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!

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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.

The BLAH Salon: Adult Swim’s Jason DeMarco

Our special interview series returns at last! This episode, Sean & Stefan are pleased to welcome Jason DeMarco, Senior Vice President/Creative Director for Adult Swim On-Air. Jason’s worn many hats at the venerable nighttime animation/live-action/surrealist powerhouse: He’s the co-creator of its anime/action block Toonami, the person responsible for the network’s distinctive promos, and the unofficial “musical director” for both Adult Swim’s on-air sound and the albums and singles it’s released from a variety of hip-hop, electronic, and rock acts. He’s also a longtime fan of both A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones. Jason joined us for a wide-ranging discussion of the books, the show, the network, the seismic changes television has seen during his 20-year career, the connections between animation and comics, how those fields are viewed in America, Japan, and Europe respectively, the difference between European-American fantasy and its Japanese-genre counterpart, and much more. Cue up your Run the Jewels records and listen in!

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Additional links:

Jason on Twitter

Jason on ask.fm

Adult Swim

Sean’s article on the legacy of Space Ghost Coast to Coast and Adult Swim

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.

5. What’s up with Euron Greyjoy?

“I am the storm, brother. The first storm and the last.” Tough talk from a guy whose first act as King of the Iron Islands, after murdering his older brother Balon for the title, is to have his fleet stolen from him by his niece and nephew. But in George R.R. Martin’s source novels, Euron is a true menace — a maniacal nihilist pirate who dabbles in sorcery and revels in cruelty, like a seafaring Ramsay Bolton with magic powers. And note the similarity between how he describes himself and how Jon Snow describes the White Walkers: “I promise you, friend, the true enemy won’t wait out the storm. He brings the storm.” Is Greyjoy a human agent of the Night King? Is he simply crazy enough to wreak havoc regardless of the consequences? Will his new fleet attack Daenerys or invade Westeros? Whatever his destination, it sure seems like he’s being groomed to be the next big bad guy now that the Boltons and Sparrows are out of the way.

In the last (sniff) of my annual Game of Thrones traditions, I wrote up seven big questions I’ve got for next season now that this one’s wrapped up over at Rolling Stone. None of them are “How did Varys get back to Meereen that fast?”

The most direct contrast between this season and its direct predecessor is the relative position of its leaders. By the end of Season Five, Cersei had been imprisoned, beaten, publicly humiliated, and placed under house arrest. Daenerys lost control of the city of Meereen and got dropped by her dragon in the middle of hostile Dothraki territory. Sansa endured unbearable sexual violence until she and Theon managed to run for their lives while their tormenter Ramsay was busy defeating Stannis. And most strikingly, Jon Snow was freaking dead.

Where are they now? In a much stronger place, though whether that’s for better or for worse depends on the rulers involved. Cersei vaporized all her enemies, from the High Sparrow to Margaery Baratheon, in a Night of the Long Knives–style act of score settling. It cost her the life of her beloved son Tommen, who killed himself when he heard the news, but that cleared the path for her to take the Iron Throne herself. After taking down the Dothraki khals, Dany retook Meereen with their men; now she appears poised to do the same to Westeros at the head of a massive all-star alliance. Like her former running buddy Theon, who helped broker his sister’s alliance with the Khaleesi, Sansa played an integral part in defeating the Boltons and securing her half-brother Jon’s claim on the Winterfell (perhaps to her own chagrin).

Then there’s Lord Snow himself, who by the way is no longer dead (!). In the most dramatic turnaround of all, considering where he started the season (i.e. as a corpse), he has been crowned the new King in the North. The so-called “White Wolf” is now the undisputed leader of his region’s great houses, the knights of the Vale,  and his wildling allies; no doubt whatever’s left of the Night’s Watch would follow his lead as well. And now that we know via Bran’s psychic flashback that Jon’s DNA contains both wolf and dragon strains — he’s actually the son of Lyanna Stark and Dany’s older brother Prince Rhaegar Targaryen, who died before she was born — he has a decent claim on being ruler of a whole lot more than just his native land.

I took a big-picture look at Game of Thrones Season Six for Rolling Stone.

