#who is the alicent stan and who is the alicent anti in the writers' room??? reveal urselves

[lemonhemlock]

It's so hilarious that some people desperately want Aegon to be Daemon's parallel and foil despite it's doesn't make any sense in terms of characterization , narrative and in terms of themes as well. Just because you know they happen to like Aemond and don't want him to be associated with daemon in any possible way. Despite the fact that Aemond was literally created in the first place to be Daemon's foil and therefore Aemond's whole characterization, his arc and even his death all of it have been made in the way they are in the book based on this simple fact , that Aemond (and none else beside him) is Daemon's foil. Aemond will never be Jon snow or jaime lannister type of a character no matter of how many times the showrunners try to whitewash him . His arc will still be the same despite everything else. That's fine to like Aemond and appreciate him for the villain he is without trying to make him this pure good-hearted person because none in the dance of dragons are . And Rhaenyra is the Matilda of this story and Aegon ii is Stephen ii , so yes Rhaenyra's true foil and parallel is her little brother who was the person who took the throne away from her and ended up killing her like Daemon ended up killing his foil. The only reason why this corny dialogue exited in the first place "tis i who studied the blade and philosophy" is because ryan got a boner for Aemond of all the other characters, while calling Alicent a woman for trump at the same time when she was a charismatic political shrewd and strong woman in the book (mix of margary and Cersei) this is woke misogyny at it's finest

I agree with Daemon/Aemond being foils and Rhaenyra/Aegon being foils, highlighted by the fact that they die by the hand of their narrative counterparts.

That being said, I'm not gonna lie to you, I really love and much prefer what they did to Aemond in the show. It proves that they can take what was basically an anime villain and properly build him up and humanize him. Generally speaking, I much prefer it when characters receive the multi-layered treatment, because it's better for the story overall to have complex characters than one-note NPCs. So I don't take issue with show!Aemond and wouldn't change him. And, yes, that goes even for team black - I don't have a problem with Rhaenyra being more sympathetic as I have with the unbalanced way the factions are presented.

But I must wonder, from a story telling perspective, when they all sat down thinking how to adapt FB into HOTD, how did they look at the text and decide that Aegon is the awful one (taking Mushroom at his word), whereas Aemond is the one who should undergo a rehabilitation?

Because, at the same time, you have this weird situation where Olivia doesn't know how to apologise more for Alicent in interviews and makes concession after concession to Rhaenyra-sympathizers, like how clearly Alicent is in the wrong to prioritize her own son's ascension over Rhaenyra's (?) or how her two sons are terrible people and she just ends up upholding the patriarchy for her male children.

But, then again, how is Aemond so terrible judging by the way he has been written so far? He hasn't done anything other than do his homework and brood. I find it very hard to believe that Olivia looked at Aemond's characterization in S1 alone and came to that conclusion, so IMO it's more possible someone briefed her to say that. But whether it was Miguel Sapochnik's idea to push for this narrative of terrible Aemond (though he directed the Driftmark episode) or it was Ryan Condal's idea, I cannot say, but something is happening, because they are not on the same page.

Someone in the creative team must really like Alicent to push for her humanization, but someone else must really have it out for her, hence this inconsistent messaging and the flip-floping in her motivations from episode to episode. And it's funny because, by targeting Alicent's capabilities as a mother, they also end up damaging Aemond's pristine reputation. So, which is it? Is Alicent a bad mother and Aemond a psychopath (although you took great pains on screen to show him differently) or is Aegon just an outlier and she has 3/4 lovely children who are just doomed to be irreversibly changed by massive trauma?

It's extra strange because Aemond's characterization is very straightforward and consistent, he doesn't flip-flop in his motivations and desires, so the writers must have decided on a clear thread with him and are seeing it through. Whereas for Alicent, they tell Olivia that both her sons are awful (?) and that she deep down thinks Rhaenyra would make a better monarch than her children.

I know there is a possibility that, when she was making those statements, Olivia was just influenced by the character work she is doing for S2, in which Aemond's character will get darker post-Storm's End. But she was still referring to Alicent in The Green Council, when she's actively making preparations to crown Aegon at Rhaenyra's "expense". Before Aemond has had any opportunity to go berserk. There have been way too many instances in which the people involved in the show, whether they be actors, writers or producers (or even GRRM with Daeron) came out and publicly said one thing, while the actual media text doesn't hold that up at all.

[darkpoisonouslove]

HotD S02E01

Many thoughts, head full, zero ability to articulate so I'm just gonna scream about it... on main. That'll end well.

