Westeros to Nazi Germany in this unusual—and, to us, urgent—episode of the Boiled Leather Audio Hour. Why are we venturing so far afield from our usual topics of discussion and debate? Because we’ve always believed that A Song of Ice and Fire, like life itself, is best viewed through an unsparing ethical and historical lens. Lately, however, that lens has been clouded. In recent weeks, numerous right-wing politicians—most notably Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson and his supporters in the United States—have distorted and repurposed the rise of Adolf Hitler and the roots of the Holocaust to suit their preexisting positions. Astonishingly, in the day since this podcast was recorded, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu followed suit. We believe this to be an act of tremendous disrespect for the dead, one that also does a grave disservice to the living. Given our personal and professional interests in this pivotal epoch in history, which have shaped our interaction with ASoIaF in ways large and small, we decided to explore the era’s real lessons as best we could.

What role did privately held weaponry and paramilitary organizations actually play both in the Nazi Party’s ascent to power and the resistance against it? How should we view Europe’s failure to act in the face of Hitler’s belligerence, and Germany’s failure to capitulate in the face of certain defeat? What parallels can be drawn between the forces that fueled the war Hitler ignited and those at play in Westeros and Essos? What makes World War II different enough from other conflicts for the likes of Vietnam-era conscientious objector George R.R. Martin to say it was worth fighting? Is there such a thing as a “good war” at all? In this experiment of an episode, we try to answer those questions.

Two notes before we proceed:

1) We are deeply indebted to the work of the historians Ian Kershaw and Richard J. Evans, particularly Kershaw’s two-volume Hitler biography and Evans’s Third Reich trilogy. 

2) On a much lighter note, this episode (hopefully—with iTunes, god only knows) marks the debut of our brand new logo, created by Sean’s partner, Julia Gfrörer. We are in her debt.

Download Episode 42

Additional links:

Mirror.

The work of Ian Kershaw.

The work of Richard J. Evans.

All Leather Must Be Boiled’s Ian Kershaw tag.

Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History series on the Eastern Front.

Previous episodes.

Podcast RSS feed.

iTunes page.

Sean’s blog.

Stefan’s blog.

A Flight of Links

- Favorite ASOIAF chapters
- Damphair's rebellion
- Lovely passage
- Who will die in TWOW
- Sansa meta
- What really killed the dinosaurs?  
- The White Walkers aren't good
- Pulp Fiction in Breaking Bad 
- The collaborative brillance of The Martian 
- Tarantino likes his own movies 
- Steam machine review of sorts
- Euron's wizard eye
- Wyman Manderly's imminent death
- Arya XI

Supreme Court of Westeros, ruling 99

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.

Casting Call: If you want to be a judge, please email us!

And now, up to ruling 98! Our guest judge this week is Talha Naushad, a professional researcher working in the middle east. When he is not working, he is dabbling his wits in contemporary history and politics and immersing himself in all things concerning A Song of Ice and Fire. He is a member of the community at JonSnow123 at Tower of the Hand and usually lurks around various forums, blogs & podcasts engrossing himself in the theories and analysis of the ASOIAF material and show.

A Flight of Links

- Alan Sepinwall about Fear the Walking Dead season 1
- And Sean T. Collins
- In what can only become a major artistic debacle, German trash-channel RTL wants to produce a ten-hour-miniseries about Hitler's life, "showing the fascist dictator form a radical new angle". Oh. My. God. (German article)
- Trailer for the Good Dinosaur
- Ant Man 2 announced
- How Jon and Dany connect
- Summerhall
- Westeros development plan
- Bran VI
- Catelyn VI 
-A look back at System Shock
- FarCry Primal sounds interesting
- This looks good
- In case you didn't know
- Hail Caesar trailer 
- DAMN IT MAKES SENSE

Supreme Court of Westeros, ruling 98

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.

Casting Call: If you want to be a judge, please email us!

And now, up to ruling 98! Our guest judge this week is Rick Davids, a student of Linguistics in a German city that doesn't exist (like an uncool R'hlyeh). In his spare time he writes, reads and procrastinates. He has been a fan of ASOIAF since the early 2000's and blames GRRM for ruining his appetite for fantasy with his unmatched masterpiece.

A Flight of Links

- Sean T. Collins rips into yet another episode of Fear the Walking Dead
- Yathzee reviews Until Dawn
- The Martian reviw
- Nintento is the bad guy here
- Why do games need to restart when you change graphic settings? 
- Mad Max is generic
- Pacific Rim II indefinitely on hold
- Gears of War got a superflous HD remake
- An annotated history of boss fight battles
- Why you shouldn't root for Littlefinger
- Favorite/least favorite POV
- Good catch about Tyrion
- Really good stuff about Feastdance
- Meta about the battle at the Green Fork
- Damon Lindelof about the pressures of producing television
- Daeron II analysis

Supreme Court of Westeros 100th ruling coming up!

The Supreme Court of Westeros will be going into its 100th ruling only three weeks hence, so we'd very much like to do something special. A fan request that we got often was to do a special podcast, like we did back when The Nerdstream Era celebrated the 50th issue of Stefan's Theory Hour, the precursor to the Supreme Court. And, well, that's what we're going to do. 

