branwinged

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crash out KING Jeremy Irons ranting about not being allowed to smoke in Central Park will never not be funny to me.

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Not in front of the thralls

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A couple of years ago we were all terribly concerned about the fact that a lot of American high schools are assigning such crushing homework loads that some kids literally don't have enough time to eat or sleep (and all this in spite of the fact that there's no good evidence that assigning homework actually improves academic outcomes at the pre-university level), but now we're hearing stories about those same schools struggling to stop kids from using ChatGPT to write their essays and suddenly It's The Children Who Are Wrong. Like, do you think maybe there's a certain level of cause and effect in play here?

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elaborate manuscript borders

from a book of hours, flanders, c. 1510-1520

source: Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 1058-1975

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Boys night :)

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user branwinged being a daemyra shipper... feels good feels right

it's literally good!!! it's good, their scenes have great erotic energy (both pre and post time skip!) and the relationship is one of the narrative backbones of the show and is so in tune with asoiaf's themes of gender performance within the chivalric paradigm, honestly confused by the negative reception it gets from the book fandom. daemon and rhaenyra are more siblings than uncle/niece (he's introduced as the usurping gothic uncle after the heroine and her father's inheritance but this is subverted) the sibling thing is established pretty early on through viserys's control of daemon, specifically the way he sends him away from home to be married (very theon-esque in the way daemon's marriage/theon's hostageship is arranged to acquire a peacetime alliance. exactly the function brides fulfill in westeros) this is mirrored with rhaenyra. the difference being daemon is a prince with a dragon and he can just. choose to not remain trapped in some tower as he puts it to her in 1.04 "d: marriage is only a political arrangement—r: for men maybe" but rhaenyra will mirror him in this as well as she has those bastards with harwin.

there's also a reversal of gender roles happening with the two of them. in their first scene together when he's introduced as heir presumptive and gives her the necklace, the gender power differential is very clear (gendered gift, he gets to wield the valyrian steel sword but she can only have a necklace) but 1.01 ends with her supplanting him and it takes him four eps to come to terms with his inheritance being stolen and his violent pursuit of rhaenyra in the first half at the expense of her autonomy is thwarted every time (by himself lol) but then she takes him to dragonstone and makes him her wife in 1.07, like they didn't make him say that aloud but i got it i understood the message mr condal. she's the feudal lord of dragonstone now and unlike in 1.05 when marrying her presumably would've caused viserys to disinherit her (which would've absolutely led to resentment plus he's doing exactly what she doesn't wish for, being possessed as the property of her husband "give me rhaenyra to take to wife"), but in 1.07 it's her choice and is made in her interests and because of her desires and she's making him her consort. it's not a complete reversal obviously, it can never be. and the finale is touching upon some of those problems, that they're no longer perfect doubles once he crowns her. the relationship's shifted from siblings in spirit to monarch and subject now and that this partnership of visenya and aegon that they've constructed is a paradox within westerosi society, their genders don't align with the roles they seek to occupy.

the other thing that i like very much and is true for a lot of my favourite ships is that, daemon's "you were a child, i spared you" is particularly devastating because while backing away was the right thing to do for all the reasons re her personhood and autonomy, leaving did not undo the harm he already did when he came up with that plan of his to get back at viserys and it didn't spare her! the specific depravity she accuses him of is "you abandoned me!" a lot of posts here are about how she needs to flee and reject him entirely but the foundational premise here is clearly that the love will never go away. this person has wounded/traumastised/violated you and you have the full awareness of exactly how they have hurt you and you choose them anyway! because will graham voice i've never known myself as well as i know myself when i am with him. asoiaf ship of all time. tbqh.

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‘Never,’ said he, as he ground his teeth, ‘never was anything at once so frail and so indomitable. A mere reed she feels in my hand!’ [...] ‘I could bend her with my finger and thumb: and what good would it do if I bent, if I uptore, if I crushed her? Consider that eye: consider the resolute, wild, free thing looking out of it, defying me, with more than courage – with a stern triumph. Whatever I do with its cage, I cannot get at it – the savage, beautiful creature!’ —Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë RHAENYRA TARGARYEN & DAEMON TARGARYEN House of the Dragon 1.01 // 1.10

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daemon getting upset about the prophecy never made sense to me since he does care about it. even if you want to frame it as him getting upset viserys never trused him...well he knows that already, he's known that for years. really the only thing that makes sense thematically, and has been set up, is daemon lashing out because rhaenyra is acting like viserys. even with the other cut scenes from the finale it's still the only reading that makes sense imo.

the scene they shouldn't have cut if they wanted to go with the prophecy is the scene from episode 1 where viserys tries to tell daemon about the prophecy but daemon doesn't take him seriously, which is probably what made viserys reconsider daemon as his heir more than the "heir for a day" brothel incident.

