#hotd het fic recs

[consistentsquash]

HOTD Fridays - Detailed Fic Rec - Coda

Link - Coda

Length - 25000 words. Rated M.

TL;DR - Ossuarium's Coda. This fic is straight up a coda. It's a lookback at the beautiful lore, characterizations, relationships and the spectacular plot that we got to read and fall in love with.

We get 13 POVs corresponding to the 13 people Daemon loses. Really a subversion on the hero's journey recipe. Antihero's journey? Also feels like Major Arcana? Maybe? Don't quote me on that though.

Alysanne. The Guide. - She is intense and formidable. We get to see how she connects with Daemon and essentially teaches him everything about their family/dragons. Later on, when Daemon is teaching Rhaenyra or Baela we can see a lot of her influence in him.

None of Alysanne's children had tolerated Dragonstone well. Her grandchildren; Rhaenys and Daemon took to the sorcery-warped hold as if they too were fused of blood and black stone by spells of fire.

2. Baelon. The Father. He is totally lost after Alyssa's death and kind of hopeless at raising his kids. But he wants to be there for them. He tries! The type of father Daemon becomes is essentially following Baelon's example.

Baelon woke in the nights with terrible visions of Balerion taking Viserys to hell as he had taken Aerea, and of Daemon dying with a bolt in his throat while Caraxes munched on goats.

3. Jaehaerys. The King. He is trying his best to fix things in the realm but that has a big cost because he loses his children + wife's love. He has 13 kids. The 13 wounds Daemon ends up with is essentially a callback to the 13 kids Jaehaerys loses. Their relationship is messy peak family drama but with Love in capitals.

They said that Jaehaerys loved his grandchildren more than he had loved his children. His grandchildren were what remained of Alysanne; he loved them in guilt and remorse and regret.

4. Aemma. The Sister. Daemon had a sister. It was Aemma. They both love Viserys. They both love Rhaenyra. They are on the same wavelength. It's what Aemond and Helaena can be if they weren't like in the middle of a war with some crazy parents. This is the saddest POV, IMO. But it's also the most character revealing.

She was Dim Daella's daughter. Daella had been married in the Sept of Dragonstone because she could not bear the sounds of crowds. There had been no bedding ceremony, because Daella could not have borne the shame of it. Grandmother had suggested that for Aemma's wedding, but Grandfather had refused her flatly. The realm must celebrate, he had said.

5. Rhea. The Wife. She is doing her best to save her household/herself from Daemon's mood swings and general awfulness. Because it's not like he's a good husband or anything. But they have a pretty decent working partnership. They actually care for each other in their own weird way. Rhea's rune knife is Daemon's last weapon in Ossuarium and we get to see them bonding over it. It's really bittersweet.

In a long wedlock, one counted what one had. Oh, she would be bitter and resentful soon, and she would meet his cruel words with her own, but right then, for a brief spell, there was peace and quiet.

6. Laena. The Lover. Honestly Ossuarium's Laena is the best. Rhaenyra loves her. Daemon loves her. It is perfect compersion/Book!Laena dynamics with Rhaenyra. I really love her POV because Rhaenyra was capable of making good female friends outside Alicent. Also because Rhaenyra and Daemon are more than just their relationship with each other. Laena POV in the coda finally does justice to Daemon's Viserys trauma about his brother holding a dagger to his neck. Which. Yeah. A classic case of Targ family bonding.

Her husband's head was on her lap and she kissed him in glad lust. Vhagar was exasperated and amused and bubbling with affection.

7. Viserys. The Husband. Ossuarium's Viserys/Daemon is the trainwreck you can't look away from. Because it's that bad and that good. They are intense and Viserys goes 100% Targ when it is about Daemon. Also they love each other. With peak stupidity. Maximum Targ. While Ossuarium doesn't really have an OTP as such Viserys/Daemon is the heartbeat of the series because of how much collateral damage they end up creating. We get the extraordinary, special and intensely beautiful Viserys POV one last time.

His gaze was heavy and grieving as he watched the rot and ruin of you that he had caused. Of his making. It was all of his making. They leeched you. The fattest prey there was. That there had been. You were emaciated and alone. Ten years. He had returned to Dragonstone and wed Rhaenyra. He visited you dutifully and frequently, but between you lay a gulf of old and unforgivable grief.

8. Luke. The Son. Luke being a really good boy. With a really crazy uncle with zero impulse control on top of a dragon with negative impulse control. He has 100% confidence that his Dad will avenge him.

"My father knows where I am."

9. Rhaenys. The Queen. Ossuarium is essentially a story about Alysanne's legacy and her four grandchildren. Rhaenys was Alysanne's chosen Queen. We have Daemon finally accepting that. Because it should have been Rhaenys. The relationship between Rhaenys and Daemon is one of the most fascinating dynamics in Ossuarium because they love the same people, they value the same things, but they have totally opposite ways of showing it. IMO, Rhaenys is the literal heart of Ossuarium. She is brilliant in her POV in the coda.

