Episode 306 – And We Remember
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HBO releases the first teaser trailer for Game of Thrones season 6, we are here to stab it into delicious pieces.
Two hosts deep, this episode captures fresh reactions to the new teaser.
Discussion Topics
Surprise, again
The ink
We have no idea
The ink is dry
Trolling, at its finest
Frame by frame
Listener theorying
Hodor
I totally agree about this being much more effective pre-campaign than some previous seasons. They are pulling Beyonces left and right by dropping epic teases out of nowhere.
Personally I appreciate the hell out of it. Keep it coming!
The biggest surprise would be if Jon’s actually dead for good, and all of his scenes are just flashbacks.
Matt,
Oh yes. Flashbacks to a time when, as a bearded child, Jon fought in Stark armor against the Boltons.
The ink is dry…
Does that mean WoW is done?!
I was all happy last week with the JS poster, and like you, thought that would have to carry us until the end of the year. So happy to log back on and see this yesterday! This is my first written response to it, mainly because my reaction was like yours – happy, appalled, excited, mystified and happy again. I’ve been mulling over my reactions, forming them with every rewatch, watched about 10 times. Honest. only 10. And when I listened to your taping and heard your excited laughter when it was done, I knew you wouldn’t think me crazy for being giddy happy over a 41 second sound bite.
My take on the dialogue is that Bran has been allowed to see these things for the first time and is overwhelmed to the point of losing his mind over the ferocity of the events that have befallen his family. Hence, the urgency in the Bloodraven’s elegant, beautiful voice explaining exactly what’s what and that there is nothing Bran can do about the past.
I was strangely revved watching all the scenes from the past. So were you, and we have seen these scenes time and again for five seasons: time to get used to the visual violence. We have places to go (Watchers on the Wall, live long!) to hash it all out. He’s still just a young boy who has only heard about a few of the events, but not seen anything. Imagine how his mind is blown. With
whom can he discuss his feelings or rage against the horror and unjustice? Just one gnarled old creature who’s telling him to chill, and Meera. I think he is trying to relay the horror to Meera.
“They have no idea what’s going to happen.” If they are trolling us, they did a good job. Can’t wait for April.
Luka Nieto,
Hahaha
From Wikipedia about Bran…..
“In 2000, Martin called Bran the hardest character to write:
Number one, he is the youngest of the major viewpoint characters, and kids are difficult to write about. I think the younger they are, the more difficult. Also, he is the character most deeply involved in magic, and the handling of magic and sorcery and the whole supernatural aspect of the books is something I’m trying to be very careful with. So I have to watch that fairly sharply. All of which makes Bran’s chapters tricky to write.”
INjustice. not unjustice. acccckkk, missed that in the edit.
Luka Nieto,
hahahaha
Luka Nieto,
Nicely done. 😀
Amazing last weeks (I’m happy too) Poster, Teaser, great news here…
HBO’s strategy for handling Jon Snow’s resurrection is amazing! 😉
It ends with Bran warging and saying, “They have no idea what’s going to happen.”
I think Bran is now entering the fight and they “won’t know what hit them.”
The casting job done for this show is nothing short of amazing. And it’s not like these characters are easy to act out…Brienne, Tyrion, Hodor, Stannis, Sweetrobin…they all absolutely nail their parts.
I’ve heard two or three sentences from Max Von Sidow and already I know they did it again. He’s going to be great.
Winter Ale is coming.
Mardawnelle,
Worth noting Rickon does not have a POV chapter. Does that mean he will be on the Bloton cross.
If everyone who does not have a PoV chapter is going on a Bolton Cross, then the biggest problem Planetos might have is underpopulation: there will be about 16 people left.
The fact that Rickon does not have a PoV chapter means one thing only: he does not meet the minimum requirement to be a protagonist.
(Also, Sue confirmed that Rickon is not someone on the crosses.)
Well, Bastards do mature faster than other people: and just because GRRM has forgotten to mention the Stark-Bolton War of 5 years earlier, it might still be there, right?!?!