re this

looked up the deleted scene you mentioned—

Shouldn’t he at least have told Daemon or others about the prophecy? No way, not at that time. That’s something that we struggled with. There was a scene that was deleted after Aemma (Sian Brooke) died, where Viserys meets with Daemon and he tries to hint at this idea of prophecies and what the gods mean to him. He was trying to get some idea where Daemon’s at with his beliefs, but the tone of the scene was never quite right. There’s no way that Daemon would even connect to that — he’d laugh Viserys out of the room. He’s not into dreamers or things like that. (Paddy Considine, The New York Times)

i do prefer him not being told at all because it just makes sense for his character and his relationship with viserys, to bring up the daemon/alicent comparison again, both acts of violence are motivated by viserys not seeing them, not recognising their devotion to the family and then their genuine grievances (alicent re rhaenyra's bastard children as heirs and daemon re otto as hand heh but the person they're both hurting instead does see them!)—which doesn't work if viserys has already tried to tell him once.

that scene is poorly set up and executed, but i think a combination of both things is happening. he's definitely angry with rhaenyra for acting like viserys—a weak and ineffectual ruler in his mind. and the crowning is tense, i think it's fair to say that viserys becoming kind sort of destroyed his relationship with him, they were never just brothers again, every scene we get with them pre-driftmark has viserys using his kingly authority to order daemon into deference. so the s1 finale is beginning to ask that question of whether their marriage will survive her having absolute authority over him which is why the choking scene is there. but he's also having a shoot the messenger moment, he's done it several times in the show and it's always viserys related news about how he's being excluded from the family. first in 1.03 w/ the royal messenger ("viserys sends aid" the equivalent of saying i don't need You to sort this out for me it's okay :) and he takes it very badly because he needs his family to need him) and then again in 1.05 with rhea royce ("or perhaps your brother has at last finally had his fill of your company, cast you aside in favour of a little girl") he knows viserys is eventually looking to replace him with a son and he's dismissive of prophecy but daemon is also someone who feels very strongly about family history. his first scene with rhaenyra is him presenting her with a valyrian steel necklace and it's a thoughtful moment because "now, you and i both share a piece of our ancestry" in light of that it does make sense to me that he'll feel quite betrayed about this reveal, about not being deemed worthy enough for viserys to even hint at it when the scene already begins with rhaenyra assuming he already knows so that cuts deep, i think.

of course, it's not entirely about viserys either. it's also about daemon and rhaenyra's power dynamic within their marriage. the way she begins to laugh once she realises she has the power here, she was chosen by viserys in a way daemon never was, she's always had the power here and daemon has always meant to serve her. hot. he spends a considerable amount of time trying to possess her at the beginning of the show but it's very clear by the end that she's the one possessing him.

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İ loved being neglected as a child…………

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https://x.com/westerosies/status/1927744812112826771?t=AUC-tqIMznCpKdr1it1bNQ&s=19

dany and daenerys <3

(I know, I know.  Some of you will just be pissed off by this, as you are by everything I announce here that is not about Westeros or THE WINDS OF WINTER. You have given up on me, or on the book.  I will never finish WINDS, If I do, I will never finish A DREAM OF SPRING. If I do, it won’t be any good. I ought to get some other writer to pinch hit for me… I am going to die soon anyway, because I am so old. I lost all interest in A Song of Ice and Fire decades ago. I don’t give a shit about writing any longer, I just sit around and spend my money. I edit the Wild Cards books too, but you hate Wild Cards. You may hate everything else I have ever written, the Hugo-winners and Hugo-losers, “A Song for Lya” and DYING OF THE LIGHT, “Sandkings” and BEAUTY AND THE BEAST,  “This Tower of Ashes” and “The Stone City,” OLD MARS and OLD VENUS and ROGUES and WARRIORS and DANGEROUS WOMEN and all the other anthologies I edited with my friend Gardner Dozois, You don’t care about any of those, I know. You don’t care about anything but WINDS OF WINTER.  You’ve told me so often enough). Thing is, I do care about them. And I care about Westeros and WINDS as well. The Starks and Lannisters and Targaryens, Tyrion and Asha, Dany and Daenerys, the dragons and the direwolves, I care about them all. More than you can ever imagine.

—from Not A Blog May 28, 2025

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SERVANT 1963 DEPECHE MODE FANCAM. IF U EVEN CARE

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waking up at 3 am: 💪lets damn big money

waking up at 6 am: why nobody ever talks about how beatiful the sunrise 🌅

waking up at 9 am: should i kill myself? 🧐

waking up at 12 pm: the family is straight up the central reactionary germ cell of the fascist state 🤔✍️

waking up at 3 pm: lol #cave #dracula #WeedIsLegalAndYouCanBuyItAtTheStore

waking up at 6 pm: maybe i was born evil 🙂

waking up at 9 pm: maybe i was born evil 🙁

waking up at 12 am: welp, time to slay the dragon’s dick 😎

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rotating my r+l vanish with jon to essos after the rebellion au… when i said bene gesseritmaxxing i meant it

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Daemon & Rhaenyra First and Last Scene of Season One HOUSE OF THE DRAGON (2022 - ?)

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Hand-drawn map of Twin Peaks by David Lynch.

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DAEMON TARGARYEN and RHAENYRA TARGARYEN holding hands in HOUSE OF THE DRAGON 1.04 “King of the Narrow Sea”

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Clive Barker’s Hellraiser - Issue #18