So, if you have any question that you want to have answered in that podcast by an esteemed panel of judges, please shoot away. You can even give in questions that we already did, because the atmosphere and the panel will be different. We will then choose totally arbitrarily from all of these questions. So, fire away!

Supreme Court of Westeros, ruling 97

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.

Casting Call: If you want to be a judge, please email us!

And now, up to ruling 97! Our guest judge this week is Logan Luce, an ecological consultant and nerd. He blogs about ASoIaF, among other things, on tumblr.

Boiled Leather Audio Hour #41

The Walking Dead in Westeros

We’re comparing two of the biggest shows on television in this episode of the Boiled Leather Audio Hour. One of them is an adaptation of a popular staple of nerd culture—a genre work that had only appeared in print before—which has translated its bleak themes, wide scope, and controversial use of violence into a modern-day ratings blockbuster. The other is Game of Thrones.
That’s right—the BLAH Boys are taking on The Walking Dead, and its current spinoff Fear the Walking Dead, by contrasting the shows and their source material to Game of Thrones and "A Song of Ice and Fire". How does their treatment of violence in an unforgiving world of real and supernatural menace differ? What do the relationships between the original works by George R.R. Martin, Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, and Charlie Adlard and their adaptations by David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, and AMC’s land of a thousand showrunners reveal about their respective ideas, ideals, aesthetics, and ethics? Which shows really deserve our moral outrage, and why? We’ll be examining all these questions and more. And one of us, at least, will be getting really freaking worked up. Enjoy!

Download Episode 41

Mirror.
Sean on the Fear the Walking Dead pilot.
Sean on the most recent Fear the Walking Dead episode.
Sean on The Walking Dead.
Stefan on The Walking Dead.
Previous episodes.
Podcast RSS feed.
iTunes page.
Sean’s blog.
Stefan’s blog.

A Flight of Links

- Nostalgia Critic reviews Mad Max Fury Road. While the review is hilarious, I'm kind of concerned as to inside the bubble it is and how much knowledge about the conversation it requires to understand at least half of it.
- Prometheus 2 doesn't sound so much better than the first. 
- Heroes: Reborn seems like a pile of shit, according to The Atlantic and Vox
- Alan Sepinwall also doesn't like it
- Why the Manix Pixie Dream Girl won't go away
- The Big Short trailer. I read the book a couple of years ago and the main impression I got was that all those guys are basically sociopaths.
- Would you have guessed? Jon Snow isn't dead. 
- Pamela looks interesting
- Tyrion X

Aaaand Poor Quentyn:
- Jeyne Poole in Braavos
- Arianne
- Arya and the House of Black and White
- More of it
- Lyanna and Rhaegar
- What if Tommen dies early? 
- Theon and Ramsay
- Howland Reed as the High Septon
- Sandor
- More Sandor
- Qyburn
- The Sorrows

Supreme Court of Westeros, ruling 96

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.

Casting Call: If you want to be a judge, please email us!

And now, up to ruling 96! Our guest judge this week is Craig, a long-time geek and ASOIAF reader, starting when ACOK came out and currently on the fourth re-read. When not drinking coffee from his Targaryen stein, or searching the web in hopes of a secret TWOW release date, he listens to Excel podcasts (and BLAH, obviously) and occasionally comments on ToTH as "Tyrion".

My favorite YouTube channels

I have stopped watching TV well over a decade ago, but recently, I started to watch YouTube a lot. Subscribing to channels I like and checking updates on them has become part of my routine leisure time activities, much like reading up my selection of magazines and newspapers. Since many YouTube channels thrive on mouth-to-mouth-propaganda and you can gain new insights with new channels, I thought I'd share my favorites so you might find new stuff that interests you and can point me to stuff that might interest me in the comments. In the following, I'll give you a quick introduction to each channel (in alphabetical order) with a little commentary. Let's have at it. 

A Flight of Links

 - Will Rebecca Ferguson play Captain Marvel?
- The emptiness of George Lucas
- Star Wars Ring Theory
- I loved the ones of Crusader: No Remorse and Crusader: No Regret and of course the Wing Commander series
- The history of epic fantasy, part 9, part 10, part 11, part 12
- Will The Winds of Winter come out in 2016?
- Legacy of the Void opening cinematic
- The German Spiegel has a piece about Emilia Clarke's distate for HBO's sex scenes
- How Sons of Anarchy got bad
- And what a fucking mess Kurt Sutter's new show is
- Low Winters review
- Sean T. Collins rips some more into Fear the Walking Dead
- Why Mad Max should gain a screenplay oscar
- Polygon has a feature about Verdun
- Jon V
- StarCraft II Legacy of the Void release date announced. Do you care? I don't.
- Mad Max review by Yathzee
- Why do games take up so much space on the hard drive? 
- Mandatory love for Metal Gear Solid?
- Fall TV: the best and the worst
- Sansa in the Vale
- The Women of Aegon IV part 2
- The Hungergames trailer sucks
- The politics of Aegon IV
- Varys and Aerys II, good speculation
- Pacific Rim 2 cancelled. Sad news indeed. 
-World of Warships review
- Why Metal Gear Solid plays stealthy

Some more Poor Quentyn meta. Will he ever stop churning out great stuff at that pace?
- The endgame of the Riverlands storyline
- Jaime and Brienne in TWOW
- Lady Stoneheart and Aerys
- The Others and otherworldly influences
- Cersei raping Taena
- Did Doran purposefully abandon Quentyn?
- More Deep Ones
- Littlefinger
- Quellon Greyjoy
- Theon
- What if Tywin hadn't found out about Tysha?
- Roose Bolton's plan for his own endgame
- Why is ADWD called that?
- The TV show vs. the books
- The Prologues of TWOW and ADOS
-  Margaery

Supreme Court of Westeros, ruling 95

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.