What does this even mean. How can they be “trolling” us, regardless of the outcome? Remember, the people who put this together (who almost certainly are not be B&W, by the way: HBO employs people to do this sort of thing) always are trying to pitch things in general ways. Ideally, this should refer to many things: not just some specific, but several things. And there even is a reasonable probability that one or more of the people who devised this are aware of the fact that, for the first time, the season will be entirely about things that have not been in the books.
So, look for it to be a multiple entendre.
So Areo does?
Looks like the Force awakens
If by “does?” you mean “meet a minimum requirement to be a protagonsti?”, then: yes. (If not, then: I don’t know!) However, this is where we use the phase: “Necessary, but not sufficient.” Being a PoV character is necessary to be a protagonist: but it is not sufficient. What else is necessary is that the character has some sort of identity crisis that (in conjunction with others by that character or by other protagonists) creates a story.
Areo is a case of a PoV characters are used to provide 3rd party development of true protagonists. GRRM did that a lot in Crows, which is part of why that book feels so out-of-place in the series: otherwise, there are fairly few 3rd party POV chapters in the series.
According to the Urban Dictionary one definition of a troll is : 1a. Noun
One who posts a deliberately provocative message to a newsgroup or message board with the intention of causing maximum disruption and argument.
This bit of advertising has been called on all sides a “teaser” rather than a trailer. Considering the meaning/nature of the word teaser itself, and considering the fact that this compilation of materials has caused somewhat of a disruption, albeit a very happy and welcome one to almost all of us, I’d say one aspect of the above definition has been met. The ensuing discussions, while maybe not being arguments of an angry nature, have certainly been of a nature that could be called very spirited discourse and speculation, meet the second criteria of this definition.
The phrase “They have no idea what’s going to happen,” could very well be considered to not only be referring to action inside the story, but taken have been directed, tongue-in-cheek variety, straight at the viewers. We have been trolled, purposely, mildly, affectionately, with intent toward deliberately causing much animated discussion, trolled.
Wimsey,
I don’t know. Littlefinger, Varys and Euron seem more like protagonists than Areo. I’d even classify Joffrey and Tywin before SoS as protagonists.
Tywin of the Hill,
Antagonists
Tywin of the Hill,
None of them were protagonists. In no way did their internal conflicts create a story: most of them didn’t even have internal conflicts of which we were aware.
That is a big reason why being a PoV character is a necessary condition for being a protagonist: stories always come from what they think, and how that changes (or not) over a sequence of events.
Wimsey,
It was a question?
Sure Rickon might not die on that cross but nor is he set up as someone who has the nous to rule, or someone we have any emotional investment in.
That mean he’s not worth killing but it also means he is also not worth keeping, unless of course there are some new wolf boy chapters ahead.
If Martin doesn’t ramp up his story the only way he’ll end up as lord Stark is because every other Stark is dead.
And by the way we are here to speculate. I hope to be surprised by who is killed. It is more likely to be a Northern Lord who looks like changing sides or whose house serves on Both sides. If it’s not i won’t be terribly upset either way.
Simon,
Well, your question was whether Rickon’s lack of PoV chapters meant that he was on the cross. And my response was that if there is a “No PoV chapters, then Ramsay burns you on a cross” principle, then a lot of people are going to die. Alternatively, the two issues are unrelated: and that is with what I would go.
GRRM is not going to make Rickon a protagonist. We do not need to be emotionally invested in the next Lord Stark. We need to be emotionally invested in the Big 6 Protagonists: Jon, Daeny, Tyrion, Arya, Bran and Sansa. The next Lord Stark might get there because of them: but he will not be one of them. As this is not about Lord Stark, that is just fine.
Wimsey,
The thing is though we are invested in House Stark. The majority of the characters we follow are Stark’s, Sansa, Arya, Bran and Jon.
Perhaps the inevitable end game will mean there will never be a Stark in Winterfell again and that will be the price of peace.