The ‘Game of Thrones’ Season 6 Post-Game Show

Like Arya Stark joining the kitchen staff at the Twins, we’re just gonna get right down to business here: This episode, Sean & Stefan discuss the just-concluded sixth season of Game of Thrones, from the finale on down, for a full (boiled leather audio) hour. As a special bonus made possible by our Patreon subscribers, Stefan’s got a new mic, which means this ep sounds better than we ever have before. Enjoy!

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Additional links:

Sean’s overview of Season 6.

Sean’s review of the finale.

Sean’s ranking of all 60 episodes.

Links to all of Sean’s Game of Thrones writing.

Stefan’s review of the finale.

Stefan’s Game of Thrones tag.

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.

7. “The Winds of Winter” (Season 6, Episode 10)
Rarely, if ever, have the stakes of “the great game” been as clear as they are in this year’s season finale. In King’s Landing, Cersei Lannister eliminates all of her political enemies in one fell swoop and becomes undisputed Queen of the Seven Kingdoms — but loses her son Tommen to suicide in the bargain. In the Riverlands, Walder Frey toasts to victory over his enemies — then gets killed by Arya Stark after she serves him his own sons for dinner. In Winterfell, Jon Snow is crowned King in the North by his grateful lords — and though Sansa Stark bears a more direct claim, they may well be right anyway, since he’s secretly the blood of the Dragon. And in the East, Daenerys sets sail for the Seven Kingdoms at the head of a massive alliance between the Dothraki, the Unsullied, the Ironborn, the Dornish, and the Tyrells — and, of course, her dragons. Rulers rise, rulers fall, and winter is officially here.

I ranked every single episode of Game of Thrones in ascending order of quality — 60 in all, from the series premiere to last night’s season finale — for Vulture. This is my wildfire explosion.

it’s the silence of the opening minutes that stays with you. Composer Ramin Djawaid’s score pulls a delicate, melancholy piano suite from out of nowhere as the major players in Cersei’s trial — the Queen Mother, Tommen, Margaery, the High Sparrow, Loras Tyrell — wordlessly prepare for what’s to come. Then, when it’s over — Loras mutilated and humiliated, the King blocked by his mom’s mountainous bodyguard, Lancel Lannister failing to stop the enormous stockpile of wildfire beneath the Sept from detonating — there’s the silence of the young ruler’s room. He watches the city burn, realizes who and what he’s lost, steps away to take off his crown while the camera still lingers on the empty sky through his window. Then he returns and quietly leaps from the ledge. It’s the most devastating sequence in the episode, as sad as Samwell Tarly’s trip to the massive library in the maesters’ Citadel is uplifting. Both moments would have been just effective if you’d had your TV on mute.

I reviewed tonight’s excellent season finale of Game of Thrones for Rolling Stone. I cried about Tommen.

Which brings us to the Red Wedding. A pop-culture touchstone the instant it took place, this bloody on-screen slaughter of House Stark’s leadership — most notably King Robb, his mother Catelyn, his wife Talisa and their unborn child — was payback by crusty old Walder Frey for the insult he suffered when the Young Wolf broke his promise to marry a Frey daughter. It was the ultimate revenge killing, for the pettiest of reasons. But more importantly, it represented as great a shock to the storyline as Ned’s death did. Before that fateful night, we’d assumed that while Dany’s dragons and the White Walkers would wind up moving to center stage at some point, the Stark/Lannister conflict would serve as a series throughline. Wrong. When Cat’s throat was cut, our understanding of what the show was about went with her. Suddenly the Lions were in charge, becoming the show’s ersatz protagonists simply by virtue of survival. A change that big required a massacre this graphic.

The same logic underlies the show’s most controversial and upsetting acts of violence: those against women and children. On this show, kings have ordered the murder of infants. Children have been sacrificed to White Walkers and the Red God. Peasant kids have been skinned, hanged, and burned just as a ruse, or devoured by the dragons their mother hoped would be humanity’s saviors. Young slaves have been crucified to send a message, young prisoners executed out of rage or simply for convenience. And from monsters like Joffrey and Ramsay to schemers like Littlefinger and Roose Bolton to ostensible heroes like Tyrion, women are treated like cattle: bargained for, bred with, and slaughtered at will.

