#d&d really were like “dany needs to be evil by the end of the show”

[midnighttales357]

do y'all remember that time d&d tried to convince us that daenerys was evil bc she killed slavers and the liberated slaves cheered her for it? what was that about?

[daenerystemper]

I remembered something. It’s from the wretched season. The two hacks had Dany say “I’ve never begged for anything” which contradicted how she said in S2 “I’m begging you”. Those two really were inconsistent with their own story weren’t they? But I also don’t like the implications. I think they were trying to portray Dany as this arrogant and prideful woman who was so proud that she wouldn’t beg for anything or be humble. And they clearly wanted to portray her “begging for the first time” as her being selfish. Those two hacks never understood her character. They didn’t understand any of the characters. I take satisfaction knowing their wretch awful season burned their show and their careers to the ground. I just hope GRRM will finish the books and give the story and characters the writing and hopefully ending they deserve. I have a lot of hope that Dany will get a good ending in the books

it’s surprising that they forgot they had daenerys begging for things as well considering how badly they intentionally butchered her season two arc.  rather than showcasing her as a queen who is learning how to navigate court,  they have daenerys demanding to be let in & given things because she has dragons which is not something that happens in the books since the qartheen come looking for her instead.  the thing is,  there’s nothing “wrong” with begging for help.  for example,  daenerys’s major goal starting from a clash of kings where she begins learning how to maneuver politically is to find ships. she doesn't like to beg, but she isn't above it.

“Xaro Xhoan Daxos would be no help to her, she knew that now. For all his professions of devotion, he was playing his own game, not unlike Pyat Pree. The night he asked her to leave, Dany had begged one last favor of him. “An army, is it?” Xaro asked. “A kettle of gold? A galley, perhaps?” Dany blushed. She hated begging. “A ship, yes.” Xaro’s eyes had glittered as brightly as the jewels in his nose. “I am a trader, Khaleesi. So perhaps we should speak no more of giving, but rather of trade. For one of your dragons, you shall have ten of the finest ships in my fleet. You need only say that one sweet word.” “No,” she said.” DAENERYS V,  A CLASH OF KINGS

i think it’s important to note that only daenerys’s begging in seen as humiliating because it comes across as petulant.  she doesn’t want to “share” the throne.  she is so manipulative & convincing that she would “overpower jon” should he give into her,  despite tyrion successfully talking jon into murdering daenerys because she kills “evil men”.  in comparison,  jon spends several seasons begging for more soldiers at the wall.  he & sansa both partake in begging northern houses to help them in their cause to retake winterfell.  daenerys parallels mostly with gendry begging arya to love him rather than being a fully-fleshed out character within season eight.  his only purpose is to love arya,  be made the trueborn son of robert & do little else.

what d&d forgot repeatedly is that dany is a negotiator before she is a beggar.  her worth is in her many titles:  the mother of dragons,  the bride of dragons,  the rightful heir to the iron throne.  she negotiates one dragon for an army of unsullied.  she negotiates her own marriage for peace in meereen.  for all the repeated foreshadowing within season seven & eight,  daenerys should have successfully negotiated a marriage pact with the king in the north, especially once learning about his true birth so that claims of him being the true inheritor of the throne could be avoided. but d&d would rather humiliate her character.

it’s misogyny that they have daenerys begging jon repeatedly throughout season eight to not tell anyone,  to love her,  to be with her even in the moments leading up to her death.  she’s presented as a dreamy fool stuck between tyrion’s all-knowing genius & jon’s impeccable honor.  even though they’re all painfully watered down,  daenerys suffers the most & becomes a fridged woman so that jon can mourn her painstakingly over the last twenty minutes of the final episode to show just how torn he is about doing “the right thing.”

[janiedean]

I read your metas on why you think GRRM always meant for Bran to be KITN, not King of the 7K as per what he told Benioff and Weiss during their decades-long intimate working relationship on the show adaptation and I have to say I disagree lol. I don't really understand how someone can think that Benioff and Weiss were told 'yeah Jon sits the throne and the irrelevant 8 year old fourth son of the Stark family becomes KITN' and D and D were like, 'ummm no we're going to blow our legacy by putting BRAN of all characters on the IT, and not giving our fan favorite character his shining moment on the IT.' I don't like Bran as King and neither did D and D, but they had to maintain that GOT was some semblance of an adaptation so they had to use Martin's endgames. It blows my mind that people still deny this. I do think the north being independent and Sansa being QITN was fanservice tho. She will likely be Lady of Winterfell, not queen. Anyone that thinks she ends her story in the Vale is deeply unserious.

Jon's a chosen one deconstruction because once he finds out about his parentage, it's not going to be a good thing that gives him a renewed sense of self like in the thousands of other chosen one fantasy arcs. It will be a devastating revelation for him and cause a very negative identity crisis. Also, his parentage was always meant to be a red herring, why do you think GRRM set it up in a way that there is literally no way for Jon to prove he's actually R and L's son? Much less prove he's a legitimate son born from a valid, legal marriage? I don't think anyone outside of Jon's very close inner circle will ever know the truth about who his real parents are, it's not something he will want to ever be made known lmao. The show conflating Jon with YG, not adapting YG, and basically being a Jon Snow is So Great Fanservice vehicle in the last few seasons has made the fandom think that's where his arc is leading, it's not. Not that GRRM will ever publish another book, but anyway.

Also, Jon is not AA, it is Dany. The thing is.....that's not a good thing lol. The AA prophecy is basically prophesizing the coming of Khal Stalin, not a savior lmao. That's the twist and the double edge sword with prophecies that is so very Martin. The constant debates among the fandom as to who is AA is so hilarious because they fundamentally don't understand that it's a negative prophecy. The dramatic irony of house targ thinking they need to bring about the AA prophecy to save humanity when in actuality they are unleashing a new evil that needs to be defeated is deeply delicious dramatic irony. But the fandom is too bogged down into the most basic fantasy tropes to see it and refuses to acknowledge that GRRM is cynically deconstructing these tropes. Almost as if he's trying to say that being the son of the crown prince actually sucks and will make the supposed 'chosen one's' life hell, the ethereal looking princess with the sympathetic backstory is actually an authoritarian tyrant who's bloody conquest for the iron throne using her hordes of brainwashed killing machines will cause destruction not restore some great dynasty, and the 'broken' disabled boy with special mind powers who is able to look into all of history to learn from the mistakes of all the monarchs that came before him is the 'best' ruler for a 'broken' realm.

I'm uuuuh, gonna try and reply to this as briefly as I can but like with the premise that everyone can agree or disagree with anything and text interpretation can't be set in stone until like the entire thing is over... in order

I don't really understand how someone can think that Benioff and Weiss were told 'yeah Jon sits the throne and the irrelevant 8 year old fourth son of the Stark family becomes KITN' and D and D were like, 'ummm no we're going to blow our legacy by putting BRAN of all characters on the IT, and not giving our fan favorite character his shining moment on the IT.'

anon I don't wanna sound rude but.... they lit set jon up to kill the night king and then made arya of all ppl do it NONSENSICALLY just to make ppl surprised, they literally shat all over the entire text since S2 if not S1 already, just the robb storyline shows they didn't understand anything about the point of the red wedding which they said they WANTED to adapt and they basically made shit up since s4 onwards without anything making literal sense including making c*rsei the ultimate boss when there is no shred of text evidence she's that important and grrm is pissed with the ending so like... I can 100% think that both of them didn't gaf about what grrm had to say and just understood what they wanted to, also because we're talking abt the ppl who made stannis go agamemnon on shireen because they hated his ass when if shireen dies like that no way it's stannis ordering it by any shred of textual sense so I absolutely will say dnd didn't gaf about what grrm said and threw their legacy in the trash, that because.... everyone thought the finale was trash and they haven't had a gig like that since bc no one wants them after got, with good reason, so like ppl can say that because there is nothing dnd have done as showrunners that shows they gaf about the og text, end of story

I don't like Bran as King and neither did D and D, but they had to maintain that GOT was some semblance of an adaptation so they had to use Martin's endgames. It blows my mind that people still deny this. I do think the north being independent and Sansa being QITN was fanservice tho. She will likely be Lady of Winterfell, not queen. Anyone that thinks she ends her story in the Vale is deeply unserious.

except the jc endgame is obviously not the book endgame, lit no one's endgame except imvho jon's (hahaha) and possibly tyrion/davos is the actual book endgame and I'd like everyone to remember there's no shred of textual evidence rickon doesn't die in the books but anyway like... sorry but dnd not wanting to put jon on the IT for shock value (which is obvious since everyone expected it) and not giving bran kitn to give it to sansa so ppl who wanted her to be queen would be happy makes absolute sense to me, also like... again I'm not gonna go over it again bc you said you read the meta but: bran is a deconstructed version of a kingly arthurian archetype which by himself means that he has to become king while being disabled/in virtue of having lost his legs so like sorry but bran being king is absolutely in the text but no way it makes sense it's 7k since he's directly tied to his land and its magic same as the fisher king so......

Jon's a chosen one deconstruction because once he finds out about his parentage, it's not going to be a good thing that gives him a renewed sense of self like in the thousands of other chosen one fantasy arcs. It will be a devastating revelation for him and cause a very negative identity crisis

I agree and I wrote a longass meta about jon being a chosen one deconstruction but being AA/his inheritance absolutely does not rule out it being a deconstruction imvho

Also, his parentage was always meant to be a red herring, why do you think GRRM set it up in a way that there is literally no way for Jon to prove he's actually R and L's son?

howland reed was there when he was born and lyanna could have told him and ned they were married, also bran can lit travel in time and prove it/see it happen, but even if he's not legitimate wrt rhaegar it doesn't matter because in the book he's legitimate wrt robb's will so he's gonna get kitn title at some point even just for that but like... point is if howland reed corroborates it and he gets a pet dragon or smth and no one has reasons to disagree esp because they'll need to kill zombies whether r/l were married doesn't matter at all

Much less prove he's a legitimate son born from a valid, legal marriage? I don't think anyone outside of Jon's very close inner circle will ever know the truth about who his real parents are, it's not something he will want to ever be made known lmao. The show conflating Jon with YG, not adapting YG, and basically being a Jon Snow is So Great Fanservice vehicle in the last few seasons has made the fandom think that's where his arc is leading, it's not. Not that GRRM will ever publish another book, but anyway.

we can't know about wrt grrm publishing something else or not but again: howland reed knows and he's still around and kicking and there is no reason for people to not make it known especially when it comes out and they have to treat with dany, also the show conflated young griff with both jon and cersei and jon connington with jorah and daenerys which makes no sense whatsoever so like that argument holds zero water bc they didn't know what they were doing and it shows

Also, Jon is not AA, it is Dany. The thing is.....that's not a good thing lol. The AA prophecy is basically prophesizing the coming of Khal Stalin, not a savior lmao. That's the twist and the double edge sword with prophecies that is so very Martin.

anon the second maester aemon said on page AA is daenerys out loud it went out of the window, the way asoiaf prophecies are structured everyone who's rumored to be X by other people/themselves before it actually happens won't be that, and jon only ever was deemed a candidate by a vision melisandre had... which she immediately discarded bc she didn't understand what the hell her own god was telling her so sorry but I don't agree and it's not gonna happen

The constant debates among the fandom as to who is AA is so hilarious because they fundamentally don't understand that it's a negative prophecy. The dramatic irony of house targ thinking they need to bring about the AA prophecy to save humanity when in actuality they are unleashing a new evil that needs to be defeated is deeply delicious dramatic irony. But the fandom is too bogged down into the most basic fantasy tropes to see it and refuses to acknowledge that GRRM is cynically deconstructing these tropes. Almost as if he's trying to say that being the son of the crown prince actually sucks and will make the supposed 'chosen one's' life hell, the ethereal looking princess with the sympathetic backstory is actually an authoritarian tyrant who's bloody conquest for the iron throne using her hordes of brainwashed killing machines will cause destruction not restore some great dynasty, and the 'broken' disabled boy with special mind powers who is able to look into all of history to learn from the mistakes of all the monarchs that came before him is the 'best' ruler for a 'broken' realm.

anon I don't even disagree with all of this but:

i do not think that in any way shape or form jon is not AA - there is no way he's not, he's lit the only one who actually came back to life in the show if we wanna show truth and there's no other character who lit resurrected and no one else will so there's that, he died according to the prophecy and no one in text would ever put a cent on AA being him, like.,........ what we know is not what they do and for westeros jon snow is the least likely candidate soooo like sorry but I don't think it makes sense that anyone else is AA, you can think it's dany but idt there's a chance in hell

I think the evil is already there and it's zombies, like... ik the show made it look like the long night was nothing but it's the actual ultimate big bad so there's no need for AA to be another evil, rhaegar would have misunderstood the og prophecy well enough as it is without getting that far

jon being the chosen one and AA would still make his life hell

idt dany is written in the book as an authoritarian tyrant and idt it's where she's headed and I'm saying it as someone who doesn't gaf about dany and doesn't care either way but the show version was just ridiculous and nothing in the text says she's headed there whatsoever

I also agree this fandom cannibalizing itself over who is AA is ridiculous... because it's jon and there's no reason to further argue over that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

bran can absolutely be the best ruler for a broken realm,..... the north, which has been mauled and will be further mauled by the zombies, and it makes no sense he is 7k anyway given his background and stuff, again you can disagree with it as you want but idt anything that happened in the show except an extremely selected amount of things which are absolutely out of context has a chance in hell of happening in the books and from the way grrm reacted to the finale it seems obvious to me, then... again you can agree or disagree with me but I wrote so much meta on the topic I honestly feel like I'd be rehashing myself over and over if I went about it again but like

of course everyone believes in their own interpretation but there's no way I'm gonna be swayed by any argument agains kitn!bran and 7k!jon who then abdicates and goes to the wildlings by anything that's not grrm publishing ados and writing differently, godspeed and that's mvho ;)

[esther-dot]

I sent the show!Jonsa ask! Yeah, I was toying with it because one of the sticking points for me is figuring out why the show did or didn't do Jonsa and why that may or may not happen in the books. That to me is really some of the most damning stuff, and I can't point to Dany's arc in the show or Stannis' etc. (many of the examples you use) as argumentation for what makes sense in the books but have yet to have happened without, too, including Jonsa.

Anon asks are limited by length (and I would not want to waste your time with adding caveat after caveat lol) but I do also have complicated feelings about D&D; on the one hand I think there were serious problems on set and I have a lot of capital F feminist problems with them, but that doesn't belie all the creative work they put into the show (I do think there are Choices they made about how to portray romance without the source material at hand, and even before that honestly, but I already wrote that ask lol).

You're definitely right about the heaping of romantic parallels; one or two of those relationships alone could be written off, but the Sam/Gilly one is very weird, and Kit's acting choices are... very weird lol. Re: Sansa's jealousy, I had read that more as Dark Sansa foreshadowing as opposed to Jonsa jealousy, so I don't know???? When it comes to show!Jonsa I mostly only like the S6 dynamic anyway, so that might be down to some of my bias.

Basically I'm trying to entertain alternative ideas that might explain things as opposed to genuinely arguing for show!Jonsa being an accident, and I was thinking about this as well because it is an issue I've encountered with shipping/romance/fandom in general before. The male-gazey tropey dynamic ends up feeling off, but by virtue of the romance goggles of the author not being applied to another dynamic, it ends up feeling more mutual and less objectified and more interesting lol. A good example off the top of my head, given you've just watched the MCU films, is that I shipped Steve/Natasha (yes...) because the dynamic in Winter Soldier was above and beyond any other M/F pairing in the films. Naturally everybody goes on about ~platonic soulmates~ but I love good guys with sad/evil/redeemed ladies so I can't help it. Not saying it's at all canon though, I think they absolutely stumbled into that one.

