#can't believe i just defended the hotd writers

[pessimisticpigeonsworld]

TG stans and Targaryen antis complaining about Aegon's dream getting added to HOTD is so fucking funny to me. Like it makes so many of their theories and metas about House Targaryen null and void.

But one thing that does take the enjoyment out of watching their tailspin is when they accuse GRRM or even the HOTD writers of adding it in after the fact to retcon things. This is blatantly wrong.

The Prince that was Promised prophecy is directly referenced in the dream. The propht is something that had been established by GRRM in ASOIAF. It's referenced multiple times, especially in relation to House Targaryen. It's the reason why Aerys and Rhaella were made to be married, Rhaegar talks about it in Daenerys' vision, and Maester Aemon talks about it. The only time it's not referenced in relation to the Targaryens is Melisandre and Stannis, which is a false reading of the prophecy.

The Targaryens have had dreams about apocalyptic events before, and the Prince that was Promised has massive textual significance to the house. Other houses don't talk about or even seem to know about the prophecy. Therefore, no it's not pulled out of thin air that the prophecy came to them as well as to the Red Priests, neither is it a very big leap in logic. Also, no, Aegon's dream was not made up by the HOTD writers, George was the one who brought it up to them.

So, no, Targ antis and TG stans, Aegon's dream is not something the HOTD writers or GRRM pulled out of their asses. Also the books aren't over yet, so it's not retconning anything if George writes it in (and he did), it's just revealing something he's going to go into in the books. Just because you're bitter about House Targaryen's importance and Rhaenyra's rightful claim doesn't mean you can go accusing the writers of being shitty without evidence. There's plenty of other instances of the HOTD writers being shitty that actually exist.

[thephantomcasebook]

I just saw a leaked clip of Rhaenyra telling Alicent to her face that Aegon has to die and Alicent just accepting it.

There are so many talented writers out there in the world and yet Ryan Condol had to be the one to adapt Fire & Blood and write HOTD. Fml

No ...

You gotta go back and rewatch this shit.

What actually happens is equally stupid.

So, Alicent betrays Aemond and Criston by telling Rhaenyra their battle plans. Then, Alicent offers Rhaenyra King's Landing uncontested and without bloodshed if she is allowed to take Helaena and Jaehaera out of the city to disappear. She tells Rhaenyra that Aegon is terribly wounded and a shadow of himself and that he'll bend the knee to Rhaenyra cause he still listens to Alicent.

Rhaenyra tells Alicent that its a stupid plan, because, she still has to execute Aegon, she must take his head to end his claim. Then she asks if Alicent is okay with this. Alicent pauses and doesn't say anything, showing that she is not.

Then, fucking stupid goes fulling fucking retard.

Rhaenyra gets enraged and frustrated that Alicent still defends Aegon. Like ... WHAT?!

Like, somehow, Rhaenyra just expected Alicent to be okay with her chopping her eldest son's head off, like they've unilaterally agreed that Aegon is not a person, or Alicent's child, and therefore he has to die and Alicent should be okay with this.

WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE EVEN TALKING ABOUT RIGHT NOW?!

WHAT IS HAPPENING?!

Are you fucking serious?!

Like that line and that reaction, boils my fucking blood - on a deeply personal level that media rarely can touch.

Rhaenyra just expects Alicent to accept that her sons are evil and that she has to kill them and is visibly offended and betrayed that Alicent isn't on her side about KILLING AEGON, HER SON. Fuck You, you crazy supremist cultist bitch! And fuck Alicent for even allowing her to have that reaction and let her believe that she's on her side about this. Ugh, I fucking can't stand this shit!

I'm seriously thinking about just closing the book on Alicent Hightower, and writing her off forever. What she did is really unforgivable and completely indefensible.

I mean she admitted to Rhaenyra that she loves Criston (wouldn't say his name in front of her) that she cares for children. But she still willing to betray all of them because ... SHE WENT ON A SWIM IN THE LAKE!

Sara Hess might be one of the worst writers in the fucking world.

