#edited it cause I died reading the last version and realized that I didn't edit it at all

[emmys-writing-blog]

- Castle infiltration scene

edited because I read it over and died inside

I'm currently writing a draft for the scenes in the story and I currently have the first 4 scenes out that eventually lead up to this one

you can check it out here

(cw: blood, fighting, daggers, swords)

Hero and her team cautiously walked through the castle's corridors. "I’ve never seen it this empty before," Hero said, visibly worried.

"It's fine, don't be dramatic," Superhero said, her voice was calm and reassuring. "We're here to do a job, not to worry ourselves sick." Hero nodded, but she couldn't shake the knots in her stomach. The silence was eerie, and the emptiness of the once-flourishing castle felt unnatural.

She couldn't help but wonder what exactly Villain had planned for them. They had done everything they could to try and keep this mission on the down low in fear of any traitors. Yet it seemed like all their efforts had led to nothing. Villain knew they were coming, and they had to be planning something big.

Hero's eyes scanned the hall for signs of danger or clues about what may have happened. "No, but really, what do you think they’re planning?" she asked, her anxiety evident in her voice. "What if this is all just a trap?"

Superhero sighed, sliding a hand down her face in annoyance. "We've been over this already," she said. "We're a small team as it is, and we can't afford to waste time worrying about what might happen. We need to stay focused on our mission."

"We should split up," Other Hero chimed in. "It'll give us a better chance of finding what we're looking for." They said, their voice firm and determined. Hero hesitated. She knew it would be the best way to cover more ground, but she couldn't shake the uneasy feeling.

"Don’t you think they want our forces divided?" Hero added, with visible concern for her team. "We’ll be weaker if we split up!"

Superhero glared at her. Their gaze was sharp and cold, tired of Hero’s continuous outcries. "If one of us finds trouble, we’ll simply catch up," they said, adding in a tone that brooked no argument. "Now quit complaining." Superhero walked off in the opposite direction, leaving Hero and Other Hero alone in the hall.

Other Hero turned to Hero, their expression serious. "Be careful," they said, their voice low. "We don't know what we’re walking into." Hero nodded, shifting nervously. She watched Other Hero continue further down the hallway, leaving her behind. Hero tried her best to pull herself together before continuing.

Examining the hallway, she soon found herself pushing open a set of old doors. The doors creaked loudly as they swung open, revealing a grand throne room.

As she made her way through the dimly lit room, the doors slammed behind her. Startled, she instantly turned around. Her hand instinctively grasped the handle of her weapon, ready to draw it at a moment's notice. Her heart raced with anticipation.

When she turned back, she watched the room slowly fill up with Villain’s royal guards. They all trained their weapons on her. Hero let out a heavy sigh as she scanned the room. She knew she was heavily outnumbered. Nevertheless, the thought of surrendering never crossed her mind. She stood tall, ready to fight until the bitter end.

With a swift flick of her wrists, Hero drew her weapons. Her daggers' blades shimmered in the throne room's dramatic lighting.

Hero drew a deep breath, her hand tensing as she pulled her arm back. She threw one of the daggers, watching as it sliced through the air. It landed with a thud in the chest of a nearby royal guard, catching them off guard. The royal guards quickly realized that the battle had begun. They began closing in, their weapons at the ready. Hero braced herself for the coming onslaught.

Hero quickly tackled the next royal guard that came for her. Lifting her opposing dagger, she stabbed them and returned to her feet.

Before she could react, another guard from the side slashed her hand. She dropped the dagger in surprise, getting punched in the stomach. Hero let out a choked gasp and leaned forward, clutching where she had been struck. She returned the punch and kicked them to the ground.

As she turned, a guard with a large sword rushed towards her. Hero swiftly punched the guard and seized their weapon. With a calculated slash to the back of the leg, the guard fell to a kneeling position. Hero finished them off with a stab to the back of the neck and threw the sword off to the side.