I'm glad your nephew enjoyed the MCU films! I remember when I rewatched Endgame with my best friend, her dad came in and we had to keep explaining who the 'blue one and the green one' were. It made the film much better.

Anyway, thank you so much for entertaining my ask, and as always, being such a good sport. 🥰💝

(continuation of this convo)

You have no idea how much I sympathize with the caveat issue. I write answers and then delete entire paragraphs because I have such a tendency to try to clarify everything that it makes things less clear because I bury the point, but then I regret it when the vague blogs start. We all have limited time though, and every answer can't be thousands of rambling words! Sometimes I've literally just said "insert caveat" lmao!

I do also have complicated feelings about D&D; on the one hand I think there were serious problems on set and I have a lot of capital F feminist problems with them

I read this article about Emilia's experience on set for GoT (I have not been able to relocate it, but I did actually read an article with her quotes--it wasn't just a tumblr post), and I felt that she was taken advantage of when it came to the nudity/sex scenes. I actually think she meant for some of the stories to be amusing, but I felt sick reading it. She didn't say it was D&D, but apparently when she wanted to do less nudity going forward, she was told her fans expected it and it became a fight trying to move away from it, and....I just worry about the power dynamics with all these young actresses and what they're told they "need" to do. The fact that even if they ultimately agree to certain things, it still may be a result of coercion or they aren't actually being taken care of/feel safe when doing it...it left a very bad taste in my mouth regarding the behind the scenes stuff. And obviously, we all noticed the changes they made to the story, what they did to Sansa...plenty of things we can take exception to purely on what made it to our screens.

Basically I'm trying to entertain alternative ideas that might explain things as opposed to genuinely arguing for show!Jonsa being an accident

I enjoy doing that too! Groupthink is boring! I don't expect everyone to think the same way/come to the same conclusion, and I've changed my mind on a few things which only happens if we're willing to entertain different ideas instead of shutting people down. I mean, I'm not easily persuaded to a different way of thinking, but I try to be open to it. With the condition that someone interprets Sansa in a way I can live with which excludes most of the fandom/their theories tbh.

I basically work myself to one position and then back to where I started when it comes to show Jonsa. If it was an accident, I don't love it any less, if it wasn't, I'm curious what the hell happened. I didn't get what I wanted there, so it really doesn't matter to me what people conclude. I genuinely thought it was amusing when Kit acted surprised when he was asked about Jonsa because it was his face that was saying "not normal sibling feelings here." Silly man. 😂 And, D&D fucked up enough I don't like to take them too seriously, so I can't say, "this doesn't make sense therefore it was an accident" because, uh, a lot of their choices ultimately made no sense.

it is an issue I've encountered with shipping/romance/fandom in general before. The male-gazey tropey dynamic ends up feeling off, but by virtue of the romance goggles of the author not being applied to another dynamic, it ends up feeling more mutual and less objectified and more interesting lol.

I certainly agree about the general male v female view of romance. I found that a problem when I said that they didn't write a romance for Jonerys, and the guy I was talking to was like, "they had sex tho???" There was just...a massive gap between what we were looking for when talking about the characters/relationships. Although, he did know what I meant when I said "well, they filmed Jon and Sansa like a ruling couple." He immediately understood that. And, considering what they did to the sandsnakes (I'm not saying the line), I do understand the argument that if they meant for there to be a romance, they would have done it in such a way that we would have objected.

I think part of the reason I believed Jonsa was intentional was because I don't ship non canon pairings. My brain isn't one to think, "oh but what about those two" as I wasn't even involved in fandom before, and I generally just took what a story was and reacted to it, rather than re-configuring it. Obvy, having been in the fandom for so long now, that's changed somewhat, but for me, s7 was a total puzzlement, and Jonsa / some variation of poljon was the only way it connected to everything we had established before. In a bizarre twist, we didn't get the story that would make it coherent, but we still got the endpoint: Jon betraying Dany for Sansa. It's still weird to me, all these years later. Now I'm mainly bemused rather than angry though.

[horizon-verizon]

Rhaenyra got usurped because like a classic princeling she just sat and waited for what’s owed to her to be given to her with no complaints or arguments, without putting in any effort of building connections and showing herself as responsible and capable as a ruler. She was handed a bad hand, true, and Aegon II was much like her in his lack of much effort, tact and humility, and he DID have it easier just because he was born a man. But Rhaenyra did NOT help the matter with her idiotic decisions. At the end of the day, she was just as cruel and horrible as her brother.

*EDIT (5/31/24): DISCLAIMER

Rhaenyra suffers from really bad sexist writing on GRRM's, not just the maesters', part and it undermines his own point.* And no, she doesn't need to be necessarily "moral" like Dany to be a deserving ruler.

The point of her story was to highlight how no matter how good or evil or morally ambiguous or competent a person you are--if you are female, you are subject to losing a power men are just granted, and violently punished for it. And this is inherently wrong. Rhaenyra chose to go to war rather than give up. This is valuable. Visenya was not thinking "for the realm" or for the benefit of smallfolk or outside of her family, yet she as so many fans bc she was not passive or restricted by "madness". She has less sexist writing.

I never claimed her to be a morally good person or to be morally equal to Dany. This is not Rhaenyra's role. Yes, she--unlike Nettles--shows how wit and compassion does "save" not only the compassionate leader, but those they are responsible for. She both shows how patriarchal violence doesn't care if you are Saint Mary AND how it is only by wit and genuine compassion that you may relieve yourself, as a woman, from falling into that trap.

Rhaenyra's compelled to fall back on her class as most women like Cersei and Alicent do against the sexism; it comes with consequences but it also doesn't mean we ignore the sexism just as we don't ignore/discredit racism if a black man/woman were to be homophobic or sexist themselves.

BACK TO THE ASK

I really, really hope this is about the original story and not HotD. I'm going to treat it that way and any ask that doesn't specify or give very good clues this way. I have multiple posts about why Rhaenyra goes to Dragonstone, or just her in Dragonstone.

*This POST focuses more on whether I think she should have continued to rule after what happens with Nettles*

This POST gets into women-being-leaders both how real-life contemporaries looked at female leadership, how modern history writers regarded those contemporaries and their own conclusion, and real-life women with autonomous rank/governing power

These posts go into GRRM's writing of Rhaenyra as well as other notes about her leadership: POST #1, POST #2, POST #3, POST #4, POST #5, POST #6, POST #7, POST #8--esp Section B, C, & D (all address Rhaenyra's rulership and has more quotes supporting what I will say below)

This other POST from way back has me talking about what Rhaenyra could have done BUT in the current post, I will point out to you how you, anon, decided to define Rhaenyra's culpability (section D).

But because I am not tired and for the sake of cohesion...

A.

Viserys was the one to order Rhaenyra to stay in Dragonstone for an undisclosed amount of time after the Vhagar claim/Aemond-eye incident. Quote "Heirs of the Dragon -- A Question of Succession":

I imagine that Rhaenyra continued to stay and used Viserys' order because Dragonstone had become her place.

B.

What do you think Rhaenyra was doing at Dragonstone, exactly? You understand that Dragonstone is the seat of the heir to the throne, the place they have domestic and lordship rights over, the place where they would go with whatever families they have to rule over its surrounding peoples? So no, Rhaenyra didn't do "nothing", she ruled Dragonstone and took care of its businesses as other lords and ladies do their own households and vassalages.

Rhaenyra didn't just go to Dragonstone to escape Alicent's undermining her and targeting her kids, though that is a large reason why. Only a person who refuses to give her or a character they decided to dislike forever wouldn't give her the grace of believing that she herself figured that going to Dragonstone was also good for her to actually learn to be a ruler, have others refer to her (instead of Viserys) for most major decisions in her domains, and have that Alicent/green block removed from her performing said governance. Not only did Alicent outrank her as Queen Consort, Alicent, again, has been plotting against her since she was a child of 10 and gathering/having followers in court even before the 111 tourney where Rhaenyra comes out in red and black (the renaming of the respective factions). Those courtiers also would have not just tittered at Rhaenyra, ignored or make subtle jokes and comments at her expense for Viserys to not understand or hear--since she was a child of 10--they also could serve to survey Rhaenyra's movements or such to report to Alicent for favors (not as real spies, but watching her nevertheless). Watch any good court intrigue drama, and you should know what I mean if you can't paint a picture or imagine what court society would be like.

Now, you still might protest and say to me, "Fire and Blood is an unreliable narrative, how do you know all of this is true?!"

This shows two things:

you didn't bother to click the first link to the post with the quotes I wrote way above. In there, I gave dates as well, to track what the text is telling us about the development of the relationship between Rhaenyra and Alicent, and what happened after Alicent birthed Aegon. You can still come to strong conclusions in some parts of the narrative, especially using context and how it chooses to relate the information

you're being hypocritical: the narrative is unreliable...so you, who have formed a strong conclusion about Rhaenyra's character versus Aegon, didn't come to that conclusion using the same text or reading the book? somehow the way I or others who disagree with you are wrong...despite all of us getting our ideas from the same sources? I however, am presenting quotes and being specific, bringing the sociopolitical context and history to show you and others why I think the way I think

C.

This POST goes into the Shepherd's role in the final riots

Maelor's death is not on Rhaenyra, as she never mistreated him or even did what Maegor did to Viserys (Aenys I and Alyssa Velaryon's son/Maegor's nephew). Maelor was safer in the Red Keep than he was out of it, but Larys Strong's attempt to get him out and remove Rhaenyra's advantage over the greens.

It is after the Tumbleton Sackings and the Two Betrayers PLUS Corlys enabling Addam to flee that we have the Shepherd show up:

We know that Larys was also likely responsible for most of the common-born malice against Rhaenyra before the Shepherd came into the scene, even with Mushroom being the one to bring this up.

he was the master of whispers for part of Viserys' reign and Aegon's stint before her capturing KL's (he knows how to use public perception and human psychology as well as was able to discover and use information)

he was the one who enabled Aegon to escape

Larys almost immediately comes out of whatever hole he was hiding in after she died

Quote #1:

Quote #2:

When one is in the middle of a war or the immediate aftermath of one, there's always going to be criticism of their rule from the fear of lack of food, shelter, ability to perform commerce (commoners), or the compensation of some political privileges and restoration of lands (nobles). People of every class even looked at the young Jaehaerys I askance after Maegor's cruelty and Jaehaerys' age--if Jaehaerys would even be able to address their needs or grow into a capable ruler.

D.

You: "Aegon II was much like her in his lack of much effort, tact and humility"

1)

Even if we stayed with your "admittance", if Rhaenyra = Aegon in bad leadership, why do you harangue Rhaenyra more than Aegon? Because you think that the enthusiasm and/or sympathy for her is unjustified?

I already addressed how Rhaenyra actually did more than Aegon ever did in her place at Dragonstone. Other than that, did you forget that Viserys had her sit at council meetings when she was his--and only his--cupbearer? Since she was 8 years old?

At eight, the princess was placed into service as a cupbearer…but for her own father, the king. At table, at tourney, and at court, King Viserys thereafter was seldom seen without his daughter by his side. ("A Question of Succession")

No, this is not comprehensive training, education, or preparation as Jaehaerys I would have had for his two eldest sons, but Viserys is at least putting in that effort. More than he had for Aegon...because he never wanted Aegon to rule. Ever. And her sitting in and being present while the councilmen speak of their plans and concerns lets her be familiar with the priorities of those people as well as the perspectives of the nobles and commoners she anticipated ruling. She had ears.

Also, you acknowledge that Aegon didn't do jack before getting crowned...but you totally ignore how he:

sexually assaulted many servant girls (do not try to minimize the "fondling", even if you do not believe he raped others. Fondling servant girls because you're bored still shows you do not care about others' emotions or boundaries, that you feel entitled to their bodies)

tried to imprison his council members when they disagreed with him, how he dismissed Otto and made Criston Cole his Hand

decided that going into battle on dragonback (instead of just Aemond-Vhagar) was a good idea and almost got killed for it

decided that threatening the granddaughter of a man who gave him sound advice of NOT antagonizing remnant opposers further was a good idea

almost mutilated his nephew to put off said opposers

How does any of this in any way compare to any of Rhaenyra's actions--or lack thereof--that usually come up when criticizing her? The ones I seriously criticize her for the most are Rosby and Stokeworth and how she interpreted Daemonand Nettles' relationship, and how she wanted to handle Nettles. In the second link I gave way above, I list out what I think she could have done to establish herself more against Alicent even from Dragonstone, but this has more to do with strategy than morality, which are NOT the same! Meanwhile, it seems you tried to make it that way with how you pushed forward that last sentence after all your problems with her "refusing" to socialize herself amongst the nobles, etc. Why do you think Rhaenyra is in any way "equal" to Aegon's actual evil character? Did she rape or fondle people? Did she punish Corlys for saying that she should have been the one for not going to confront the green army at Rook's Rest? Why does he have to be "better" than a person who is objectively inferior to most people?

No, it is specifically when she is BETRAYED by those she gave power to, after she loses children in violent, preventable conflicts that Rhaenyra begins to unravel and her paranoia grows. Aegon went crazy from the jump.

Aside from you ignoring how terrible and worse of a general human being Aegon is, he was also much less worthy to be a potential leader who went out of his way to be an actual menace to lowborn people, as well as his own Faith/highborn council members. He does not seek to build connections and rather did all he could do to destroy any well-wishing or favor for himself once he came more into the forefront of the story. He showed absolutely no desire or concern about what he could do with the power he took for other human beings' quality of life or personal satisfaction.

Where is the concern for how Aegon should and how he does/does use "tact", or concern for how he refuses to have "humility"? Do you realize that the lack of concern for him and his actions in themselves results in reaffirming his male privilege to just inherit his maleness alone? Because it makes any and all of Rhaenyra's actual or hypothetical actions meaningless in the face of how little he actually has to do to be considered "capable"?

2)

You: "without putting in any effort of building connections and showing herself as responsible and capable as a ruler."

I find it interesting that you seem to acknowledge that Rhaenyra should be doing more than Aegon, especially to ingratiate herself with other nobles or assure them that she is a good ruler AND allow that Aegon to do nothing but be male for those same nobles (who you have simultaneously lumped together into this Aegon-preferring mass). Why should Rhaenyra have to put in more effort to even be considered "responsible" or "capable" when Aegon is even less so AND historically the Westerosi lords and ladies all already have this idea that female leadership is inherently less favorable than male leadership, that women are simply less trustworthy? If we are talking about Rhaenyra before she moves to Dragonstone, before years pass with her as the official heir with everyone getting used to their being said future Queen, and hypothetically Aegon actually put in the smallest bit of effort, these lords and ladies would prefer him even if he just visited a few households. If Rhaenyra put in the exact same amount of effort, they would likely suggest or hint at Viserys to put Aegon forward BECAUSE HE IS MALE AND NOT BECAUSE HE ACTUALLY SHOWS TO BE A GOOD RULER.

It seems you fooled yourself into thinking that either you or some of these people are actually looking for "capability" or "responsibility" from Rhaenyra. Leadership as a concept is masculine to these people, similar to how real-life contemporaries of European territories saw female leadership.

