#the cocktail i ordered was served in like a fucking TANKARD

[navree]

I know you’ve shared your thoughts on Aegon II before but if there’s anything you haven’t or still want to talk about, I’d love to hear it <3 

I just came around to enjoying his character but like others, what he did to Dyana and the child fighting ring makes me apprehensive and I have to check myself and make sure I’m not woobifying him. 

Like, what would you like to see from him during his reign and his relationships with his family now that he’s king. I hope they don’t hammer us with more wild awfulness, (and hopefully he doesn’t lash out at Alicent or Helaena who are going to witness a horrific act of cruelty), to show us how unworthy he is. We won’t know until we know but child fighting rings, really? Most of what I like about Aegon (fan meta aside) seem to be TGC’s own acting choices, apparently the “do you love me line” was improv, so there’s only so much he can do. Thanks!

I know that some people are really dooming about the upcoming seasons and the Greens but I will say, it's not just Team Green who's been part of the backlash to some of the more stupid stuff in Aegon's character, it's been general audiences AND TGC himself. Combining that with the fact that they know there's an audience for the Greens (they only gave Ewan eleven piddly minutes of screentime and he turned that into making him the fandom darling, they know there's a capacity for it, along with as many people appreciating Alicent as they did), I'd imagine that they're not gonna turn those people away with more cartoonish antics, especially the stupid fighting pits. Those especially I think were just there to kinda establish that Mysaria is a champion of the poor, due to her background as a slave (and also I don't remember if they ever specified what Aegon's involvement was in that tomfoolery was because I'll freely admit to skipping over that portion whenever I rewatch the ep).

It's important not to woobify Aegon because, as much as I say that those scenes seem to exist only for the sake of existing and not to really say anything about Aegon other than cartoonish nonsense, they did happen. And there's information to be gleaned from them, especially the Dyana scene, both for Aegon (he's a drunkard and a bit of a lech, as well as clearly inebriated when he attempts to consummate his marriage) and certainly for Alicent, to show why the smallfolk like her and what kind of woman and ruling queen she is and how her own experiences have shaped her and her interactions with other women. But I can choose to focus on the myriad other aspects of his character, and the insights his actor provides into him, and acknowledge that those scenes were poor writing choices I disagree with even if I still think they happened.

I'm unsure as to what I'd want to see from his reign, because his reign is well chronicled in F&B and is incredibly short, and his reign is largely filled with his wartime decisions. I'd like to see his relationship with his council, and with the smallfolk, especially after the coronation and the mythologizing that's gonna come from what happened with him and Alicent and Meleys on the dais, along with the fact that his mother and wife are well known for being adored by the smallfolk. I'd just like to see some of why people would be willing to go along with his reign, especially when compared to the book where they were far more unenthusiastic than they were in the show. I assume he'd have a better relationship with his family than we saw in season 1, especially with Alicent after she proved her love for him in such a big way, but I'd also like to see some good moments with Helaena and especially with his kids, not just to show why he'd be willing to spare Aegon the Younger and Gaemon Pale-hair with his apparent softness for children, but also to an add an extra gut punch in how good everything was going before it goes to shit. And I don't think he'll likely lash out at Alicent or Helaena for anything, since a) Blood and Cheese is gonna happen pretty soon in season 2 and b) there'd be no reason to. Aegon's gonna be nearly as destroyed as Helaena from what happened (and I don't think even he would start castigating his brokenminded wife for how she handled an atrocious situation while in fear for her life, and certainly not his mother who was attacked and then bound and gagged in order to prevent her from interfering at all), and even the source material specifies that he wasn't being cruel to Helaena, he just wasn't capable of providing comfort to her, both because she was just so mentally debilitated by what happened and also because of his own grief. I think if he lashes out at anyone, it'll be Aemond. Speaking of Aemond...

One thing I absolutely want to see is more of Aemond and Aegon. I've talked about them a bit as we've seen in season 1 in the aforementioned Aegon posts, but let's talk about season 2 and what I want. First things first, I want them to expand on the fact that, in the book, Aegon was the only one who wasn't upset with Aemond after Storm's End. I want to see him don his big brother hat and try, in his clumsy way, to attempt to comfort him, to point out that it's not so bad that he killed Luke, and hey he got the Baratheons over to their side so that's good. I want him to take Aemond at his word that it was an accident, to throw him that feast as an Aegon-style attempt to make him feel better. Because I want their relationship to be at its highest point we've seen in the narrative before it comes crashing down. Blood and Cheese is gonna be seen, in universe, as Aemond's fault, and I want that to really fuck with Aegon for a while. I definitely want the family to stand together in the immediate aftermath of it, like from the moment it happens until whatever funeral they hold with Jahaerys, and I'd really like to see Aemond try to be a comfort to his siblings (as I've written in fic, he should tell Aegon, he should be the one to do it) while dealing with his guilt in the process. But as Aegon, as F&B says, drinks and rages and drinks, I want him to start turning over in his mind the fact that it was Aemond's killing of Luke that prompted this horrible thing to happen to his wife, to his children, and I want him to blame Aemond, to his face. To call him kinslayer, to say that he holds him responsible, and I especially want one of those scenes where person A (Aegon) beats person B (Aemond) into the ground while person B refuses to fight back because they think they deserve it. Mayhaps a bit hokey (even tho this show did the stupid White Hart which is peak hokey) but if that beatdown ends with Aegon weeping like a child about the whole thing because he's really just grieving and needs an outlet, that'd be great too.

