#Ranting about HOTD

[princesssszzzz]

I don’t have a problem with Daemon being a bad father (it’s consistent with his selfish behavior) just that Baela and Rhaena have their scenes cut because of it. Rhaena smiling and nodding is the bizarre part and having character development taken away. She marries a Hightower in the future and her being at odds with her father while also being “on his team” is great set up for an intricate family dynamic. She’s gentle/sympathetic, they can have Daemons actions (i.e blood and cheese) be an even bigger reason for their poor relationship. For Baela to be outspoken, if they go the entire war without her disagreeing with someone from team black openly that’s crazy and OOC. I’m sure greens will have scenes with internal conflict and writers should know that’s interesting to fans. Conflict should extend past Daemon and his wife. Even Cat and Robb got to have disagreements and it made for great scenes. No one complained about “but they’re supposed to love each other”. Forcing them to always act like a happy loving family when they aren’t makes the girls look like hostages at gunpoint and NOT like an affectionate blended household. Showing them react to his willingness to do for others except them and their response going forward is actually compelling and a great parallel to Aegon and Aemond who were also neglected by their father. People are calling for them to start off S2 showing him as a doting father like his behavior in S1 never happened but that’s worse. I have 5% hope that the writers took out his “girldad” scenes because of the direction they want to take the twins and it was last minute after filming ended? It makes sense for him to be training baela in swordfighting now he sees her as useful and not Rhaena. Maybe a scene where he tries to pressure her to claim Vermithor because he’s desperate for a dragonrider but she wants a hatchling. This keeps his motivations and behavior consistent while still giving them screen time and development. The twins are morally good and the fans wanting them to be devoted to a character that’s not supposed to be seen as good in universe is just outlandish and unrealistic to me. It’s also not fair to the actresses playing them for others to be playing complicated and unique characters and they get none of that acting chops if they just exist as mindless cheerleaders with no motivation of their own. I feel like fans would get this more if they thought less about Daemon being seen in a certain light and more about Baela and Rhaena. It’s a better storyline and having characters that aren’t simple and straightforward is what people loved GOT for. That should be extended to HOTD and I haven’t even touched on how they would realistically feel about other characters.

[lagosbratzdoll]

Ryan did a bunch of interviews recently that I've been reading and I have some thoughts. You can find the interviews here and here.

There's a lot of terrible stuff in it but I don't have the time or inclination to bother with all that. I'm going to be focusing on two things he said in the interviews.

Starting with this from the House of the Dragon podcast which I've linked above.

In it, Ryan talks about why he decided to contrast the lives of Hugh Hammer and Ulf the White with the lives of the privileged Targaryens. It was fascinating to get a peek into his head.

Ryan reads a rapist and thinks "this is a person worth deepening. We need an in-depth exploration of what goes on in this rapists head. We need the audience to sympathise with them."

Which wouldn't be so bad on its face, there's always room to analyse a fictional rapist. The problem is that he then reads about a little Black girl who raised herself on a tiny island rising up to become a dragon rider on her own merit. A little girl whose Valyrian heritage is constantly debated and discounted. He reads that and decides that there's nothing worth exploring there. Her story isn't unique. She isn't unique. In fact, she's so common that while we adapt and humanise not one but two rapists, we're going to erase one Black girl and turn the other into everyone's punching bag.

Then I read his puff piece from Big Think.

This is a fascinating glimpse into his thought process. I read this and Ryan Condal's baffling decisions began to make a little more sense.

By his own admission, Ryan's ideal show is one where Black women are erased, flattened and ignored. He claims to write powerful women but we've not seen hide or hair of these women. In Ryan's show, nothing is ever deliberate and the women are largely passive participants in their own lives.

In Ryan's ideal show there's no room for a little black girl to claim a dragon with nothing but faith and her wits. In Ryan's ideal show we need all of the rapist men but the Black women are interchangeable AND replaceable.

In Ryan's ideal world, it is too much to ask that a Black girl be adored, have songs written about her and knights joust for her favour. In Ryan's ideal show, Black people aren't fully developed characters, they're props that he forgets about for episodes on end.