Hero took a moment to catch her breath after defeating the guard, assessing her surroundings. She could feel the fatigue taking over in her movements. It left her in a vulnerable state as the guards continued closing in. Hero's mind raced with thoughts of her team, hoping they were still alive and had found a way to escape.

The door behind Hero opened with a slow groan, and she turned around relieved. A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, but her thankful greeting died in her throat. Villain strode towards Hero with a smirk on her face, their footsteps laced with blood.

Hero stood there frozen. She couldn’t make out much from the gruesome scene behind Villain, but she was quick to guess she wasn’t getting out of this easily. Villain pushed Hero to the ground, holding the tip of their sword to her throat. Hero's heart raced as she realized the gravity of the situation. She attempted to fight back, but her movements were slow and sluggish from fighting the guards. Villain overpowered Hero with ease, forcing her to give up.

Hero knelt on the ground, slowly raising her hands in surrender. Maybe there was still a chance to get out of this. Maybe her team was able to escape before Villain made their way to them.

Villain used the blade to tilt Hero’s head up, forcing her to meet their gaze.

"Well, well, well," Villain said, savoring each word. "It looks like the mighty Hero has finally met her match.” They relished the moment, enjoying the fear in Hero's eyes as they held the sword to her throat. Villain's gaze lingered on Hero's face. The tension in the air was palpable as the two locked eyes, each waiting for the next move.

Hero glared at Villain. Even though she was on the ground, her spirit remained unbroken. She felt a surge of determination coursing through her veins. She refused to let Villain see her fear. "You haven’t won yet," she said, trying her best to hide the increasing worry in her voice. Despite the fatigue and pain coursing through her body, Hero's will remained strong. She knew that she still had fight left in her.

Villain chuckled, raising their hand to signal the guards to lower their weapons slightly. "Oh, I think I have," they said smugly. "That precious team of yours left you behind. And you, my dear, are at my mercy." While relief washed over Hero regarding the fate of her team, she couldn't fully let her guard down. The possibility that her team could be dead still lingered. She knew better than to blindly trust Villain.

Hero felt her heartbeat echo in her ears, but she stood tall. Steadying herself, she locked eyes with Villain, ready to confront the impending threat.

With Villain's reputation for brutality, surrendering was out of the question. Hero needed to buy time, devise a plan, and find a way out of this seemingly hopeless situation. "Come on, Villain," Hero spat, leaning as far forward as Villain's blade would allow her to. "You're not the type to do your own dirty work. Why don't you finish me off yourself?"

The royal guards retrained their weapons at Hero, threatened by her sudden act of defiance.

Villain laughed and flashed a large grin at Hero, throwing her off and breaking her tough façade. "Oh Hero, who said I was going to kill you?" When Villain finally stopped laughing, they met Hero with wide eyes. The smile still plastered on their face. "You aren't getting out of this that easily." Villain raised their hand and signaled to their guards who slowly began closing in.

The guards roughly grabbed Hero and pulled her to her feet, dragging her out of the throne room. Her mind raced, and she was filled with dread over what might come next. She hoped that whatever lay ahead wouldn't be more dreadful than the death she had so narrowly avoided.

[ilreleonewikia13]

Before you read, I wrote the first draft of this post in October, then I resumed it in April, but then in May I decided to heavily re-edit it when I noticed the massive grammatical errors that I left. So the version you will read is quite changed from its original form. Starting with the decision to split it into more chapters and not in a single piece as I did before. I even tried to add more characterization to some events as I noticed that maybe I rushed up some important things, cause when I wrote this "fanfic that is not a fanfic" I didn't have a clear vision of the events in their complexity. Some parts were very detailed and explained well, while other parts are only briefly mentioned. As I re-edit it I tried to make everything more cohesive and pleasing to read. For this reason, unlike the first version, this post will only be about the disclaimers and the introduction of my "fanfiction not fanfiction", as the whole "story" will be published on AO3. As I'm writing this I've already posted 2 of the 5 parts, and right now I'm working on the editing of the 3th chapter.

