Endless Thread - Bonus: Endless Thrones

Episode Date: April 12, 2019

In advance of the season 8 premiere of HBO's "Game of Thrones," we talk to one of the head moderators of r/gameofthrones and to a couple of in-house GOT nerds to hear some of their fan theories and predictions for the show's final season.

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Produced by the I-Lab at WBUR, Boston. The feed is dark and full of terrors. I don't know what that means. It means, yes, we are still on break for just a few more weeks, but we're back very soon with lots of brand new endless thread content for you. In the meantime, we are ramping up with some bonus stuff. because you missed us. And we missed you.

And Amory missed the first seven seasons of Game of Thrones. Yes, I did. But as season eight kicks off, we figured we'd put something in the feed for the free folk. And also, Amory does have a little bit of a connection to the hit HBO show. She covered the theme music live in concert. Yes, I did. Because there are a lot of you fantasy dorks out there. Yes, and now we are going to cover some theories about the show with the help of two of our WBUR

colleagues. And one of the moderators of the Game of Thrones subreddit, one of the many, many Game of Thrones subredits we should say. Yes, so many. But first, let's nerd out. Oh, but also, Here Be Dragons. As in spoilers. Okay, so we have Caitlin O'Keefe and Kat Brewer in the studio with us. They are both incredibly accomplished producers in the I-Lab. That's WBUR's podcast unit. but today they are representing as WBUR's biggest Game of Thrones nerds, hands down. Woo-whoop! Kat and Caitlin, welcome. Thank you.

Thanks. Okay, so you guys have an eight-page document full of predictions. You will not shut up about this show, and so we thought you should not shut up about Game of Thrones for a little while on our show because you guys are awesome and all of your thoughts are deep. and interesting to us, even Emory. Yeah, deep and full of tears. Even for Amory, who has never seen the show.

So I think I'm going to call this episode an endless thrones episode. And we're excited to hear your theories. I'm a Game of Thrones noob, as I think you two know. Ben says to say, a girl has no idea. And I don't know why I'm saying that, but I'll say it. Caitlin, can you give me like a 30-second description of what Game of Thrones? Oh, my gosh. Okay. So Game of Thrones is basically a deep investigation of power, right? So when Game of Thrones begins, how do I do this in 30 seconds, you guys? This feels unfair. That art is very smart.

When Game of Thrones begins, there's a power structure in place. There's an iron throne, which belongs to the ruler of the seven kingdoms of Westrose. And when the show begins, that throne is held by Robert Barathean, who is the king, the lord of the seven kingdoms. Then, spoilers, guys. Yeah, you need a big spoiler at the top of... Big spoiler alert. Robert Baratheon is killed, dies, and the power structure that exists is thrown into chaos. And over time, you see characters who have power lose it.

you see characters who in the beginning of the show sort of are in positions of extreme weakness, whether because they're women, whether because they're bastards, whether because in the case of one character, because he's a dwarf, you see them gain power. And it's sort of just a progression of,

it's just a political epic, and then also there are zombies that are coming to kill everyone. And dragons. And dragons. I'm sorry, yes, and dragons. There's magic. We asked Kat and Caitlin which characters they see themselves as in the show. So Kat thinks of herself as badass underdog warrior the hound.

Caitlin thinks of herself as Marjorie Tyrell, a more peaceful or diplomatic force for good, I would say, in the show. Then we asked them to say which characters match us. I think Amory is Catlin. Oh, but then she's dead. I know. I'm sorry. I was going to say not in looks,

but Amory is Sam. Huh. Interesting. She's a learned, thoughtful person. Yep. Who's helping out. Yeah. He's producing.

Yeah. I mean, Sam's producing this whole thing. That's true. Maybe. There's a theory that Sam's the writer of the show. Of the Song of Ice and Fire. Oh, that's good. I like that.

Yeah. I could see that. I just think Amory is Catlin because Catlin is extremely fierce. She is a force. She's really a force. And I think Amory is a force. But she makes some pretty big mistakes. I don't think Amory would make those mistakes.

I don't think I would either. Her last act before she is killed is to slit the throat of a young, innocent woman. That's what I'm saying. True. I don't know that Amory would be slitting throats like that. We know I can get a little stabby, though. She just wants to get a little stabby. She just wants to hang out in the library and solve the issues.

