#HotD racism

[blackcat419]

Adultification of all HotD Girls and the infantilization of Rhaenyra.

Two scenes in HotD really bug me with how the characters acknowledge Rhaenyra as a child when she’s 18, but then go on to marry and impregnate girls younger than 18.

Viserys call Rhaenyra, “just a girl” when Daemon takes her to the brothel. He doesn’t use the world woman, he uses girl, denoting Rhaenyra as not an adult at this point in her life. By Visery’s logic, he married a child. Alicent was only 14/15 when he married her and only 17 when she become a mother twice over.

Daemon also cause Rhaenyra, “just a child” when she’s says he abandoned her after her wedding. Daemon then goes on to flirt with a 15/16 year old Laena at the wedding and marrying her soon after.

The adultification of Laena is much worse than characters in text acknowledging people older than her as kids. Laena is played by two actresses that are about ten years older than Laena’s canon age. This also isn’t just a case of adults playing teens, the show has set Rhaenyra and Alicent as the standard for what a 14 through 18/19 year old and 28 through 34 year olds looks like. Laena’s actresses are older than Rhaenyra and Alicent’s Actors and Actresses. This is a classic example of black girlhood being earesed in text and out of. Laena goes from a clear 12 year old who is very visually much younger than Rhaenyra and Alicent to being a near adult woman who looks about the same age, if not older than the other girls. Laena is also styled in much more mature clothing than we see any other character in. Even Alicent’s “sex dresses” are much more reserved than Laena’s gold dress.

We also have the same thing happening to Laena’s daughters, Baela and Rhaena. In text they should be 16 or younger but their actresses are older than Jace’s actor. The only upside is that the two are not visually sexualized and aged up as teen Laena was.

In conclusion, HotD in text shows the absurdity of Viserys and Daemon viewing Rhaenyra as a child while pressing girls younger than she was at the time. The show tries to erase the clear adultification of Laena. The show engages in a lot of anti black stereotypes and I am not looking forward to how they’ll treat Nettles.

Disclaimer: I am not a WOC or a POC, if anything I wrote is wrong please correct me. My goal is to learn and advocate for better representation in media for all gender, races, ethnicities, and sexual orientation.

Blogs I recommend you follow if you want to read more about how HotD fails women and people of color: @bohemian-nights @venusintheblindspots-blog @mejcinta @sunnysideaeggs

[rhaenin-time]

Being a native who's studied colonialism means that I know wayyyyy too much about blood quantum. I know how stupid it is, how it's tied to eugenics, but I also know how it "works."

Which means I can use my stupid-power to do this:

Well this took a turn.

[daeneryseastar]

link

“Baela shrieks with her father’s anger.”

“Jace the closest to Aemond in age —”

“Aemond puts his hands around Luke’s throat, throttling him.”

“You will die screaming in flames just as your father did.”

“…comes at Aemond, who readies the big rock.”

“He counters, smashing Jace’s face in with the rock.”

I’m gonna knock some teeth out ‘closest to Aemond in age’ and he was canonically 6 to Aemond’s 10. Jace and Luke were the only ones really involved with the fight in the book, and it’s stated multiple times that Aemond had the clear advantage over them and was beating them ruthlessly. It was a clear power play on his part that quickly turned sour because the younger brother feared for both his and his older brothers life (as he should, the kid was 5 fucking years old).

I know why they added the Dragon Twins to the fight, and it was solely to infantilize Aemond even further than they already had (and demonize the girls and the Velaryon boys in turn). Sure, I’m supposed to feel sorry for him because he was bullied for not having a dragon (boo fucking hoo); but I’m not supposed to feel sorry for the twins after they just lost their mother, considering how quickly that storyline was left in the dust to further Aemond’s. I’m not supposed to feel sorry for the woman and kids who were targeted purely due to their blood/gender (but that doesn’t matter ofc just that they’re bastards and harming poor helpless trueborn baby Aemond how dare they).

The agenda being pushed in the show is obviously full of microagressions against these kids — the Velaryons were made into POC just to make certain the audience knew that Rhaenyra’s first three children were bastards, and Baela and Rhaena were added to the fight to show them as the ‘true’ aggressors to the entire situation. It didn’t matter that they had lost their mom recently, it didn’t matter that they didn’t even know who Aemond was. They had one of the last living relics of their mother stolen out from under them by this random kid who immediately insults them to their faces for having the audacity to be upset, but HE is the victim here. Jace had just found out about Harwin being his bio dad and then lost him within a short amount of time. He was being openly mocked and told he and his baby brother were going to die in the exact same way at Aemond’s hand. But no, no! Don’t jump to the obvious conclusion; AEMOND is the victim here.