[horizon-verizon]

Im not sure if you watched ep. 3, but I feel like they’re utterly destroying Rhaenys’ character. Season 1 Rhaenys I liked, but this season she is already feeling so oddly out of character. The fact they made her defend Alicent to Rhaenyra is crazy to me.

Also Rhaenyra begging Alicent for peace?? What’s that about?

And Ulf being Baelon’s son pissed me off so bad. They could’ve chosen any other of Jaeherys’ children.

This episode is why I’m boycotting the rest of this show.

Haven't watched. And I don't have the desire to, either. Wrote about Rhaenys in these posts when others talked abt her recently: #1, #2, #3. Pointed out some in-HotD character inconsistencies, I believe, in the first linked post.

Answer to your rhetorical question: It's sexism:

Male Gaze and HotD -- xenonwitch

Essentialism in Pacifist Women v Violent Men - rhaenyragendereuphoria

Alicent, rhaenicent, Fascism, and Sansa Stans -- rhaenyragendereuphoria

Why Rhaenicent is so Popular -- me/rhaenyragendereuphoria

Excuse me anon, I'm taking this opp to rant again.

I mean, yeah, this is really just the show's MO and has been from the beginning, I just think people didn't really think about the implications of some of the changes they made and what they meant about how these writers saw the project they were creating so now they're caught by surprise at the stuff here. It's kinda understandable bc you just want to enjoy stupid drama sometimes. But I felt that it would inevitably travel towards interpreting the actual book/orig story itself bc people kept using the "two canons" and "F&B is a historical document w/biased/sexist writers" even when they did read the book....which shows how they didn't actually read the book or understand what the purpose of the unreliable narrators & how they are there to get readers to try to read between the lines as best they can and not take some things (not ALL things!) at face value. The book is presenting the reader with the opp to see how susceptible they are to propaganda and we are supposed to work through a process of battling the cognitive dissonance it creates and/or see our own biases while arguing how Rhaenyra DID NOT deserve her fate (Doylistically/exegetically). How greedy and violent men have over generations assured the demise of themselves in their exclusion of women. Sounds trite to those who don't understand the implications.

Which is parse out the truth as best you can, recognize patterns or deviations/inconsistencies (& think abt why those are there) from such to do so, understand the cultural and character context to understand the likelihood of that what Septon Eustace/Mushroom/Munkun/others all tell the version of an event the way they do. And, with any literary text, look to syntax, vocabulary, the use of some figurative language, tone, the mood the language sets and for what reason? That Rhaenyra likely sat the Iron Throne when she took back KL, that can't be denied. That she was bleeding bc she was "cursed" & "rejected", bc she was so "obviously" not worthy of the throne? That's what Septon Eustace wanted you to believe, just as he wanted people to not criticize Aegon for being with a 12 year old girl by saying "she was of good status to be a paramour".

Back to how people use this fallacious argument abt 2 canons and unreliability--I felt that people would use this to then argue that HotD was actually "revealing" mysteries and hidden truths of F&B/AWoIaF, and that was proven by how people think of the 3 eggs Dreamfyre laid that became Dany's dragons. Now you got people believing that they are Syrax's depsite how F&B makes it so damn clear they aren't. And so now you got people arguing for Baelon cheating on Alyssa the same way some were arguing for Rhaenyra to not be the person GRRM wrote her to be...karma keeps receipts.

This show is a money-making, marketing project that seeks to deny the sort of sexism-commentary F&B was actually doing or willfully misunderstands it and most lore in order to make bucks off a rich world. Because people in real life do not take sexism seriously, thus they do not know or care to understand the basic "woman=human" "idea". People even take pains to deny it at the same level or close to racism. It is the oldest form of discrimination...except maybe ableism?

The sooner people realize and internalize all that, the sooner they will not be disappointed by this show and be more interrogative of it.

Me, I chitter over the slowly accruing hatred for it on Twitter.

[mejcinta]

The stuff that happened with TCG is why I don't take this fandom serious anymore ...

For some reason we went from joking about our favorite War Criminals in the darkest humor possible to emotional weirdoes harassing actors on panels.