The Doom in Our Blood Comes Back - the Fanfic of a Fanfic

INTRODUCTION TO THE MANUSCRIPT: THE CHRONICLES OF TWO DRAGONS

TRIUMPHS AND DEFEAT

THE CONQUEST OF DORNE

RUBIES AND IRON

When do you start to realize that a fanfiction stops being just a fanfiction and becomes a real work of entertainment?

For me it's when reading it makes you want to theorize about it as if it were a real book and even before it is finished: this is what happened to me with "The Blacks and the Greens" by @sweetestpopcorn a fanfiction (which almost every fan who started watching the series has read if like me you went looking for Daemyra fanfics on AO3 as soon as it started) that tells the story of the Dance of Dragons starting with the idea that Daemon and Rhaenyra got married as soon as their "affair" was discovered, thus an AU of the original plot leading to a completely different scale of events from the original plot of the series/book.

This story, still in progress (at the exact moment I’m writing this post it arrived “just” at its 170th chapter) has gripped me so much this past month that my brain convinced me that this was the real canon story and made me completely forget about the existence of the TV series: so if you are interested to read this AU I suggest you read the original fic, even if it’s a little bit long cause it’s totally worth it.

I thought about writing an actual story about these ideas I had but then changed my mind. It didn't make sense to write about one idea when I already had a bigger story planned that wasn't finished yet.

As I said before, the story from where I take inspiration is only halfway done and things might change a lot in the upcoming chapters as I write this post. This means that the characters I'll talk about in this headcanon might have died to are going to because I don't control the story, the author does.

As I write this post, my idea for "this story" went in a totally different direction than what the original author intended. It became its own separate version of the Blacks and the Greens, with a different set of rules and logic.

I am a big fan of the Black side in the civil war and like happy endings.  I wanted Helaena to be happy with her kids and for Rhaenyra to rule the Seven Kingdoms with her husband and raise her five children. In my imagination, the Greens give up quickly and Rhaenyra becomes the Queen without any fighting. She brings both sides together and makes the dynasty stronger.

This means that in this universe almost all of the Targaryen family is still alive and because the war didn't last too much the finance of the kingdom is not significantly damaged making the reign of the Black Queen very prosperous and full of innovations, technically and artistically speaking, making for them more effortless to conquest Dorn and made Westeros finally United.

The first idea for this story was to talk about Rhaenyra and Daemon's five children and their fun experiences instead of just focusing on Rhaenyra and Daemon's relationship, which is already the main focus of The Blacks and The Greens.

When I was reading the fanfic for the first time, I knew that liked Baela the most because of her personality: plus in my head, she's like a female version of Daemon for this reason, I decided to use her as the main character in my story.

She, in my mind, had the right characteristic to be our main POV, being, in my head, the “middle child” of the group - so the one who is between Aegon and Viserys (the boys) and Rhaena and Visenya (the girls) - and that belong to both of the two worlds, the feminine and the masculine, and have both these sides with her.  She, in my fantasy, will spend a lot of time with her two brothers, with whom she will share a very strong bond as a very strong rivalry for the attention of their father; with the girls too she will have a special relationship. Especially with Rhaena who is her twin, who is, in some way, her opposite and her complementary, especially in the way they decide to express their femininity over the years.  I think that in the Book-canon, Baela looks more masculine than what it was depicted in The Blacks and the Greens, and because this headcanon is heavily inspired by that fanfic, I decided to follow this vision more than the canon one. 

In this universe, she dresses like a combination of Queen Visenya, whom Baela really likes, and Queen Rhaenys. Baela is both strong and sensual like her mother Rhaenyra. She wears bright colors like red and loves jewelry.

I thought about what clothes would look good on her at the court. I imagined she would like dresses that were fun and sexy, with low necklines and tight bodices. These dresses would be like armor to her and would have lots of beads on them. I got ideas from the outfits worn by Anne Boleyn in the show The Tudors, which I really like.

