#and i also have a trillion bones to pick with fandom characterization and the way it's completely incongruous

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I've always joked to myself that Luke's biggest offense (aside from the obvious) was that he was boring, but I've never seen anyone else outwardly say it with such conviction. You're a braver person than me! 👍

Oh I've been on the "Luke is boring" train since the show was airing, it's just an objective fact. Luke suffers from something a lot of characters on the show suffer from, which is that the show tried to cram way too much into one ten episode season of television and as such a lot of character writing suffered, especially on the Blacks' side (nearly all Blacks side characters are severely underdeveloped except for Rhaenys and Corlys, who have the distinction of being somewhat schizophrenic). Luke does nothing notable for episode six, nothing notable for episode seven until he maims Luke, nothing notable for episode eight, he's not even in episode nine, and then in episode ten he dies. That's why the scenes he's in during episode ten feel as clunky and bad as they do, they sat down to write the finale, realized that there was no reason for people to care at all when Vhagar munches him, and so we got those random scenes to try and bolster his connection with Rhaenyra and show that he's The Goodest Boy to try and shoehorn in any reason for the audience to care. And be honestly people, did you feel sad when Luke died because Luke as a character is now gone and we'll lose him forever, like we did when Robb and Catelyn died, or are you just sad because he's fourteen and it made Rhaenyra sad and you like Rhaenyra? It's the latter.

(it's also why Lucemond is so popular, because Luke is such a nothing character he's basically a blank slate that a bunch of people can project themselves onto and thus be casted in whatever role they want him to be as a self-insert because Aemond is hot and you can't do that with any other character Aemond interacts with, because they've all got personalities that can't be subsumed the way you can with Luke because he's got no personality)

This is a problem that plagues Jacaerys and Baela and Rhaena as well (seriously, please name me three character traits for Baela and Rhaena separately, I can barely name three for the two of them combined you could literally replace them with lamps and nothing changes it's so bad), but because they're gonna be in the show longer, there's more of a chance to fix it. Luke only being around for four episodes, doing fuck all for most of his appearances, and being defined by "guy who caused grievous bodily harm in a fight he shouldn't have been involved in due to the fact that the opposite side did nothing wrong and then refused to ever even show contrition for it" and then promptly dying means that there's no chance to expand his character the way Jace and Baela and Rhaena can potentially get (and I highly doubt Baela and Rhaena are gonna get much expansion tbf), so we're stuck with the most boring boy. He's a plank of wood, he's nothing, he means nothing to me except that sometimes I think about how difficult the recovery period for literally losing an eye must have been for Aemond on so many levels and I think that Vhagar went too easy on his boring ass.

And it's my blog so I can say what I want and I will bear this cross for you and those like you anon, I will proudly call Lucerys Velaryon a piece of cardboard.