This is a quote from an essay talking about how contemporaries saw women in autonomous power:

In medieval times a woman could not bear arms; therefore a woman could not take on a role which, even symbolically, required her to carry arms. In medieval times a woman who took on an overt military role was an aberration. Lyon, A. (2006). "The place of women in European royal succession in the middle ages."

For some people in-text and those reading the book, she will never be enough. Should she forever ingratiate herself once she comes across this block, or continue on and use her dragons? Would you say the same for Aegon V and his laws that enhanced the lives of the smallfolk by whittling down on ancient aristocratic rights & privileges? What about Jaehaerys and his marrying Alysanne despite sibling marriage being forbidden and reviled in the Faith (and most of Westeros being of the Faith except the North and the Ironborn)?

What you are really looking for is live "proof" that she--and women in general--her womanhood can never conform to that concept of leadership that Aegon can easily adopt even just by doing nothing.

3)

You: "Rhaenyra got usurped because like a classic princeling she just sat and waited for what’s owed to her to be given to her with no complaints or arguments".

If Aegon is a "classic princeling", then do you have the same disgust for every other prince (male princeling) in the whole of Targ history who expects to be king or at least one heir's heir?

Already go into how Aegon doesn't need to do much as a prince. This focus on Rhaenyra not having some sort of aristocratic feeling of entitlement is crazy. Yes, she expected others to fall in line with Viserys' wishes...because he is King and she is the official heir.

If you try to argue that a monarch or any leader must take into consideration the perceptions, traditions, and mindsets of those they rule to make their subjects more amenable to their rule--thus you have more confidence in ruling and your position is more secure--you also have to acknowledge three things about the Westerosi feudalism and the 1000s old-traditions & ideologies toward gender roles and succession:

the lord/lady's chosen heir is considered the one with the strongest claim/expected to rule next

the eldest is first up in the succession and is the primary/first claimant (royal or noble)

as I said, these people live with the overarching idea that men make better rulers because they comparatively were more entrusted with power and authority over others

Even with the anxiety around illegitimate children, there are other possible claimants, this one element of feudal succession in Westeros remains true. Visery had the privilege of naming a child his heir, and she happened to be both his eldest and female. And there have been ladies/queens in pre-Targ history that ruled in their own right. Lady Jeyne Arryn is not modern exception to a modern moment in Westerosi history.

The lords and ladies of Westeros did not have any excuse to doubt Rhaenyra even with:

the Queen Dowager Rhaena passed over for Jaehaerys and her other brother Aegon (who was also her husband)

the Council of 101 setting that precedent of male primogeniture (very important link)

Jaehaerys I being one of the better Targ kings of Westeros (Alysanne is not only described as equal in "intelligence" to any man--again that male=better and men have intelligence mentality--would have been even better, as it is she and Septon Barth who put the ideas or presented some of the problems Jaehaerys reformed -> but because she was younger than him; the lords' immediate desire of a claimant to finally rally against Maegor for was specifically for a male heir; and she became Queen Consort instead of Queen Regnant when Jaehaerys subsumed her claim by marrying her, she could not rule in her own right)

Therefore, I must reiterate how their only gripe was that she was female and not because she was legitimately worse than Aegon as a candidate. Which she wasn't.

4)

You: "But Rhaenyra did NOT help the matter with her idiotic decisions. At the end of the day, she was just as cruel and horrible as her brother."

I already spoke about her decisions regarding Stokeworth and Rosaby, Nettles, the rioting's origins, and the greens taking the gold in the treasury that leads to Rhaenyra being unable to pay for most needs for the KLers. If not in this post, in the ones I linked at the very top of this post.

Quote -- "Rhaenyra Triumphant":

Another hint at Aegon's and the greens' lack of care for non-noble or noble subjects that you somehow designated only to Rhaenyra...

I always find it hilarious when the phrase "at the end of the day" precedes a sentence that has little to do with the preceding ideas the person presented. In the text of your ask, Rhaenyra's cruelty and "horribleness" had nothing to do with your past claims of her being "idiotic" or spoiled. It came out of left field, and it is as if you're trying to smush all of the reasons for your dislike towards her into one without losing space, or you're trying to throw that last bit in there for extra emphasis, not knowing how to really create emphasis. Like a misinformed child who just remembered their last complaint.

*EDIT* (8/21/23):

THIS is a great post by @mononijikayu about medieval queens, female rulers, the history of how women in leadership positions were made and seen as threats to the very structure of social "order", and contextualizing Rhaenyra thru Empress Matilda. I didn't even know about Matilda's husband being comparable to Rhaneyra's Daemon! PLZ READ!!!!

Excerpt:

just as much, along with these fictitious portrayals, more lies are depicted. these women are considered vixens that cause havoc to men by shifting them into desires and danger. through the written word, we see how women are cast in roles of villains in men’s lives. it is because by their conclusive thoughts, women are the only creatures that are able to turn ‘good honorable men’ into despicable creatures who do shameful, deplorable acts for the sake of women’s pleasures.  it is within this narrative that ancient chroniclers declare that women were in fact the doom of men. if they were not able to control the dangers posed by the wiles of women, then the foundations of the mighty society they had built would be up in flames.  [...] as i mentioned, these factors of community are written down and preserved. and with that, the example of the ancients were the foundations by which medieval society built itself. the same concepts continued to cause the same issue within society and that was the exclusion of women from participating in the bigger picture of community and state, much so with governing states in their own right—without judgment or disapproval. 

[attonitos-gloria]

Daemon/Laena, Night King/Corpse Queen, Cersei/Euron, Rhaegar/Elia?

ahhhh love these. thank you <3

daemon/laena: C (not a bad ship) for the book version in which he duels for her hand, E (i don't really like it) in the show. i think my favorite part of this marriage is whatever is going on in the daemon/viserys/corlys dynamics in the background... and i do like laena a lot; i think she deserves better than daemon. this applies to virtually every woman in daemon's life... i don't know, i just think only viserys and rhaenyra can actually love this man.

night king/corpse queen: oh, ok. great one. listen: i think i am waiting, in the next two books, for a version of the war against the Others that is all-consuming and turns the world upside down in such a way as to be an actual apocalypse. I want a long night that is actually worth the name and the build up of five books. and the story of the corpse queen and the night's king could add to the lore that would make the Others more interesting. i need this. whatever is going on with the children of the forest, with the Others, beyond the Wall with bran, i need to see it developed so badly and i need the impact of this War to be like, devastating, life-changing, i need Westeros to never be the same after them. i like very much the idea of the corpse queen being an asset to the Others - to seduce men so they willingly give their life and souls to frozen monsters. like what is it about her that made him do it? was it because life in the night's watch was boring, the end of the line? was it something else, something more? i would read this story. i think this pairing could be a window into something great. it's an A for me.

cersei/euron: if euron is an actual monster and an evil god who can control the minds of animals and men: A, yes, sure, i want cersei paired with this kind of thing. but if he's just edgy and mad in a slightly uncomfortable human way like in the show... nah. D, i'm indifferent.

rhaegar/elia: huge F for me. i can excuse many evil things (see: all my favorite characters) but i draw a line at abandoning your wife and children with your cruel, mad father to impregnate a young girl because of a prophecy or whatever rhaegar was doing. though, to be honest, i think i would love to know what was going on in this marriage before rhaegar went batshit insane. like. were they friends. were they ever in love. were they allies until rhaegar crossed that line. did elia always hate him from go. i love elia very much, she's my favorite Narrative Ghost in ASOIAF (right there with Joanna Lannister) and i think, if i had any sympathy for rhaegar, i would be invested in this pairing as a study in terrible marriages (which, of course, i adore.) as it is, i find rhaegar a huge disappointment and my favorite things about him are not about him, they are about dany. so. NOTP #justiceforelia

ahhhh i want to hear your thoughts about these ships.

[fedonciadale]

Hi there! Randomly sliding in your ask box, but do you think GRRM overglorifies D and the Targsa bit too much? Right now, the son of an ousted dictator is dangerously coming close to being the next president of the country. I've noticed that some relatives of mine who blindly support him were also D stans, and while I understand GRRM's intention was too study how tyrants are made, some people just don't seem to get that and think that this type of character is what we should look for in a leader. Do you think the show or GRRM himself failed to get that point across to viewers and readers by glorifying the Targs for popularity and profit?

Hi there!

And the son of a dictator even made it. Yikes... 😑

I don't think GRRM failed to be honest. He hasn't finished the books and it remains to be seen how he'll bring Dany's arc to an end. I think people actually see the red flags and there is the famous Meereenese essay whose author was praised by GRRM for "getting it right". And it's not as if "Fire and Blood" glorifies the Targs. Even Targs we might have thought beforehand were pretty decent (like Jaeherys the Old), we now know to be almost as bad as the others. I don't think anybody can read Fire and Blood and stick to the believe that the Targs are good.

I think it is a bit different for the show. D&D prioritized the hiding of the DarkDany twist over everything else and then they managed to even botch that. They did such a bad job that people just refused to believe that Dany burning King's Landing will be canon and accused D&D of doing "fanfiction".

They postponed Dany's fall to the very last moment, by alternating her "red flag" moments with triumphant moments. They wanted to milk their cash cow to the last moment and that is why they failed. They should have committed to really depicting Dany's fall.

So, I would say that D&D failed to unmask Dany as a tyrant in a convincing and compelling way. But that does not alter the fact that the character is a tyrant and that people just refuse to see it. And sadly enough this is what happens sometimes as well.

One of the most haunting experiences I ever had was reading the diaries of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's Propaganda minister. These are not personal diaries but were meant to describe Hitler's ascent to power. And despite knowing that he was an evil man, that he supported an evil dictator, I could still feel the pull of his words and was always on the edge of catching myself to nod at the easy explanations, the black- and white painting of political problems, the disdain for the slow procedure of democratic politics. To this day I shudder how easy it would have been to be lured in, if I had not known who wrote these books.

This is imho exactly the reason why we need to unmask dictators - fictional and real ones. We shouldn't fall for their "everything will be solved once I'm in charge" or their "I'll do this a lot more efficiently". They spoonfeed us easy explanations. We should reject them and talk about the complexity of the world that doesn't have easy solutions.

Thanks!

[loquaciousquark]

Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E111 (Sept. 29, 2020)

@eponymous-rose‘s internet is out tonight, so I’m here late and without coffee! Let’s see how many typos we can fit into an hour and a half episode.

Tonight’s guests: Ashley Williams JOHNSON, oops!! & Liam O’Brien!

We open with Brian in light-up vented sunglasses and Henry at his side, as always. Dani is very excited to be back and has fun-buns in her hair tonight. So cute! Everyone talks about how much they’re Zooming these days for work, and Liam mentions he and Matt & Marisha did a digital cocktail night. He and Dani arrange on camera to have a distanced, masked meetup in the park so Dani can see Liam’s dog again.

No announcements! Tonight, we’re discussin’ episodes 110 and 111.

Starting with the end, Brian jumps right to it by asking how they feel that Molly is alive. Liam 100% thought we’d be back to him, but still wasn’t ready when it happened. Caleb doubted he was alive. Both Liam & Ashley marvel at the numerology that keeps cropping up throughout the show. Brian hates not being able to see it at the same time the show happens live; Ashley was biting her tongue not telling him spoilers. (He doesn’t want to hear spoilers unless Yasha dies so he can be there for Ashley if needed.) Brian says he has a little reality trauma from the night Pike died in the pre-stream game; it was the first time he’d realized how much it affected the players.

Ashley’s realized how much she misses unpacking the game with Brian when they get home. She just has to sit with it until everyone else gets to see it. Brian: “Instead she comes home and I have to fill her in on the Real Housewives of Amarillo, Texas.”

Reunion dinner with Trent! Liam talks about how the way things unfolded with Trent is not at all how he imagined it in his pre-game creation; he’d expected more of a fracas, more of an unexpected clash. “Caleb might have been a different person if he’d run into these people earlier in the story. The M9 changed him before [Trent & co] came back and got to him.” He’d imagined Astrid & Eodwulf to be complicated encounters, but says what Matt’s designed has been even harder than that. A fight on a mountain is one thing, but walking into a room with “what Trent dropped, is impossible to cope with.” It also means that if what Trent said is true, anything Caleb does now is effectively of Trent’s design, even killing him.

He doesn’t think Caleb would have gone anywhere near Trent & co without the M9. “The Mighty Nein--it took a long time--but they cracked Caleb open like a walnut.”

He thinks what Matt has done is much more murky than the simplicity of murder, such as the Briarwood arc. He can’t just exact his revenge now.

Liam says that the tempation to tinker with time is no longer as all-consuming as it was. He might still be tempted if Matt dangles a bunch of carrots in front of him, but he thinks that now it might be better to make sure that that kind of thing doesn’t happen anymore for anyone else (!!!). “It’s still a nugget in his brain and it’s still possible he could be tempted by the drug, but what he wanted in the beginning was entirely selfish, but now that the M9 are involved he owes it to them, to the people of the country, even on the Dynasty side--is so complex that if Caleb were to get that carrot and chase it, he would be risking everything.”

Ashley agrees that most of their choices are no longer black and white. Many of the situations feel more like real life. Liam agrees and says he’ll sometimes make decisions that he’s both really happy with and regrets at the same time. They both look forward to what Matt will reveal in Act 3.

Brian feels it’s tough to gauge how deep they are into what Matt’s planned for the campaign. Liam says that thanks to Matt’s skill, he really doesn’t know what Caleb wants right now.

Ashley agrees, and talks about how she created Yasha to have more to overcome than Pike. She loves what Matt’s doing in terms of allowing each of them to overcome more emotional hurdles than physical ones in this campaign.

Going back to Molly’s grave was very exciting for Ashley since she wasn’t able to be there when he died in the game & wanted to do what she could to honor him. Yasha, however, was very hesitant but knew what needed to be done. She’s not very open with her emotions, but both she & Ashley were stressed. They all could feel the energy in the studio & knew Matt was about to do something mind-blowing. Liam: “You could feel all the dust in the air coalescing around Taliesin.”

Brian trips over Eodwulf. Liam tries to help him find some pronunciation shortcuts. Ashley: “You say it so beautifully.” Brian: “Thank you.” Ashley: “Not you.”

Caleb knows how wickedly intelligent & ambitious Astrid is, and was heartened by the wavering he saw in her at the dinner. However, he can’t trust her until he knows why she’s where she is.

He really feels that if they’d had this dinner 60 episodes ago, Caleb might have tilted back along the evil axis and he would have had to retire the character. He had a playlist entirely for if Caleb turned evil and left the party.

The vision of Zuala was a huge deal for Yasha, even along every other instance she’s had of being mind-controlled, etc. “That’s guilt I think she will always carry with her, but at least she’s starting to forgive herself.” Losing the chains, sprouting wings again--Ashley reiterates that she didn’t know that was even a possibility, she just picked the skeletal wings because they were dope--were huge moments in the character development. Ashley’s glad Beau was there at the moment of the first flight; Ashley thinks of the quotation “Happiness is only beautiful when it’s shared,” and because Yasha tends to keep things very much to herself, having someone there to share it made it more impactful. “That was a cool moment. There’s been a lot of healing for Yasha these last episodes.”d

Ashley also says sometimes in that moment, when all eyes are on you in a one-on-one with Matt, everything goes muffled like Saving Private Ryan. “Wub wub wub.”

Dani feels that the only way she could even have the conversation with Zuala was to let her go in the first place.