That sounds like me. That's true. Who's been in the same? this scenario. You go first. Oh. I... My first thought was Davos.

Oh, that's good. That's better than mine. Which one is Davos? Davos is... He's the Onion Knight. Yeah. He's sort of the sage advisor to Kings. Yes. And so he was originally... The son of a crabber.

Yeah, the son of a crabber. I don't know if you're the son of a crabber. Then now he's helping out John, and it's great. And I just love him, and he can sit on the Iron Throne. He's the guy with the pinky missing. Yes, because Santa's cut off his pinky. And he loses, yeah. He loses his son. That's good.

I'll happily accept that. And Onion Knight's a good title for you. See, I was going to say Hot Pie, but Davos is better. Wait, who's hot pie? Hot Pie is like Arias sidekick. Who's a really good baker. I don't even know if Ben can bake. I don't know that either.

Hot Pie is like one of the forces for good in the universe, though. He's just one of the people who he eventually just finds an inn to, you know, bake pie at, and that's where he is. Yeah, that's me. He's just lovely. He's kind of out of the way of the fighting, but he's like, he's a force for good. Wow. I had picked for myself John Snow and Padrick combined. I don't know what that means, but I'm going to laugh.

But neither of those are accurate. So I think that I would happily accept high. Hot Pie and Onion Knight, I think that's a good combo. Can each of you share your craziest fan theory? Kat will start with you. My fan theory is mostly a fan hope in that. So I think it's fair to say that most people know there's a big battle in episode three of the six episodes left. And I hope that the Night King and all of his zombies die, and we don't have to deal with the Night King anymore.

Because the Night King for me is the most boring part of Game of Thrones. I like all the politics and the people. And I want to see Danny and Circe fight. And I want to see the Battle of Kings landing in between people. And I don't really care about this zombie story at all. So that's my fan theory. And John will kill the Night King. And then my concern is John Snow.

Yeah. Good job, Amory. I know one John. Well done. Series. Yep. And I know winter is coming. What about you, Caitlin?

What about you? Yeah. You know, I'm not, I don't really love the Game of Thrones theorizing as much. I feel like the crazy theory has got a little too crazy sometimes. Oh, come on. Just go there. Sorry. No fun.

I'm sorry. I do love the theory, though, that Sam is the author of The Song of Ice and Fire. And I actually read a really interesting interview that John Bradley, the actor who plays Sam Tarley, did with the New York Times the other day. where he said that, like, he loves that idea, too, especially because it makes you have to go back and reevaluate the entire show and think about, like, would Sam be portraying things differently

given where his own allegiances lie? So I sort of love that idea and the cast that that would throw over the entire show. Anything else? You got any parting words? The big thing that I'm wondering about, as the show wraps up is that, you know, for seven seasons, we've had this, like, intricate political drama with all of these characters and these,

like, as I said, these machinations of power. And now it's becoming a story about good versus evil and sort of simple good versus simple evil. And I'm just really curious about which story they're going to end up foregrounding, like whether it's going to ultimately be a story about good versus evil or whether it's going to be true to what it always has been, which is like sort of a deconstruction of, as Alyssa Rosenberg said in the Washington Post today, like a deconstruction of the idea of what fantasy is and fantasy epics are and the good versus evil sort of set up.

So that's my big question. All right. Well, thank you guys for your totally badass WBUR slash Game of Thrones awesome nerdery. House W-B-U-R. Oh, God. Yeah. You can keep up with Caitlin and Kat's reactions to the show every week on Twitter and until their hit Game of Thrones podcast launches.

Any minute now, you can follow them at Cat A. Brew, that is Cat with a K, and Kate E O'Keefe. That is C-A-I-T-E-E-F-E. Thanks, you two. No worries. Happy to do it. Thanks, you guys. Back with the mod. in a minute. At Radio Lab, we love nothing more than nerding out about science, neuroscience, chemistry.