Four grieving children reacted on their extremely volatile emotions, with one acting on fear alone, and it ended poorly for all parties involved— who would’ve thought?

[queenvhagar]

[juniorfor2]

For all the racism that’s very obvious in the show, I really think one big one has been missed - C&H’s decision to make the Velaryon boys bastards, instead of Laenor’s sons by blood, simply because of their skin color.

Due to the writers’ decision to make the Velaryons black, but Jace, Luke, and Joffrey white, this was used to support the idea that they must be bastards. Rather than using hair color, only skin color is brought up as an issue (or at least that’s what’s obviously implied). Because the writers think that kids come out looking like a 50/50 mix of their parents. That if they aren’t exactly in the middle of Laenor and Rhaenyra’s skin color, then they can only be bastards.

But this just isn’t how real life works. Kids come out looking all sorts of ways, lighter or darker than both their parents, right in the middle, or only like one parent. My own mother is from Pakistan, but I came out looking exactly like my white, American father (except as a girl).

And that has consequences for a lot of people. Those who come out looking different from one parent can often experience difficulties as others refuse to see them as part of their group or culture. Biracial children are often forced to choose one race over the other, or are deliberately excluded from one group because they aren’t light or dark enough.

And the thing is, this issue is actually raised in the show. Vaemond actually gets the closest to the real life issue, when he says to Rhaenyra, “you wouldn’t know Velaryon blood if you saw it.” Because they are white, they are excluded from being Velaryon. They are viewed almost as weird colonizer-parallels, “stealing” from the only black family in the show, thereby erasing any racial culture the Velaryons currently have.

Even Alicent, despite not being part of the dispute, shows so much disgust towards the boys. They aren’t darker skinned, and so she views them as unworthy and unable to be part of the Velaryon family. It’s not even her fight, but she still is vitriolic towards them - and that’s how so many biracial people are actually perceived and treated in real life.

The issue of how biracial children are perceived should have been a fairly easy message to portray and resolve. We could have seen how Jace was ostracized and pushed away because of his looks, how much it hurt him for everyone to say he wasn’t Velaryon, even while Laenor raised him and viewed him as his son. We could have then seen how Jace eventually resolves this, realizing that it doesn’t matter what he looks like, because all that mattered was that Laenor was his father who loved him and raised him with Velaryon culture. That Corlys accepted him as well, despite the rumors.

But C&H, because they are both racist and mainly ignorant of how skin color works in real life, went the easy route and didn’t try to even find a single explanation for why the kids could be Laenor’s children by blood. I don’t need a complete reversal to make them undoubtedly Laenor’s, but some ambiguity would have been nice.

[horizon-verizon]

Oh, Nettles really has been cut this season and everything points towards her being cut entirely. Mostly because Condal refuses to discuss her at all in interviews while he doesn’t do that with Daeron, Maelor, or any other yet unseen book character. There’s also very, very strong evidence of Rhaena claiming Sheepstealer this season.

Ryan went out of his way to expand upon other dragonseeds such as Addam, Alyn, Hugh, and Ulf this season while Nettles is a no show.

Why give a character no development, steal her dragon, steal every detail that makes her compelling, and then randomly plop her into season 3 with an immediate romance with Daemon ?

Ryan is also doing something every different with Nettles in interviews than he did with Daeron. When people ask when Daeron will show up, he has always been consistent that Daeron existed and would be apart of the show at some point. He’s even willing to talk about Maelor who hasn’t showed up yet either. When he gets asked about Nettles, he straight up ignores the question and changes topics.

I agree, Nettles doesn't seem to be real in HotD. Which, you know, tells us something abt how some people don't understand Nettles' narrative importance both in the controversy over Rhaenyra--whether or not she sought to arrest her merely to allay her own paranoia over the Dragonseeds after Ulf and Hugh's Betrayals/Tumbleton, or whether she merely sought to question her, or whether she truly thought Nettles was a witch who seduced Daemon as Septon Eustace claims--OR in her paralleling & reaffirming Daenerys Stormborn. Rhaena can't occupy that role, at all.

