You know something serious has happened when, despite the deadline clock ticking, you find yourself on a website that discusses the relative hotness of the male characters of a TV series.
Furthermore, you catch yourself vehemently disagreeing with the opinions therein.
Even if he wasn’t a psychopath, Joffrey Lannister wouldn’t muster tepid, let alone hot. In the first place, he’s too young and in the second, well, he just doesn’t have the looks or charisma. Hard to fancy someone who looks like a wee boy in a Star Wars costume.
Just goes to show that power is not always an aphrodisiac, but intelligence and humour are. (Smart-arsed dwarf in armour, anyone?)
But it’s a worry. Apparently, there are armies of young women who are willing to overlook cruelty and despotism in the objects of their lust. Sets a bit of a troubling standard, don’t you think?
And that’s only the start of the things that I’ve got to fret about right now.
It all began when we took the decision to catch up with the rest of the world on the Game of Thrones series.
In truth, it wasn’t my first visit to Westeros. I’d read the first book after my son’s English teacher had recommended it with a compelling light of passion in her eye. And it was fine enough – even the bits with zombies and dragons.
I don’t normally get on with fantasy worlds. The Shires of Middle Earth are full of confusingly grunting grubbiness and anything that has the words ‘epic’, ‘kingdom’ and ‘quest’ on the cover notes makes me glaze. But the flawed and plausible characters of the George R R Martin book had me hooked. He’d managed that surprisingly rare thing of making the reader care about the fate of his creations.
A couple of weeks ago muttering about the latest series started to filter through to me. Who’s dead? Who isn’t? You’ll never guess what…. A bit like laughter and music from a party you wish you were invited to.
And so we decided to collect a virtual carry out and knocked on the door – and that’s when everything changed.
The Panther and I barely speak now. Every available child-free minute is spent on Game of Thrones. Conversation is limited to “what did he say?”, “did that really happen?”, “no, it’s him – the one who was sent away by his father/escaped/didn’t die after all”.
We can’t surf the internet freely for fear of finding out what happens in series six which would, irrevocably, ruin our current series (two, at time of blogging).
Fear reigns as we learn that no one is safe. After all, did you see what Theon Greyjoy did to Bran and Rickon? (Yes, yes, shhhh *fingers in ears*.)
No taboos remain unthroned. Incest, pedophilia, rape, infanticide, slavery, forced marriage, abuse, infidelity and many others are now normal in our sitting room. What have we become?
And how must they all smell. Not so much as a bar of soap between them for weeks and all that mud and shit and gore everywhere. Ewww. It would have seriously reduced the hotness of any of them.
That aside, there are so many other things wrong with Game of Thrones, it’s hard to know where to start:
Hardly any of the women have properly functioning clothes, the slightest thing and they fall off.
Dragons and zombies are some of the least preposterous things about it.
Some of the acting and many of the accents are deeply dodgy, unless people from the North are supposed to sound like they got there via Wales and Pakistan.
No one explains how the ravens know where to go.
The iron throne looks so uncomfortable it’s hard to see why anyone would want to sit on it.
… and I can’t wait.
Have you tried Downton Abbey?