#and how can we forget his beef with Jaehaerys

[alicent-archive]

Free Tyland Lannister from the Targ administration.

[selfproclaimedunicorn]

Fic background ask question! You mentioned that you chose House Costayne for Otto’s mother’s house, what drew you to that house specifically? Did that house influence Otto or his mother in any specific way? 🖤💛

Ahh, thank youu! This is gonna be very long & rambly, so I'm putting it under a cut

So, ngl, I haven't fleshed out Hobert & Otto's mom a whole lot--and given that Steffan Rhodri (Hobert's actor) & Rhys Ifans are both in their mid 50s when HOTD starts, it feels like a safe assumption that both their parents are probably dead & not just their dad. So I've been working with the assumption that Unnamed Costayne Mother had them a bit later in life & has been dead since my fic started (not unlike Lord Yorbert Royce, but hers was just plain "being old" instead of cancer). So you can see why I thought "maybe I don't need to do a whole bunch with her," especially given how expansive the cast of the fic already is.

Mostly, I picked her being part of House Costayne because I thought it would be so silly if Hobert & Otto just were the cousins of Ella, Yorick, & Aemon's uncle. A kind of Five Degrees of Kevin Bacon thing. So many people are so many other people's cousins in my fic that it's just very "Why not? It's very silly at this point." So that's why those guys' mom is the paternal aunt of Lord Owen Costayne, who is Lady Rhea Royce's brother-in-law (the one she likes). It's funny to me if those two guys are related to Stoic Sports Man Who Lets His Wife Peg Him & have that much more connection to my main OCs (especially since Otto is beefing with Yorick when he's a literal small child for no other reason than "this is my rival's son").

The secondary, & less crucial to my decision making, reason I picked House Costayne is that if I'm already altering canon so much in terms of shuffling some of the Dance alliances around, & was already planning to make the Costaynes be with The Greens because them siding against their liege lords apropos of nothing didn't make sense to me, then why not just give them a whole bunch of connections there? I'm already giving House Costayne a reason to side with Aegon (their Lady is the aunt of my OCs), so let's just make Lord Owen be Otto's cousin too! So it's really more "just tie these guys to the Hightowers even more than they were before."

A thing to remember about me is, "yes I know the lore, but I also sometimes forget it." This is how we get things like "I accidentally made Borros Baratheon have a connection to Criston Cole because I forgot which house Criston's dad works for" & "I accidentally made implications that Otto is, like, probably the nephew of Elinor Costayne." So that's fun. SOTF Version of Ser Otto Hightower, man that you are. Being Hand for 3 Targaryen Kings (pay no attention to him getting fired twice) while also very much having a mom who was directly related to one of the Black Brides. I have Elinor in my big, main family tree & still forgot that implication & it makes everything have directly trackable motivations, but also be so, so much funnier. Hand to the guy who almost killed Maegor out of some weird sense of ambitious gratitude (the throne beat Jaehaerys to it, & honestly, slay), Hand to that guy's grandson to try & nip future problems in the bud (& stay on that bureaucratic grindset), beef with your boss's brother because "I don't like his vibe. He might try some fuckshit--don't you remember what happened last time one of you guys had a little brother with a wife he disliked & zero enrichment in his enclosure?," spend the rest of his life trying to head off issues that may or may not exist. I'm not saying I've made Otto an unintentional hero or that he's justified & absolved in anything, because he absolutely 10000000% is not. I'm saying I've made him be a character in a workplace comedy who thinks he's in a prestige drama, because SOTF is a comedy actually.

The weird cocktail of "your dad was an overly strict prick with standards in the stratosphere who never said he was proud or hugged either of you," & "equally kind of cold & pragmatic mom who had to helplessly watch as her relative was forced to marry The Actual Worst Guy To Happen To Westeros So Far & just never recovered" is what made Hobert & Otto Like That

[sweetestpopcorn]

Why people hate dany and targs in general so much? Even the ones who claim themselves as supporters usually shy away from incest and blood purity thing. And people kind of assume that 300 year (mad) targ rule was very bad while we aren't given a single other example for comparison except robert's one. Which IMO was as bad as any monarch could be

Because they're cooler and more interesting than their boring a** faves. If there's one thing the "intellectuals", incels, and karens of the fandom love is some goo'ol fashion DuTy and characters acting like robots. Rule is: you displayed emotion you are henceforward dumb/stupid. Also, never forget kids, it's only wrong if a Targaryen did it! Which is why they don't like the Targaryens... well most of them. Hence why you have certain Targaryens who are ok to like because they... well were kind of boring in a sense? Way into religion or duty and/or being a punching bag. Those are the fandoms pre-approved Targs like Naerys, (asoiaf canon) Helaena, Maegelle... Vaegon. Elaena can be liked too but she needs some work, like saying her rumoured "affair" with Aegon IV was SA, 'cause you know, we can't have a character enjoying seggs for nothing else than good ol' DuTy. They also tend to like Daeron II, and I actually think he was a very cool dude but the reason they like him is because they think he bent the knee to Dorne in a sense, and because they probably see his marriage to Myriah as one of DuTy instead of love and passion; plus bonus points for him for his beef with Daemon B who was very Targaryen. They will also like Targaryens who in a sense "cleansed" themselves from their original sin (of being a Targaryen) by marrying people from outside their house. Some examples are Rhaenys (Aemon's daughter) and Rhaelle (Egg's daughter who married a Baratheon). Daella they could like - since she married a Arryn - BUT Daella was very emotional and Rodrick was buddies with the Devil aka Jaehaerys, so they can't like her.

We actually have an example before: how Westeros was divided and always waring BEFORE the Targaryens :D but that sh:t isn't really very convenient to bring up.

Bottom-line: Logic isn't really strong with this lot, so let's just let them be. We do have something in common with the antis, which is that we love to spend time with House Targaryen. Difference is, we're having fun, and they are spreading hate and many times misinformation as well. But anything so they can have a parallel of their fav with their "good" Targaryen of choice, or between another character they dislike and a "bad" Targaryen just to hammer down how bad that Targaryen is :(