But, but we do also like to get into other kinds of stories, stories about policing or politics, country music, hockey, sex, of bugs. Regardless of whether we're looking at science or not science, we bring a rigorous curiosity to get you the answers. And hopefully make you see the world anew. Radio Lab, Adventures on the Edge of what we think we know. Wherever you get your podcast. There is something powerful about the sound of the human voice. Beautifully produced audio has the unique power to connect and inspire. Tell your organization's story with a custom podcast from CitySpace Productions,

the creative studio from WBUR's Business Partnerships Team. Become a thought leader. Recruit new talent. Reach new audiences. Whatever your goal, we can help. Discover how. the magic is made at WBUR.org slash creative studio. Okay, so Game of Thrones has a lot of subredits, and we wanted to hear from a moderator of one of

those communities, Stuart Ward, known as BW Phoenix on Reddit. We called him up on Skype. Hello? Hey, there, how's it going? Hey, is this Stuart? It is, yeah. Wonderful. This is Amory. Thanks so much for responding to my message.

No worries, I'm happy to help out. Stuart, where are you from? I am from Scotland. I thought so. It doesn't give it away. Yes, yes. I love it. I love it. Are any Game of Thrones episodes filmed there?

I feel like that would be... Yeah, well, there's parts of the pilot were filmed in Scotland, and they scrapped most of the pilot, but a few scenes they kept for episode one. So there's a few little scenes in Scotland in the very first episode, but by and large, there's nothing in Scotland. What, can you hit us with the little scenes? Do you remember what the little scenes in the first episode were? Yeah, so there's a couple of the scenes in Winterfell,

shots of Winterfell, and the pilot's the scrap because they really didn't like how it went. But yeah, there's a couple of Winterfell scenes that were shot in Scotland. Some of the bends and the glens. Exactly. Well, you know, they've not made enough use of them. Maybe the prequel's well.

And on a scale from like one to you could recite every line from every episode of Game of Thrones, where are you on the fandom nerd spectrum? You know, a while ago, maybe I thought it was quite high up. But being in the subreddit so much, you just see some people who are so good at it. It just makes you think, like, wow, maybe I don't know that much. So yeah. Interesting choice of words, good at it. Yeah.

What's an example of that when someone has clearly out-nerded you? Well, we do this, we do trivias every couple of weeks. And there's one of the common things we do is we do, kind of fill in the quotes. And it's just absolutely, I mean, you can literally just, you know, you just pick a scene, put a couple of words from a quote in, and people fill it in. And it's just like, they can just recite it, like, from a couple of words. How big would you say this show is on Reddit? Yeah, so it's massive. I mean, it's really, really massive. Last year was the first year that of all the TV show, Subredits, Game of Thrones,

wasn't the most frequently commented on subreddit for the first time RuPaul's drag race overtook it. Very different shows. I like that spectrum, though. Are they, though, Amory? Are they? Are they that different? I don't know, Ben, I don't know. I've never seen either show. They both involve intense competition. There's a lot of backstabbing. Yeah, there's a lot of backstabbing. Exactly.

You know, Stewart. Yeah. Just the human condition at his score. And this season's going to be the wildest yet. So it's just enormous. Tell us about the throne pool. What is it? Yeah, so basically one of the things about having such a big community is that a lot of content gets drowned out.

You know, because there's so many people posting after an episode, it's scary. you know you have that queue which is like all the new posts coming in and we can have three moderators on that like just removing posts and they'll never run into each other because it's just coming in so fast wow yeah so the throne pool basically was our way of with the help of the admins who've been really helpful and giving people a chance to choose what character they want to win that iron throne so we picked out kind of 14 key characters and said to people you know which these not who do you think will win but who do you want to win

and that gives them a kind of spin-off subreddit to go to and they can join their fellow Sansa fans on that community and just post memes mainly, I think. So who do you want to win and who do you think will win if those are different things? Yeah, professionally I have to support professionally of whatever the equivalent for that is volunteers, but I have to say Brian because that's the one I'm dealing with.

Personally, I do want Sansa to rule an independent Norse. Ooh, very Scottish perspective. Isn't it? Yeah, you've called that there, but it is. It's true, though, you know, the Norse is going to be going through so much strife, and they're going to have to bear the brunt of this war against the dead.

So I think they've earned their chance to have we go at themselves, and I think so much it would be good to do it. Who do I think will win it? Well, I wasn't sure, and then H.P. put out their kind of promo for the series and it was for the throne, hashtag for the throne. And I was not alone in saying after that HBO, you're just setting us up for the two, no throne, aren't you?

Just, that's the right. You know, they're putting such a big emphasis on who's going to win the throne. I think it's a red herring right there. But I'm very bad at predictions, so despite reading the subreddit so much. What is the free folk and the other subreddit battle all about? Can you explain that? Basically with the free folk sites, everyone there has read the leaks. They're really into reading the leaks.