First thing I have to say is that the atmosphere and tone definitely work very well here. You can feel the tragedy in the air, the way that it's already happened and it just waits to unfold, to be witnessed in its full glory. Everything is so eerie and bleak and everyone keeps going but they cannot escape the framework of the war. They're trapped in it and you feel it.

Daemon is... he kind of surprised me ngl. There are definitely layers of emotion there that isn't just rage or bloodthirstiness. I didn't want to strangle him the entire time so that's a positive.

Emma D'arcy was amazing in this episode and (I could be missing something; too lazy to check but) she only had that one line??? And still, you feel her grief. That was certainly an interesting approach and it worked for them!

Aegon is such a contrast to all the other characters! I know he's supposed to look completely out of place and incompetent but damn, I am On. His Side! He's ready to be so generous to the small folk. He's trying to compensate on what he missed with his own father by spending time with his son. He has no idea how to interact with Helaena but he's trying his best and goddamn, if that's not a summary of his character! 😭😭😭😭😭😭 (this is an Alicent AND Aegon stan account now, I guess)

(that scene of him and his buddies drinking in the throne room has such fuck boi vibes and yet, SOMEHOW he was utterly hilarious and still sympathetic in it (I'll talk about the place of that scene in the plot later))

@ Otto and Larys: STEP AWAY FROM THE CHILDREN!!!!!!

The scene with Otto and Alicent was surprisingly touching. They finally reach some kind of understanding... and then he turns right around and continues to scheme behind her back. Sure, what he was trying to accomplish with Aemond is in line with his talk with Alicent but he's going to have his own agenda 100%. This wasn't just a strategical decision because Aemond is mad at Alicent rn and wouldn't want to hear any of her opinions even if they're also Otto's opinions.

Which leads me to THE SITUATION BETWEEN ALICENT AND AEMOND AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!! I. Am. Screaming (as you can see)! They are both so hurt and angry at each other 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 And I can't even take a side because both of them are correct in different ways. What Aemond did is actively hurting the whole family because it certainly exacerbated the war proceedings. But he's also right to be upset that Alicent would (seemingly) place her old friendship with Rhaenyra above her love for her children. She should feel vindicated that the one that mutilated her son is now dead. But instead, she's angry and has turned away from Aemond. When she was the only one who stood by him (and vice versa) on that awful night when his eye was gouged out????? The disappointment that they each feel in the other is KILLING ME!!!!!!!!! (I have to say that I hadn't thought about the possibility of Aemond being angry but it makes perfect sense and it hurts me so badly. Look at the contrast of this and this)

And now for the absolute fuckery of this episode (pun unintended). I have zero problems with Alicent and Criston fucking. Good for them! Love the moral dilemmas that are 10000% going on in their heads. HOWEVER, the decision to make them have sex while Blood & Cheese is going down? More anti green propaganda from the writers and I am SICK of it. Alicent was originally part of the scene, she was there to experience the horror of it first hand and they choose to switch that for her having sex????? You know the same thing that Rhaenyra and Daemon were doing when the whole fight between the kids in 1x07 was going down and they got no shit for it whatsoever but, of course, Alicent and Criston are going to be torn apart about this, I am 100% positive about that! Once again, the writers are trying to manipulate the viewers by going "See! Not only is Alicent being a hypocrite because she said she wasn't going to do this with Criston again, but that's what she was doing when her grandson was getting murdered" when originally she was bound and gagged and had to watch the whole thing happen in front of her. You could say that they spared her that trauma but they literally could have had her doing anything else if that was the intent. I am ANGRY about this. Not to mention the fact that Helaena literally interrupting Alicole while they're having sex adds an obstacle to Alicent offering her comfort. At the very least she has to get dressed first before she can hug her and try to provide some kind of feeling of safety, which inserts awkwardness if not downright shame into Alicent's actions and choices during that night. (Oh, and this will probably make her stop having sex with Criston, which is going to be another big L; let her be marginally happy and have orgasms, goddammit!)

Let's go back to Aegon now! So while Alicent and Criston are too busy fucking to be any the wiser about what's happening with her grandchildren (even though they literally couldn't have known anything like that would happen), what is Aegon doing? (Probably) drinking and stroking his ego by trying to come up with titles for himself... as the assassins are walking past him, right under his nose. Don't think he's not gonna get shit about that by fans if not by the writers themselves! They have set everything up so perfectly to blame all the Greens for allowing this to happen (since Otto and Aemond are so ready for war and yet were nowhere to be found during this either) but what about the Blacks, who organized all of this? Well...