Rhaena's Daemon's trueborn daughter, has been a part for Rhaenyra's household and family for years already (trust is already there), was waiting on Morning to hatch, and was never with Daemon at Maidenpool but at the Vale. So what will induce Daemon to meet Aemond-Vhagar sooner rather than later?

They already co-opted so much from the supposedly "Mad" Daenerys for Rhaenyra and the greens. Misogynoir is baked into this project, and no, that Rhaena's own unique storyline is tweaked the way it seems it's going, it's still misogynoir for her as well: POST #1 & POST#2.

......................................................................

*EDIT* (7/5/24)

A Later Anon Had This to Say:

So... none of the eggs Rhaena leaves with are Morning. They actually confirmed they're Dany's three eggs and a blue one for Viserys. So if they truly do combine Rhaena with Nettles, how tf are they going to pull that off without it being crazy stupid or misogynistic? The council's whole justification was "she has no ties to our cause, we don't know her, and we don't know if she's been working with the Betrayers the whole time. If one more rider defects to the Greens it's over." None of those apply to Rhaena. So what, instead of the council pushing for strategic reasons, Rhaenyra's going to turn into a ranting raving evil stepmother that the men try to reason with and everyone can laugh about how she's worse than Alicent? Or will it be another "misunderstanding" in which case, why would Daemon ever believe she would order it? Does this mean that Rhaena will have a MASSIVE dragon? If she flees Rhaenyra specifically, why would Aegon risk killing Rhaenyra and bringing Rhaena out of hiding? Why would the war not immediately be over the moment Rhaenyra and Sunfyre die and Rhaena has the last huge dragon? The whole point of the dance is that targaryens and their women were left vulnerable. How is that still true if instead of a hatchling, she has a dragon big enough that she and Caraxes were seen as enough to take down Vhagar? Big enough for her and Baela to say, "fuck you. We're Aegon's regents."

[bohemian-nights]

the hotd writers writing the black characters as plot devices for their main white characters is so disgusting. like "here are some black character for representation, but let's not bother to give them any actual plot beside serving daemyra".

and now they are trying to write out the ONLY canonically black character out of the show because she does not serve the narrative that is beneficial for their daemyra. i'm so done with this show.

It’s disgusting how they treat them. Yes, House Velaryon doesn’t have the best outcome during the war, but they made them worse in the show(Vaemond calling Missy Anne a whore to justify his murder, Laena lighting herself on fire cause she’s unloved, Corlys and Rhaenys, not Black but she still looks stupid, thinking Dumbnyra killed their son and still supporting Missy Anne, Laenor being a deadbeat dad, Rhaena going around and calling her cousin/stepmother my queen, Baela’s scenes being cut).

They straight-up made them look like idiots with no self-preservation/respect by blindly following Missy Anne. They could’ve kept them white if all they were going to do is have them play second fiddle to their chosen one.

We want representation but don’t throw us scraps and act like you are doing something. These aren’t fully fleshed-out characters. These are the modern rendition of racist stereotypes.

[lizzie-queenofmeigas]

There is a very useful trick that I like to use to identify misogyny and racism and that is to simply compare the situation to its male/white counterparts.

Rhaenyra had bastards she can't have the throne! Aegon had them too, having children bastards doesn't make you a worthless ruler. That is misogyny, a "moral" failure disqualifies the female candidate but not the male candidate.

It's not racism! Laena just wasn't that important! So why now that she is a black woman, her plot as Rhaenyra's friend and the sapphic subtext was given to Alicent? That is racism

The change to a more brutal death for Laena is misogyny AND racism.

There are also the unfortunate implications of the changes they made with the Velaryons. I am one of those who supports that Rhaenyra's children, although they are not biologically from Laenor, are legally from Laenor and therefore are not bastards, but I completely understand the people (even some TB) who pointed out how uncomfortable it was to see a black man on screen claiming his inheritance while it was given to some white guy.

The decision to make the Velaryon black simply to irrefutably say that those boys were NOT from Laenor without applying the necessary and logical changes within the narrative and considering the out-of-universe racist implications was not only a mistake but one of the most racist decisions they've ever made.

Half the cast should be mixed, and yes, several of them could look white, as literally demonstrated if they see mixed families of more than two generations, but certainly not as white as they look.