Liam thinks one of the things that Yasha & Cad share is that still waters run deep. He loves how much Yasha hangs back sometimes, only to then reveal some new moment like the fighting pit. Apparently Ashley also has a knife collection, and uses that metal side of herself when she wants to let that new side of Yasha show.

Cosplay of the Week: Crystal Armstead (@riyuski on twitter) in a Reani cosplay. Beautiful!

How does Liam feel about the return to Rexxentrum? Very, very complicated. Caleb loves magic and lights up when he sees it, which is wrapped in the Soltryce Academy; he brought folks to the dance hall for the same reason, which was wanting the M9 to see the things that he loved about the city.

Yasha felt the same way about visiting the Chantry of the Dawn. It was a memory of a very traumatic moment (almost killing Beau), but given everything that’s happened between then and now it was cathartic to see again. There’s been a lot of healing in the past few weeks. It also felt like a physical representation of Yasha’s growth, the last time she was controlled against her will like that (or at least, until she was mind-controlled by Vokodo. Ashley sighs, aggrieved.)

Brian: “The tower really feels like a love letter from Caleb to his friends.” Liam: “It is, and a love letter from Liam to his friends.” When he looked at Caleb’s spell list, he remembered how amazing the mansion was in Campaign One and how many role-playing moments it led to and knew he wanted to incorporate it. However, he knew it could never be the same as Scanlan’s mansion because Caleb doesn’t have the same improvisational genius as Scanlan does. Liam has been “tinkering with this machine” for over a year, waiting for the moment to reveal it. He loves that he got a chance to see Jester’s room in time to have her tower room reflect reality. He’d discussed the tower extensively with Dani & Matt. Brian: “Hey! What am I, chopped--what’s the saying?” Ashley: “Chopped cabbage?”

Ashley marvels at the design of the dome. Liam talks about how Caleb knowing Caleb has been abused has been slowly getting better, but he also loves now being able to juxtapose that healing with his innate love of magic and how beautiful he finds it, how he loves to use magic as his artistry. The Soltryce Academy wasn’t “Welcome to DEATH SCHOOL,” it was the Sorbonne. It was amazing, everything he wanted. It was only one bad apple within that recruited him and turned it all bad.

Liam also points out how much it means in real life to be able to express his love and care for his friends in person too.

Ashley talks about how much she loves Yasha’s armor in a meta sense because it’s so cool and useful, and great for her armor class, but struggles with what it represents in game. She might not be able to let it go due to its sheer utility, and she may have to find an in-game reason to justify keeping it.

Ashley segues a moment into talking about her velvet top which apparently has a matching velvet scrunchie. She’s asked to demonstrate the scrunchie and ties her hair up in a way that I have never in my life seen someone do with a scrunchie before, and my hair’s been waist-length most of my life. I watch it again in slow motion. How did she DO that??

Caleb’s been looking for the right time to tell Jester about his past for a long time. She’s a good person and makes him feel like he might be capable of becoming a good person at the end, because that’s how she saw him. Liam knew from Laura that Jester wouldn’t condemn him, but Caleb put it off as long as possible. He also wanted to take the time to make sure Caduceus & Yasha knew the whole story too before they went to dinner with Trent.

Liam was also relieved to get it out, because he could never remember who knew and who didn’t, and now he doesn’t have to track it anymore. “Now we can move forward. Now we can heal wounds, maybe.”

Ashley feels Cad picks up a lot, more than most people realize. Yasha was really affected by Cad’s line: “Patience can be good, but it can lead to apathy.” She really feels it opened her eyes, and she appreciated the simplicity of him pointing out her hair’s growing back white again. Having a friend notice “hey, you’re changing for the better” really means a lot. She’s interested in seeing how this means things might change with Beau.

Dani points out that it also reinforced for Yasha that she can want things too--she can be patient and just continue to be with the group, as she’s wanted, but it’s okay to want more than that too. Ashley remembers Veth asking her what her purpose is. There’s a part of her that knows Yasha is still figuring that out, and she’s interested to see how Yasha will continue to change. She’s always spent her life serving somebody--the Sky Spear, Obann--and then even after she joined the M9, it was very centered on “what do you need, what does the group need, how can I help with our next job?” She’s going to have to take some time to figure out what she wants.

Fanart of the Week! Lovely Yasha & Beau flight art by @JMNP7888. The wings look amazing!

Brian: “One of the things we want to talk to you about, Liam, is about the Vokodo fight and the FUCKING disintegrate spell.”

Liam: “That was one of the most insane 60-90 seconds of gameplay that ever existed for the table, and definitely for me, in the entire history of the show. A lot of people think I just went, oh man, just bet it all on black. But what if I told you that...I Larkin’d the first 20 seconds of that fight and then at a quarter to midnight, I forgot that the reflection was a thing? I just forgot it was a thing! I spent that whole battle thinking I’m just here to banish things. I might buff my friends a little bit, maybe I’ll counterspell, but I’m just here to banish. And it didn’t work and it didn’t work and then it did! Finally it did and Jester made it work and then he was GONE. And then everyone got greedy and it was done but we brought him BACK. And it was a quarter to midnight and I’m not an animatronic D&D lesson machine, I’m just a guy playing D&D at 11:45 at night, and he came back and everyone started Goodfellas circling him and kicking him, and Beau & Yasha are gonna kill him, and then it’s my turn? Disintegrate! And then the room was quiet, and then time passed, and Matt asked, you really cast Disintegrate? And I said yes, of course, and Matt started rolling dice, and in the back of my head I started wondering why he asked if I was rolling Disintegrate. Oh no. In the back of my brain, I was like, well, just tell him that’s not what you did. Tell him you didn’t remember the reflection thing. But he’s already rolling dice! You can’t take it back now. Hold on a second. I’m going to take you on the journey I went through. I was thinking: you have a spell save of 17. This thing wasn’t that fast. +1, +2, maybe? Anything under 14 is okay. That’s 70%. 70%. That’s okay, right? And still no one said anything to tip me off that I was in ELDRITCH MADNESS at that point, no one said anything about the reflection! And then I realize it can reflect back on us, and I realize this is...disintegrate. And then I started becoming morbidly, macabre-ly fascinated at the puppet dance of death I had created. Well, this is a mess. I have made a mess. Let’s just sit in it. And somehow, nonsensically, spectacularly, it worked out in my favor. I went home that night and I got in bed next to my wife, who was fast asleep, and I stared at the ceiling going, dude. Duuuuuuuude. Duuuuuuuuuude.”

He apparently also told his therapist about this and how terrible it was and how close he “danced myself to the precipice like a crazy person!” Marisha (as told by Liam): “Epic roll, though.”

Matt told Liam that night that if it had been reflected, it would have gone back on him. “If a player throws an M80 in the middle of a room, it would reflect on that player who threw it.”

Ashley talks about how interesting that Yasha is not performative, and yet has been doing these public performances with the harp. It’s a great experiment for Ashley--Yasha doesn’t like the attention, but feels like she is making something beautiful for the world.” She’s trying to change something about how she views herself & her place in the world. She was raised to be a weapon for the Sky Spear, but she’s also extremely gentle and loves flowers & beautiful music, and the further away she’s gotten from the tribe, she’s falling in love with gentle, beautiful things. 

Liam also points out it easy (real, but simplistic) to make an entire character centered around a single personality trait: “I’m angry all the time. I’m sad all the time.” He thinks it’s more realistic to see nuance in personality.

Liam can see some paths for Caleb to find peace & do good. He doesn’t know if Caleb is conscious of those. He thinks it’s a huge step forward to admit he was molded in this direction at all and that it wasn’t all his choice, but doesn’t know if this is the same possibility as redemption.

He also mentions Essek in this answer: there was/is attraction there, both intellectual and physical--the forehead kiss was a big marker of that--and he’s interested in seeing where that goes because he’s invested in Essek’s redemption arc on its own, but Essek is not as high on the list as other things Caleb/the M9 need to work on. He loved the “high spy times” of the Essek arc and the tangled-up-ness of feelings getting involved at the same time as intense commitment to duty.

Liam always felt Matt would bring Molly back in some aspect, even though Caleb always demurred because he doesn’t believe in fate. Dani and Brian agree that this is the start of a new act.

Ashley cried at the Vilya reunion. She thought that was an incredible moment and was so glad to see Keyleth. Liam: “Keyleth as part of our story is everything to me. That story is really important to me, so getting just a glimpse of her again was so important to me.” They could all see how that affected Marisha & how special it was to her. Liam: “It was such a great note in her song or color in her painting. She achieved magnificent things and was powerful and great, but had a very heartbreaking and sad ending, so to have this sliver of joy go back in is so complex and beautiful and masterfully done.”

Aaaaaaand that’s all for tonight! Remember, no Critical Role this week. Talks will be back in two weeks. As always, don’t forget to love each other. <3

[lexinoctura]

Right back at ya!

Who would be the other two: Teal’c, Ronon Dex or Teyla?

Who would you pick: Jack O’Neill, Daniel Jackson, John Sheppard, Rodney McKay, Cameron Mitchell, Jonas Quinn or Ronon Dex?

Who is the best head of SG (SGC or SGA): George Hammond, Hank Landry, Elisabeth Weir, Sam Carter or Richard Woolsey?

Who is the best enemy: Goa’uld, Replicators, Ori or Wraith?

If you could pick three characters (no matter if dead or alive) to create a team, who would they be?

Where would you be rather stationed: SGC or Atlantis?

What’s your favourite ship (canon or not) from each show?

What rare/alien species did you like the best?

.Who is your favourite Alien (person/creature not from Earth).

And last but not least: Favourite male character of each show and favourite female character of each show?

Bonus question: Least favourite male and female character from each show?

Okay, lets see…

Who would be the other two: Teal’c, Ronon Dex or Teyla? -> Hmm… Teyla beats Ronon, but either ends up in a tie with Teal'c or manages to beat him by like… one second; She is really fast and while T has the tactical skills as well as the muscles, he is not as fast, and does not rely that much on his skills to dodge or keep his whole body protected

Who would you pick: Jack O’Neill, Daniel Jackson, John Sheppard, Rodney McKay, Cameron Mitchell, Jonas Quinn or Ronon Dex? -> As a buddy? Sheppard (love his humor); as a leader? O'Neill (has great skills in that area and is rather loose in his interactions)

Who is the best head of SG (SGC or SGA): George Hammond, Hank Landry, Elisabeth Weir, Sam Carter or Richard Woolsey? -> Let's kill Landry, Woolsey and Weir before we even start that question; Neither of them had my liking, and the first two were basically just replacements because the others died/didnt want to anymore I would say Carter. She knows what its like to be in the field, so she has a better understanding of how and why her people react the way they do; AND(!) she goes with on missions and does not just sit in a comfy chair

Who is the best enemy: Goa’uld, Replicators, Ori or Wraith? -> Wraith for me. I like the whole concept of it, where they are (mostly/often) evil, but not out of their greed for power, but because they are hungry; And I love Todd 😂

If you could pick three characters (no matter if dead or alive) to create a team, who would they be? -> Sheppard as a leader (because i would like to interact with him more, and he is more same-level than jack is), Teyla as the negotiator and Dani as the smart boy

Where would you be rather stationed: SGC or Atlantis? -> Atlantis, for sure! Tho only with a ZPM or the intergalacti gatebridge in order, because while I dont need to see my familiy and friends every week, I do not want to spent 3 weeks (one way!) to get to Earth; And I would really like to meet more of the cultures they show there

What’s your favourite ship (canon or not) from each show? -> Jack/Sam in SG-1, and Sheppard/Teyla in SG-A; Never watched SG-U and dont intend to either 😂

What rare/alien species did you like the best? -> The Unas 😂 Damn, I love that episode where Daniel meets Chaka, and has to learn that just because he is more animalistic, that doesnt mean that he is uncultivated or dumb

Who is your favourite Alien (person/creature not from Earth). -> Ronon Dex :D I mean: "You've gotta see this guy in action. He is an incredible shot, none of my guys can beat him in a fight, and he's ex-military."

And last but not least: Favourite male character of each show and favourite female character of each show? -> SG-1: Sam and Daniel; SG-A: John and Teyla :D

Bonus question: Least favourite male and female character from each show? -> SG-1: Hathor (stupid snakehead) and Landry (never really liked him, he was too… blablabla); SG-A: Princess Harmony (the one that constantly lied to Sheppard and then portrait Rodney as her hero; spoiled little brat!) and Woolsey (I mean… he is IOA!) *I mean, even in my notes for a possible Teyla/Sheppard fanFic, I explicitly stated the following: Princess Harmony (S4) -> DOES NOT EXIST!

This is fun, thank you!! :D

[goldenchan-fx2thepeacock]

Don’t Go Running Off Into Danger, Even If I Do pt 2

So, I have no clue what a publishing schedule is. So here, have more of this dumb fic at 11 pm. FUCK SLEEP! SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK!

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Chapter 2

Danny and Jazz managed to finish just in time to put everything away before their parents got home. He’d actually managed to have a ghost free night. But the peace wasn’t going to last. And this wasn’t about ghosts. He got slammed into his locker.  “Hey look, it’s Fenturd. What’s with the dumb picture of Phantom? You’ll never be on his level,” Dash said and laughter broke out. Danny groaned. At least they didn’t know he was trans. He’d be beaten twice as much if they knew. The locker door closed and locked.  “Seriously Dash? I have to get to class!” He yelled through the metal.  “Whatever Fentina. No one cares! Oh hey, it’s fresh meat!” Dash went away from Danny’s locker. Danny had found out a way to make it so he could open his locker from the inside without it being outerwardly compromised. He jumped out. It was those kids from last night.  “Leave them alone Dash. They haven’t even been here for a day yet. The rules are that newbies get a probation period,” Danny crossed his arms.  “I don’t know Fentoenail. Would you like to take their beating?” Dash mocked him. Danny sighed. He’d have to do this.  “Any day,” 

Danny regretted everything. Dash had hit him twice as hard as normal and his locker trick wasn’t working. Everything hurt. He was going to miss Lancer’s class. At least his ghost sense wasn’t going off or something. Lancer wouldn’t miss him. Suddenly, his locker opened and he tumbled out. He yelped. “Are you okay?” The girl twin said.  “No worse than what I’m used to,” Danny brushed himself off.  “You didn’t have to do that,” The boy twin told Danny. “Yeah, I kinda did. The probation period is sacred. Dash knows that,” “Probation period?” The boy said. “A rule we made up last year. If Dash really wants to break it, I take the beating instead. Fenton gets to take the beating so the new kids don’t have to,”  “That’s not fair. You should report him,” “Nah, he threw like four perfect throws last night and is exempt from punishment,”  “Football?” The boy gave Danny a knowing look.  “Danielle- I mean Daniel Fenton to the main office,” The loud speaker said. “Oh come on! At least it was probably just a misread,” Danny was fuming. The beating plus being deadnamed was getting on his nerves. “We have to head there too,” The girl said. Danny shrugged and let them follow him.

Lancer called them all in at once. “Sup Lancer. Can I help you?” Danny leaned against the wall. “Mr Fenton. You and I both know that you need to show me more respect. W-what happened to you?” Lancer looked up from his papers. “Just a certain football star. Nothing I can’t handle. He broke the probation period,” “That’s a rule between students. I have no need to enforce it,” Lancer sighed. “I have no clue why you of all people were chosen for this, but you are too be Mr and Ms Pines guide around the school,” “Jazz not good enough for you? Had to pick the ‘slacker’ Fenton?” “Daniel, mind your tone. Jazz is our top student,”  “We all know I’m destined to fail in life. Can I get their timetables?” “Yes of course. Listen Danny, both you and I know you’re capable of better grades. I don’t understand why you don’t try,” Danny wasn’t in the mood for Lancer’s pep talks.  “I’ve got more important things to worry about,” Danny grabbed the papers and stalked off with the Pines Twins on his heels.  “Why didn’t he do anything about Dash?” the boy asked. “He has no reason to. Not like I’m about to ask,” Danny handed them their timetables. He’d seen that the girl was named Mabel and the boy Mason. “We’ll start with your classes Mason,”  “I prefer Dipper,” “I’m not calling you by a dumb nickname. Let’s go,” Danny growled.