They are whitewashing Daemon now by making Jaehaerys's murder be the idea of the assassins themselves. You see, Daemon would have never gone after a 4-year-old! He was only going after Aemond! And this is yet another misunderstanding like with Lucerys' death, except that this was way more deliberate but you cannot blame the Blacks when the people that they hired acted on their own. I hate it here! The writers are cowards and cannot commit to the actual characters that they're supposed to be writing so they're just doing whatever they want. And doing it badly at that! (That whole sequence was so fucking disjointed and lackluster also so congrats to whoever wrote this on the terrible job that they are doing!)

Poor Helaena! She's literally not going to get anything in this season. They already did Blood & Cheese so now they're just going to make her lose her mind and give her nothing else to do. I hope I'm wrong about this but I don't think I am given their track record.

Anyway, go team Green!

*I already bitched about this in the tags of another post but the fact that in the extra ("inside the episode" or whatever it's called) they had the gall to say that Alicent was in a "marriage that was loving but not exactly romantic or physical for quite some time" is a fucking insult. HE CALLED HER BY AEMMA'S NAME! HE USED HER AS AN INCUBATOR AND COULDN'T EVEN BE BOTHERED TO CARE ABOUT HER OR THEIR KIDS. SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!!!!

[lemonhemlock]

Why Aemond, Alicent, Rhaenyra, Daemon and others have been all whitewashed to the point some of them even became new characters while Aegon has been made worse in the show than his book counterpart? The whole thing about watching children killing eachother when some of them might be his own children is something didn't happen in the book and it's actually ramsay-level sadism, the whole plot line of given his younger brother a sexual trauma was invented by the show, he is so incompetent and drunk all the times. BookAegon was drunken yes but it's no where in the same level of his show counterpart, also Book!Aegon shown cunning and bravery during the war , has a very strong bond with sunfyre, has a good relationship with his wife and children.and all of these traits/things are non existing in Show!Egg . BookEgg always give me the impression that he has a strong mentality and perhaps even internal strength since he went through the worst things any person can go through in a such young age but he never give up until he succeeded in killing rhaenyra . The only times we've seen him show any kind of vulnerability are when his son jaehaerys died and when sunfyre has died. The interpretation of the showrunners of his character is not only very bad but it's also strange , inconsistent and extremely unfair considering how literally everyone has been whitewashed. which makes me wonder, what they will change too? will They make him hiding in the red keep while Aemond fight for him? i feel they will really make him a clone of joffery by being man child , power hungry and coward.

I basically agree with everything you've said, anon. 😭 I've long been complaining about this in my Aegon tag.

Anonymous asked: I honestly doubt the writers were surprised about the low support the Greens have with the general audience and I also think they knew very well what they were doing when they made Aegon a rapist. They can say whatever they want in interviews as it's probably just gaslighting for the fans, to keep the discussion going and to keep us engaged for S2.

I was expecting things to be a lot more balanced between the greens and the blacks at the start of the series. I think perhaps someone in the writers' room really didn't like Aegon as a character or something and Miguel Sapochnik didn't care enough to change it? Or they thought that Aegon's awfulness would be counterbalanced by Daemon's awfulness and the audience would be split?

Sara Hess seemed taken aback that the audience ended up swooning for Daemon, in that she gave explicitly anti-Daemon interviews? But that's .. ?? That's Matt Smith in a wig, every Eleventh Doctor girlie (me included) is gonna swoon for him ?? It's a given that he's gonna have a ton of fans stanning for his character. How is it logical (from a marketing perspective) to pit him against poor Tom, who only gets a couple of minutes of screen time, and expect things to be even steven?

And it's not even the same thing, because Daemon is merely the consort, whereas Aegon and Rhaenyra are leaders of their respective factions, the two options for monarch. You can't whitewash one to the extreme, while giving the other the worst possible interpretation. In a story that is famous for the "both sides bad, all war terrible" angle.

I just don't get it. If they wanted to make the greens the bad guys from the get-go, Aemond was right there, it could have been very easy and convenient to make him some kind of child terrorist, yet they seem to like him a lot and gave him a humanizing plot (??) Whereas Aegon is the one they turn into the monster? Aemond/Daemon being the awful ones would have made more sense, since they're foils already.

This is why I tend to think there must have been some disagreements in the writers' room, because I've heard too many contradicting takes from the showrunners/actors that don't really vibe with what's being displayed on screen. So something must have happened between intention and execution and my guess would be too many chefs in the kitchen.