#HotD characterization

[horizon-verizon]

[bohemian-nights]

emma is really very good characterized as a targaryen, I think she's even much better than milly in the characterization (young Rhaenyra's wig is horrible) but i must say that emma and matt really don't have chemistry for me, she has charisma with olivia, and Milly and Matt are too creepy for me guys, I'm sorry...

I think visually Emma looks great as a Targaryen and perhaps if Emma was playing a different type of Targaryen(maybe someone along the lines of Visenya) I’d see it characterization-wise as well, but so far the performance is not like book!Rhaenyra.

I do agree that Milly’s performance is overhyped (she’s new so that isn’t a knock to her, but I wasn’t blown away by what I saw on screen) and I’m not seeing the chemistry people are talking about with Milly and Matt either.

It is creepy, especially that brothel scene 🤢(and it’s supposed to be creepy so the people saying it’s not really are an interesting bunch).

[ceriseo]

i dont think otto and daemon had an actual serious relationship but i do think that as a part of daemon's pyschosexual fixation on his brother he drunkenly hit on otto and when otto reacted homophobically daemon got offended because?? wym you dont want to fuck me im literally daemon targaryen?? and otto was like. im not a filthy degenerate (same tone as 'or you, her childhood companion'). and daemon was like. clearly. whatever loser im too cool and hot for you and then went to his chambers and stared at the wall for twenty hours. the next day he met mysaria.

[idkjustletmescroll]

It's really weird how a lot of people in the got/hotd fandom don't seem to accept how grey grrm's characters are? Idk maybe I'm just on the wrong side of tumblr/tiktok, but...several things can be true at once.

Cersei Lannister can be an abuser, a killer, AND A VICTIM. She can love her children AND have deeply unhealthy relationships with them. Alicent Hightower can resent her children, have unhealthy relationships with them, have no idea how to parent them, and still love them. Rhaenyra can be the rightful heir to the iron throne with good intentions, and still seemingly have no idea how to rule. Viserys can make Rhaenyra his heir and talk about how much he loves Aemma and be a sh*t dad and partner. Sansa Stark can be mean to Arya and also a child whose behavior is reinforced by a guardian (the septa, who she is told to obey and learn from). Joffrey Baratheon can be a sadist who had to die for the good of the realm, and still a child. Robert can be funny and Ned's friend, and a terrible father and husband. Ned and Catelyn can be some of the best parents on either show, love each other and their kids, do everything for each other and their kids, and still have failed to prepare their children for the world they live in. The whole POINT of grrm's characters is that they're not good or evil, they're not black or white, their cruelty has a reason and they are all functioning within an inherently unjust society, and doing the best they can.

[thaliajoy-blog]

I don't really know what to do with people who view Daemon's complexity as a character literally in those terms "he's a violent man who loves his family and would die for them" like i'm sorry it's boring as hell and clearly the "violent" part allowed is only good and acceptable violence (cutting up criminals in the slums, earning you the people's love !) and not *problematic* violence (abuse of girls and women). You don't even want him to be bad in a meaningful & thematic way. I'd rather have "Daemon wanted to be a girl for his brother" type of analysis than that frankly. At least it's a bit creative. At least it's doing something with the concept of gender.

[greenbloods]

i know hotd is still on season 1 and thats the reason but i want more discussion on aegon ii outside the family dynamics. aegon who made his sigil gold because thats his dragons color. the claimant who had to be convinced to take a throne he never really wanted. whose family and advisors were only too eager to fight a war on his behalf that was never his idea to begin with. the boy who was out of commission for most of his own war, recuping from injuries he took while dancing with dragons. the boy who fought again despite that, who flew to dragonstone, who avenged his sons. the king whom they had to poison to finally kill. isnt that what all the boys want in the stories? to bond with dragons and ride and fight, and be brave even when it hurts?

none of this need have happened. the pain did not make him better. but all the same, a man was forged from the boy amidst the fire of war.

[rhaenin-time]

[americanprometheuss]

i love it when the voices start speaking to me and they make me realize that the reason i sympathize and feel bad for alicent’s children is because i AM alicent’s children.

i’m the child being overlooked in favor of someone else, the ones who have to watch their mother beg for their father to realize that his inactions are harming me. the one being scorned and sneered upon while being told that my father figure isn’t my father, he’s my authority figure, the one who holds the rod instead of being my nurturer.

i’m aemond after he loses his eye, and is watching alicent beg for viserys to do something to help him. i’m aegon slowly wasting away as he tries to live up to the mantle of king that was forced on his head. i’m heleana who speaks of the misfortunes of her family but is ignored and pitied.

i feel like every person who has been emotionally, physically, mentally, etc. abused in their childhood can find pieces of themselves within each of the green children because they’re just the beacon and poster child of how the same abuse can make so many different types of adults.