And that is why the show will continue to drop in ratings. When I saw the Nielsen numbers for the premiere, I laughed until I cried. The biggest streaming day ever for Max and they couldn't beat The Boys or Your Honour. The most recent numbers are even funnier.

But don't worry gang, House of the Dragon is doing great. It's now number three. It finally beat a four year old show! Everything is fine.

[wishesofeternity]

“You toil still in service to men. Your father, your husband, your son. You desire not to be free, but to make a window in the wall of your prison. Have you never imagined yourself on the Iron Throne?”

A couple of things:

1)  Alicent is a queen consort and is a Hightower by birth, so no, she cannot imagine herself on the Iron Throne, because Targaryen succession does not work like that. This is basic knowledge that 5-year-olds would presumably be expected to know, and I am astounded and embarrassed that Rhaenys, with her age and experience, lacks this fundamental bit of common sense.

2) Alicent has been the functional regent of Westeros for the past six years. In the previous episode, we see her actively governing the realm and overseeing all royal matters (while Rhaenyra sits on her ass with her loser husband in Dragonstone). We also literally hear Vaemond tell Rhaenys “It’s not a king who sits the Iron Throne these days, good sister. It’s the queen”, so I can assure you, Rhaenys, that Alicent has physically sat on the Iron Throne just fine. She lacks authority, obviously, as she is the consort and not the king, but she certainly did not and does not lack power, to say nothing about influence. This ridiculous show, however, does not seem to be able to differentiate these terms.

3) Does this show not understand that Alicent installing her son as King is not just beneficial to him (which the show acknowledges) but also directly beneficial to her? This is a patriarchal and patrimony-inclined world; Alicent’s son being King would not only mean immense prestige for her family; it would also mean the ultimate peak of power and influence for her (which we see her unapologetically wield in the books). In Westeros, we see Visenya Targaryen supporting her brother and her son’s kingship rather than angling for the throne in her own right, and wielding absolute power and authority in their reigns. Historically, Empress Matilda (the female claimant to the throne in the Anarchy, the war this story is based off) relinquished her claim in favor of her son, Henry II, presumably because she recognized he stood a better chance at gaining the throne (which he did) and continuing her legacy. Joanna of Flanders, who commanded troops in battle, did it to support the cause of her husband in direct opposition to the claim of his niece. Yet according to this show’s logic, every single woman who has fought for their fathers and brothers and husbands and sons subscribes to internalized misogyny rather than, idk, supporting their families and gaining power, security and status in the process. Not to mention, Alicent relinquishing her children’s claim and stepping aside would not only be utterly humiliating and degrading for her from a political and personal standpoint, but also legitimately life-threatening for her children and her family. More competent writers would understand that she did not have much of a choice.

4) “You desire not to be free but make a window in the wall of your prison” is the MOST SICKENING PIECE OF VICTIM-BLAMING BULLSHIT I have ever heard in a long, long time. Alicent was a teenager when she had to marry the much-older King (her best friend’s own father) because of his desire for her. He repeatedly raped her and forced at least four pregnancies on her that she did not want. She was utterly isolated at court after her marriage, lacking comfort and friends (including Rhaenyra, who abandoned Alicent for three years after learning that she was being made to marry her father and, based on the comments she made, did not even stop to consider the awfulness of Alicent’s predicament). She had to endure the humiliation of her father being fired and made to leave court, leaving her even more alone than she previously was. She had to endure her husband constantly favoring his firstborn and his grandchildren by his firstborn rather than Alicent’s children who were a direct result of her rape by him. Her son was maimed and bleeding and her husband chose to defend his firstborn’s moronic decisions rather than bring him justice.  She is not a Targaryen, she does not and cannot ride a dragon. WHAT WAS ALICENT SUPPOSED TO EXCEPT TRY AND SURVIVE? HOW ON EARTH IS SHE BEING JUDGED FOR IT?