Casting Call: If you want to be a judge, please email us!

And now, up to ruling 94! Our guest judge this week is Michael, a member of the community who also serves the court as a clerk, checking our questions and helping us with keeping it all straight, for which we are immeasurably grateful.

A Flight of Links

- Hateful Eight first trailer
- We come as friends review
- How crappy SciFi movies get made, an example
- Another trailer for glorious looking "The Martian"
- Queen of Earth review
- I so hope that this will become reality
- MacBeth also looks nice
- Some stuff about West Side Story
- Interesting long-term-perspective on Superhero-movies
- The visuals of Earth Defense Force
 - If I read stuff like this, I always feel that D&D is lightyears behind many other RPG in, you know, roleplaying. 
- Great meta about whether or not Cersei is a sexist character
- Steven Attewell stomps over a lame attempt to defend Ironborn culture
- Adam Withehead's series on the history of epic fantasy, part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8
- First trailer for HBO's Westworld
- The new Hitman ripoff
- King's Quest and the demise of the Adventure genre
- What does the end of Moore's Law mean for video games?
-Yahtzee has another take on the death of the Adventure genre
- As does Phil Hornshaw.
- Yahtzee takes a shot at King's Quest as well.
- Blood of the Conquerer, first part of a series about Aegon's plotline in TWOW 
- The Ladies of Aegon III 
- An analysis of Daeron I, Baelor I and Viserys II
- The ladies of Aegon IV
- More about Star Citizen
- Speculation about the future of the MCU

New round of Poor Quentyn meta:
- Robert raped Cersei
- Origin of the Pink Letter
- Why The Mystery Knight is great
- A bit of Cersei characterization
- READ THIS JON CHARACTERIZATION BECAUSE IT'S THAT GOOD
- I should stop recommending because you need to read all of his stuff, but check out this Theon meta in particular
- And more about Cersei, Tyrion, Tywin and empathy
- Little nugget about the Greatjon
- Shit I'm doing it again: READ THIS
- I agree on the casting.
- The future importance of Tormund Giantsbane
- Good points about Feastdance being "bloated"
- Was Jon sending his buddies away a mistake?
- Doing it again: MANCE RAYDER META TO READ
- Yes to these thoughts about Daemon...
- ...like this one...
- ...and this one.
- Great meta about Beric Dondarrion, the Hound's helm and identity
- Thanks
- Sarella meta
- Donnu if I linked this Bran meta before
- Varys' fall
- What's the endgame for Oldtown?
- Bran and Winterfell

Supreme Court of Westeros, ruling 94

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.

We're rapidly approaching the 100th episode! If you have brillant ideas about what we should do with it, now's your chance!

And now, up to ruling 94! Our guest judge this week is Sean T. Collins, co-host of the Boiled Leather Audio Hour. He writes on his blog All Leather Must Be Boiled and is a pop-cultural freelance writer for many outlets including Rolling Stone and Wired.

The Dark Eye: The World

After my introduction to The Dark Eye (TDE), which you can check out here, I am today covering the world in which it is set. I am not planning on giving you a detailled overview over countries and cultures because you can read all of that up yourself if you are interested (which I hope you are by the end of this series), but rather to give you a sense of how it all feels in the end. So, without further ado, let's take a look at the world of The Dark Eye. 

1) Introduction.

2) The World. You are here.

3) The Rules. 

4) The History (of the system)

Still no country for Old Gamers

Exactly a year ago, I jumped onto the Anita Sarkeesian bandwagon with both feet. I had encountered her "Tropes vs. Women" series roughly two weeks prior, which got me to really challenge some of the beliefs I had held previously, and when in late August 2014 the #gamergate scandal fully broke, I wrote an article called "No country for Old Gamers" to stake out my position, which is pretty deep in the Sarkeesian camp. This position, I have to say, was a personal break for me in many respects and a harbinger of my turnaround on other related issues in social policy as well, and it produced some serious stress in friendships in which the other guys weren't making the same turnaround, and it still is. In the discussion that I had with some readers in the original article, I had an argument with an anonymous reader about whether or not Sarkeesian was hurting the case, how the #gamergate movement's proclaimed issues ("ethics in video game journalism") and how it would play out in the medium term. He challenged me to take a look again after a month, and I said that this was too short a time and we should make it a year. Well, today it's a year. So, let's have a look how the situation is today, but first, the last bits of the discussion for context: