#and the worst part is alyssa doesn't even understand what she did. that she just ruined everything 😭

[oblako]

it's just. i keep thinking about how rand and yujing went through all this trouble to cover their tracks and hide nol from yui, even to the point of not taking the company car, giving jayce false information, paying off security, and not letting kousuke bring his phone (in case it's being tracked). and then alyssa leads her right to nol's hospital room like it's nothing. "you guys are family!" girl she wants him dead. my god.

[atopvisenyashill]

All of the adult female characters are supremely isolated from other women... friends or family. It's equally doled out. Alicent is in King's Landing. Rhaenyra is in King's Landing and then Dragonstone. Laena is in Pentos. Rhaenys is isolated on Driftmark (she essentially doesn't leave due to Corlys's wars and/or various strifes between her family in all those years).

The only female company any of them have are daughters, step-daughters or granddaughters and that is a relationship of responsibility, even if it brings happiness at times.

they establish that feeling of isolation in the show you’re speaking of too early & in a weird way by wholesale excising laena’s impact on the plot and also making rhaenyra look a bit nonsensical. the thing about this time period in the book is that everyone is building the families that are going to get destroyed by the dance. there’s an entire arc here wherein rhaenyra & alicent get their first true taste at what losing might mean with the driftmark fight and the harrenhal fire, and it makes both of them double down on their worst impulses in fear for their families and make the conflict more volatile & more irreparable. for rhaenyra, this involves first losing harwin and then laena, two people she is incredibly intimate with, and laena to childbirth to boot. it’s why she panic marries daemon so quickly, she’s afraid for the lives of her children and has convinced herself only daemon is capable of helping her do that. in the show, they gloss over rhaewin and cut out laenyra completely by isolating her in pentos and then telling that arc exclusively from daemon’s PoV instead of laena’s or split between them. laena’s death is what drives rhaenyra’s isolation to dragonstone. instead, in the show, it’s what drives daemon back home (because he wants to lay laena to rest at driftmark) and then to dragonstone with rhaenyra. this is exactly what they did in got btw - they told the war from robb’s pov not cat’s, then changed jeyne into talisa bc she was less complicated. they cut sansa’s entire vale arc bc they thought it was boring then put her in winterfell and focused more on ramsay gleefully torturing her than sansa’s actual story. they just shuffle laena around into what’s easiest.

the thing is that laena is a tricky part of the family because she is a daughter, but also has her own family, and her husband does not have his own seat, so he’s naturally an extension of yet another family. this nuance in her character doesn’t work so they just have her never interact with her own parents or brother & then die so daemon will go home. the reality is that laena loved her family and considered rhaenyra her family, and would have fought for her on vhagar but she dies before she can and vhagar is used to kill rhaenyra’s son. that’s the tragedy of laena. like alyssa t, like aemma, forced out of the story too soon. but idk, they just weren’t interested in talking about the tragedy of a woman who died too soon, so even if she died loved, she dies woefully unfinished in her life. reminds me of what brienne says - no one sings songs for the women who die in the birthing bed. not only that, but her entire family is sloppily racebent & they refused to think through the implications of a) what laena’s death in childbirth looks like now and b) what completely erasing her entire character’s impact and changing her personality looks like now. i think that’s wonky writing and i don’t understand people’s devotion to defending that weird choice!