Just as he was about to lead Mason to his first class, a royal pain in his ass showed up. “Daniel! I require your assistance, little badger,” “It’s bound to be another plan to get in my mom’s pants. Go away,”  “Now, don’t be like that. I’m the mayor after all. You should be honored,” “Plasmius, shut your goddamn mouth. I. Don’t. Give. A. Fuck,” Danny said so that only Vlad could hear.  “Well, something’s got you in a tizzy. I’ll ask later. I should tell you though, it’s about Danielle,” “What did you do to Dani?” Fury. Wait, he had to get the kids to class.  “Nothing. It wasn’t me. You should ask your ghost hunter girlfriend,” Vlad grinned. Fucking Valerie.  “Come on kids. You’ve got to get to class,” Danny ignored Plasmius. Valerie was going to die. 

At lunch, he purposefully turned into Phantom and waited for Valerie on top of the school. She took no time at all. “What. Did. You. Do. To. Dani,” He glared at her.  “I didn’t do anything to her! You’re going down ghost!” “Am I really?” Danny was pissed. She wasn’t getting any mercy today. He teleported behind her.  “What the... HOW?” “Where is she?!” He growled. “What do you care? She’s always off on her own,”  “Does it look like I care Valerie?!”  “How did you know?!” “I know more than you seem to think. Tell me where Dani is. NOW!” He froze her feet. She looked terrified.  “What’s wrong with you!? Why do you care so much about her? Ghosts don’t have feelings,” Danny lost it at that point. The laughter was dark. Hollow. Horrible. Val’s terror was visible.  “Don’t have feelings? DON’T HAVE FEELINGS? FUCK YOU! I’M SO TIRED OF ALL THIS!” “Phantom, calm down,” Val was terrified. Danny wasn’t done. The rings were threatening to come down and expose him to her.  “So you admit this is real? Would you like to know how it feels to die Val? How it feels to live on the line between life and death? Wait, I can’t do that! You don’t have a deactivated portal in your basement that I can make you turn on while your inside. I don’t have a stupid jumpsuit with your dad’s face on it so I can take off the that sticker. You don’t have parents that threaten to rip you apart molecule by molecule for just exsisting! You don’t have to see a future where you become evil because you cheated on one test and your family all died! Can you even begin to comprehend what I go through? Ever been cloned? And forced to do something incredibly painful so that one clone can get fixed and watch another get lied too? And that’s just the brunt of it Valerie. Keep telling me how I don’t feel. How I’m nothing!” Danny screamed at ice engulfed their feet. Val’s eyes went wide.  “D-Danny?” She said quietly. “Congratulations! You aren’t as niave as the rest of Amity Park! How does it feel?” He’d snapped. “Calm down! I’ll tell you where Dani is!” She shrieked. That hollow laugh came back. But instead of an angry rant afterwards, he just sunk to his knees and screamed. It wasn’t a wail. It was a scream of pain. Of being done with the world.  “I can’t do this anymore,” He sobbed and the rings went down. All that was left now was a beaten, broken Danny Fenton.  “You should change back. I’ll take you to Dani,” Danny nodded and followed her.  “Sorry I broke down. I’m just sick of people telling me that I can’t feel. That all ghosts can’t feel. You don’t even bother talking to us, ya know?” “Ghosts lie,” “And so do people! I’ve talked to the ghosts. Listened to them. Heard their stories. I protect people, but I protect them too!” “How do you know those aren’t just acts?” “Cause they make sense. I’d have the same response if it was me. If my parents burned down the place I was in because I got caught being gay,” “I’m confused,” “Ember. I told her I wouldn’t tell anyone. But you need to know that they all have reasons for being the way they are. Skulker’s family was hunted, so now he hunts to prove his strength,” “Maybe we should talk to you more,”  “Maybe you should. No one asks to die,” “But your parents say that ghosts don’t remember their lives. They’re the leading experts,”  “That’s like putting a ten year old in a room of babies. They’re the expert by default in that situation, but an adult would be the expert the moment they walked in,” “Why don’t we know about that,” “Dying is traumatizing. Even half dying is traumatizing. It’s taboo to mention it unless you’re told. No one explains it until they’re ready. And talking about a life before that is almost wrong,” “How did you learn?” “Skulker told me during the Christmas Truce. Ember told me one day when she just wanted to be left alone, but I did too. I guess things end up working out in weird ways,” “The Christmas Truce?” “On Christmas Eve and Christmas, ghosts have a truce. No one is allowed to fight anyone that day. The Ghost Writer broke the truce and Walker got to haul him off in just means,” “We really know nothing about ghosts, do we?” “No, you don’t. They even have a party. I got invited last year. Skulker let me make the star! It took me weeks to get it right,” Danny smiled at the memory. He’d made a scale model of a blue giant that went through it’s life stages.  “So there’s a whole society?” “A government. Systems. Main rules. Taboos. Just cause we’re ghosts, doesn’t mean we don’t have a system,” “I’m sorry,” “What?” Danny nearly froze. “I’m sorry that I made so many assumptions. I never should’ve chased you or any ghost like that,” “Keep them out of Amity Park and send them back to the Zone. Most ghosts forget that living is dangerous, so they just rampage. I keep trying to talk sense into them, but they’re pretty stubborn,”  “What about the dog?” “Dog? You mean Cujo? I was trying to stop him from trashing Axiom. He was trying to get a toy. I’m sorry that recked your life Val,” “My life? Wrecked? When compared to you, my life is a dream. It’s not like I died,” “I guess you’ve got a point,”

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Thanks for reading. I just like fics where Val finds out, and this one seemed like an okay place to stick it. Dani is fine. I’ll fill you in on that next chapter, but I should get some sleep.

[ajoblotofjunk]

Sorry for the unsolicited ask, but I remember seeing you said that Ned Stark was Lawful Neutral. What DnD alignments do you see for the rest of the characters at the beginning of their journeys and where they are now in the books? Also, what should have the TV adapted from the book and what should the book series take from the TV’s changes and pitfalls?

Hi! I love unsolicited asks, no apologies necessary. :) 

I’m going to pick a handful of some of the more interesting-to-me POV characters since it’s been a minute since I did a book re-read and also there are a ton of characters in this story. So. If there’s someone in particular you were hoping for, you can ask!

Ned Stark - Lawful-neutral from start to finish, ALTHOUGH. I think Ned’s great tragedy is that at the very end he bent and it didn’t do shit for him anyway. He still was killed, because he’d gone too far and he was too unwilling to bend when he had more power. Also my first D&D character ever was a LN gnome fighter and I just have a lot of feelings about LN fighters.

Catelyn Stark - Here’s a hot take: I think Cat is True Neutral at the beginning, and then when things start to happen to her family she slips a bit into Neutral-Evil, with the selfishness focused around her pain and her family’s well-being. (There’s an argument to be made that she’s chaotic-good/chaotic-neutral but I think Cat feels more strongly about authority than that suggests.)

Arya Stark (yes, my secret is out: I am a Stark fan) - Arya is very chaotic-good at the beginning of the story and where we’ve left her, I think she’s chaotic-neutral and poised on a tipping point where she could slip to chaotic-evil but I think she’s gonna go back to CG. Maybe True Neutral, but I don’t see her becoming the true Faceless Man archetype that requires in the books (in the show I think she did become TN).

Cersei Lannister - I think Cersei is Lawful-Evil, because Tywin is Lawful-Evil and she thinks she’s female Tywin. In reality she’s probably Neutral Evil, especially where we’re at in the books, though she still lets herself be bound by authority in a way that suggests she might still be LE.

Tyrion Lannister - Okay here’s the thing. I don’t like Tyrion. Which, if you’ve read my fics, is probably not a surprise to discover. I liked him in the early books! But as he’s gone on I’ve liked him less and less and now he just annoys the crap out of me in ASOIAF. I think Tyrion was probably True Neutral at the beginning; honestly there’s an argument that he might’ve been Neutral-Good, but he’s definitely Neutral-Evil now, MAYBE Chaotic-Neutral if I were being generous with him. Which I am not.

Jaime Lannister - Jaime has had I think the biggest alignment shift out of anyone in the entire series. I think he started life as Lawful-Good, and then when the authority he trusted betrayed him, he shifted to an outward Chaotic Neutral/inward Chaotic Good that’s struggling to reassert itself. I think where he’s at now in the series is transitioned into that Chaotic Goodness more outwardly, and I think by the end of the series he’ll be fully CG, POSSIBLY Neutral Good but I’m not sure I see him making that shift completely.

Brienne of Tarth - Brienne is maybe my all-time favorite character of anything ever, so I have a lot of Opinions about her and this one I hold dear: I think a lot of fandom thinks she’s Lawful-Good, but I think she’s Neutral-Good. She is extremely driven by keeping her promises, but not, IMO, because of the weight of authority but because of the weight of her own moral beliefs in making a promise. She wants to do good because it’s the right thing to do, not because any oaths she takes tell her to. It’s why she was willing to hear Jaime out about what he did to Aerys when others (like Ned) wouldn’t - because she recognizes that good is the choice, not the oath. BECAUSE HERE’S THE DEAL. If Brienne were Lawful-Good, she would have stayed and married someone on Tarth. But she’s not. So she didn’t. I think she will retain her Neutral-Goodness through the series. I could see her slipping to maybe Chaotic-Good, but honestly I think she’ll stay NG/return to NG by the end.

I am very curious if people disagree on any of these (even Brienne!) so discussion encouraged. :)

Whew, that was pretty long. And I still have more of this question to answer! So the rest I’m putting under a Keep Reading cut.

What should have the TV adapted from the book and what should the book series take from the TV’s changes and pitfalls?

This is a really complicated question, and I really like it, but I’m not sure I feel confident answering it.

I think the TV show suffered from trying to refine an unfinished story to its core themes without knowing where George was going to end (except I guess with Bran as King?). I used to think that the choices they made about what they left out where telling - all of the Targaryen nonsense limited just to Dany and not any of the other stuff, for instance - but given the finale, I think D & D both hyperfocused only on keeping the main points they needed for what they saw as the end while also only paying off the bones of what they’d adapted from the first three books and didn’t have room for the ways GRRM expanded the story after the third book nor for the ways his end will probably be more complicated than the one they were limited to by it being a TV finale.

All of which is to say: I would have loved them to adapt the Lady Stoneheart arc, particularly for Brienne, but that D&D had no idea how to make that work within the confines of what their limitations both of what they’d chosen to focus on previously and TV, and so I understand why they didn’t. I would have loved, as well, to have more depth and see more of the Dorne arc with Arianne and Myrcella and Tristan, but that adds a whole season’s worth of episodes that the show just could not absorb. The show was forced to choose early to focus on the Starks and the Lannisters, with Dany as a third party, and they never were able to sway from that.

If I were starting over from scratch, I would have to have a long talk with GRRM and figure out what his point is, and work backward from there. I don’t get the sense D & D worked backward from anything but the Red Wedding.

(To be honest, if I were writing the show, I’d do everything the same up to season 6, at which point I’d separate Jaime and Cersei, and make it all about setting up the War of the Five Queens in s6, then we deal with the threat of the White Walkers as a serious, full-season arc for season 7, and then spend season 8 paying off the Queens War and ending with whatever thematic ending it is GRRM is going toward (humans are the ultimate monsters! Women make it work! Women fuck it up just as badly as the men did! Democracy for everyone! Peace is tentative and must be fought for in a tense standoff that all of these older, weary women now understand! Which is what I would have chosen. heh.)

As for the other way, what do I think GRRM should learn from the show. I mean I love the tent scene and would love to see something like that adapted somehow to the books (when Jaime comes to Winterfell to fight, would be my personal suggested placement; imagine the drama and romance!). I think GRRM could also stand to learn from streamlining to key characters and plots, which is what I hope he’s doing in TWOW. But where we’re at in the story in the books is so different from where the show went that I think it’s hard to make any specific suggestions. Mostly I just really want him to look at the story he’s telling and understand it, and recognize that it may have changed certain endings he may have considered previously before his story unfolded itself and he realizes that Jaime and Brienne living on Tarth can be the sweet part of the bittersweet. Ahem.

[writethelifeyouwant]

Dive Bar, Ch. 4/?

Pairing: Dean x Sam,  Dean x OFC (Dany) x Sam (previous chapters)

Rating: 18+

Prompt/Summary: @spnkinkbingo square - Gay Panic (eventually, I don’t know how to write short things, so the gay panic comes later). Dany and Dean hit it off at a bar and Dean is confident it’s a sure thing. But Dean doesn’t know that Dany’s has a dare to complete, and he definitely didn’t imagine his night would end with his pull inviting his little brother to come home with them too.

WC: 2262

Warnings: angstttt, mentions of incest, brother/brother incest, mentions of blow jobs

Beta: my enabler - @negans-lucille-tblr​ 😘😘

Chapter 3

                                                            ***

At their next stop off, for a dinner that was slightly more substantial than their gas station lunch, they still weren’t talking. There was nothing to talk about besides what Dean resolutely refused to address, so Sam stuck to his silent treatment. 

Sam wasn’t sure why he wanted Dean to talk about the previous night so badly. If Dean turned around and asked him how he felt about what went down, he wouldn’t have a good answer. It was probably unfair of him to expect Dean, of all people, to be able to process it if not even Sam could. Okay, it was definitely unfair, Sam thought to himself. But in true little brother fashion, there was no way he was about to own up to that. 

Why did he have to make it such a big deal? Like Dean said, so they banged the same chick, so what? 

But that’s not all you did, that voice in Sam’s head pushed in again. You blew your big brother. Looked the man in the eye, the man who practically raised you, then sucked his cock down your throat. What the hell made you think that was a good play?

Dean had enjoyed it though, hadn’t he? It definitely sounded like he had. But how does that make it better, Sam, seriously? 

It does, he argued with himself. It does because if he enjoyed it too then it’s not just me that’s screwed to all hell. 

                                                              *

Dean could tell Sam was up in his head, obsessing over the night before. And the longer Sam stayed quiet, the more Dean worried about what he might be thinking about it. He wasn’t stupid, he knew what they’d done last night wasn’t normal. Wasn’t good. Except it was. It had been so fucking good he’d felt the ghost of Sam’s fingers and lips on his dick every time he had the misfortune to think about it again. And that had been a lot. That’s why you did the right thing shutting Sam up earlier, he reminded himself. Not the time to be popping random boners like a teenager. But the silence was making him self conscious as fuck. 

Once he’d made it through his burger, Dean pulled out his phone and started cold calling hunters, asking around for any leads in the midwest. They got a dime about a string of mysterious deaths about 100 miles south; violent and fairly improbable deaths. Very distracting. Thank god. 

The Impala was a little less tense now that they had a problem to solve. Their voices sounded a little less strained when they ran through the typical gamut of supernatural evil that could be causing all the mayhem they were driving for. 