She likes to show she is comfortable with her sexuality, without feeling ashamed for having fun with men as she thinks that both women and men should be able to act in the same way.  Besides her regular clothes, I also see her wearing softer and masculine tunics as she trains, showing how much she loves the culture of the East continents. Even though she doesn't like to study, Baela enjoys reading High Valyrian poems and listening to Lysene music, as she prefers to sing over playing it. I can imagine her spending time flying and staying with her dragon more than her siblings. She will become very fond of her dragon, Moondancer.  She will also train with her brothers with the sword and be very good at it.

Because Baela became a such strong and intense character in my mind, I started to think that she needed an equally strong and enigmatic counterpart that matched it, but at the same time opposed it and gave it a hard time: or in reality the opposite, that is someone she could challenge and confront, someone equally crazy and reckless, but by the opposite and darker energy. 

And so that at any moment this post headcanon "The Blacks and the Greens" has become somehow a story focused on Baela and Aemond, or at least with a particular focus on the relationship and the clashes between these two. 

Let me make it clear that the choice to "pair" these two characters were not based on a double interpretation of the original story, which clearly shows a strong dislike for Aemond and the Greens in general. The decision to highlight Aemond's character was solely influenced by the irresistible charm of Ewan Mitchell, the actor who played the role in the television adaption, which unfortunately clouded my judgment. To be absolutely clear, I have never felt any form of empathy towards him during my entire fanfiction journey, except for some mere pity.

There were multiple factors that led me to spare the lives of Aemond and Aegon, as I believed it would be more gratifying to let them suffer as they experienced the consequences of all the actions that they made thought the first half of The Blacks and the Greens and the accompanying disgrace of their defeat, rather than simply executing them on the spot.

In this headcanon, Aemond will undergo significant transformations, causing a profound shift in his mentality and character due to experiencing a series of intense and traumatic events. As a result, this version of Aemond will differ significantly from both the Bookcanon and the Blacks and the Greens.  The decision was serendipitously influenced by reading a particular sentence in the fanfic where the detestable Aemond ridicules Daemon for allowing Rhaenyra to mistreat him and become submissive to his sister, referring to him as a "slut." Aemond expresses his reluctance to ever allow a woman to control him as his uncle did.

Well, these two simple sentences made me decide that I need to create my own headcanon where Aemond would become the exact thing that he always derided his uncle for: a "loser" who would be bossed around by all the women in his life. And not only command but as a great misogynistic bastard who was, after touching the bottom of the funds, it would be a woman to save him and put him on track, making him feel indebted to her. 

So this is how this literary experiment was born.   

A simple and very banal enemies-to-lovers story with A LOT of drama and a bunch of dragons, but that needs the perfect setting to work, for this reason, most of the work I did was on figuring out how to set the side character and the background events in a way that could serve my goal.

As I specified many times in this exaggeratedly verbose disclaimer and in the tags this is not actual fanfic, I will not so use a prostatic style like many other stories in this platform, still, I want my readers to have a pleasing experience while reading this work, the result of a very elaborate mental wank and my pressing need to take my mind off my real duties, so I decided to write the whole thing as if it were a cross between historical writing and the introduction to a Greek tragedy. 

Imagine, just like in Fire and Blood, that an obviously bored scholar set out to write the memoirs of Rhaenyra and her deeds; as I tried to make up this story I even tried to figure out the timeline of our characters' birth, some of them are the canon ones used in the books, while the others are the ones I tried to calculate trying to use some mathematics and the information that the writer give us on her fic. This means that it's not very precise, but I hope it's remotely accurate.

Aemond= 110

Daeron =114

Addam=114

Alyn=115

Larra= 115

Aegon III = 118

Viserys = 119

Daenaera = 120

Baela and Rhaena =121

Visenya= 125

Jaehaerys and Jaehaera = 123

Maelor = 127

Baelor = 130