It's like... My first impression of Game Of Thrones was, I looked those books up on Wikipedia like eight years ago just to see why the kerfuffle. And the impression I came away with from that first expedition was that the main characters were: An ugly dwarf who covers up his emotional scars with irony and is constantly forced to have sex with beautiful women and has a wonderful heart, a virgin who runs off to join the army because his mommy is mean and eventually becomes king when people realize how amazing he is inside, and an utterly raped girl who can talk to dragons and has silver hair and purple eyes. Does the silver carpet match the silver drapes? Well, there's no way to know, because despite her enormous breasts she will never reach puberty. And I said, "No thank you."

Because obviously that sarcastic ugly emo dwarf is every boy that reads the books, and that virgin guy is who he wishes he were and someday may become, and that purple-eyed dragon girl is every anime cartoon he has ever masturbated to. And those impressions were not entirely off-base? I get it better now, and I love that show now, but these are still not entirely incorrect assumptions.

In the same way, we have Aria here, who -- although she dresses like a feral toddler set free to roam a Forever 21 and has an unlimited credit line at Claire's Boutique* -- now has an apartment owned by her fabulously rich, conflicted boyfriend who is also a teacher and also an heir to a fortune, his younger brother just showed up with all kinds of problems and is even hotter than the boyfriend, and both of them are constantly telling her how fantastic and beautiful and talented and special-special-special she is: Aria Montgomery is the Tyrion Lannister of Rosewood Pennsylvania.

MARIN

*(The Yelp review that popped up just now when I was doublechecking the name of Claire's starts, "So we took my four-year-old to Claire's to get her ears pierced..." and I reflexively closed that entire browser window with a single click, because that is an internet dealbreaker, even if it does prove my larger point. Also, Google automatically assumes now that when I type Clai... I'm once again googling what the fuck is up with claire forlani, which I'm not gonna lie, there is substantial precedent for that assumption.)