When they made it into town, it was late enough that most reputable establishments would have been annoyed with them trying to get a room at that hour. Luckily, they didn’t stay in many reputable establishments, and the motel Dean pulled up next to didn’t bat an eyelid when two guys walked in with next to no luggage and wanted to pay in cash. They saw that a lot. 

Right now, Dean wasn’t wild about what they must have thought they were there for, and his insides were screaming out - Not here to fuck, I swear! Just your standard monster hunt. Nothing to see here. Not brothers sleeping with each other, that’s for sure. But as he couldn’t reasonably set the record straight, Dean left it, and strode back to the car to grab his duffle before cracking into their motel room. Sam followed close behind, slinging his own duffle onto his chosen bed. 

                                                            *

Exiting the bathroom after he’d gotten ready for bed, he was met with Dean holding a bottle of bourbon and wearing a conciliatory expression. Still silent, Sam nodded and accepted the glass Dean handed him a moment later. 

Sam settled onto his bed, already in just his t-shirt and boxers, and sipped quietly at his drink. Dean set his glass down on the table between them and took his own turn in the bathroom. He emerged in his typical sleep gear which, Sam all of a sudden remembered, was just his boxers. 

Jeez, put a shirt on. Sam tried to look anywhere other than at his very nearly naked brother, but it picked at him that if last night wasn’t a big deal, this shouldn’t bother him. It had never bothered him before. Although… Sam thought to himself. He had looked before, noticed the muscle definition, the odd freckle that hid behind the hair on Dean’s chest.  

Sam gulped down nearly half the bourbon in one go in an attempt to burn that thought out of his mind as quickly as possible. That is not how little brothers look at their big brothers. That is not how he looks at Dean. It’s just because he likes guys, at the very least he likes having sex with them. That much he’d come to terms with at college. And it’s not like there’s many dating opportunities in hunting, and Dean didn’t know anything about Sam’s broader sexuality so he wasn’t about to hook up with a guy at a bar when Dean was expecting him to take home a pair of boobs; or more typically, sulk off to the impala while Dean and his guest got their motel room for the evening. Dean was just the only guy around most of the time, that’s all. And since Jess, and then hunting, it had been years since he’d had the chance to to really look at another guy like that. So yeah, he looked, because Dean was not a bad thing to look at. 

But right now, Sam’s brain was at war with itself, one side wanting Dean to pull on a shirt and the sweats he’d wear when it got cold, and the other side wanting to peel off the last bit of fabric covering Dean’s skin so he could get a real look. And maybe another taste. And with that, Sam downed the rest of his drink, flicked off the table lamp, and quickly tucked himself under the covers with Dean at his back, who was left to stare blankly at a lump of blankets and messy hair, his full glass of whisky in his hand. 

                                                             *

Even though they’d driven a fair bit south of where they’d been yesterday, the grass still crunched under his boots when Sam trod across it the next morning. He’d already been out for a short run, and arrived back at the motel to find an empty room, with Dean presumably out looking for food. Sam settled himself with his laptop on a picnic table and rebooted the pages he’d had open the previous night at dinner when they started looking into this case. He brought up a new window to look into a thought he’d had on his run earlier. 

“This is a crappy park.” Dean arrived with their coffee and shoved a paper cup towards Sam, which he took gratefully.

Sam chuckled incredulously when he looked up to his brother, attention momentarily drawn away from his laptop screen. “The park is fine, Dean.”

“No swings. You gotta have swings in a park.” Dean shoved half his donut into his mouth.

Sam fixed him with an admonishing stare for a moment before letting out his amusement in a sharp exhale. “Okay, sure.”

“The swings were always your favourite. You don’t remember that?” Sam shook his head puzzledly. “Yeah,” Dean huffed in the way he does. “When you were a rugrat I couldn’t pull you off those things. Said it felt like flying.” 

Sam stared at him for a moment with something behind his eyes that Dean couldn't work out. He ran out of time to try; Sam’s hair fell back in front of his eyes when he looked down to his laptop again. 

“Hey, so, get this. I’ve been looking into the local lore and I think our victims -”

“How do you have wifi right now?” Dean asked through a mouthful of the other half of his donut.

“Phone hotspot. Want to focus for a second, Dean? People are, you know, dying here.”

“Yeah yeah,” Dean grumbled. And he tried to focus on what Sam was saying about the creature that might be hanging out in the woods that he ran by that morning, Dean swore he was trying. But deciding to focus on Sam’s lips as a means to concentrate on the words that were coming out of them proved to be a thoroughly misguided strategy. Because the second he looked at Sam’s lips all he could think about was what they had looked like wrapped around his cock. What they’d felt like dragging across his skin. When Sam’s tongue flicked out to catch a drop of coffee that had beaded on the rim of the cup, Dean’s own tongue went dry, his breath caught in his throat. 

What the fuck is wrong with you, asshole? Dean hoped his distress wasn’t showing on his face. It seemed like he was doing a decent job at convincing Sam he was listening, because Sam was still talking. This was really gonna bite him in the ass later if he had no clue what Sam was saying this whole time. 

Maybe you want Sam to bite you in the ass? Fuck, no, stop it. Dean was used to arguing back and forth with some semblance of a moral compass, though it usually lost, but this time he needed it to win. He had just been sitting there remembering how he used to push a little Sammy on the swings when he was squirt sized. Jumping from that, to wanting him to suck you off does not make you a good brother. Know what it makes you? An asshole. He was supposed to protect Sammy, take care of him, not take care of him. 

“Dean,” Sam’s voice saying his name cut through the noise in his head, and he looked up at his little brother. He hadn’t realised he’d been scrubbing his hands across his face, no wonder Sam was looking at him like a sad puppy right now. “You okay, dude?” There was a hint of annoyance but it was mostly concern.

“Yeah,” Dean blinked and ran his fingers up over his face to scrub through his hair. “Totally awesome.” 

“Okay, well,” Sam didn't seem convinced, but maybe he wasn’t in the mood to push it. “Let’s go get our fed suits on and head over there.”

“Yeah, sounds like a plan.” Dean swung off the picnic bench and crumpled his coffee in one hand, tossing it to the nearest trash can. Sam snickered when it bounced off the rim, and flung his own to the same can from further back, landing it dead centre. Smirking, he set off with his laptop under his arm and Dean pulling faces behind him the whole walk back to the motel. 

“Where we heading again?” 

The glare Sam gave him made it clear he wouldn’t be getting an answer. 

                                                             *

By the time they’d made it to the local bar and restaurant that evening to grab some food and scrutinise the local wildlife for signs of supernatural proclivities, Sam was seriously confused. Dean had been acting off the whole day. And not just in the typical evasive act he pulled when he didn’t want to talk about his feelings, he was spacing out of conversations about perfectly mundane things. Witnesses had started getting annoyed with him after the third time he asked the same question Sam had literally seconds beforehand. When they’d been let into the room of one of the victims, a girl about their age - just out of college, he hadn’t made any jokes about her extensive stuffed animal collection (those bears were freakin’ everywhere man), or the vibrator not so skilfully hidden down the side of her bed. When Sam had switched the music in the car, no warning and no asking for permission, Dean hadn’t batted an eyelid. And Sam had changed it to smooth jazz. 

Now Sam was standing, bewildered, by a barrel serving as a table that he’d been about to sit down at, because when he’d grab Dean’s shoulder to direct him towards the one empty table in the vicinity of the bar, Dean had broken his grip so fast you’d have thought Sam had insulted their mother. Dean came back from the bar with two beers and some menus, dropping all of them unceremoniously onto the barrel-top, and that’s when Sam noticed. 

This was the first time Dean had taken off his fed jacket all day and now he was rolling up his sleeves and loosening his tie, unwinding from the persona and his bracelets were gone. This was the weird thing to end all the weird things that Dean had done all day. Since Sam had given Dean those stupid bracelets nearly a decade ago, he couldn’t remember a single day when Dean wasn’t wearing them. 

It wasn’t like they were valuable or anything. It was wooden craft store beads and elephant-hair cord that Sam had strung together at a summer camp when he was twelve. And he’d been embarrassed to give them to Dean when he got home, wondered why he thought Dean would want some lame homemade souvenir, but Dean had coaxed the presents out of Sam, and insisted that he loved them. And that was that, they’d been on his wrists ever since. But not today. Sam’s lungs deflated. 

Fuck. 

***

Tags: @negans-lucille-tblr​ @hawkerz12​ @babybrotherandthedemon​ @dylansbabygirl24​ @mineshinamary​ @popsensationnicole23​ @spn-problems​ @donthateme454​ @doyouknowsamw​ @peridottea91​@delightfulbakeryaliendeputy @fictionallemons​ @petitgateau911​ @natastic​ @marvelfansworld​ @delightfullykrispypeach​ @akshi8278​ @crashlyrose​ @miufel​ @lyarr24​ @itsthedoctah10​ @kiss-my-peachy-arse​ @leftlokiofpuppy​ @tftumblin​ @devilsbby​ @alice101macwil​ @caitlinvd​ @j-ai-adore-dean​ @disneysloot​ @half-closeted-bi-girl​ @deandreamernp​

[esther-dot]

D&D’s message in regards to Sansa was disgusting. The romantic girl who dreams about marriage and family is beaten, humiliated and raped by her “love interests”, has her “delusions” destroyed, so she matures into this woman who thinks that all the abuse she suffered was actually useful, because had it never happened, she would have stayed a little bird all her life. On top of that, it’s almost like they’re depicting the harmful notion that abuse survivors are too ruined (and undeserving at worst) for positive experiences and love. This mature woman, who’s not a little bird anymore, ends up all alone, without the family she yearns for and her friends. Not even Brienne! The only reason they made her go South was because they needed her as LC of the Kingsguard, so she could fill out Jaime’s page. She should have been LC of Sansa’s Queensguard, but noooo. And to think that book!Sansa is convinced that nobody will marry her for love...and in the show, nobody did.

Excuse me while I hide in a corner and cry. My poor baby.

You’re right about Brienne. It’s amazing how they wrapped the finale around the dead characters and didn’t pay any attention to what their writing implied about the ones who were still living. It wasn’t enough to have Jaime leave Brienne in such a demeaning scene, they had to twist her character around his even after his death.

S7-8 were such a mess it leaves me endlessly curious what they actually thought they were doing. They did think Sansa needed to toughen up, but if that’s the case, why did they make Jon so naive in s7-8? I mean, if it’s wrong for a little girl to be that way, surely it’s worse for a grown man? And, if it’s bad for a little girl to love a prince, why did they romanticize all the men who instantly fell in love with Dany? Daario, Jorah, Tyrion, Jon...why are we meant to sympathize with that if Sansa needed to know better when she was half (or less) their age?

Their thought process is so anti Sansa and so contradictory when I read the the finale script I genuinely thought “did they rewrite this shit to appease r/freefolk?” I really can’t even imagine the conversations they were having about the last two seasons because there’s no consistency to be found. It actually made me wonder if when Dany gives her speech to Jon about how Sansa isn’t the girl he knew, while we all thought Dany was being evil and manipulative, if they were agreeing with Dany? I mean, they did have Sansa tell The Hound that she was different, so, did they want the audience to agree with Dany? Did they think Sansa was only admirable if she was a little bit villainous? Who knows. Their decisions in s7-8 will baffle me forever.

A lot of Sansa fans (non Jonsas) think that being Queen means she will be able to choose her own husband at a later date and are happy with that. She’s very young in the books, so maybe that’s the ending we’ll get. I guess maybe it solves the problem in that, a male family member won’t marry her off to someone for an alliance. Personally, I don’t think that’s an emotionally satisfying ending. If the point of her character is that she is wrong for wanting love, believing in heroes, and needs to grow out of all that (as D&D believed) then yes, that ending fits. I don’t think that’s the point. I think Martin is a romantic who also believes in love and heroes, only that, it’s messy, painful, and may not have a happy ending. I don’t think he views love as a weakness, something that needs to be rooted out, but what makes life meaningful, beautiful. I think D&D opted to wrap Jon around Dany in an even more grotesque way than how they wrote Brienne around Jaime. That meant they couldn’t deliver for Sansa in the end.

TLDR: I think Sansa will get a romance, but it will be as messy and complicated as the rest of the story. Jonsa fits in really well with how Martin likes to give us conflicting emotions about things. It’s fitting for the series to end with a romance that feels “wrong” but is also, incredibly right.

[horizon-verizon]

People like to excuse Rhaenyra’s cruelty and stupidity during her brief reign as a queen because she lost her children during the war, and in my opinion, that is no excuse. She ordered daily executions, established “knights inquisitors” to hunt down innocent children, would not offer peace terms, imposed ridiculous taxes while throwing a lavish birthday party for her son. It has nothing to do with gender but everything to do with her despicable actions.

Daemon gets some “redemption” in the end because he cared about Nettles (whether or not she was his lover, bastard daughter, or both), or whatever, and Corlys, also a grasping and power hungry snake, had a change of heart after losing practically everything, but other than being badass, I thought these two men, Daemon especially, were awful. People called Daemon an anti-hero, and I am trying to recall when anti-heroes behead children, started wars for fun because they are bored, seduced their 14 years old nieces, screwed and raped virgin prostitutes, etc. Yeah, I enjoyed reading about the character and thought he died in a totally badass way, he was much more competent than Rhaenyra, but let’s not kid ourselves about him.

Probably a response to this post and all those it is connected to it.

I hope people see what I mean about how misogyny can creep into genuine criticisms of rhaenyra's flaws OR mask entirely as good faith criticisms of her moral character & fitness as a leader from this ask.

*EDIT (5/31/24): Rhaenyra suffers from really bad sexist writing on GRRM's, not just the maesters', part and it undermines his own point.* And no, she doesn't need to be necessarily "moral" like Dany to be a deserving ruler.

The point of her story was to highlight how no matter how good or evil or morally ambiguous a person you are, if you are female, you are subject to losing a power men are just granted. Or usurped. And this is inherently wrong. Rhaenyra chose to go to war rather than give up. This is valuable. Visenya was not thinking "for the realm" or for the benefit of smallfolk or outside of her family, yet she as so many fans bc she was not passive or restricted by "madness". She has less sexist writing.*

On Rhaenyra

These posts go into GRRM's writing of Rhaenyra as well as other notes about her leadership: POST #1, POST #2, POST #3, POST #4, POST #5, POST #6, POST #7, POST #8--esp Section B, C, & D. Read them!

You: "established “knights inquisitors” to hunt down innocent children."

1.

This is the quote you refer to ("Rhaenyra Triumphant"):

This is the quote of Larys' plan of the Greens' escape before Rhaenyra entered KL ("Rhaenyra Overthrown"):

Assuming you mean Maelor, once more, Larys took this boy out of the Red Keep to take away Rhaenyra's advantage against the greens, as Maelor would be an official hostage. And seeing as Rhaenyra refuses to kill ALicent and specifically gets rid of just those who had a militant hand in her aspiration or/and was an adult once she gets to KL

("Rhaenyra Triumphant"):

("Rhaenyra Triumphant"):

Rhaenyra did not send out those inquisitors to harm or kill MAelor. She sent them to kill/harm his holder, anyone who took him and is taking him from the Keep. He and those for Jaehaera and Aegon II. she specifically says "traitors" to mean Aegon II, who she also already warned she would kill after he was the one to reject her terms BUT NOT HIS CHILDREN! ("The Black and the Greens"):

I would go as far as to say Maelor & Jaehaera were both safe with Rhaenyra, and I say that despite Blood & Cheese bc B&C was an answer to Lucerys' non-hostage, anti-diplomatic (images and all), and wrongful death. a death sparred by anti-bastardism and patriarchal privileges entitling Aemond to kill his own family. With intent and malicious desire. Don't let the show fool you. Aemond willingly choosing to murder his own nephew, especially during the process of diplomacy and getting allies is the catalyst to the violence of the Dance, the war, and the battles themselves. Tracing the motivations, how he wanted to take back what he thought of as an "indignity" of a bastard somehow hurting and showing him up (the eye incident) despite his "trueborness" is exactly what spurred him on.