In the Dragonmont's shadow, the last of Alysanne's grandchildren embraced each other upon the ossuarium of their house. Each bore the other's favour. The remains of them they clung to in fierce hoard-hold.

10. Jace. The Heir. Ossuarium's Jace is fantastic. His resentment about being a bastard and getting mocked about it, his love for Baela, his confusion about how Daemon sees him, his support for Rhaenyra without missing her weaknesses, his need to get validated by Rhaenys, his protectiveness for his sibs, his search for a father figure, his willingness to do anything to protect his family. We get to see everything in his Coda POV. Including a great serving of the tense relationship he has with Daemon. He opposes Daemon knowing that Daemon will forgive him. Because that's what a father does.

Jace should not speak of the matter again, but he wanted to hear that he had been right. Mother had told him that he was in the right. Grandfather had told him. He wished that Father would affirm him too.

11. Viserys II. The Prince. Literally. He comes up on top because he is clever, plucky, endlessly optimistic, manipulative when he needs to be and has 100% faith in his family. He is probably the best King Westeros lost out on. We get to see it here. Whatever his situation he figures out what to do. He is the best GOT player of their family. Also he does everything to get back to his family. Everything from his relationship with Daemon and Rhaenyra to his love for brothers/sisters to his really special attachment to Aegon is 100% a mirror of Daemon himself.

He parted himself in thirds, for brother and wife and the light that came.

12. Rhaenyra. The Twine/The Yoke. Because she is Daemon's everything including the weirdest passionate umbilical connection ever. The twine he chose/the yoke it gradually changed into. There is nobody else who can make him fall so low and rise so high. He screwed her life up big time. Also saved her. Also screwed her life up again. Rhaenyra is the biggest tragedy in this story. It's messy/passionate/horrible/frightening/beautiful/intense. This is a love for the ages. But it is the type of love that nobody really wants because it's scary and a million ego deaths. Like you can't consciously decouple from this. There is no going back.

He did not speak her name. He sang it as if it were a hymn. Perhaps that was why he could not harden himself against her. What man could erect a carapace to protect himself when he spoke a name as hymn?

13. Caraxes. The Heart. Because. This is Ossuarium. This is the greatest sacrifice in Ossuarium and it's also the most willing one. Because Daemon was everything to Caraxes just like Caraxes was everything to Daemon. They are fire made flesh. They belong to each other. Caraxes is the 13th/final wound and the one that ends up saving Daemon. Plot spoilers so I won't go into more detail. But how absolutely spectacular to have the Caraxes POV as the closer because the Caraxes POV opened Ossuarium.

Their once-home was a place of fourteen flames. They are what remains of it in misshapen heart and warped wyrm-wings. Their troth is what remains of it. They burn as the fourteen once burned, unto ossuarium. Peregrine things, the lonely elm and the vine that sought it so that they might be peregrine no more, for the vine's home is the elm, and the elm's home the vine that hoard-holds it.

Like a lot of things about Ossuarium, the devil is in the details and the layers. Caraxes keeps the agendered present tense POV. Viserys keeps his unreliable 2nd person POV. The others remain in the past tense. Because Caraxes is the one who ensures Daemon's future and Viserys is the one we don't know if Daemon ever recovered from.

But. Read the coda. Read it for Caraxes because this is essentially a story about a boy and his dragon. With lots of meditations about masculinity and gender. With a lot of questions about where exiles/others belong in a society. Also Targs being Targs 100%.

[consistentsquash]

House of the Dragon fic rec - Soon the hymen-song

Deep Tuesdays! House of the Dragon Fic Rec

Link - Soon the hymen-song

Rating - M

Pairing - Daemon/Rhaenyra

Author - eldritcher

Length - 5300 words. One shot fic.

TL;DR - 50% Female character study + 50% Pegging.

Vibe Quote!

A godlike thing, lonely and brittle, warped strange like his wyrm. He had wed himself to her in hymenal hymns, and the greatest of his grants was this hold of her arms about his yielded all.

Spoiler warning - Spoilers for the books and the show. 

Title!

We have got to talk about this title. It looks like it's about a woman's virginity. Because that's where we generally see the hymen word pop up. But this turns that expectation upside down. The fic is really about how Daemon's "hymen-song" is only for Rhaenyra.

 Premise

This fic is set during the period when Rhaenyra has given birth to her first kid (Jacerys/Jace) and she is now pregnant with the second. She is struggling a lot with her body image after the pregnancy esp comparing herself to Alicent.

 Themes

Experienced Older Character/Idealistic Younger Character

One of the classic fandom tropes! Cynical/experienced older character gets his/her emotional awakening/reawakening because of falling in love with somebody innocent/optimistic/idealistic/totally different. They go through a lot of challenges and both of them change but in a good way because the Power of Love. This is Luke/Han, Any doctor/their companion, Xena/Gabrielle and a ton of other pairings.

 It's complicated!

Rhaenyra and Daemon are in the fucked up soulmate category. They kind of exist in two weird spaces of May-December relationship and forever Love with capital letters. The May-December relationship part is why Rhaenyra really doesn't want Daemon to see her post-pregnancy body. But at the same time she wants him to be still attracted to her. Which he is, of course. Because forever Love with capital letters.