Rhaenys is one of those trouble spots, because she implies, through the "strong seed Baratheon" plot, that her whiteness is superior and the conquerors now have the cumbersome problem of Aegon and Visenya as black and violent people and Rhaenys as the seductive brown, all racist types that have been fought, because they did not add nuance they simplified to an uncomfortable degree.

I also want to add that I would love to know if the anon that is causing you as a Poc with internalized racism is white, because I noticed how he didn't address this as an issue they faces. There are a disgusting number of TGs who are not actually analyzing the racism and misogyny in scripture but are instead using it as a get-out card to attack others for their opinions

It has been established as world-building that magic is hereditary at least to a large extent. It is the inherited magic of the First Men that gives the Stark children their powers, it is the inherited magic that allows some Targ to bond with their dragons, it is the inherited magic that makes Melissandre specifically seek the blood of a king's son. We have Targ descendants who don't look Targ, so because Nettles, the only woman and dragon seed who doesn't look Valyrian, has to be the only one who doesn't have Valyrian blood? Why do they want to apply that she (as a woman and Poc) would have to work three times as hard to have what her male and white peers achieved through the genetic lottery?

Just something to think about.

Also, I have noticed that these aggressive anons come at you in waves, remember that even anons can be blocked (and it is not reversible)

I block a lot of them, but they just keep appearing.

I'm am actually very concerned about some people unwillingness to see the racism in the Hotd writing. Just because they fucked up every character, doesn't mean that their treatment of the Velaryons, their erasure of Nettles isn't racist.

I don't trust HBO, they hire terrible writers that just want money and have no respect for the source material.

It sucks, because this could have been done so well, if they actually cared about representation and equality it would be a very different show.

Other than that, I agree with what you say.

[alicentflorent]

I feel like we don’t talk enough about how baela was reduced to a cheerleader who spent most of the season giving Jace pep talks and Rhaena was reduced to a surrogate mother tasked with caring for the queen’s children who are also her brothers but the show forgeta to mention that

Rhaena does not get to develop her political skills and impress Jeyne Arryn or show us that she has value despite not being a dragonrider and Baela doesn’t get to have more than one quick scene that shows off her skills as a dragon riding warrior nor does she get to advocate for her sister’s claim or get the same comfort from Jace that she provides him.

[witheredoffherwitch]

Y'ALL CAN EXCUSE RACISM?

Let's get one thing straight: I have no part in this chaotic mess (infact, I have blocked all the accounts mentioned below), but it's grinding my gears how it's devolving into another petty fanfic drama: case 607. I know this drama is getting the attention for certain individuals who are demonstrating mean girl behaviour and gossiping about other writers behind their backs. However, I am solely focused on addressing the racist and discriminatory remarks made by these individuals in the leaked text messages.

For those not in the loop, there's been a huge drama in the fanfic community involving leaked text messages from a group chat of four prominent members. In these messages, two users - Fae and Bel - have admitted to sending hate anons and talking smack about other writers behind their backs. Two other members left the group after it was revealed that B tried to make amends with someone who these two, Em and Ange, don't particularly care for. As a move to clear their names, Em exposed all the texts, trying to prove that Fae and Bel are the real villains here.

But wait, there's more! In these same chats, Bel not only mocked fellow non-English speakers but also bragged about sending rat emojis to an 18-year-old Pakistani writer who was already receiving racist anons. While everyone is focused on getting back at these two women for being shady af, it's mind-boggling how Em and Ange are suddenly jumping on the anti-racism train.

These two ladies stayed in the same chat as a fellow Pakistani writer was driven away because of racism, knowing full well that one of their own was contributing to it, and said NOTHING! Zero discouragement, no condemnation - they only hopped off when things got personal.

So here it is… I've had it with all of you hypocrites. You praise and encourage these women at every turn, feeding their egos like they're the second coming of Beyonce. But let's not forget who's always stirring up drama in this fandom - hint: it's these same people with a sense of entitlement the size of a planet. The issue is groupthink and y'all have all jumped on the bandwagon. You're worse than HBO's marketing department because just like their shitty teams, everyone involved here SUCKS ASS. You don't have to pick a side because they are all petty, mean losers. Bel and Fae are facing the consequences of their actions, which they rightfully deserve.