(And this ridiculously condescending comment is coming from Rhaenys of all people, lmao. A dragon-riding Targaryen who was an actual claimant to the Iron Throne, unlike Alicent. So, what was stopping HER from seizing power, pray tell? After all, she even has the Velaryon forces to back her claim. Instead, in her own words, she made peace with her sidelining. She constantly disagreed with her husband’s ambition regarding her claim and her family’s power. She volunteered her 12-year-old daughter as a child bride for her own aging cousin. The hypocrisy and double standards here is pathetic, and the lack of self-awareness on the part of the show is even worse)

Alicent was legitimately terrified for her children and her family’s lives, and she was entirely justified in doing so: if Rhaenyra ascended the throne, Alicent’s children would inevitably become threats to her whether or not they directly opposed her. This is unavoidable. Look up any historical usurpation, and that’s the inescapable result - and that’s not even going into the fact that Rhaenyra and Daemon are people who are reckless, cruel and indifferent to violence, and would not hesitate to kill any opposition to their reign. The show’s so-called claim that Alicent is upholding the patriarchy falls apart when you consider the fact that this is the only solution that guarantees the security of her children and herself. How is Alicent’s perfectly understandable motivation written as internalized misogyny? 

And moreover, from a writing perspective ... why give her this arc at all? Fire & Blood was badly written, but it doesn’t change the fact that they looked at an ambitious woman who wanted to enhance her power and improve her family’s standing, who directly defied her husband’s wishes in terms of succession in favor of her own, and rewrote this choice into one borne from internalized misogyny. They wrote her as a child bride, a rape victim, an abuse victim and a teen mother and then used this backstory to say that she was conditioned to become the so-called agent of patriarchy (which they do not support with believable evidence) who opposes their so-called feminist protagonist (whose primary enabler is Alicent’s rapist and abuser, btw, not that his abuse is acknowledged nearly enough by the narrative considering how heavily he was romanticized in the last few episodes) It’s a heinous, disrespectful, absolutely terrible writing choice, and I cannot emphasize this nearly enough.

(Oh, and speaking of Rhaenyra, let’s talk about how her queenship solidifies Viserys’s claim over Rhaenys’s. Let’s talk about if she truly cared about women inheriting the Iron Throne - as opposed to just herself - she would have considered this. Let’s talk about how she disregarded the claims of Baela and Rhaena in favour of her son when it came to Driftmark. Rhaenyra is not challenging the patriarchy, her ascension to the Iron Throne will not change anything for anyone except for herself, do not make me laugh by claiming otherwise)

ON TOP OF THIS, the show can’t even decide on a consistent motivation or characterization for Alicent. They repeatedly show us her visceral and justified fear for her children’s lives, which is somehow forgotten in episode eight in favor of her saying that Rhaenyra will be a good queen. Her desire to see her son crowned and thus ensure her children’s safety is disregarded in favor of her actually wanting to fulfil Viserys’s half-baked wishes on his deathbed. They have her say that everyone knows Aegon will be king, and then act surprised when the Green council plots to install him as King. They do not care about Alicent’s personhood and individual character; what they care about is her position as a foil and antagonist to Rhaenyra.

In conclusion: this show sucks. It shows absolutely no understanding regarding the politics of its own world and our medieval history and is a parody and a travesty of respectful storytelling. It has inconsistent and baffling character motivations and downright misogynistic writing, and this is not acknowledged nearly enough by the fandom.

[gracielikegrapes]

Used heavy ref of Nanna Blondell to doodle Laena; I havent drawn characters in days (only pudgy dragons lol) word vomit in tags

[nonbinarylesbianherb]

people be like “it was Alicent who ruined the friendship!”

“No it was Rhaenyra!”

It was neither.

Both of them were young teens, both dealt with horrible situations.

“Alicent should have told Rhaenyra” Her options were extremely limited, she did the safest thing. She did not choose to marry Viserys, she was used by her father for political gain.

“Rhaenyra shouldn’t have lied to Alicent” She had been groomed by her uncle (also for political gain) and then thrown away. She felt ashamed and humiliated, it is understandable she lied.

They were both children and victims, neither of them were at fault for anything that happened to them.

The real fault lies on the men. Literally just the men, otto, viserys, daemon. All these adult men are the ones to blame. For everything in the show honestly not just the end of rhaenyra’s/alicent’s friendship.