[gwenllian-in-the-abbey]

While there isn't that much to book! Helaena but what we know so far that she was a happy, gentle, and brave girl who claimed a fierce and old dragon like dreamfyre when she was only 11/13. Who was also so loved by the smallfolk apparently and was politically involved before b&c destroyed her, i just don't understand how and why the showrunners tried to minimise Helaena's role (it was already small in f&b) and turned her into a lonely somber character who has no personality traits beside being obsessed with bugs, even her prophecies only makes her a walking talking spoiler it's not even written in an interesting way like asoiaf!bran or dany or melisandre etc.... and then they have the nerve to call their writing feminist 💀

Hi anon! I really had to think about this one, because I agree that compared to her brothers, show!Helaena gets a pretty shallow characterization. One of the problems I think with show!Helaena is that while they've given her more of a personality, they haven't given her a motivation. There is nothing wrong with her being a neurodivergent bug girl with prophesies, and I think even her visions could be an interesting twist to her character, but the show failed to convey what drives Helaena, or even show how she feels about the conflict.

Granted, Helaena's characterization in the book is kind of thin, but I'd argue that book!Aemond's characterization, for instance, is also thin. Aemond is a mean asshole with a chip on his shoulder, but the show went out of its way to humanize him by giving him motivation, backstory, and an arc that will likely follow him through the show. Even Luke, who literally exists within the story to start conflict, is given doubts about being the heir to Driftmark and the need to prove himself. But Helaena? We have no idea what drives her. I want to know how Helaena envisions herself within this conflict! So she has prophesies, and she tries to communicate them, but that's not working. Now what? She and Aegon are both crying at his coronation, but we have a good idea why Aegon is crying. What about Helaena? Is it because she's seen their doom? Is she sad for Aegon? Does she feel like her family is doing the wrong thing on a moral level? And has she told anyone how she feels? And this is where the prophesy part gets lost because if Helaena's visions are coherent enough that she knows crowning Aegon is a bad idea, then why does she only speak them in cryptic riddles? She's capable of expressing herself relatively clearly otherwise, so the riddles are a contrived way to keep anyone, including Helaena, from acting on those visions, or the rest of her family from realizing she has them at all. So the visions add a tragic element to her character, but don't actually give Helaena anything to do, plotwise. This is a character whose death is the catalyst for the riots which drive Rhaenyra from the city, so there is certainly material there to work with.

And the thing is, Blood and Cheese, an absolutely inarguably evil act, is going to happen to Helaena early on in the second season, and when that happens, Helaena becomes the so-called "perfect victim." Helaena's character is something of a cipher, someone that the viewer can project their own values and assumptions onto. We have Helaena who is secretly in love with Aemond, Helaena who had a loving relationship with Rhaenyra, Helaena who was a good wife to Aegon, Helaena who loved Aegon as a brother but not a wife, Helaena who was Otto's favorite, Helaena who didn't care about the family feud, and all of these Helaenas exist simultaneously without really directly contradicting anything that was shown on screen. And because she remains this blank slate character, it is acceptable to sympathize with her even though her side is in conflict with Rhaenyra. The viewer can say, "well Helaena didn't deserve that, she was innocent!" But the thing is, no one deserves what happened to Helaena and her children. Helaena does not need to be perfectly neutral for her to be a victim, to have never held an unkind thought against Rhaenyra for her suffering to matter. This idea that someone cannot be worthy of any sympathy or empathy unless their hands are completely clean absolutely permeates this fandom (just look at the reaction to Alicent), and online discourse at large, and whether the show realizes it or not, they've played into it by making Helaena the "true innocent," as if she were a child with no agency of her own, when she is actually a beloved queen, an adult, a dragonrider and a mother.

That's not to say the show couldn't give her more to do in season 2, they could. Maybe Blood and Cheese will motivate her and she will take action. Hopefully, if the show follows the book and makes her beloved of the smallfolk, it will be for something other than how beautifully she suffers.

[horizon-verizon]

Coudn't Agree More.

I remember a tweet saying how Jace and his brothers are undermined, co-opted, & denigrated all at once bc they derive power from Rhaenyra, are signifiers or something of her sexuality/"disobedience", and something else I forgot but guess is their bastardry. Hate towards them is derived from hate & sexism towards Rhaenyra in that it's a way for people to reaffirm female sexual purity and reproductive objectification, but they are also the only persons besides Helaena's children and Helaena that you can say are purely innocent.

I will reblog the tweet if i ever find it.

[bohemian-nights]

People really are missing the point of a character like Nettles. Being the a non-Valyrian dragonrider is what makes her different(in every positive definition of that word) and helps to serve a larger purpose in this story.