However, Em's exposé on Bel's racism seems more like an opportunistic move and it's disappointing that so many of you are supporting it. It's a predictable cycle now; there will be a half-hearted apology, an announcement of a hiatus, and then tons of people will flock to their inboxes to shower them with praise and excuses. It's ridiculous! I know there are many who feel the same way as me but are afraid to speak up because they don't want to upset the "village elders" and risk losing their connections and engagements. It's a joke atp!

Instead of taking responsibility for their own wrongdoings, they will come up with a list of 10 different cyber crimes by others to divert attention from their own nonsense. These very same women have confessed to creating multiple fake accounts, secretly stalking servers without mods noticing, and constantly harassing individuals through anon messages.

Yet, we are supposed to consider them as examples of moral integrity and ethical behavior? 😒

[fandom-blahs]

What happened to CrazyTom is crazy and going through the twitter comments is insane, people justifying it so weird.

You can look up very old threads on the ASOIAF forum or reddit where people talk about how bad the Jaehaera’s ending is and how it’s one of the weaker, if not the weakest parts, of the dance (or post dance? Idk how to classify it) and F&B in general (not the weakest in that case)

Daenaera just pops up as the realm’s hottest 6 year old and you’re just like yup hahaha there goes GRRM again with his quirky writing.

I promise you just look up pre-HOTD threads about Jaehaera it has nothing to do with Daenaera being black in the HOTD!verse.

The way people defend it has me going crazy because with the arguments they’re putting forth it’s clear none of them …ever tried giving GRRM’s writing a go, it’s just so sensitive “why would your ant Aegon III to be sad and be….” huh??

It’s so obvious that the twitter fight is just a dumb extension for the TB/TG shit fight when in the past it was more of “why did GRRM forsake a perfect ending for the dance to encapsulate how useless this civil war is”

[rhaenin-time]

[sukibenders]

Racism and misogynoir are so apparent in fandom, especially when it comes to shipping because why is it when a white male, sometimes female but I see it more with the former, character is on screen with a love interest, particularly woc, especially if they're black, and even with all the emotional scenes or just moments where they look at one another in ways different from the rest, it's met with "No, they aren't dating/the show is not going to put them together" but let the other love interest be white as well and suddenly it all makes sense? Heck, the examples I mentioned above don't even have to exist between the latter for some to STILL go and believe this rhetoric (eg. some Jace and Helaena shippers because, even if these two only interacted with a dance but yet we see Baela console Jace, after he seeks her out, apparently it's to far fetched to believe that Jacela could be a thing?!)

Sometimes it could be a headcanon that, largely, would make sense (and oftentimes was birth due to lack of respect that the poc characters could have been given by the writers *cough* TVD *cough*), and yet you'd still have people dismissing it left and right and spewing hate. At a HEADCANON! And I'm not saying that just because the other person in the ship is poc that you have to ship them, I'm not, but it's very apparent to many poc fans in fandom that unless the characters are swapping spit and doing the nasty, the possibility of them being viewed in any romantic lens feels too much of stretch even though their white counterparts don't have to jump through the same loops.

[queenvhagar]

If Nettles is scrapped, I want twitter to be an absolute nightmare for condal & co.

She definitely is scrapped, with Rhaena about to claim Sheepstealer in the Vale, despite it breaking canon that the dragon is there in the first place, according to GRRM.

I wish the fandom cared about Nettles but most fans are uncritically lapping up the white feminism of Rhaenyra's story and will continue to defend it. Apparently some people think black women are interchangeable and undistinguishable 🙄 essentially it's this:

[amadholes-lostre]

Everybody who saw the chemistry weeks ago knew how hotd fandom would react if it actually became canon.

[horizon-verizon]

Just adding my two cents to that post about the Velaryon’s being race bent (hope you don’t mind) - but to me, the funniest part about race bending the Velaryons so it would be ‘obvious’ that the Velaryon boys aren’t Laenor’s because they aren’t black, is that they expected people to believe that a half white man and a white woman couldn’t produce white/white passing children.

Anon speaks of this.

Pfft, that's one crazy part of it. Like with Daemon-Laena, you'd probably expect the twins to come out even lighter with a looser hair texture, but that's whatever...but here with Rhaenyra and Laenor, now it's all an issue, now people want to ask questions and use the kids' skin against Rhaenyra.