#larys strong brain rot

[attonitos-gloria]

larys & aegon. your mind is all that remains to you - I do not say that gladly. he was CRYING. no one talk to me

[harrowscore]

sooooo, yesterday i watched hotd s1 finale. here are my (semi-coherent) thoughts:

i've had one (1) day to simmer down my instinctive "wtf??" reaction and ponder on some writing choices - actually, two notable writing choices. first, this is no got s8 levels of disaster, but i'd already noticed a couple of red flags in ep9 and so i was - i am - guarded, though my emotional investment is nowhere near as high as my peak asoiaf/got era. i'm way more detached, and if i came off as pissed in some prev posts it was more of a general 🤷🤷 feeling concerning old disappointments in correlated or different media. (having said that, the larys/alicent feet thing is atrocious.)

i see they're still going strong with the childbirth from hell saga - i've already written about it in an older post, and i quite liked it, however gory and heartbreaking it was.

i don't buy the daemyra choking (not in a kinky way) scene. there's nowhere near enough build up for that. yes, daemon killed his first wife (which btw wasn't in the book) but they hated each other and she wasn't a targ. from d. pov's that's quite an important detail. (not that i’m excusing it, you know.) i don't even buy that "he's grieving that's why he acts (more) irrationally and with 0 impulse control (than usual)" because while he's ready for war and legitimately angry at the thought of his brother being murdered (tho viserys had been rotting away for years, last time they saw each other he could barely stand/talk, it was only a matter of weeks, maybe a couple of months at best before he died, they should have been prepared for this & the greens response) he doesn't act that out of control. let's be honest here: daemyra was always problematic and people shouting ~grooming! weren't completely wrong, but the writers also sold it as High Romance. the Stupid Fangirls weren't that blinded by their silly girly brains: d&r were framed as being genuinely in love despite the painfully obvious problematic elements. (& the incest is the least problematic thing here, since this is westeros and they're targs.) i think one of the directors even compared their love to what she feels for her own husband. so no, we weren't dreaming it up, they just couldn't find a balance between Toxic Incest Couple & Soulmates Being Soulmates, and obv they had to put a ~Bad Man is Very Bad, Girlies, Don't Try At Home~ bs Morality Play that seems so damn popular in this day and age. mind you, we all knew shit was going to hit the fan with nettles' appearance (i'm still worried about her portrayal, she's just a young girl and daemon is so much older than her, and i have no idea how they’re going to develop/frame their relationship) but somehow i had not foreseen him being physically abusive to his wife (who just gave birth to their stillborn daughter and lost her father btw). i was expecting him to lash out but... not like this. after their (fabulous ngl) wedding i haven't been much invested in daemyra anyway (i thought their decades long budding romance was much more appealing) but despite what i said above, one thing d/r fans were wrong about was expecting that hbo could actually make a medieval fantasy wuthering heights 2.0 and deliver lmao. no mainstream media would do that, not in the current ~think of the girls!!! climate. this is like believing that the star wars sequels were a gothic female-gazey romance that featured rey's sexual awakening + happy ending with the local parricidal ex darksider - the romance was there, don't get me wrong, but no hollywood-made pop culture piece of media could ever deliver. we also know d/r history from f&b, it's not all sunshine and rainbows... tho it's not comparable to jaime&cersei either. this is no valonqar situation - if and when that happens in asoiaf, motives and characters can't be compared only because d. and jaime share a love for poor impulse control and incest; the framing for their ~love affair and the choking act is also radically different. this feels like a punishment for the girls who tend to romanticize daemon and his feelings for his niece, as a "sharp reminder" of who he is and what is capable of (and that women, even dragon queens who are more than mere consorts and childbearers, can be victimized and have shitty husbands ig). except that however awful and poor little meow meow he may be, he didn't do any of this marital abuse bs in the book as far as we know. which brings me to:

i have a small problem with the people who say "f&b is no real account of the dance, these characters can't be written as ooc because we basically don't know them! it's all headcanons and bias!". theoretically i agree: there are at least 3 different versions of any major event, and what intrigued me the most about this show was the premise of Unreliable Narrator Extraordinaire. which path would these writers follow? because logically one should also say: "is this what really happened in the dance?" like, aren't these people (hired by hbo, paid a shitton of money, apparently asoiaf fans themselves) also writing down their own interpretations? unless grrm himself is behind everything (foot fetish and wife-choking included) who are these people to say this is what actually happened? they didn't create the characters and the plot etc., we're seeing them through their eyes and bias as well. why are the Poor Naive Girls who romanticized the Bad Dark Prince (aka they knew he was a big asshole but didn't think he had it in him to actually assault the woman he loves) the ones to be so awfully biased and affected by media illiteracy, to the point i’ve already seen the usual crowd online gloating over it like “ha ha the bitches had it coming”? one could say this is just another version of the dance... which would actually be more compelling imo. this also brings me to:

grandma vhagar being nostalgic of her war crimes era and gnam gnam lucerys to the oblivion. i have... very mixed feelings about this. i agree that making aemond more than an evil cackling anime villain is a good choice but idk about this tbh. idk how they could have spin it differently either tho, so i give up. people say "at least he doesn't actively seek war out so he doesn't look like an idiot" except he looks like an even bigger idiot because no one in their right mind would chase down their four-and-ten nephew and his dragon (said to be “five times smaller” than vhagar) through the sky while they're riding a huge ass fucking beast that could dwarf a mountain and actually fought in the conquest just to pick out his eye, and not expect it to horribly escalate. like, if you make two dragons face each other (especially if one of them is as powerful and ancient as vhagar is) what do you think is going to happen? realistically, i mean? maybe aemond didn't want to go that far but omg he should have foreseen this from a mile. like, sweetie maybe you didn't study your history and lore so well. and for the "he's just a teenager he doesn't know what he's doing" crowd: in a short span of time this ~poor baby~ is going to burn down the riverlands, hundreds of people will die. the incident that sparks the dance being an actual accident, tho... lmao sorry but that sounds like a joke. like, no matter how you spin it, if you like or love or hate it, it still robs the character of his agency, and therefore the story of poignancy. and i'm not even 100% sold on ~the dragons randomly eating people alive even when their riders strictly forbid them too~ because yeah, i can see that, a dragon is no slave and of course they're not mindless beasts but actually quite intelligent etc. but on the other hand i for one can't wait for drogon to fire up kl of his own free will - maybe he'll just hate that fugly city, who knows - so that ~dany (aka an actual 16 year old victim of rape and abuse who liberated thousands of slaves in a continent she was exiled to as an infant) is going to burn children alive and be put down like a mad bitch because that's somehow comparable to lotr shire chapter!!1~ disk horse can finally die its miserable death.

so, yeah, mixed feelings about these two (2) plot points, particularly the ~daemon is physically abusive now~ thing. also dk about whitewashing the blacks anymore, rhaenys killed a fuck ton of civilians in ep9 for no conceivable reason (something that in the books and in peaceful times only the worst of the worst are willing to do, no matter how much these elite assholes don’t care about the smallfolk) and now daemon is even more evil than he was in the book. aegon ii may be... well, aegon ii, but with aemond being somehow more humane and whatever they're doing to alicent the blacks are the ones that actually wreak more havoc - and i’m not even touching the blood and cheese thing. at least aemond's fuck-up kinslaying was accidental lol. jokes aside i overall liked this ep more than i did ep9 and while it’s not bad bad... no mistake, this is no high television either. i’ve seen what great tv can do (it’s exceptionally rare tho, more than people think) and this doesn’t look like it except for some acting choices + scenes.

[attonitos-gloria]

Thoughts on Larys Strong?

Ahhhh, friend. I adore him, and I feel very conflicted about it. Thank you for asking me that. I needed to vent about this.

I have to talk about Tyrion to explain why lol sorry I throw Tyrion in every conversation too. Also sorry to be HORRIBLY prolix, this is so long. (And spoilers for the books for those who care.)

I'm a simple girl, really. I see a cunning, clever, quiet, morally gray man moving the strings of the game, chances are that I'll like him a lot, and it's even better if he is a little sad; I think Tyrion being my favorite character is a reflection of that.

But Tyrion is a deconstruction of a certain trope - that is, the evil disabled advisor, who can not be trusted because they're ill-intentioned from go, they will inevitably betray and turn against the master they served, because they only serve their own interests... No. This is Tywin, and Otto, two very able-bodied men. But Tyrion is loyal to a fault to the Lannisters, even though they are horrible to him (he never bets against his family! Until the day he does!!) He is actually an excellent asset to them and works very, very hard for them. When he turns again them, he does it out of grief and not as a consummation of a long planned betrayal. It's sudden; it's utterly emotional. And it's not exactly a secret: it's loud, as most things Tyrion does. It's not behind the curtains! The betrayal of House Lannister against him was obvious, and his response to that was just as obvious. He killed Tywin and fled. That's the message. He has turned against the system and he wants it to ruin.

This is one of the reasons why I don't like the idea that Tyrion will (unexpectedly) betray Dany in the books; like, why bother to give this character so much nuance only to make him go down the same path of so many of the Disabled men occupying the role of Advisors before him? Everyone expects Tyrion to betray people, both in-universe and in fandom, even though he is, all things considered and relatively to other characters, a rather loyal man (as long as people are loyal to him). He is many horrible things! But unloyal is not one of them! I trust George; I think ADWD built things in a way that even if he does, indeed, end up betraying Dany, he was given enough nuance that we cannot put him in that category. It would make me very, very sad, I'm not going to lie to you. But I think characters, unlike real people, should be allowed to be evil, and Tyrion has so many reasons to be the worst person ever that whatever he does... We will get it. We are going to read it and be like, "oh, so this is one of the possible outcomes of years being abused and neglected by your family and the entire world! This is a thing a human being could do if they're deprived of love." That's the thing: Tyrion is a whole, entire, layered character. If he turns out to be, ultimately, a villain, we'll follow the thread, all the way from Joanna's womb, and indeed before her, to Tytos, to all the Lannisters before them that made his life and story what it is.