Valyrian blood is not special. It’s not needed to do great things. No one is special because of what family they happen to be born into.

A non-Valyrian Nettles shows that we are more than the circumstances which we are born into. Our birth, our names, and our very blood does not define us. Our actions are what do. We can overcome so much and rise to become absolutely extraordinary with a little bit of determination, patience, and a dash of help along the way. Nettles exemplifies that to the fullest extent.

She's more than a Black Valryian. She doesn’t have to be Valyrian. She shouldn’t have to be Valyrian.

She’s a survivor. She’s a final girl. She’s a Black low-born girl likely without a drop of dragons blood that tames a wild dragon with patience that killed countless others who had dragons blood. She survived the Dance where others high and low alike fell and perished to become a firewitch to the Burned Men.

Her legacy is immortalized in the history books(and by the Burned Men cause they still worship her) as one of the last(if not the last) dragonrider(s) before Dany all without having any known Valyrian ancestry.

[heraldofcrow]

A day may come when I stop developing unhealthy obsessions with characters that have long pale hair and psychological issues…but it is not this day…

[aradeia]

Perhaps the death of Balerion during the reign of Viserys I represents how the Targaryen family lost sight of Aegon's dream around that time. The Targaryens supposedly united all Westeros under their rule to defend against the threat of the Others. But during the Dance of the Dragons, and the many Blackfyre rebellions that followed, the Targaryens became preoccupied with which individual sat the Iron Throne. Balerion's death is perhaps symbolic of the Targaryen family becoming more interested in destroying itself (for nothing) than in looking ahead towards the imminent threat.

[greenbloods]

shoutout to this exchange on r/pureasoiaf about arryk and erryk i saw two years ago and havent forgotten since, and the final comment by u/Jon-Umber on westerosi chivalry

AliEray: Oh, I never realized they were named after Cargyll twins. [deleted]: What kind of parents would name their children after two brothers who killed each other? Xx_kingbanana_xX: Who loved each other despite their vows/duty setting them up against each other [deleted]: no matter. if there is one thing asoiaf wants to teach us it is this: vows suck. Jon-Umber: That's not the takeaway I have at all. Rather it's that Westeros values romantic ideals which are clearly incongruent with reality. Nobility is given the power of life and death over the serf class with little to no oversight, since they rely on oaths and vows to do the dirty work for them. Obviously, it fails miserably more often than not, because only morally good people are concerned with keeping their word, and they're not overly likely to engage in aggressive violence to begin with. The morally repugnant don't give a damn about vows anyway. There's nothing wrong with vows and oaths. Keeping your word is extremely important to human relationships. How many liars do you enjoy being friends with? Would you call someone who fucked your significant other behind your back to come bail you out of prison? The problem is Westerosi just tend to ignore human nature and their social organization is broken as a result of that. Those in power who are aware of the facade take advantage of it to increase their own power and prestige at the cost of others (Tywin, Roose), and those who have internalized the myth are at an incredibly steep disadvantage (Ned, Robb) to those who haven't. Ned dies as a direct result of his investment in Westerosi romanticism when he confronts Cersei and tells her what he's going to do, expecting the idealized Westerosi norms to protect him. Obviously this fails catastrophically, as Cersei tears up Robert's letter without giving a shit, and Ned ends up dying for it. In many ways the romantic foolishness inherent to Westeros is what GRRM set out to write about in the beginning. George undoubtedly saw all of these overly romantic epic fantasies of the '70s and '80s, which were all aping Tolkien and based on a painted-turd version of feudalism and, being an enthusiast for medieval history, George knew that this was a steaming load of bullshit, and set out to write an epic fantasy which more accurately depicted feudalist society. Anyone who has any knowledge of feudalism whatsoever would undoubtedly agree.

[rhaenin-time]

The changes the writers made to Alicent, Aemond, and Aegon have too many modern connotations and it disturbs me that so many people find those connotations "sympathetic."

[ride-thedragon]

'Nettles characterization wouldn't work if she's older."

A smart, foul-mouthed, dirty, twenty five year old who manages to be the only person since Old Valyria to claim a wild dragon.

A thief and loner whose sexual promiscuity is built into the narrative.

A home rennovator and big sister type at the same time, in the same family...

Her knowing Marilda as a peer on Driftmark

Understanding her background through her well into adult mannerisms

Self preservation without kids at that age

Potential sapphic undertones

Daemon pulling someone age appropriate.

A woman in ASOIAF whose sexual relationships don't affect her innocence in the narrative and actively serves to save her.

What's not working?

Where is the Ayo casting announcement?

Are you not a Natasha Lyonne Fan?

Are you LGBT?