I blame the fucking marketing for taking a regular ass show and turning it into a goddamn litmus test of morality.

Yet, on the other hand, across the board, people are taking fiction way too serious.

Even in the Downton Abbey fandom super emotional female fans - yeah, I'll say it, fan girls - are basically holding the entire franchise hostage and not allowing any adult or darker storyline to take place because they view the characters as not just real people, but their friends. And no one can do anything but really cheesy fluff plots in the movies, because, the overly emotional wine moms will rip their shit if Lady Mary is shown in a bad light or something bad happens to one character or the other. They don't want any lasting consequences.

It's gotten so bad that even in fanfiction they black list writers if they write too dark or adult storylines with the character ... I mean actively go out of their way to try and hound them off of Reddit.

And this is Downton Abbey for fucks sake!

The level of completely out of control hate messages I still have from the HOTD fans over me defending Jaehaera as the rightful queen is insane. Over me supporting a little girl ... WHO IS A FICTIONAL CHARACTER!

I know you're younger than me (I'm 33) but what the fuck happened where these people can't seem to tell the difference between fact or fiction.

It's even bleeding into actors and actresses personal lives. The TCG incident is tame compared to one actress I know who played a character on a tv show who another female character was in love with in the show ... just once - ten years ago. Now, in her personal life, she can't actually date men openly because her fans will tear her apart if she's not dating a woman. Like their entire career is based on her fangirls believing she's a real life lesbian rather than Bi-Sexual. Even now she gets shit for being a 'fake lesbian' when she never said she was in the first place.

How the fuck did we get to this place?

You were right to say it. The Fan Girl ™ phenomena has become a sweeping and overpowering threat to modern entertainment and actors' personal lives.

Yikes! I can't imagine being forced to put up a front just because fans will lose it if I don't act like the character I play in real life. Wow!

I blame this on this growing desire in the West to tolerate and placate weak minded people, instead of encouraging mental and emotional development. The studios are no better because they pressure actors to play along with the loud and entitled audiences. Actors can't even be douchebags anymore because this obsession with image has taken over, instead of encouraging diverse views, and it's even worse when you factor in superficial feminism in stories, which has melted many fans' minds into goo!!! Literally, people stop using their brains when they see a female lead and don't allow anyone to do a fair analysis of said character because apparently "Woman can do no wrong", "Woman always right", "Woman strong". It feels redundant and cultish.

I don't know about y'all but urgent help in the West is needed. 😂😂😂 Seriously. The mental deterioration going unaddressed is leaking into entertainment and driving people into extremes as well as bankruptcy (Marvel and Disney)!! When the whole point of entertainment is to enjoy ourselves in whatever corner we choose to be and to view characters objectively and to treat them and judge them equally and humanly!

Instead we have morality Olympics on the daily, about how only one character is always wrong and another is automatically right for having a vagina. Weird behavior if you ask me. I'm sick of it.

[horizon-verizon]

The fact that some QUEEN CONSORTS did more against their abusive husbands than Rhaenyra, A QUEEN IN HER OWN RIGHT....

Cersei confronted Robert and smashed a horn in his face so hard that she broke his tooth.

Rhaena tried to murder Maegor with a dagger hidden beneath her pillow during the wedding night.

Daena the Defiant escaped her captivity thrice and get back at her fanatical captor by giving birth to a bastard.

I promise, I’m not victim blaming Rhaenyra but... SHE’S A QUEEN REGNANT AND HER HUSBAND MUST OBEY HER. SHE HAS THE POWER TO PUNISH HIM, SHE HAS AUTHORITY OVER HIM. This fandom just want demure and submissive tradwives otherwise they’ll scream “mutual abuse” or “girlboss”.

(Not to mention that if they have an agenda to make Daemon a villain and create an entirely different character, despite him being completely and unconditionally devoted to Rhaenyra in F&B, and their ONLY way to do that is make him abuse the women in his life, then that that is a HUGGGE problem, and it doesn’t make sense why people aren’t disgusted by it).