[helaenasaegon]

Green stans have the nerve to say that this show is biased in favor of the Blacks when their socials post nonsense like this:

On top of that, the showrunners have changed Alicent and Aemond so much in order to baby them that she's an entirely different character in the show, and he's taken multiple of his little brother's traits.

So which side is this show actually biased in favor of?

[la-pheacienne]

I just LOVE how both in got and hotd we have established that the root of all evil is women who *checks notes* enjoy sex! consistency is important right? I mean GOD FORBID we genuinely root for anyone that isn't nEd FuCKinG sTark the paragon of big dick masculine honor! who are we gonna root for? a flagrant philanderer that started the war because she's a whore? pwease

but at least they're criticizing monarchy you guyzzz hashtag anti war hashtag subversion!! definitely promising!! never been done before!!!

[chemicalreal]

If you ever posted or commented on the main HOTD sub now you know why your opinions were likely flagged, downvoted or deleted.

It's PR and paid bots as usual.

[throwawayasoiafaccount]

When I see stuff like this I kinda want to bash my head into a wall:

To start off, I’m not sure whether this person was commenting on book or show Cersei, but honestly, it doesn’t even matter because she’s so much more than the ‘ambitious villain’ or the ‘murderous girlboss’ tropes in both the book and show.

(Of course, I do have my issues with the way Cersei was written in the show like most people but this is simply a rant post so I’m not going to go through the differences of Show vs Book Cersei)

Cersei is a female character who was shaped by her environment, who’s insecurities were created by her environment, and she’s a woman who’s idiotic mistakes can be traced back to how her environment shaped her. She’s much more than a murderous girlboss, she’s both a victim of the system and also a beneficiary of it, while also acting as an agent of it to keep the status quo while also desiring what the system denied her.

Cersei is NUANCED and complicated and even now people hate that about her and want her to have been a purely evil woman handcrafted in a vacuum, ignoring the context of her life because readers would rather not engage with Cersei’s victimhood and nuances because that ruins their idea of: She Was The Problem and Always The Problem. (People would rather say that she deserved her walk of shame instead of interacting meaningfully with the theme of systematic gender-based violence that is so prevalent in Cersei’s story. The exploration of patriarchal violence in Show Alicent’s story is done so horribly in comparison.)

And what really pissed me off about these tags is that this person has clearly decided that they don’t care to interact with the nuance of Cersei and are fine with flattening her, and yet they shit on others for not liking Alicent.

Because of the way Alicent is written in this show, she almost always has a ‘woe is me I can do no wrong’ attitude, which of course drives people away from the character (woe is me I deserve to take a child’s eye 🥺). However, what actually annoys me is how she’s made out to be stupid, foolish, ignorant, and inconsistent due to the horrible writing of this show, all of which are deviations from her book characterization. Also, I despise it when people want me to support writing decisions and changes made in adaptations that are downright misogynistic and are meant to attract the male gaze.

But what pisses many people, including myself, off is how the changes made negatively impacted many other characters. Alicent’s terrible characterization is like a black hole that distorts and warps the whole story! It’s annoying af!

So when people like this say: ‘She’s nuanced and people just can’t handle it 🙄;’ I say: No. She’s horribly written and a different character from the book and people have a right to be critical about these changes that stripped a female character of 1) her agency and 2) her intelligence!

And the thing is, there was little reason for the writers to have made all these changes to Alicent’s characterization! In the book she is an interesting character with clear motives and understandable reactions. She’s cunning and ambitious and acts the way a noble lady who became queen would. And despite her clear ambitions and dislike of Rhaenyra, she still makes a comment wondering about who would protect the Princess from Ser Criston, and yet she then takes Cole into her service after his falling out with Rhaenyra. That’s a perfect example of nuance! Show Alicent could never compare to book Alicent’s clear moral values and consistent disregard of said moral values in pursuit of power.

And because of this, Book Alicent isn’t easy to stomach. It’s hard for most people to come to terms with a character like her and it’s even harder for people to feel sympathetic for her at the end when she went mad with grief.