It’s these deaths, whether they involve major players or minor characters, that are toughest to endure and most important to think about. Violence, like water, flows downhill, and inevitably drowns those most vulnerable to it. Depicting it in any other way would betray Game of Thrones’ central contention that however you dress it up, power is seized by the sword, with all the carnage that entails.

I wrote about the different ways Game of Thrones has handled death scenes — and there are a lot of different ways it’s handled death scenes — for Rolling Stone.

This is why complaints that Ramsay was too one-note in his cruelty miss the mark. Does he have a “character arc”? Not unless you count his legitimization by his father, which only made him more of what he already was. Does he grow, change, surprise? Nope — once he led Theon back to that X-shaped crucifix, we knew what he was, and he never challenged that knowledge. But there’s more to a character than this kind of by-the-numbers analysis lets on. There are the intangibles of Iwan Rheon’s performance — how he made the Bastard’s demented mirth feel so striking and singular amid an ocean of comparably cruel characters. There are the themes he helped articulate better than any other character — the inherent unfairness of Westeros’ class system, the way rich and powerful men can quite literally get away with murder. And there’s the spectacular nature of his brutality — how his extreme bloodlust forced every viewer to confront our own complicated feelings about violent stories, on-screen and off. We’re glad the bastard’s gone, but it’s good we got to know him.

Don’t believe the hype: Ramsay Bolton was a terrible person and a great character. I explain why for Rolling Stone.

Like the Mona Lisa removed from da Vinci’s verdant landscape and plunked in front of Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, Sansa Stark’s smile at the end of “The Battle of the Bastards” is all the more enigmatic for the madness of its context. Here is the young woman who’s endured the attentions of a long succession of the worst people in Westeros: Joffrey Baratheon, Cersei Lannister, Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish, Lysa Arryn, Roose and Ramsay Bolton. Here is the heir to House Stark, so far as anyone knows — the torchbearer for Ned’s decency in the face of injustice and Catelyn’s tenacious defense of those she loves. Here is a survivor, who made it out of murderously abusive conditions under which her hot-tempered siblings would not likely have lasted half as long. Here’s the generational hope for the North, the way Daenerys Targaryen and Yara Greyjoy represent similar paths to a better future. Here she is … grinning as a man is eaten alive by dogs.

What’s wrong with this picture?

I wrote about Sansa, Ramsay, and Game of Thrones’ long history of portraying revenge as an inherently ugly enterprise for Vulture.

And in the end, the late Lord Bolton dies in a manner sadistic enough that even he’d approve of it, had he not been on the receiving end: fed to his own starving dogs by Sansa, who walks away smiling from the carnage. It’s a complex and unsettling set of images, even putting aside the shot of a gigantic hound tearing a man’s jaw off. Everything about it uses the cinematic hallmarks of badassery: the poetic justice of the method of execution; the exchange of quips and one-liners that eventually leaves the loser speechless; the blasé, almost slow-motion stroll away from the carnage; the vengeance-is-mine smirk. Certainly no one would begrudge Lady Stark her satisfaction, especially given the codes and customs of the place and time.

But righteous revenge is almost always an oxymoron. That goes double on this show: Theon’s betrayal of Robb Stark was repaid by a fate worse than death; Tyrion’s payback against his awful father Tywin also involved the Imp strangling his ex-girlfriend to death; the murderers of both the Hound’s religious community and Jon Snow himself died slowly at the ends of nooses; Arya’s kill-list victims have gone out in unpleasantly gruesome fashion one by one; and on and on it goes. Seen in that light, Sansa’s smile over her abuser’s hideous death is far from the simple “fuck yeah” moment it might seem. Again, there’s some question as to whether the series sees it this way, or if we’re intended to take her “cool guys don’t look at explosions” exit at face value. Given the unsparingly awful battle that preceded it, it seems safer to assume that it’s intended to make you uncomfortable. What kind of world would it be, what kind of people would we be, if we weren’t?

I reviewed last night’s Game of Thrones, which made me uncomfortable like a show’s supposed to, for Rolling Stone. My advice for processing this episode: 1. Don’t read the comments; 2. Don’t complain that Aquaman’s wife doesn’t have gills.