And once again, this is not an indictment against abuse victims, this is saying that usually Westerosi abuse victims usually can't do much against their husbands bc they can't, and when we finally have a woman who can and has the stuff (resources) at her disposal to punish and defend herself...the show denies her that. Rhaenyra of all people, who had, as you mention, the opportunity above other women. And once more, bk!Rhaenyra most likely would have used what was available to her. Best believe. [So Spake Martin; POST #1; & below]:

While of course it can and does often happen, It is certainly not a guarantee that a person gets more...reserved even in the face of Rhaenyra went through. This was still a choice from one of the silent options the writers had and then decided to go with to make her more palatable to more people who are looking for a more "peace for peace sake" element (nothing wrong with peace and trying to avoid war, but GRRM wrote F&B writing this for Dany's rise AND Gyladyn writing F&B as propaganda against female leadership doesnt invalidate or erase how:

there absolutely was a wrong side (the greens)

that, yes, Rhaenyra, by GRRM's own words & instructions to Amok, outside of F&B (artist who drew the official image of her and all the ruling Targs/their consorts except Daemon) was much less reserved or dour & more confrontational as her own personality than show!Rhaenyra

Repetition: Their/the writers' trying to create a story for that doesn't make the fact that bk!Rhaenyra was much fierier than this go away or false. Again, GRRM describes who Rhaenyra was OUTSIDE OF F&B! (So Spake Martin).

Also, she has had 6 years of happy times with Daemon by the beginning of the 8th episode, we couldn't get Rhaenyra make at least some snide comebacks at Vaemond?!

Okay, let's say that F&B is unreliable, two canons, etc. (true enough)....why are we acting this is the best or only way to write how the Driftmark claim and Rhaenyra's bearing?!! (epi 8).

Why are we (the HotD writers) choosing to make Rhaenyra seem to have so many helpless images of tolerant agency-lessness? Why are we choosing to make Rhaenys so hostile form the beginning to the very last episode, only when Rhaenyra shows her what she thinks is good for the "realm" and (when the war with the greens was inevitable if the green usurped Rhaenyra and she is expected to at least plan how to get it back without/as little bloodshed as possible)? Why are we making Rhaenyra so destitute in positive female connections when there's proof of otherwise in the original story?! There is a difference between having 0 to having 2-3 good connections out of much more bad or neutral ones!

Why are we choosing to rely on one negative stereotype of women...to avoid another perceived negative stereotype against of women?!

And once more, just bc the book is unreliable in terms of who's telling what, how, and for what reason (Septon Eustace dislike of Rhaenyra with the deal with her bleeding from the throne and other things, Mushroom's hypersexualizing and objectifying her while seemingly favorable, Gyldayn's sexism towards Nettles, etc.) doesn't mean that characterizations, events, dates, appearances in Fire & Blood are totally subject to interpretation and absolute changes. Otherwise we can say that Daemon or Viserys were totally different people and re-characterize Daemon as a scholar--a Samwell Tarly-- for life who never hurt a life and only went to war to supervise command over the Stepstones wars from a tent!! Or we could make Nettles into someone who insults everyone she meets after finally getting a dragon, high on a victory she never got to have. Or we could make Mysaria into a crybaby and have her controlled by some john with aspirations for throne instead of a woman who independently worked with Daemon to do horrible shit, and that's how she becomes even more victimized into her eventual death. We could then write Otto to be the brash, unsecretive agent pushing Viserys through glaringly obvious intimidation insteadof the staid politician and manipulator that he was.

Why is it that with these women, we're okay with them becoming their polar opposites?!!! Why are women take with being the "voice of reason" and men show destructive anger, or just hot anger and indignation? Why are women the ones keeping males' "natural" warring in check as if they themselves have not also sprung for wars in real life?! Why are women in HotD (more often than not) the failed keepers of men and the ones to temper their male aggression & ambition?