 Characterization and character dynamics

Brilliant characterizations written on the show side of the show-tell scale. We get to see the characterizations through their character dynamics.

Daemon is Rhaenyra's uncle and she replaced him as the heir. So their dynamic really shows that combination of being family/lovers esp in the context of how much Daemon's destiny changed because of Viserys choosing her as the heir. They have a lot of reasons to resent each other. Their personalities are definitely on the long grudge holding side. Which we get to see. But they really aren't able to do that with each other.

Family

I really love how Rhaenyra in this fic has love/support from her husband and her father. True soul mates fics can sometimes bash the people who are "standing in the way" of the soul mates getting together. This fic is refreshingly different and doesn't bash anybody. Rhaenyra deserves that support <3

 Beauty

Beauty for women is a lot of times defined in terms of what other people find attractive. Rhaenyra is doing that here. Daemon realizes that but it's not like he is the world's best orator or flatterer. He's probably one of the worst. But he sees how Rhaenyra is hurting about her body image without her saying anything about it and he is great at showing through his love language why he is still attracted to her.

 Love languages!

Two people with totally different love languages and still on the same page. This is like the perfect fictional soul mate dynamic! Other people don't really get them but they get each other.

 PEGGING!

:D Some authors have repeating kinks in their fics. Eldritcher is pretty interesting in how they write their het fics to focus around how women feel about aging, pregnancy, menopause, body image, self pleasure and things like that. Also pegging. The het fics from this author are really liberal with pegging. So we get that here also. It's really hot and it's really fitting the dynamic Rhaenyra and Daemon have.

Prose

Some authors have writing styles you can spot anywhere. Eldritcher's standard prose is distinctive because of how it looks like poetry but without any extra descriptions. You can also easily spot this author's work by the last sentences. The lyrical endings are really unique in their work. It is like a Gregorian chant.

[consistentsquash]

Hot rec! Hump day is for the hottest fics. Also the longest rec I ever wrote for a PWP. It totally deserves a long rec <3

I am a big fan of Sexposition. Exposition with sex! Especially if it has an angle of female empowerment. Because that’s really one of fanfiction’s major differences from what’s available in mainstream.

Title - Soon the virgin

Length - 3400 words

Rating - M

Pairing - Daemon/Rhaenyra

Rec because- this fic takes sexposition to the next level. Also really love the Death of the Author style concepts in this fic. More below the cut!!

Content Warning - Daemon is Rhaenyra’s uncle. So. Also the canon is from G. R. R. M and the show is from HBO. So. It’s definitely not going to be safe for work.

Spoiler Alert -House of the Dragon (show), Fire and Blood (books), Game of Thrones. If you don’t want to be spoiled, stop reading immediately.

Premise - Rhaenyra’s first time.

Themes

Satire - Game of Thrones and G. R. R. M’s writing in general has really strong /r/menwritingwomen vibes. The women in the franchise are basically male fantasies. Nothing wrong with it. But the stereotypes are kind of everywhere in the series. This fic neatly acknowledges the vibe of the canon with its obsession and the male gaze. But then it turns the male gaze upside down and we get a Rhaenyra who goes for what she wants. Really love the super surgical precision which subverts the canon flaws instead of totally ignoring canon choices.

Title - OMG! The title! The tongue-in-cheek satire is already there. Starting with the title. It’s a total Playboy style title. It puts front and center the Virgin obsession/attraction in media in general and in this canon especially. But in the fic we find out it’s actually talking about another type of virginity. Just like popular culture has an obsession with female virginity it's also got an obsession with emotional virginity for men. A really nice touch.

First time - So really the most tired cliche pwp premise ever. But good fics stand out because of how they turn the cliche upside down. This one is a masterclass in working with a really tired cliche and getting it to something fantastic.  I really hate the moon blood/first flowering obsession in the Game of Thrones universe. I mean I get it and the context. But really. Really love how this fic turns that around to empower Rhaenyra. For her getting her moon blood/first flowering is one thing off a check list. Because it’s like getting her drivers license. Like the first thing to do is to go on a road trip. Which in her case means finding her uncle and getting him to service her.

Power dynamics - Daemon just gives in. But he definitely isn’t the giving in type. Really love how we get to see his character and family loyalty/obsession/attachment with how he responds to Rhaenyra.  Also zero bratting. Zero Daddy/Baby Girl dynamics. This is Rhaenyra’s show and she is great at it honestly. Really love how the fic empowers her. Because the canon and the HBO show is really kind of not my thing... the basic lesson is just that Women Are Bad Rulers and Also Go Mad.  Idk if empowered female characters really need to be written that way for popular appeal. Anyway. Not going to get into that rabbithole now!

Vibe quotes

"I want you," she says. She delights the realm. He delights her. He delights her when his hand clenches over her shoulder in warning. It is no gesture of command. It is a plea for restraint.   Daemon, restrained.