On the other hand, Show Alicent was designed in a way to garner pity, and when the writers felt like her current arc wouldn’t be enough to garner the specific reaction they wanted they would then throw in a time skip and suddenly she’s completely different and yet still Thee victim. She’s designed to be as sympathetic as fucking possible! The camera angles, the background music, and the lighting is set up in a way to make sure you the viewer feels pity or sympathy for her! Cause that’s her role in this series! She’s thee Ultimate Victim!

But too bad for the writers as many people are fed up with this kind of inconsistent writing. Even when the writers created a whole new challenge for Alicent where she’s shitted on by the green council and forced to face the beast she helped to raise, I and many others could never feel any satisfaction as it was clear that once again Alicent was being made to be Thee Ultimate Victim who was just led astray by the patriarchy and was a victim of it and was only just realizing it so don’t you pity her don’t you feel sad for her and now she’s trying to do the right thing so pls pls pls pity her 🥺~ So it shouldn’t be surprising that many people are annoyed by these eNLiGhtEnEd changes that have led to a complete deviation from the source material.

To summarize: Cersei is an excellent fucking character who’s by no means easy to stomach, and because she’s not easy to stomach she’s often reduced to annoying ass tropes by dumbasses who are reading above their comprehension level. But when you actually try to understand her, you can easily see why she turned out the way she did and you can feel sympathy for her while understanding that she’s both victim and perpetrator! On the other hand, Show Alicent is a mess and HOTD is trying to make her serve a different narrative role than she did in the books so ofc people are going to be unhappy with the changes as book readers are once again faced with the annoying reality that the writers don’t give a fuck about the source material.

[rhaenin-time]

No, House Targaryen is not inherently "doomed" by the very same flaws (and themes) that doomed the civilization that they left.

No, they're not fated to succumb to the Doom that they survived specifically because of the foresight that set them apart from everyone else who perished. Not only would it be terrible, simplistic writing, it would also endorse a terrible, simplistic worldview.

People choosing to make House Targaryen a representation of and thematic successor to not just the civilization that they differentiated themselves from, but the power structure that they chose to leave, literally divested from, and actively worked to prevent from rising again in another form... really rubs me the wrong way.

Why isn't this projection and generalization done for any of the families that come from the cultures that are not coded as other? Why is it only the family that's been separated from their cultural context? Why do the other families each get to be unique, complex manifestations not just of different aspects of their cultures, but of their own specific histories?

Why is the foreign degenerate family both a representation of everything wrong with the culture they come from, and a scapegoat for everything wrong with the system they assimilated into? How is it they represent everything bad about what they left behind, and also everything bad about the land they came to? Even though all those flaws are not only shared by the system as a whole, but are flaws that predate their arrival, that they were punished for resisting, and that they are demonstrated to be incompatible with. Why is it always both?

It just rings so familiar to the way so many people view the other in real life. Because the Targaryens are overtly, and intentionally written as the other. It's the reason so many people identify with them, and it's the very same reason that other people vilify them. They're not just the in-universe other to the 'default' culture established in the text, but they're also given characteristics that we, the reader and audience, can recognize as other and even sometimes anathema to Western Christian culture.

Perhaps the old tales were true, and Dragonstone was built with the stones of hell

A Storm of Swords, Chapter 25, Davos III

I want you to ask yourself: Why is the idea of "fire and brimstone" evil?

To paraphrase the annoying people that love to cite Ramsay when they feel like it: If you look at a morally complex family surrounded by other morally complex families in a morally complex world in a story that's famed for seeking to challenge your underlying assumptions, and think that their association with fire and brimstone is meant to signify their singular satanic evilness, rather than say... challenge that very Eurocentric assumption, you haven't been paying attention.

This vilification mindset where the Targaryens are the singular evil of Westeros is so common to people who seem to want to consume ASoIaF without engaging with the criticisms of the Eurocentric worldview of history at the heart of it. And they end up using the convenient “others” to project all the wrongs of that world onto so they don't need to examine it any deeper.

This is the part where I so often get crucified!

This is the take that so often gets me crucified for "trivializing real world bigotry" in an attempt to "moralize interpretations of fiction" by an onslaught of people with troubling ideologies who then ironically steer the onslaught to moralizing their interpretations of fiction in a way that seeks to either mask or justify their troubling ideologies.