Meanwhile, we have Aemond killing children at Harrenhal, a rumor of Alicent laughing at raped and murdered children at Tumbleton, Alicent & Aegon (not a rumor, very much confirmed to be true) wanting to mutilate their own hostage Aegon the Younger to protect themselves. No proof nor rumor of Rhaneyra trying to hurt her siblings or other children until she gets to King's Landing and faces the lack of moneys bc the greens stole it to disable her.

Not to mention the riots stoked against her by both the Shepherd and the hiding Larys Strong...interesting how this doesn't figure in the assessment, and how you think you would have done with all this at once.

You: "imposed ridiculous taxes" & "daily executions" & "while throwing a lavish birthday party for her son"

...there was literally no money...bc the greens stole it all to make her unable to actually fund projects, whether she wanted to or not. While the executions leave a very bad taste in most mouths, most of the executions were specifically carried out for the money:

Context:

The greens didn't care about the smallfolk by taking the money that could help them. Nor did Viserys care--whose main issue with Daemon performing his brutal "cleansing" of KL was how it made him look and not the commoner's fear or vulnerability--much about the smallfolk. They are all aristocrats who lived in the lap of luxury or use clothing, dinners, etc. it to denote their status and or triumphs fopr most of their lives.

Come up with a better way for her to make money fast in her particular situation and maybe I'll concede, until then, just block me. Or reveal yourself and let me block you.

And as for the party, instead of it being a malignant thing as you painted it, I'd say it was unwise (EDIT: "altruistic") but also not as morally corrupt as Aegon throwing a party for his own nephew's unjustified death ("A Son for a Son"):

While Aegon was celebrating his "triumph" over his nephew's death because his life meant little to him was he thinking about how Rhaenyra's hypothetical anger rained down on KL and hurt his subjects? If not for strategy (Alicent & Otto), why doesn't he consider the harm this could for his subjects and castigate Aemond for this?

Why is Rhaenyra made to be the worst person of this bunch when she herself decides to quickly name her oldest remaining son her heir and publicly so, even more so because he is suspected as a bastard so she could give him a stronger claim? Alicent did the same for Aegon when she left Viserys' body to rot, imprisoned people to silence/stop the flow of any information in or out of the Red Keep, and convened the council to convince-coerce them into making Aegon the king through the ceremonies of ascension. All the bells and whistles, to create his legitimacy in the eyes of the lords and smallfolk. Alicent 100% would not care if it was winter or spring and wait to crown Aegon publicly whenever Viserys gave up the ghost, because she knew that time was of the essence and she only cared about the smallfolk as far as making sure they felt Aegon was the ruler and maintain all their images. I despise the scrutiny against rhaenyra and not against Alicent, bc Rhaenyra happens to be the woman who actually flouts constrictions against her sexual autonomy and freer model of matrifocality!

Rhaenyra also celebrated her taking of KL's with the mind of a semi-typical noble who wishes to mark their reign or victory with a feast. Again, not wise nor altruistic, but it's weird how you don't apply the same need to consider care towards subjects and the effects of one's own actions on our other claimant. That you fully ignore how Aegon is still worse than Rhaenyra both practically & morally in this area. that Rhaneyra is the one who must be the morally perfect aristocrat-claimant over him?

Finally, while I'm sure that there were people who grumbled at the princess throwing a party during the city's pennilessness, it was not a big enough deal to enough to be expressly compounded onto her imposing taxes--as she is only called "Maegor with Teats" for the taxes of all things! More protests were against her taxes, then rumors of her whoring out Alicent/Helaena, then Helaena's death, then Maleor's, until the Shepherd came along and directed the built-up hatred and fear towards the Targaryen dragons. Again, rumors and fear-mongering were first incited by the hidden Larys Strong ("Rhaenyra Overthrown"):

You: "would not offer peace terms"

1.

I already showed how she did back before the Dance even began when Aegon was the one to lose his cool and try to get her imprisoned and killed before hearing of any terms himself. Go back and read the given quotes. Rhaenyra, having to be consistent and firm as a leader, must stick to her own words even if she hadn't already hated her brother and wasn't trying to protect herself. Why the fuck would she offer peace terms after they were rejected and her life is on the line?!

2.

Regarding her refusal of Alicent's terms about dividing the realm...huh?

This is the quote, btw (Rhaenyra Triumphant):

In context with Aegon already rejecting Rhaenyra's terms way back not once, but TWICE!, why do you think Rhaenyra should have let him & Aemond off? Does Alicent only get to love and try to protect herself and her sons? Alicent the one to plunge said sons into this war by being so misogynistically out for more herself and her ambitions? (Again if this was another story with only someone like Alicent, I'd root for her more, but Rhaenyra as a queen is good to set that precedent of public female leadership being seen as valid for other female claimants and is thus the better option. Plus, the internalized misogyny is really too much with Alicent, both book & show. She is the sort of woman who'd supply the gas to help a man burn another woman alive if it got her wanted she thought was either male validation [show] or personal power and family prestige [book]).

Anon, you're both using straight-up lies, misinterpretations, and exaggerations--just like Fire and Blood's Dance account sources and writer-- to present a woman that much worse than she actually was. Thank you for being an example of blind misogyny twisting facts.

On Daemon

1.

You: "People called Daemon an anti-hero, and I am trying to recall when anti-heroes behead children, started wars for fun because they are bored, seduced their 14 years old nieces, screwed and raped virgin prostitutes, etc"

Posts about Daemon being a Character as Categorized as a Byronic Hero (which can often be a version of an anti-hero): #1, #2 (esp #2)

On Anti-Heroism: #1, #2, #3 (number 3 defines anti-heroism itself, but you can see how Daemon qualities as an "anti-villain"...which goes into GRRM making him a being of both light and dark, hated and loved)

When it comes to Daemon if we're looking at him as a character with a moral balance, he is a guy who grew up with patriarchal privilege (yes even with him being forced to marry like most young girls, he still can move about and wage wars and have an extramarital- premarital sex life without suffering shame or censure like noblewomen) and is mainly motivated by his love for his family. Pretty much it. That is his saving grace, not (just) the Nettles thing.

I have nothing to really say about Corlys apart from his: blaming Rhaenyra for Rhaneys death while Rhaenyra was recovering from a stillbirth; daring to cheat on Rhaenys for at least 2-3 years and having two other kids from this younger woman...after marrying an already way-too-young girl (16 to 37 at the time of marriage); his misogyny guiding the Rosby-Stokeworth decisions. Other than all that, I don't see what other sort of "snakiness" you refer to. Aegon needed killing.

You: "started wars for fun because they are bored"

The Stepstones was not just Daemon being bored. Corlys had been complaining about the Triarchy and its threat to his own ships and lands. And larger, the Triarchy and those who worked for them became a problem for Westerosi trade/merchants after high tolls (it's funny how we keep coming back to money, eh?) ("A Question of Succession").

No one was "bored". Daemon chose the right conflict to gather some military experience, military glory & honors (as is the feudal dream for men in general, look at Aemond!), and bide his time after he had been exiled again. Was it altruistic, no. Was it actually maliciously wasteful, also no. Very much like Rhaenyra's feast wasn't either of these things.

Speaking of Aemond, Aemond is a worse character concerning warfare and child killing bc the Strong genocide AND he refused to help his own brothers bc he wanted all the glory for himself...at a critical moment when they could have attacked KL together. He specifically called it a "craven" move to do this even though he was the one to suggest attacking KL to Cole! And again, compare it to the actual amoral selfishness of Aegon's feast to Luke's death.....Well, we got out parallels.

You need to stop lying to yourself.

3. You: "he was much more competent than Rhaenyra"

Did you somehow believe that most of the hype for him is how much "better" at politics he is, or just "better" (since you are so vague and I'm left assuming) than Rhaenyra?

Back to assumptions because of vague language, I assume that you mean that he was able to capture KL for her, and make the plans for ravens and diplomats sent out (forgetting that after she had stillborn Visenya out, she calmed down to "work"), and how he was able to take down Aemond. Anon, this is where the misogyny jumps out again, bc apparently to be a good ruler, you must learn how to fight and put yourself in the forefront of battle....but most noblewomen were actively barred or discouraged from military pursuits equal to men

AND

Rhaenyra knew her weakness concerning actually fighting, and I believe that this gets lost in all the "she's always been a bad candidate because she made dumb choices--she deserved to die and lose to Aegon, even!" bullshit. She called her council many times to get advice, so yes, it really is her own aristocratic blood purity and grief motivating her into making all the actual mistakes and sins she makes. I thought good leaders listened to their council?

AND

what is so wrong with a ruler not putting themselves in danger like Aegon II did? The same Aegon who got put out of commission for nearly a whole year and is likely unable to have kids due to said injuries from Rook's Rest?! Do not put the very person whom your side is fighting for at risk! Minimize it as much a possible!

AND

Fighting and personal physical prowess--despite the idea of leadership--don't have to be a ruler's main strength. Think of Daeron I (not so versed in swordplay but known as one of the better Targ rulers). How though Maegor was very much the warrior and a determined king, was also very cruel and incurred the hatred of not just the Faith but several others in justified fear of him and it lead to his end. Aenys was weak not because he wasn't a warrior but because he gave in too much and didn't use his dragons and dragon riders for the sake of what he thought was conciliation and respecting his subjects' desires! To garner love and admiration!

Last....

If we compare her to Alicent, Alicent is a heavy-duty blood purist who never looked out for other women, even seized power from another woman entirely for herself and her house's patriarchal prestige and power. No matter who Rhaenyra was before King's Landing or after, Rhaenyra was "vulnerable" to this due to her gender's inequitable access to higher positions of power in Westeros. Rhaenyra was never a tyrant before King's Landing and the greens' usurpation.

*EDIT* (8/21/23):

THIS is a great post by @mononijikayu about medieval queens, female rulers, the history of how women in leadership positions were made and seen as threats to the very structure of social "order", and contextualizing Rhaenyra thru Empress Matilda. I didn't even know about Matilda's husband being comparable to Rhaneyra's Daemon! PLZ READ!!!!

Excerpt:

just as much, along with these fictitious portrayals, more lies are depicted. these women are considered vixens that cause havoc to men by shifting them into desires and danger. through the written word, we see how women are cast in roles of villains in men’s lives. it is because by their conclusive thoughts, women are the only creatures that are able to turn ‘good honorable men’ into despicable creatures who do shameful, deplorable acts for the sake of women’s pleasures.  it is within this narrative that ancient chroniclers declare that women were in fact the doom of men. if they were not able to control the dangers posed by the wiles of women, then the foundations of the mighty society they had built would be up in flames.  [...] as i mentioned, these factors of community are written down and preserved. and with that, the example of the ancients were the foundations by which medieval society built itself. the same concepts continued to cause the same issue within society and that was the exclusion of women from participating in the bigger picture of community and state, much so with governing states in their own right—without judgment or disapproval. 

[tatticstudio55]

Jon and Dany – both beyond the Wall at the end?

DAY SEVEN (Sunday, August 2nd) Leadership  |  Free Choice  |  DoS: Royal Retirement / Passing the Torch

This is less meta-ish and borders more on the speculative side, but I’d like to discuss a Jon and Dany (potential) ending I’ve never seen anyone talk about before: them ending both beyond the Wall, living with the free folks/as free folks. So, basically, the ending Jon got on the show, but with Dany by his side. I would even go as far as to say that the showrunners might have considered it.

This is not by any means “my ideal” Jonerys ending. That would be Jon and Dany settling on Dragonstone with a bunch of targlings and wild dragons. I do not, alas, think this is where the story is going. I do not expect either (or both) of them on the IT either. On the other hand, an ending with them both beyond the Wall seems to me like it could work with the overall story. There is already some book evidence/foreshadowing pointing to Jon’s endgame there, notably in ASOS when he (forgive my French) “finds himself” beyond the Wall:

“On the edge of the haunted forest, where the tents had been, Jon found an oakwood stump and sat.

Ygritte wanted me to be a wildling. Stannis wants me to be the Lord of Winterfell. But what do I want? The sun crept down the sky to dip behind the Wall where it curved through the western hills. Jon watched as that towering expanse of ice took on the reds and pinks of sunset.

[…]

He wanted it, Jon knew then. He wanted it as much as he had ever wanted anything. I have always wanted it, he thought, guiltily. May the gods forgive me. It was a hunger inside him, sharp as a dragonglass blade. A hunger . . . he could feel it. It was food he needed, prey, a red deer that stank of fear or a great elk proud and defiant. He needed to kill and fill his belly with fresh meat and hot dark blood. His mouth began to water with the thought.

It was a long moment before he understood what was happening. When he did, he bolted to his feet. "Ghost?" He turned toward the wood, and there he came, padding silently out of the green dusk, the breath coming warm and white from his open jaws. "Ghost!" he shouted, and the direwolf broke into a run.

[…]

He had his answer then.” Jon XII, ASOS

Dany is more of a wild card, but even the show gave us SOME reasons to believe that D&D played with the idea at some point: the pregnancy bait, Dany’s comment in 7x07 about King’s Landing and how “constrictive” the Dragonpit felt, Dany’s “we could stay here a thousand years. No one would find us” line in 8x01. Most importantly, back when I was watching season 7, this is the impression I was getting (from the showrunners):

Dany is a good person at heart, but she would not make a good queen nor would she like being queen.

I do not wholly agree with this, especially if we are talking about bookDany, who would make – and is – a much better queen than she is given credit for, but it looked to me like this is where the show was going with her. Or, at least, this is the message they were trying to communicate. They were not trying to “hide” Dany’s dark turn from the audience by making her or trying to make her bad-good-bad-good-bad-good, they simply had another endgame in mind for the character. I do not want to make this about the show but had to get this out of the way.

Now onto bookDany:

A while ago, I posted a meta where I discussed a pattern in Daenerys’s story: twice she succeeded at something magical, highly dangerous and related to dragons, and twice after she ended up in a desertic environment, thirsting, starving and nearly dying from exposition. Following the rule of 3 (which is especially predominant in her arc), it will probably happen again and – since there is no Great Grass Sea in Westeros – the “desertic environment” swallowing her afterward will be the frozen lands beyond the Wall. It could mean that she will die there, but it could also mean that she will simply disappear there. Her fate could also be revealed to the reader while remaining unknown to most characters. This would fit with Dany’s current representation in the story so far: she is an enigma, a rumor; nobody really knows her whereabouts, who she is, what she is, what she wants, what she has, if she is even real.

There are numerous parallels to be drawn between Daenerys and Mance Rayder, which I covered here. I would love the irony of Dany coming to Westeros thinking she is reclaiming her family’s lands, only to settle in the only part that was never conquered by the Targaryen. There is the (disputable, ok, but) fact that the only region in all of the continent where dragons could turn up useful for tree planting would be beyond the Wall (so frozen soil can be thawed and warmed up for plants to grow there again). Martin hung a pretty riffle on the metaphorical Wall when Silverwing refused to fly across in Fire and Blood. There is this pattern of wildling women making up Jon’s romantic prospects; first a wildling “commoner” (Ygritte), then a wildling “princess” (Val), then a wildling “queen” (Dany, eventually, if this theory proves to be correct). So of course, you will ask –

If this is Martin’s intended ending, why couldn’t the d’s just go with it?

