A Soren of Fire & Ice

Unless you've been living under a rock, by now you would have heard about the HBO tv series "Game Of Thrones." This is a series based on a fantastic story, "A Song of Fire and Ice" written by George. R.R. Martin. If you haven't read them, I highly suggest you do. Even though it's considered Fantasy genre, it's less fantastical and more about political intrigue. The coolest aspect (in my very own "humble" opinion) of these stories though, is that there really is no such thing as a "Good Guy" or a "Bad Guy". The way Martin writes about the characters, you learn why they do the things they do, and you begin to understand from each perspective that they choices they make are quite logical.

I started reading this series back in 1998, waaaaay before I had kids. In fact, while waiting for book 5 to finally come out, I had two of them. It's been a long journey with Martin, and while I cursed him for the 6 years I waited for the latest book to come out, I still come back for more.

When the show finally aired on HBO last year, depite the fact we don't have cable, J & I worked to find it online, a hard thing to do with HBO shows. We ended up watching the series online with grainy images. We didn't care! We just wanted to watch our favorite book hero's kill each other and toss sarcastic retorts to the camera!

Ever since I started reading GoT, my all time favorite character has been Tyrion Lannister: a dwarf noble with an endless supply of witty quotes, utterly sarcastic, and a heart of gold. I'd have to say that he is my favorite book character in general, and as I read about a book a day, that's a huge endorsement. His personality is so much like my own I feel like he is the male version of me.

Imagine my surprise and delight when we began to watch the series and I saw Tyrion (played by Peter Dinklage) for the first time, and I thought he looked pretty damn familiar. It bothered me for awhile as I just could NOT place where I might have seen the actor before. I looked through his resume on IMDB and couldn't find anything that stood out to me as to why I felt like I *knew* this guy. J had the same feeling, but neither of us could figure it out.

Awhile later, while the kids were wreaking havoc on the house as they are wont to do, Soren raced by and it hit me like a bolt of lightning. THAT'S where I knew the face!!! Soren looked just like Tyrion Lannister! Granted he looks 40 years younger, but still, it was uncanny. I mentioned it to J and he agreed. Since then, anytime I asked any of my friends who were GoT fans what they thought, bolts of lightning would hit them too and 100% of them agreed wholeheartedly with us.

The photos I used are not the best to show you, but it was the best I could come up with for now to try and show the similarities. Take a look at Tyrion Lannister and Soren side by side:



It's now become a running joke amongst my circle of friends that we should have named Soren Tyrion. He's even begun to answer to that name. One of my best friends said we need to get him a teeshirt like this:

Unfortunately I've yet to find one in size 3T.