6 A few years ago, I heard about the show, Game of Thrones, starring Peter Dinklage, a guy about my size (and my personal hero), as Tyrion Lannister, the sometimes heroic, sometimes not, son of a lord. I begged my mom to let me watch it. She protested that the show was TV-MA, with tons of nudity and violence in it. She suggested, Little People, Big World as a substitute. Because what any normal, red-blooded teenage guy really wants to see is a show about a bunch of little people, operating a wedding farm. But I gave it a shot. Also, I read the book, A Game of Thrones, which is over eight hundred pages long. Then, I started on A Clash of Kings. And I begged my mom again. I pointed out that, if I wanted to see boobs, I could find them on my phone, just by Googling boobs. It wasn’t about boobs. It was mostly not about boobs. That time, she let me. She’d watched the show herself by then, and she said okay—if I promised not to be influenced by the character’s drinking and whoring.