Well, because the d’s never gave Dany any incentive to go beyond the Wall, apart from a brief rescue mission back in season 7. If Dany must end up there, something has got to bring her there and the show scrapped or discarded all of it : no Lands of Always Winter, no curtain of light, no this, no that, no nothing. And once she gets there in the books, because I am quite sure she will, she will not come back. The North is Dany’s ultimate destination. No yoyoing back and forth North and South like what the show did. That was just dumb. Travel time and distances should mean something, even if you have dragons (plus, Dany’s armies would have to travel on foot, horseback or by boat, like everybody else). The closest of yoyoing we have ever gotten in asoiaf was probably with Catelyn, it spanned three books, and she never made it back North anyway.

Did the d’s consider going with that ending? They might just. The clues were certainly there (see above…) but at some point, they must have realized that it would not work with the hole they had dug themselves in.

Now about the elephant in the room

I know some people will think that Dany ending beyond the Wall does not make much sense for her story, which technically (so far) does not have much to do with the lands beyond the Wall. In a way, I agree. Some people would also find such an ending anticlimactic to her arc and a waste after everything she has learned about leadership and politics in Meereen. I also agree. On a watsonian level, an ending with, say, Dany as a queen in Westeros – I think it works. Of course, I do. Where it does not work is on a doyalist level. Dany already had her arc of becoming queen. She achieved that by the end of book 3. Then she had to learn all the nit and gritty and dirty work of ruling over the rubble of a corrupt system while trying to make the lives better for everyone. If Dany becomes queen in Westeros, the same thing will happen again. Different setting, different people, same story. Some people have criticized the underlying message of Dany’s fight against slavery as “only a preparation” for what comes next in Westeros, saying it would undermine the real value of Dany’s work in Essos. I agree. However, the same problem applies if Dany becomes queen in Westeros: then her time in Essos is reduced to a prop up, a preparation, as if ruling Essos were somewhat less important than ruling Westeros. Furthermore, I cannot imagine an ending where Dany, still in possession of significant military forces – significant enough to secure her a crown, anyway – could choose to settle in Westeros without being plagued with guilt over leaving Essos’s slaves behind. I am sorry, I just cannot.

This is also, I think, where part of the “Dany is not a peace time queen” mentality comes from. Dany will never be a peace time queen, not because she prefers war, or because she does not want peace, but because what she is trying to achieve, in these times and places, means a lifetime of war. You cannot undo and rebuild an entire system that is rotten at its core in a single lifetime (heck, even show!Tyrion said this to her, for what the show is worth now…), much less in a few years. Dany is not a peace time queen because she is not a queen that is interested in maintaining the statue quo. At least that is how her time in Meereen revealed her. Arya would not be a peace time queen either. Jon would not be a peace time king. They could never be, less they abandoned their ideals and their ethics for a more comfortable life.

Then you might say that an ending where Dany goes back to Essos works too. It does – once again, on a watsonian level. What is the problem with this on a doyalist level? It turns Dany into a deus ex machina, coming to Westeros just in time to save it, then leaving it right after, as if neither the Others, nor her had ever been there.

The two remaining options are: either she dies a queen in Westeros, most likely during the Great War, or… the queen, Daenerys Targaryen, dies, while Dany lives.

That means that all reasonable possibilities, or choices, to keep on fighting as a queen are taken from her. Maybe her forces were severely depleted during the Great War. Maybe her dragons died. Maybe both. Maybe her function, not as an individual, but as a character in a specific story called A song of ice and fire, was to destroy an old system (AND to inspire others to follow in her footsteps, ensure that her efforts were not in vain, that the first steps will not go wasted, that the work she started will be taken up by other peoples, and others after them, and others after), not to rebuild the new one. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. Frodo Baggins’ role in The Lord of the Rings was to destroy something evil. His gardener Sam was the one who planted the trees and went on to become a mayor afterward. One was a destroyer and the other was a builder, but in the end, they were both heroes.

Not to mention that Frodo did not die at the end. You could say that he went on to live beyond the Wall too.

[the-daily-dreamer]

“The Stark’s are villains!” - A deep dive into the validity of a Dany stan claim: Part 1

“Manipulators”

“Schemers”

“Back Stabbers”

“Oath Breakers”

“Hypocrites”

“Xenophobes”

“Power-Hungry”

“Murderers”

“Selfish”

“Willing to kill everyone to get what they want”

“Ned would be ashamed”

“They’re the new Lannisters”

Villains

The Dany stans have really started a movement that the Starks are the new Lannister. The new villains of the show. They’re selfish, powerhunry, racist, conniving characters. The lowest of the low. This is obviously utter nonsense.

But for the sake of something to do, I thought I’d take a deep dive into the actions of the Starks and see if they really are all these terrible things (or..if Dany stans just don’t understand words and what they mean) and how their precious queen stacks up! This’ll be a long post so I’ll break it into two parts. Analyzing the Starks (part 1) and then analyzing Daenerys herself (part 2).

Disclaimer: This is part 1, which focuses on the Starks. I will mainly be focusing on Jon and Sansa since they are the most vilified Starks by Dany stans. Arya is mentioned, but not much.

Manipulators: a person who controls or influences others in a clever or unscrupulous way.

I assume Dany stans are making the arguments that the Starks are manipulators because 1) Sansa “manipulates” Jon and Dany into...doing something??? D stans never make it clear, and 2) Jon “manipulates” Dany into fighting for the North.

1) Sansa manipulates Jon and Dany. Where?!? Sansa is completely open with Jon. She makes her opinions clear, not to manipulate Jon but to continue having an open and honest relationship with her brother/cousin. She understands that they all need each other. Sansa is not being vocal because she jealous or petty or any of that bull. She’s being vocal because she’s a leader. She’s in a position of power. She needs to be heard, just as much as any other lord or lady present at a meeting. Jon is never manipulated. He is being told the truth. When it comes to Dany...Sansa never really manipulates her. The only scene I can imagine would be even close to manipulation is the “What about the North scene”. I even say so myself that Dany is easily manipulated and receptive to Sanaa’s praise and thanks. But that means Sansa’s only manipulation is complimenting Dany in hopes of persuading her to free the North, which never happens ans doesn’t work. So Sansa doesn’t manipulate but rather stroke Dany’s ego and butter her up, in hopes of getting on her good side. If that’s manipulation then oh boy do I have news for you! DANY DID THE SAME THING TO SANSA AND WAS FAKE NICE TO GET WHAT SHE WANTS!

2) Jon manipulates Dany. I so desperately want this to be true. Unfortunately, the show was unclear on Jon’s motivations. Personally, I don’t think what Jon did was manipulation. He never tricked her or lied about anything to her to get what he wanted. He was open and honest. He told Dany that the others were coming and begged for help. Where is the manipulation? Asking for help by using dragon glass and dragons to defeat a literal horde of ice zombie that will kill everyone? If that’s manipulation, then every person that has ever asked for help is a manipulator. Even Dany says that Jon manipulated her into coming to the North, but there is no basis for that claim. He was ready to leave her castle and prepare for the battle, she kept him there. He didn’t use her affection against her. Jon simply asked for help. If Dany chose to go because she was “in love” or something, that’s on her. The other instance I could see for Jon manipulating Dany is the parentage reveal, but again, Jon never uses anything against Dany!

In short, the Starks didn’t manipulate Dany. They had autonomy. Just because they didn’t agree with your fav doesn’t mean they manipulated her. They are not unfairly controlling her. They are giving their opinions and council. She makes her own decisions.

Schemers: a person who is involved in making secret or underhanded plans

I love this one. The Starks are schemers now lol. They have a grand on to dominate the world and kill everyone. I have to laugh.

I assume the rhetoric of this comes from the scene in which Arya and Sansa tell Jon they don’t like Dany. That would be the closest thing to scheming the Stark girls do. The thing is...they never make plans to kill Dany, they never make plans to usurp Dany, they don’t do anything. They tell their brother/cousin that they don’t trust Dany or like her. And with good reason! They want independence! But telling your family you don’t like or want someone as your head of state is not scheming. Telling your family your opinion is not scheming.

The other instance would be Sansa telling Tyrion there’s another. Again, that isn’t a scheme. Unfortunately, the show left out a lot of personal involvement, so I can’t be sure what Sansa’s motivations or ideas are. But here’s the thing, she couldn’t have known what would happen after telling. To be a schemer you need to have a plan, know what will happen every step of the way. Pull strings. Littlefinger was a schemer because he planned everything out. Sansa didn’t have a plan beyond, get the North freedom. I can see the justification that this is still scheming because she tells Tyrion; however, I don’t believe it. Because Sansa didn’t know what would happen after.

And even if it was scheming, it’s not villainous. Her plans are for freedom for her country. She is pushing independence, which her people have fought for and declared over and over again. She is protecting her nation’s interests, not just her own. That’s heroic. Rob did the same thing. He made plans and “schemed” to win independence. But it was against the Lannisters, so to D stans it was ok. Sansa’s actions, if you perceive them as schemes, were still lined with noble intentions and were heroic for her people.

So whether you think it was a scheme or not, it doesn’t matter. Sansa was right to do it.

Backstabbers and Oath Breakers: Backstab - to attempt to discredit (a person) by underhanded means, as innuendo, accusation, or the like. Oath breaker - Someone who breaks an oath.

I’m clumping these together because they work hand in hand. This one has validity, so I won’t completely say no. But it’s an interesting question.

I assume this comes from broken promises, right? I’ll admit that Sansa did break her promise to Jon. She did tell a secret she promised to keep. But that wasn’t an oath. Oaths are more serious than promises.

Oath - a solemn promise, often invoking a divine witness, regarding one's future action or behavior

Promise - a declaration or assurance that one will do a particular thing or that a particular thing will happen

Sansa promised to not tell Jon’s secret. She did not swear an oath to Jon. She broke her promise, which I’m sure everyone has done.

Jon never promised Dany he wouldn’t tell his sisters. So that isn’t a broken oath. He did swear an oath that she would be his queen...and guess what! He didn’t break it!!!! Dany was his queen until her very end so no oath was broken.

So on the oath front - The Starks are clear

Backstabbing? Simple. Yeah. It happened. Jon killed Dany and Sansa spread Jon’s secret. That falls under the category of undermining. However context is important. They did it for the right reasons. Jon killed Dany because she was crazy! She killed an entire city! Murdered hundred of thousands and planned to keep going! Sansa did it to keep her kingdom free. So were they backstabbers....? Yeah...kinda. But they needed to be in order to defeat the villain and threat.

Hypocrites: the contrivance of a false appearance of virtue or goodness, while concealing real character traits or inclinations, especially with respect to religious and moral beliefs

I’m not spending time on this. They weren’t hypocrites. The Starks never feigned morality with underlying evil. They were open and honest at all times. And no...Sansa being polite back to Dany is not hypocrisy. Next!

Xenophobes: a person having a dislike of or prejudice against people from other countries.

This one kills me. I have to laugh. There’s no evidence! THE STARKS ARE NOT PREJUDICED AGAINST IMMIGRANTS! If the Stark girls were prejudiced against immigrants...they would hate Dany because she came from another country. And that would be it. They would hate the unsullied because they came from another country. They would hate because people come from other countries.

But they don’t! The Starks dislike Dany and her army because they are invaders who are trying to take over their country. They are oppressors coming in. There is no fear or hate of immigrants, there’s fear of oppression.

To say the North is xenophobic to Dany and her army because they come from another country, is to say that India was xenophobic towards Britain because they came from another country. The stupidity of it all!

Power-hungry, selfish, and willing to kill their people to get what they want: 1) power-hungry - having a strong desire for power 2) selfish - lacking consideration for others

1) How are the Stark’s power hungry? Jon never asks to be King. He hates being king. He takes back Winterfell because that is his family’s home. Sans never accepts the Lord’s invitation to overpower Jon. She stays behind Jon wholly and isn’t seeking to become queen. She takes back Winterfell because it’s her family’s home. And neither want the iron throne. Sansa wants Jon to have the throne, but that’s so he can grant independence. Neither one of them seek out power. It’s given to them because they show that they are capable leaders.

2) Both Jon and Sansa put others needs before their own. Jon is searching for a way to defeat the others. Sansa is searching for a way to feed her people and help them through winter. Sansa is also seeking a way to give her people the independenc they have fought for. Neither of them is thinking about their own gains. They are concerned about everyone else.

3) Willing to kill others for their own gains. I’m added this in because I hear this claim a lot. But again, Jon and Sansa do not kill people to get ahead. They do not let people starve or be killed be zombies. They do not kill the Lords of houses who did not support them initially. They do not kill to get ahead. There’s no evidence. Next!

Murderers:

You got me there! They do commit murder. They killed people. Everyone in the show except Gilly, Little Sam, Bran, and Rickon have killed people!

But let’s look at the kills they made in the last seasons, shall we?

1. Ramsay Bolton - Sansa fed him to his dogs After he lost the battle of the bastards. He was a murderer, sadist, rapist, and torturer. He raped Sansa, killed her brother, tortured her family friend, and was in control of her home unjustly. Deserving? ABSOLUTELY!

2. Little Finger - Sansa had a trial and asked him how he pled (guilty or innocent) for his crimes. His throat was slit by Arya. He was a manipulator, murderer, schemer, abuser, and cause of her fathers death + marriage to her rapist! Deserving? ABSOLUTELY

3. Daenerys Targaryen - Jon stabbed her in the stomach after she burnt down Kings Landing, murdered almost the entire population by burning them to death, and let her soldiers pillage the city and rape and murder the survivors of her fiery destruction. She was a mass murderer, abuser, destroyer of a city, and a tyrant. Deserving? ABSOLUTELY

So yes. You win. The Starks, like everyone in the show, are murders. Because they killed people before. And each one of them had it coming.

Ned would be ashamed and The New Lannisters:

This’ll be quick.

no

NO

NO

No. Ned would be proud of all of his children for coming back to one other and taking back their homes. He would be proud of them surviving their abusers. He would be proud that they continued the quest for independence after Rob. He would be proud they protected the North and defeated the others. Ned Stark would be proud of his children and nephew and would not prefer Dany.

No. They aren’t the new Lannisters. They haven’t done anything like the Lannisters. That’s a false comparison, and it’s stupid.

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Let’s redo the list. Shall we?

Manipulators - Nope! Dany did everything on her own

Schemers - Not really, and if they were then it was justified

Backstabbers - Kinda? Again justified! Against a mass murderer!

Oathbreakers - Nope! Broken promises? Yes. Oaths? Not once.

Hypocrites - Nope!

Xenophobes - Nope! Anyone who thinks so doesn’t understand the word or oppression

Powerhungry - Nope! They don’t want power, and if they do they don’t seize it unjustly.

Murderers - Yep! But they only killed Dany (mass murderer and tyrant), Ramsay (rapist, murderer, sadist, and stealer of their home), and Little Finger (manipulator, muderer, and schemer).

Selfish - Nope! They worry about others

Willing to kill everyone to get what they want - Nope! They don’t kill anyone to get what they want

Ned would be ashamed - Nope! He’d be proud

The New Lannisters - Nope! They’re not!

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I know this post is long, but if you’d like to see part 2 here’s the link!