And they're very lax on rules. Otherwise it gets bigger. They have to put in some more. Whereas Game of Thrones and our subreddit, we generally speaking people don't want leaks. So we don't allow leaks. So there's a little bit of... Anybody who leaks gets stabbed in the stomach and drawn in quarters, like, et cetera, et cetera.

As long as they keep it to the side, that's all right. We can find with that. Okay, wait, I have a question about this. Where are the leaks coming from? I don't get how people have information that is not out there yet. Yeah, there's two elements to it. The one element is the kind of Game of Thrones, I think, has kind of created a genre of fans who are, amazing at following production news.

Like, you know, like looking at which crew member follows who on Instagram and then, okay, if they're there, then they must be in this location just now. Let's see if anyone on Instagram who's like a cameraman is posting from there. And they piece it together in like some kind of, you know, kind of amazing mind map on their wall kind of thing. And then the other element is that there's someone, a certain person who seems to have contacts in the crew. who just gets his details from somewhere.

Can you describe the Game of Thrones subreddit for us a little bit? Because I was poking around in there before as a, you know, self-confessed total noob. And I saw like different pages almost. There was a page for spoilers and what else is on there? Yeah, so in terms of content, love we've got some really like amazing artists I think that's the biggest thing about our subreddit I feel like you know just today there was a post

from his name was Chot with Chris and you know a while a few months ago he posted a kind of carving of a stark banner and like a piece of wood and it's just amazing amazing bit of wood carving and HBO have just sent him like actual map markers from the show for three of the houses

oh wow just today. Yeah, that's an amazing present for him. But it's, so, yeah, we've got a lot of great fan art. I've obviously got some kind of tinfoil hat theories going on as well. What is the strangest Game of Thrones related Reddit thread that you've seen pop up in relation to the show? I mean, there's one that stands out. I think it originated on the book subreddit in all fairness.

It has to be mentioned, though. So there's a theory that I've really I'm not making this up and this is so, you know there's an essay to call it a theory you'd be underselling it a little bit that Tyrion is actually

Dineris's son. Whoa. Yeah, actually that and the guy cites like the Odyssey and the Iliad and all kinds of ancient Greek literature saying that Terrian's a time traveler it's and I'm not, I mean it's just

it's so thought out for a second you're almost like, oh this could be possible and then you can be possible. and then you can catch yourself and realize what you're saying. It's just absolutely incredible that someone came up with that, frankly. And did all the sort of ancient literature citations involved, et cetera, et cetera. That's a very Reddit. I feel like that's very Reddit.

Yeah, that's what it's all about. That's the fun. And, you know, that is actually the fun of it. And it's like that's the kind of thing where, you know, like, I'm looking forward to the six new episodes we get, obviously. Yeah. final six episodes, but also the six weeks that this show was airing, it's just going to be so fun because you get so much stuff like that. People just having fun with the sea rising about the show, and that's really what it's all

about, I think. Are you throwing parties? Well, the thing is, because of the subreddit, I don't really get time to. Oh, no. Yeah. How much time are you spending after watching the show moderating this sub? So, like, personally, obviously I'm in the UK, but I'd be up to, like, from probably until 5am or something. Oh, my God.

You know, with our subreddit, especially, you notice that even right now, no matter how big the show is, our subreddit isn't that busy compared to other ones of its size. But it's not quiet, but it's not that busy. But the second episode hits for the next six weeks, it's just huge. I mean, it's absolutely massive for six. weeks and you know you can't escape it like wherever you're on the internet you can't escape it and um reddit kind of fosters that it gives people a chance to talk about it and yeah i don't know if that'll be repeated with you know so many big shows now dropping at once hmm

Stuart ward moderator of the game of thrones subreddit Stewart thank you very much for talking to us I was happy to help cheers yeah whatever whatever the game of thrones equivalent of like May the force be with you. I wish you that. Seven blessings. I'm sending you blessings, I guess. All right. Thanks, last year.

Take care. Have a good rest of your evening. Bye, bye. All right, that is our Game of Thrones bonus content for you this week, just for fun. More coming soon, including a special series on vaccines and anti-vaxxers. Get ready. See you later.