Wildcard:

Arghh, HBO, what are you doing to me!? It’s too soon to get back on the Thrones-wagon. I’ve got all these other shows I wanna catch up on, goddammit. And here you come swooping with your flashy new trailer and your dragons and sand snakes and all these tiny hints of the spectacle to come.

A new season of Game of Thrones is a big commitment. It’s almost exactly a month until it starts and this trailer is basically my final warning that if I wanna get that last book finished by the time the series starts then I’d better start reading it. There’s no way I’m letting the big money adaptation push in line ahead of the written word.

The thing about the books is that numbers four and five pretty much overlap. They happen concurrently. So I’m ahead on half of this stuff and behind on the other half. Strange territory, some of these images I’m like: ‘Yeah, sweet, so that’s what that’s gonna look like’, others more like: ‘huh?’. But this season the show’s promised to be further away from the books than ever. They kinda have to be, after this season they’ll be fully caught up (though supposedly we’ll get book six before next season). I guess what I’m saying is that my pretentious ‘I know, I’ve read the books’ façade is soon coming to an end. And I’ll be as clueless as the rest of them.

So what is there to take from this cheeky, frustrating collage of fade-ins and fade-outs? Cycling through families as spokes on a wheel. A wheel that Dany promises to break, best of luck to her. There aren’t really any more revelations than there were in the first trailer last month, just 1:45 of teasing glimpses of stuff we’re already too impatient to wait to see. I liked the David Bowie ‘Changes’ trailer more I think, the contrast between medieval violence and 70's glam rock was just too irresistible.

So is the framing on this shot. Man, that’s tense. Cersei should have plenty to do in season five, she might finally get a little sympathy as well. Poor lady’s having her family torn from her. They really don’t hold back on the body count, I wonder how many of these characters in this trailer meet their final fates and how many live to see season five. Crowd shots don’t count, I’m putting it at a 60% survival rate.

Ooh, someone said ‘Winter is coming’! Havent heard that one for a while. But Jon ‘Knower of Nothing’ Snow wants to live with the Wildlings!? Gotta be some PTSD beneath those perfectly coiffed locks. Call this the ‘Fat Guy From Lost Conundrum’. Stuck on a deserted island, he doesn’t lose any weight, how does that work? (Apparently they were all dead or something? I stopped watching after a season or two). Same goes for how no characters on GoT ever need a comb even when Bear Grylls-ing it in the wild.

Also there are dragon shots which everyone freaks out over, I don’t really care, it’s all CGI. There are fights and blood, to be expected, and there are Sand Snakes. The Sand Snakes are gonna be tremendous, no spoilers. Not too many other unfamiliar faces though. Tyrion and Bald Eunuch Guy are plotting something, Arya is still the biggest badass of them all and it looks like Dany’s gonna get some from chiselled bearded fella. Guts for whatever-his-name-was.

Ah, but the image that’s driving me furthest off the cliff is this one. What’s up with this? (I’ll tell ya what’s not up, hyuck-hyuck…). Did someone invent a cure for castration? Is this a John Wayne Bobbitt situation? Dude’s a eunuch, this is stupid.

Diggity Doc:

So much castration from the Wildcard, I don't really know how to follow that up.

Not sure why dark haired, light skin shorty in the sun dress/traditional attire isn't messing with someone like me who isn't castrated but oh well.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that while GoT does a great job of juggling the different adventures of different characters, I reckon that Daenerys won't be as important as people think. Her borderline adult dragons, blonde hair-light skin shorty nature has her at the forefront of everyone's mind but there's many more subtle characters/situations that will come into prominence.

In theory, Dany is coming to fill the power void that now exists in King's Landing thanks to Tyrion popping his father with a few arrows while he took a shit. If King's Landing was a sports team, the coach has left along with their best player leaving a few role players and the guy with a heap of potential but a penchant for partying (Cersei).

All signs point to Cersei continuing her evil streak, I mean she's an evil bitch after all but I think it's time for her to play it smart now. Not only does the threat of dragons and a rival queen-like shorty loom over the Lannister whanau and their city, but I'm very weary of the Tyrell crew as well. Most notably Margarey who has so far just been a side piece for the Lannister boys. You would imagine that she's been soaking up plenty of wisdom/evilness from the great leaders she has around her and will be making a bunch of moves.

Everything points to King's Landing being a black hole, sucking everyone in as they're all eager to fill the void of the guy who got shot taking a shit.

And then there's these Sand Snake people. The Wildcard did the no spoiler thing but I'm a gangsta so I'm going to say that this is a group of females who have a connection to the 'Red Viper'. This is where the one and only Keisha Castle-Hughes comes into play and I can't imagine that they're too happy that their homie the Red Viper lost his life at King's Landing #justsaying.

Does it feel as though all the people who will hold great relevance to King's Landing are female? It sure does and it also feels like the complete opposite up north.

Who knows what is going to go down up north. The Winter is in danger of becoming a bit like Dr Dre's Detox album at the moment as it's always talked about but it just hasn't quite arrived. Unlike Detox, the Winter definitely looks as though it's coming though. However, Jon Snow is in the most interesting position of all the main characters as it looks like he's going to have to juggle a few different mini-situations under the umbrella of the big situation of the Winter.

Stannis Baratheon, it just looks as though he's going to be the spanner in the works up north.

I saw a headline for the GoT trailer that read something like "Sex and violence, it's back!" which for seasoned GoT fans is insulting and I think we'll get another example of why that's so dumb. There's an absolute shit load of characters doing really important things right now and if all goes well I imagine we're going to see this juggled skillfully. Obviously the trailer isn't going to showcase the intricacies that we all love because it exists to simply build hype for the upcoming season but everything heating up it's going to be an impressive effort to give us, the viewer enough of each character to get our fix.

The Wildcard told me not to expect too much of Bran Stark, but what about Ayra and Sansa? Me and the DubCizzle (Wildcard) are kind of in love with Ayra, we've got a bit of a love triangle going on here and to completely speculate, how awesome would it be if Ayra was the most powerful female? There's all this fluff going on for us to focus on, but Ayra is a strong willed young lady who is the perennial underdog.

Anyone else completely gone off Dany? Her intentions are to be celebrated, but she seems super arrogant and I just can't see it ending well.

Another random thought - Stannis Baratheon has that weird fire thing going on, now when you're fighting beings the resemble mystical creatures more than human beings, surely a bit of funky fire shit will do the trick? At the very least, it's got to help.

I think I've covered all the characters I wanted to ................... well maybe like a quarter of the full roster and I've definitely overlooked the midget, hah. I've got no idea how his story is going to pan out, but I'll finish by putting myself in his shoes, that specific moment when he's on the boat. Looking up at a dragon...

Is it a look of despair, or hope?