The worldbuilding of ASoIaF is an almost unparalleled projection of the Eurocentric worldview. That's what makes the world feel so rich. That's why GRRM and even the readers and audience are able to craft so many details that feel intuitive. But that also means that how you choose to interpret that world is often driven by underlying biases and ideologies that relate to that worldview — especially if you're not willing to challenge them the way George RR Martin does and encourages you to do.

It means that certain potential biases and ideologies people might balk at outwardly expressing in the real world are recontextualized in a way that feels more comfortable to indulge in.

There are countless examples from countless parts of the narrative. Honestly, you could fill books on the matter. But the one I'll point to right now is how the vilification I pointed out earlier is so emblematic of how the Eurocentric worldview often seeks to project their own flaws onto the other or choose scapegoats for systemic issues.

It comes from the same place with how someone pointed out that the baffling bastardphobia that would have medieval peasants giving the side eye is so often people jumping at the chance to “cosplay” as bigots who base their arguments in misogyny and bio-essentialism. Because it's an acceptable channel to indulge in that mindset in a way that they'd often otherwise question, or at least hold back from expressing out of caution.

And there I go again. "Moralizing fandom" for pointing out that fandom is so often used as a 'safe space' to build communities that share and spread troubling ideologies that you're not allowed to criticize because those ideologies have been 'appropriately' decontextualized from their real-world parallels, even though those parallels are still very much there.

But the problem is that it's impossible to simply 'channel' bigotry and leave it in an 'acceptable' space, because bigotry doesn't work like that. It's not a static object you can carry around in your pocket to play with when you think it's safe to do so. It's a blight. A living poison that feeds and grows and spreads. And if you give it a 'safe space' and continue to feed it with 'acceptable' fuel, it will always find its way out.

[juniorfor2]

Ok, so for some reason I was under the assumption that Nettles’ most important part of the story in F&B was around racism and classism. Turns out I was wrong, my bad - it’s actually how a black character gets in between two white people. That’s absolutelyonehundredpercentnodoubt her most thematically important part of the story - it’s certainly not about the way she grew up, or how that upbringing cultivated her cleverness in claiming a wild dragon, or how she was constantly discredited by the maesters because she was black. Nope, it’s her (not even confirmed) love story.

I mean, I thought we were all mad Nettles was cut because it erased a thematically important character that showed that race obviously didn’t matter in order to claim/access incredible things. But for some reason, the FIRST thing I see on every post is that it was a terrible decision because it cut out Nettles’ potentially romantic relationship with a 50 year old white dude. And somehow that’s not racist.

Why is the not-even-confirmed part of her storyline the most important? Why is her love story the most important? Why is her getting between two white people the most important? What is it about that part of her storyline that’s so thematically needed? Because as far as I can see, if she turned out to be Daemon’s daughter, it STILL wouldn’t erase her importance. She would be just as needed, regardless of whether or not she was Daemon’s lover or daughter.

You know what did matter when she was cut out? The part that proved that race did not determine anything about inferiority/superiority. The part that said that a young, impoverished girl could do what no one else did - claim a wild dragon not only because of blood, but because of cleverness and patience. The part that proved that bastards were not born disloyal or cruel or dumb. The part where GRRM asks the reader to look past the maesters’ narrative, and question why they hate her so much. She’s not there for long, but she’s important. Her potential love story just doesn’t have anything to do with that importance.

[lagosbratzdoll]

You guys are always yapping about how Criston Cole is Rhaenyra’s victim. Even though the show contradicts you on this point many times. Even though the producers contradict you on this point repeatedly. 

However, no one wants to reckon with the fact that those men took a tale about a misogynistic paedophile and the child he groomed and isolated and then turned his child victim into the initiator/aggressor. 

It’s par for the course with the adaptors. We watched it happen with Dany and Jorah, Doreah and Xaro Xhoan Daxos, Loras Tyrell and the homophobic way they adapted his story. The racist, heavily sexualised way they adapted the sand snakes and Ellaria Sand. I had hoped the fandom would know better by now but alas!