The final paragraph of the Introduction of the anthology Dangerous Women, where GRRM wrote "The Princess and the Queen". Which is the precursor of Fire & Blood, and relates essentially the Blacks and the Greens chapter of F&B:

I really don't think GRRM went so far to the Marina trench as to make the women in his tales not try to gain agency, exercise what power they do have, etc. to a value of total 0 when he frames both Alicent & Rhaenyra choosing to assert themselves & their real or perceived rights through this war as them NOT being "hapless victims who stand by whimpering in dread". Not to justify Alicent becoming 15, marrying a age-raised Viserys who she clearly did not want to marry and Rhaenyra not resembling much of anything of her original, take-no shit self after episode 5. Same with Rhaenys. Or how Daemon treats Laena, then the choice to make him kill Rhea Royce. Both unsubstantiated in the orig text.

And Targ women have a record of the same, as you say!

[horizon-verizon]

Hotd is the trenches of white feminism because why else is it that most of the time when I see someone who actually understands why trying to change it to a story where both sides are wrong is actually both irresponsible and impossible, they so often turn out to be a bipoc woman? Why are we the ones out here having to defend white women and even the men around them from other white women who so often claim to be feminists and why is this also true in real life? I'm tired.

When the ASoIaF fandom itself is entrenched in white feminism with no real public acknoledgement of how/why people got the conclusions they did bc everyone wants to avoid being honest and just be either sexist/racist OR deny such things motivating some of the writers' decisions or other fans' feelings abt such and such...

the next fandom for the next TV/film adaptation will inevitably follow. And worse bc HotD is the hub of male gaze and misogynoir-baked-into-the-writing that reinforces it all.

I have had to explain how male gaze is different from "female gaze", how it has always been about trying to make subordinate a woman's true perspective AND agency for male-viewer excitement and confidence. To make the female subject no longer subject or actor as the male. How it constructs a pleasure in seeing female subjects subordinated, that that is its inherent purpose and function.

ANOTHER LINK

Not about "who is hot", or "looking with disrespect", or "what makes men attracted to women" like female gaze is supposed to be about "what makes women attracted to men" or gets them hyped or whatever. This, what I just described people have done/said about male gaze vs female gaze, is a complete misunderstanding AND attempt to redefine what male gaze is/what it has always really been about to distort the unnatural desire to see female objectification as "natural".

Something that neoliberal capitalism has tricked many people, inclu women, into believing like it has tricked girls into thinking sex work isn't as dangerous and "a big deal" bc you're making money being a commercial product of a patriarchal society.

I will repeat: male gaze, as a theory/application/criticism/observation of patriarchy in film/media was about how & why women are agency-less/mitigated objects for the male-centered or male-as-the-actor/subject story.

In the male gaze, the "woman" is not "the maker of meaning", but the "bearer of meaning".

And Laura Mulvey was a white, "mid" class woman...and other white women can't even get this shit in their fucking brains for more than three seconds.

I, too, am tired.

Now, of course we can understand how both sides went into a war that ravaged an entire realm in under 3 years. how it lead to the end of dragons before Daenerys. How we can seem to chalk it up to noble people being typically selfish nobles...however, what makes this unique is the fact that it could have been entirely prevented if sexism itself did not exist. That Rhaenyra was a woman mattered and defined the entire trajectory of the greens' moves & motivations & confidence into usurping her in the first place. This is just basic fact. Not even Maegor's war w/his own nephew (Aegon the Uncrowned) was this devastating!

(LINK#1 & LINK#2, both by zaldrizer-sovesi) The Blackfyres came from xenophobic, [likely] ableist, desires for self-aggrandizement and have a lot to do with ideas of masculinity and power: bastard given a ruler's sword by the past one vs nonmilitant legitimate ruler who invites the "Other" into his court--using such things already in the society for one's one advancement. If we can acknowledge that, why can't we acknowledge the same for Rhaenyra/the Dance and sexism?!

Why do we need to subordinate that under "both sides bad", instead of the other way around? Again, Condal and many HotD "neutrals" have argued that "both sides bad" is the "point" of the war...which, it it actually were, then what is the goddamn point of it if it can be subsumed under "oridinary" nobles' wars?!! What is the point of the Dance or even adapting it at all? bfr!