#being hot by essosi standards is very different from being hot by westerosi standards

[hylialeia]

I've always gelt that Dany test in men is a bit self-insert from the author, also I think being a child who grow up without love, if someone is good to her and gave her love she's going to love them at the moment

That’s certainly a big factor in it. I also think Daenerys’ preferences fall heavily towards who will give her the control, agency, and respect she was denied growing up.

Qotho was ever the cruelest of the bloodriders. It was he who laughed. “Does the horse breed with the sheep?”          

Something in his tone reminded her of Viserys. Dany turned on him angrily. “The dragon feeds on horse and sheep alike.”                  

Khal Drogo smiled. “See how fierce she grows!” he said. “It is my son inside her, the stallion who mounts the world, filling her with his fire. Ride slowly, Qotho … if the mother does not burn you where you sit, the son will trample you into the mud. And you, Mago, hold your tongue and find another lamb to mount. These belong to my khaleesi.” (Daenerys VII, AGOT)

“I swore that I should wed Hizdahr zo Loraq if he gave me ninety days of peace, but now … I wanted you from the first time that I saw you, but you were a sellsword, fickle, treacherous. You boasted that you’d had a hundred women.”  

“A hundred?” Daario chuckled through his purple beard. “I lied, sweet queen. It was a thousand. But never once a dragon.” (Daenerys VI, ADWD)

Khal Drogo and Daario both satisfy this desire, with Daario respecting her status and Drogo being the first man to give Daenerys control over her circumstances (though I maintain that Dany’s feelings for Drogo also surfaced as a coping mechanism, not dissimilar to Stockholm syndrome).

There’s also a theme of Daenerys being attracted to people who are dangerous, exciting, or unpredictable.

And Daenerys Targaryen, whatever else she might be, was still a young girl, as she herself would claim when it pleased her to play the innocent. Like all good queens she put her people first—else she would never have wed Hizdahr zo Loraq—but the girl in her still yearned for poetry, passion, and laughter. She wants fire, and Dorne sent her mud. (The Discarded Knight, ADWD)

Setting aside for the moment that this passage from Barristan’s POV is flavored with his own biases and sexism (and possibly a bit of bitterness regarding Ashara Dayne’s implied affair with Brandon Stark), Dany does have a tendency to gravitate towards the “fire” in others, and often romanticizes things. She’s like Sansa in this way, yet another parallel between the two (though Sansa’s type is a bit different), only Daenerys has a few more years of experience that help her suppress those urges.

The girl in her wanted to kiss him so much it hurt. His kisses would be hard and cruel, she told herself, and he would not care if I cried out or commanded him to stop. But the queen in her knew that would be folly. (Daenerys IV, ADWD)

Notably, Dany differentiates between her personal desires and her responsible ones. It doesn’t erase “the girl in her”, but it silences it the best she can.

There’s nothing particularly wrong with this, despite what Ser Barristan suggests. Daenerys has an aesthetic type (alongside her basic requirements of respect and agency), and that type is charismatic, physically impressive, potentially dangerous men.

She also apparently has a thing for blue or purple hair. And gold teeth. And maybe pirates and older men. I guess.

Thanks, GRRM.