[petr1kov]

the girls are fightingggg ‼️‼️‼️

[allgirlsareprincesses]

I don't go here and I realize I'm in the minority with this opinion, but it looks to me like GRRM is just trying to distract from the fact that he's never going to finish his f*cking story. I hardly think he's in any position to criticize someone who may have created a flawed product but at least GOT IT TO THE AUDIENCE. Also he's a misogynistic, entitled hack and I will die on that hill.

[rise-my-angel]

I've come to the conclusion that I really like the music in the final montage of the House of the Dragon finale, but that it very much is not in any way in the essence of Game of Thrones.

The only two parts that feel like it belongs in that universe is the remix of the Stark theme and the Lannister theme, because the music from Game of Thrones perfectly captured the spirit of that world and story. But, the show doesn't get credit for those two parts being as good as they are, because they wouldn't exist without Game of Thrones doing them first.

The rest of it is very beautiful and epic in scale, but it feels nothing like music that belongs in the same world that the music from Game of Thrones did. It feels like it belongs in a completely different fantasy world.

The show has some great music, like the build up score to the battle of Rook's Rest. But the problem is that the music does a lot of heavy lifting for the lack of the show's writing ability. It feels like the music is telling me how I should feel, rather then enhancing how the story already makes me feel.

This show's music perfectly encapsulates it's identity problem. The music is either great but ill fitting of the story and world it's set within, or it is completely bland and forgettable. Whereas the music for Game of Thrones is as memorable as the show itself.

Both in the season 2 opener and the finale, they tugged at my heartstrings by playing scores from the Stark theme's. And it stands out at how little the rest of the soundtrack fits into that style, because the show itself doesn't understand how to fit itself into the world of Game of Thrones despite trying very hard to remind us that it's set in that universe.

I get it's a different show with a different story, but the music really just does not suit the world it exists within. A lot of the scores with mild singing in it, do not feel like it suits a world where in universe, The Rains of Castamere is a song that actually exists and both suits the world and the narrative the music is playing alongside.

Like the music, some of this show is really good, but none of it actually fits the world it's set itself within. The music at all times feels like it's grasping for straws to find a place to fit in, but never does.

And as good as the finale music is, it is a standout in an otherwise very bland and forgettable soundtrack that do not feel as if they suit the same story that opened this season with something as memorable, and emotional and iconic as "The North Remembers."

Part of what made Game of Thrones identity, was that the music matched the scale of each story being told, and it used it expertly to enhance a scene without overpowering the emotions on screen.

House of the Dragon is a mixture of forgettable music, and overpowering ill fitting music that it's using as a crutch to do the hard work the writing is failing to accomplish. And using a style that does not match the world it even is claimed to exist within.

I'm not saying the music had to all be the same, but it certainly is not anywhere near as powerful as they think it is, this time around.

[agentmilayawithshield]

Tell me media literacy isn't dead when we have people judging Alicent and Cersei by the same metrics, making it so that Alicent is the worst one out of the two, because Cersei "at least loved her children".

Comparing these two is like judging a fish and a monkey by their ability to climb a tree.

Cersei had all of her living children under her own conditions. The moment her marriage to Robert started to sour, she said "Fuck you 🖕" and went ahead to have three kids with her twin brother. She had children with someone who shared 50% of her genes. That's like a double fuck you, since her kids are not only NOT ROBERTS, they are over 50% hers genetically. (Which a Westerosi wouldn't know ) But to Cersei, who sees Jamie as "herself but a man", her kids are hers, and hers alone. So of course a self-centered narcissist like Cersei loves her children. She sees them as an extension of herself.

Alicent on the other hand has her first child at 15, with a man probably triple her age. She has three more before turning 20. She was a child raising children, with no support system, deep religious trauma, slowly stripped away from her identity. Her whole life becomes the Faith, her sick husband, and children she doesn't know how to connect to. And despite everything, she still loves them.

Is she a good mom? No. But neither is Cersei. They both let their sons run around doing whatever they want, deeply neglect their other children, give them no support. But they also do everything for them, no matter how misguided their judgments are.

Cersei is "better" only because her children never got to show their fully formed identities in front of her. They live and die as nothing more than a part of herself. Alicent's are old enough to see her beyond childhood wonder and innocence.