All of this is what makes boiling Jaime and Brienne’s relationship down to “You think they’re fucking?” so silly. It may be ex-prosecutor Marcia Clark, of all people, who’s best put this into perspective. She and former colleague Christopher Darden formed this year’s other great star-crossed-romance story line in FX’s stunning docudrama The People v. O.J. Simpson. Clark has spoken eloquently of their bond, marked by similar forced intimacy, breaches of trust, and mutual understanding: “Fact of the matter is, Chris Darden and I were closer than lovers. And unless you’ve been through what we went through, you can’t possibly know what that means.” I’m guessing Jaime and Brienne would have more than an inkling.

Which is not to deny the actual erotic potential of those two big, beautiful, blond-haired, brokenhearted warriors going at it. Repurposing the ideal physicality and emotional intensity of your favorite fictional characters into the stuff of sexual fantasy is an entirely righteous enterprise, or at the very least a harmless one. If your goal is to get off, by all means hop on that ship and sail off into the postorgasmic sunset. It can even provide readers or viewers, particularly those whose sexuality has been marginalized, with vital grist for imagining and thus understanding their own needs and desires. The problem with shipping arises when the entire spectrum of intimacy between adults is reduced to the romantic or the sexual. It does a relationship like Jaime and Brienne’s a tremendous disservice to flatten it into “will they or won’t they.” In the ways that matter most, they already have.

I wrote an essay on the history of Brienne of Tarth and Jaime Lannister’s relationship, and the limits of shipping on Game of Thrones and beyond, for Vulture.

9. Stannis Baratheon
To some fans, he’s Stannis the Mannis, the guy whose uncompromising will to win — and last-minute rescue of the Night’s Watch at the Wall — makes him the one true king of Westeros. To others he’s a glowering goon whose pursuit of the Iron Throne cost him his humanity — and his brother, wife, and daughter their lives. In the end, he himself seemed to take the latter position, surrendering to Brienne of Tarth’s sword as if he accepted her guilty verdict. “The good does not wash out the bad, nor the bad the good,” he once said of human behavior. He was living proof.

I ranked the 30 best villains on Game of Thrones for Rolling Stone. On this show, “villain” can be very broadly defined, which is what made the assignment so interesting.

“The things we do for love.” When Jaime Lannister says this to Edmure Tully, his prisoner and bargaining chip, he’s quoting no less an authority than himself. These were the same words he uttered just before he tossed Bran Stark out the window to cover up his sexual relationship with his own sister, Cersei. Now he’s using them to describe the intensity of his love for her — confident that his prisoner’s feelings for his own family (especially the young son he’s never seen) will lead him to surrender the castle of Riverrun to save them. His gamble pays off, of course. If there’s one thing that tonight’s episode of Game of Thrones — “No One” — gets right, it’s how much our desire to see the people we care about one more time can motivate us. That, and how much leaving them behind can hurt us.

I wrote about last night’s Game of Thrones, which I thought was dynamite, for Rolling Stone.

In its latest episode, Game of Thrones carved the heart out of one of its central story lines. When “The Broken Man” revealed that Sandor “The Hound” Clegane had put down his sword and taken up with a religious community in the Riverlands, it was echoing a passage from A Feast for Crows, the fourth volume in author George R.R. Martin’s epic-fantasy saga A Song of Ice and Fire. But in that echo, something sounded very different. The antiwar monologue known as “the broken man speech” that made this section of the books so crucial to understanding the whole series was removed and replaced, with a much darker outcome for its participants. And that change demands special scrutiny.

[…]

So when we consider the show and the book’s treatment of this plotline, it’s worth resisting the instinct to pit the two approaches against each other. Snap judgments do a disservice to the challenging, upsetting, and ultimately rewarding themes that Game of Thrones has chosen to tackle. Yes, while it’s difficult for even the biggest skeptic of the “but this isdifferent!” book-to-show style of criticism to resist an apples-to-apples comparison, there are whole orchards to consider.

These are the opening and closing paragraphs of an essay I wrote on how Game of Thrones handled Septon Meribald’s “broken man speech,” and what conclusions we can or should draw from it, for Vulture. I hope you’ll read the rest.

