Last time around, it was decided that Melisandre is going make your shitty death metal band all melodic and atmospheric with her fell magicks, King Stannis is still bitter about getting put on that cross-country bus by James and Lars back in ’83, and Ser Davos would rather just relax in the tub with a nice book. Today, we check out The Mother of Dragons, Daenarys Targaryen, and The Mountain That Rides, Ser Gregor Clegane.
SPOILER LEVEL: Slight allusions to stuff from the second half of A Storm of Swords and maybe part of A Feast for Crows, but nothing major for people who only watched the TV show. So yeah, technically, there are references to minor details that haven’t happened yet on HBO, but you should be able to read on without having things ruined.  Just don’t blame me when I spoil the surprise of the part where a cyborg Ned Stark shows up in a spaceship from the future and just starts laser-blasting Lannisters and Freys in the name of Freedom. Oops. But still, if you haven’t read the books or seen the shows, go do that soon, because it’s kinda worth it, you know? (And really, read the books, because they’re about five theoretical seasons ahead of  where the show is at by my count, and I don’t want to wait for you fuckers.)

GREGOR CLEGANE

Ser Gregor Clegane, aka “The Mountain That Rides,” and I… I just… I got nothing, man.

The Song of Ice and Fire book series has among its most notable traits the fact that there are some terrible-ass people in it. There are various and sundry murderers, rapists, torturers, slavers, people who skin folks alive just for the sport of it, people who wipe out entire families and towns with the casual calmness of taking a morning dump, an evil queen who at one point was cheating on her brother with her cousin, a Maester who lost his Maester license for being the fantasy novel equivalent of Josef Mengele, a pretty decent amount of cannibals here and there, and fuckin’ Joffrey. From Lord Tywin to Queen Cersei to Ramsay Bolton to the Crow’s Eye to Walder Frey to The Tickler and back to fuckin’ Joffrey, this whole deal is just lousy with awful, terrible pieces of shit just asking for a good old-fashioned country ass-whoopin’ that’s seldom ever coming, because evil always triumphs.

And The Mountain might very well be the worst person in the entire series.

I’ll let that sink in for a minute while you look at this picture of the dude they got to play him in the next season of the show and shit your collective internet-pants:

Just imagine this, but with less seems-like-an-alright-dude smiles and more literal head-crushing.

This dude is a monster, an eight foot tall, 400 pound engine of pure irredeemable assholery who burns, smashes, rapes, stomps, kills, mutilates, hacks, destroys, and then re-rapes everything in his path, including but not limited to women, children, horses, babies, and members of his immediate family. He’s the guy that assholes talk about to other assholes, when they’re all, “man, you know, you’re such an asshole, but that giant guy over there? Heeeeee’s an assssssss-hoooooooole.” As far as pure, pointless evil is concerned, he’s like the exaggerated internet joke version of Chuck Norris, covered with poisoned spikes and set aflame with hatred. He’s the Bill Brasky of huge pieces of shit. And the worst part is that he’s absolutely unstoppable. Un-goddamn-stoppable. He’s the strongest man in the world as far as anyone can tell, wears more armor than a human body should be able to physically support, (literally heavy metal, you guys) shrugs off sword-stabbings the way most people take a mosquito bite, and for the love of Christ, he can kill you by punching you in the face. His two fully powered-up finishing moves are to either chop you in half vertically, or to just straight up smoosh your noggin with his bare hands. To sum things up, the Mountain is basically a walking Cannibal Corpse song. So hey, there’s your metal comparison.

PICTURED: The only known Cannibal Corpse album cover that won’t give you nightmares forever and ever.

METAL LEVEL: Holy shit.
BANDS/GENRES REPRESENTED: BRUTAL DEATH METAL BLURRRGGGHHH; Crpytopsy, Suffocation, Dying Fetus, Cannibal Corpse, pretty much any of a thousand bands out there that sound exactly like Cannibal Corpse.

DAENARYS TARGARYEN

Daenarys Sotrmborn the Unburnt, Mother of Dragons, Queen of the Andals, The Rhoynar, and The First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, Queen of Mereen, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, and so on, so forth, yadda yadda.

Daenarys is a pretty tragic figure, when you think about it. Born into what was originally intended to be a pretty sweet life as the daughter of the king of basically half the world, things went sour early on. Between the majority of her family getting killed, (including a couple of The Mountain’s signature head-squashings) being sent into exile, having her brother be a shithead to her, getting sold to a brutal warlord, watching her brother get his face melted, having the warlord die once it turned out he was an alright dude as far as warlords go, getting double-crossed by the witch-lady whose life she saved, being abandoned by her Khalassar, having her right hand man get all touchy-feely and “oh yeah, by the way, I used to be a traitor”-y, having the slave-cities she freed turn right back into shitty places with slavery-based economies as soon as she turned her back, and having every-goddamn-body in the goddamn world try to steal her goddamn dragons, shit’s been hard. No matter how hard she tries to do things in a right and just manner, it always seems to get all complicated and fucked-up somehow, and every time she trusts somebody, gets close to them, or otherwise lets them into the inner circle, something usually goes terribly wrong, and once again, she’s been left on her own – LIKE A RAINBOW IN THE DARK

It’s kind of crazy to think about, but a character who just started out as a scared little girl who really missed that big house with the red door has become one of the top contenders for Most Metal in the series. She’s ridden with a barbarian horde, she’s had to match wits with an evil sorcerer, she’s led a conquering army on a path of destruction, she’s freed a whole mess o’ slaves in the process, become a queen by her own hand all Conan-style, and there’s also that whole “brought dragons back to world, and in the process, also magic.” thing. And unlike most of the other severely metal characters, she’s managed to not be completely freaking awful in the process, (looking at you, Ramsay and Mountain) which is fitting, with the otherwise extreme Dio-ness at play here. Other bands would be all “there’s some evil shit that’s gonna get you, YEAH,” but Dio was always like “there’s some evil shit that’s gonna get you, so LOOK OUT.” Basically, while everyone else was trying to looks and sound as evil as possible, Ronnie James Dio was always on our side, and still managed to be history’s most metal human. Man, I miss Dio.

Be right back, you guys, going to Bulgaria.

METAL LEVEL: Dio.
BANDS/GENRES REPRESENTED: Power/fantasy metal; Dio, Blind Guardian, Nightwish, Dio, Dragonforce, Rhapsody, Gamma Ray, Dio,  etc., plus maybe a little Manowar. And also Dio.

NEXT TIME: Not sure yet. Ideas knocking around in my head during slow days at work have included Jon Snow, Euron Greyjoy, Harma Dogshead, Mance Rayder, Arya Stark, Thoros of Myr, Brienne of Tarth, and a couple others, but I haven’t fully formed a plan yet. (Oh man, as if I actually plan things, but still.)  Thing is, no matter who it is, I’ll be over double-digits for subjects covered by then, so it might be time to actually start putting a power ranking together, which was allegedly the point of this whole thing. So many things must be considered, y’all.