House Targaryen

ISSUE #52

I prefer not to pay lip service to people in power, so I don't have a lot to say about the Targaryens. Prayer was once our way to fuel the gods; now the gods have died, and legends we stan have taken their place. Words on their behalf are secular prayers, and the more we talk, the more influence they wield. That's why Wendy's is desperate to go viral and why Tchotchke Lahren, our millennial cockroach, just won't go away.

Daenerys took a hard left turn from the family policy when she started taking cities to abolish slavery, so that was good at least. But in the end, nobody deserves to rule; no heart can truly take it. So I won't celebrate the conquerors. This is a great excuse to compile all of my favorite fire songs though, and to sprinkle them with my favorite blood songs. Some of them happen to fit quite well. "Sister Cities" feels lyrically like it could've been written for the series O.S.T., like studios once did for films of the mid-2000s, and "Heroes" is essential for anyone deluded enough to think they have a divine right to their behavior.

A wyrm itself is a sort of wingless, limbless dragon of yore, so this is as good a time as any to confess where I got the Earwyrms name. I regret to inform everyone that I guess I'm just a huge nerd, though I prefer not to identify as such after Gamergate exposed most nerds as right-wing infantrymen. But my critics don't have to dig much further than my history with Coheed & Cambria, an eternally strange band that was given the cultural space to sell sci-fi operas in album form. I think "Blood Red Summer" might *cough* totally rule? Some people could find it grating, but I think it's catchier than dragonfire on a dead grass field. But I'm not a nerd. I'm actually cool, and covered head-to-toe in chest hair.