BUT LARYS. You asked me about Larys. Larys is such a perfect crystallization of this trope that it almost makes me cringe inside. Even in the books he is, like, this huge mystery. Why does Larys do the things he does? What is his game? No one knows, Larys is inscrutable. He's not morally gray; as far as we know he's straight up evil, but almost no one (but Alicent) seems to suspect it because he looks innocent, he looks harmless, keeping the company of women because he cannot hunt. He is deceitful: that's pretty much the core of his character. Intentionally misleading, and even more, using his disability to employ that falsehood. Behind that mask of being a loyal servant, he has manipulated basically everyone he's interacted so far, including Otto. He employs cruel methods, he is completely unscrupulous. He is ridiculously creepy and the show goes to great lengths to make that clear. He killed his family, and he showed no signs to hate them before, quite the contrary; he simply did it because... Love is a downfall! It's almost like the show is telling you that betrayal is in his nature [ableism red flag]. So obviously [spoiileeersss] he is going to betray Alicent after years in her service.

Oh, and also, people call him Larys Clubfoot, and he has a foot fetish....... like. Really? Why, WHY make him disabled, I ask?

And it's hard, because for one side, the mystery is part of the reason why he is such a fun character. Sometimes people are simply evil! Not every bad person has a traumatic family history; some people are just perverse. Larys seems to be one of those people; and why not? For the other side, when we deprive him of nuance and a history that could enlighten us as to how he became this horrible man....... He becomes a trope, and not the nicest one!!! Hence my conflict.

But at the end of the day, even though the way he is presented to us strings a problematic chord to me, I am obsessed with the portrayal Needham gave him. Obsessed. I read the terms and conditions, and I wish to proceed, I am so so sorry. I just support all his war crimes.

We still don't know why he did what he did to Alicent in the books, and I'm very curious to see how the show is going to explain or justify that. I think there's still time to be invested in Larys' character. I thought at some point in the first season that maybe they will go the Criston route? He is going to be disappointed because Alicent will reject him in some manner that will displease him, but he will do it in the delusional, creepy way, and not the incel-Cole way. Or maybe they'll just follow along and give him no reason whatsoever, because he is Larys? I don't know!!!

In the books, Larys asks to be buried without his twisted foot. When combined with the scene in the garden and the hunt, I think this throws an interesting light on his character. He's never found peace with his disability, he doesn't want to be tied to it for eternity beyond the grave; but he's found something useful - being invisible, looking harmless, observing people without being observed - and he turns this against the world. I like this villain origin story very much! I would like to see this being further explored.

I think they really grounded his character in Alicent, so far. His relationship with Alicent fascinates me, because it is so abusive. It's coded as courtly romance but it's ANYTHING but. This man is gaslighting her! He actually groomed her (politically if nothing else) when she was rather young and lonely! And she is using him! It's all horrible, and they remind me a lot of Petyr and Sansa in that regard, and I always hated the romanticization of Petyr/Sansa so I feel validated lol I mean. Let creepy ships be creepy.

Speaking of which, that's one of the reasons why I didn't hate the scene where they exchange information for sexual services. I liked it, because it was so horrible! Like, Alicent looks so uncomfortable that it was bordering on the non-consensual. You cannot romanticize that shit, lol (I mean, you can, but the romance is not there, that's my point). But the fact he has a foot fetish (and she takes her shoes off on her first dinner with him) reminded me of Shae calling Tyrion my giant and the court proceeding to ridicule him for it at his trial. I wish they hadn't done that to Larys. Nothing against kink. Nothing against finding sexual pleasure in what one perceives as a lack in one's life, be it a father or a mother, or a limb, or privacy; whatever! Kink is fine, and everyone does that. It can be empowering. But one of those days I would like to see disabled people in TV having different kinks? Or maybe... none? That would be nice, too, and I don't know what it is with making such a fuss about what disabled people like, or don't like, in the bedroom. Or maybe I do.

TL;DR: I think his characterization is problematic and I wish he were more nuanced. I still hope they will develop him further. But I cannot help but love him. Like. Top 3 favorite characters of HOTD for real.

I would really love to hear your thoughts on him.

[attonitos-gloria]

Do you believe in the grand maester conspiracy theory and that the maesters are poisoning viserys?

oh!! i don't; i think viserys is simply sick. unless it's something larys is secretly doing and boosting, in which case i do believe it.