'A Song Of Vanilla Ice And Fire' Is Exactly What You Think It Is

By Petr Navovy | Videos | April 15, 2019 |

By Petr Navovy | Videos | April 15, 2019 |

It’s that time of year again! That strange moment in which a huge proportion of us revel in one of the last remaining vestiges of the dying entertainment monoculture. Where once limited choice defined which television spectacles were the ones that everybody watched, our viewing is now fractured and scattered across a fertile landscape of prestige television and streaming giants. Sure there are still shows that are consumed by the millions, but by and large you see nothing like the monopolistic market shares of old.

The most notable exception to that is HBO’s monolithic, water-cooler dinosaur Game Of Thrones, which landed with massive fanfare last night for its final season. Fans can now look forward to a last precious set of dumbed down, brutally streamlined, emotionally ravaging, and visually spectacular episodes of the quite wonderfully complex and nuanced show that once was. But never mind that long gone mature politicking and magic-tinged human drama! Now that we’ve gotten to where we are I just want that sweet CGI-undead-ice-dragon-blue-freeze-flame(?)-nephew-aunt-incest-orgy injected directly into my eye veins! Gimme gimme gimme!

Game Of Thrones season is a quite unique minefield of an experience for me. It’s probably the only show I’m really concerned about avoiding spoilers for—partly because it’s basically the only one I keep up with in real time, and partly because I’m so goddamn invested in its mad roller coaster after all these years that I just want to have the maximum emotional experience possible. Because of my disadvantaged position close to the Greenwich Mean Line I don’t get to watch each episode until at least a day or two after it premieres in the States on Sunday nights. That, combined with the fact that I write on the internet—and therefore have to scour social media for something to write about—means having to engage in one hell of a tiptoeing act in the interim period between an episode airing and me getting to watch it. Seriously. The discipline is mad. The twitch muscles in my eyes go absolutely insane during this time of year, as I scan each page like a paranoid meerkat, bouncing from text to text, instinctively scroll-leaping away from anything that looks like it might even mention a ‘Jon’ or a ‘Dany’ or feature a screenshot with that familiar colour palette. Even logging into the back-end of this site to write something involves basically blocking half the screen with my hand and clamping one eye shut as I know that the other writers here will be covering each episode before I get to see it and often embedding something plot-centric into the piece’s title in the system.

So, yeah. Mixed feelings about Game Of Thrones season as far as Knava’s concerned. On the one hand, woo! On the other, my eyes already hurt from spoiler-avoidance twitching. But hey, at least we can look forward to delightful riffs like this:

And, also, never forget the eternal truth: Euron Greyjoy is just The Worst.