Sansa Stark (1:10)
The Queen in the North! From her head-in-the-clouds early days to her current role as a realpolitik rallying point against the Boltons and the White Walkers, Ned’s eldest daughter has learned from the countless torments she’s suffered to be strong while still being decent. If anyone will lead Westeros into its post-apocalyptic future, it’s her.

Jon Snow (10:1)
He’s the prince that was promised, to hear Melisandre tell it — the man to lead humanity against the Long Night. Here’s the thing about messiahs, though: They tend to sacrifice themselves to save the world. Granted, Jon’s done so already, falling to the blades of the Night’s Watch mutineers but returning to fight another day. Unfortunately, his supernatural luck can’t last forever. Expect Lord Snow to go down swinging in the final battle against the Night King.

Arya Stark (Even)
More like Arya Questionmark: Now that she’s spurned the Faceless Men, will the Starks’ wild child pick up where she left off with her kill list and make a kamikaze run into King’s Landing? Will she reunite with her old running buddy the Hound, or her siblings Jon and Sansa — or maybe even her direwolf Nymeria, who is still roaming around out there somewhere after she shooed the beast away way back in Season One? The answer will help determine whether her story is a cautionary tale about children in a violent world or a moving message of rescue and redemption.

Over at Rolling Stone I predicted the odds of survival for every major character on Game of Thrones. As always when I predict things, these are definitive and not subject to debate. Don’t @ me.

When Game of Thrones does a cold open, you know something big is about to go down. Tonight’s well-paced and well-packed episode — “The Broken Man” — is only the third time in the series’ history that the show has started with a pre-credits scene, the others being the Season Four premiere and the pilot. What warranted the break from tradition? The presence of two of the most intimidating actors in HBO history: Deadwood‘s Ian McShane, making his first (and only) appearance as a cheerfully profane man of the cloth called Ray, and the return of Rory McCann as Sandor Clegane, the motherfucking Hound himself. It turns out the mad dog of Westeros survived and joined a religious community in the Riverlands. After a lifetime of violence, a new life of peace was within his grasp. Seen in that light, the episode’s final shot, of Sandor reaching down and picking up the Axe of Vengeance, is crushingly depressing.

But more than that, it represents a surprising lapse on the part of the show itself — a Walking Dead style conflation of principled nonviolence with fatal naïveté. Ray’s belief that “it’s never too late to come back,” functioned as, well, a ray of sunshine in GoT’s bleak world. There’s no reason such faith in humanity need be portrayed as Pollyannaish; as Ray himself explains, it’s the result of bitterly earned shame in having participated in war atrocities himself. But the extreme sanction he and his flock face for this belief — slaughtered in minutes, with the septon hanging from the eaves of his own house of worship — makes him seem like a sucker, not a sage. He looks idiotic for leaving his followers defenseless, and Sandor’s Rick Grimes–style decision to murder the perpetrators seems like the just and moral choice.

You can say “Violence is a disease — you don’t cure a disease by spreading it to more people” all you like; you can even sincerely believe it. But actions speak louder than words. And by wrapping up this subplot in such spectacularly grim fashion, the series is shouting “kill or be killed,” at least in this circumstance.

I’m excerpting this part but you should really read the whole thing, because I had both negative and positive feelings about tonight’s Game of Thrones, which I reviewed for Rolling Stone.

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!

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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.

There’s a lot going on in tonight’s episode of Game of Thrones, entitled “Blood of My Blood.” Isn’t there always? With so many characters involved in so many storylines spread across so many locations, the sprawl is simply incomparable to anything else on television. But that backstage sequence stands out because it demonstrates how nimble this series can be, despite its massive scope. Writer Bryan Cogman and director Jack Bender took time out of their busy schedule of zombies, dragons, and Dothraki hordes to craft an intimate exchange between two strangers, both of whom know the advantages and disadvantages of playing the role of someone they’re not. Yes, this gives the audience a big stand-up-and-cheer moment when Arya returns to stop the assassination she’d set in motion, but that’s almost beside the point. Revealing character through conversation, even if it’s buried deep beneath layers of deception, is what matters here.

I reviewed tonight’s wide-ranging Game of Thrones, which I found delightful, for Rolling Stone.