And crucially, I want Aegon's involvement at Rook's Rest to be a surprise. The source material is oddly explicit in the fact that, if it was only Meleys vs Vhagar, she'd have a chance, but it was adding in Sunfyre that ended up being her doom. So I want it to be primarily Aemond and Criston's plan, and Aemond's prepared to essentially have a kamikaze attack, taking Meleys and Rhaenys down even if it kills him, and maybe it gets close, and then suddenly, in swoops Aegon on Sunfyre. Unexpected but he's there, and he's saving Aemond from Rhaenys and Sunfyre is incurring grievous wounds in the process, before the final plunge happens that kills Rhaenys and injures Aegon. And then, after the attempts at highs after Storm's End and the deep lows of the Blood and Cheese aftermath and the slow attempt to build back up to something normal, when Aegon swoops in to save his little brother and finds himself incapacitated, that's when he names Aemond his Prince Regent. And that's when Aemond takes it, as seriously as he can, and why he refuses to call himself king in the meantime, because Aegon trusted him with this, after everything, and he won't let his family down ever again. @ HBO I don't have a minimum salary requirement if you're hiring, just saying.

The Aemond and Aegon stuff is my main wishcast for season 2, and I've written a Blood and Cheese fic that's my ideal interpretation for how the immediate aftermath can go (still want that beatdown tho, just later in the aftermath), and I'm hoping for everything else I'm proven either right or semi-right. Haven't touched on everything I could talk about with Aegon; there's some sex stuff I've alluded to in previous posts that I almost included here but this is already long and it's an incredibly niche reading of the character, but if y'all wanna hear it lemme know.

[kivaember]

Tumblr Prompt: Memory with a relative

(I accidentally answered private to @lumei-xiv because i’m a fucking moron so pls imagine this as a reply to an ask with the prompt: Memory with a relative

CW: mental health’s discussed quite a bit in this) 

Sometimes, Bluebird felt so out of her depth with the hot mess that was her brother.

It was three in the morning and they were both sitting in the far corner of the Forgotten Knight. Only the hardcore alcoholics and depressed assholes were still mooching about here, keeping quietly to their own tables. It smelled like shitty ale and smoke and Bluebird hated it. She just hated Ishgard in general, with how it was grinding Aza’s spirit into dust and fucking them over with new dramatic shit at each turn. Aza had been getting better when they came to Eorzea, and now…

Her brother always had a drinking problem, but it was manageable. They just made sure to have one of them soberish with him at all times, and they weren’t afraid to wrestle him away from the bottle and bundle him into bed to sleep it off. This time Aza just… well, he’d been drinking, but Bluebird had no idea how much. She just found him like this, sitting at the table holding a half full tankard of ale and just staring at nothing. He hadn’t said a word when she sat down next to him, and he still hadn’t said a word or even moved after her staring at him for the past hour.

She recognised this behaviour, though she hadn’t seen it in a good, long while. When Aza was upset enough, he just… shut off. He blocked everything out and disappeared inside his fucked-up brain, thinking up fucked up things, and coming to fucked up conclusions that were so wildly wrong and damaging that Bluebird just wanted to beat him around the head until she smacked the illogical crazy out of him.

Even after all these years, seeing him at his worst, at his best, she just didn’t understand him. She couldn’t predict his moods or thoughts. One day he’d be fine, then something would just set him off and he’d brood or get quiet or weird and snappish, and it drove her nuts. It wasn’t his fault, though, she knew that. He tried his best, he had coping mechanisms, and they worked most of the time, but other times he had unhealthy coping mechanisms, and just tried to destroy himself and it was… exhausting to try and keep up.

Bluebird had no idea how he was keeping up with it.

It was a little after three when Aza stirred out of his blank staring, and Bluebird smiled tightly when his unfocused gaze slid over to her. “Oh,” he rasped, “Hey.”

“Hey,” Bluebird said breezily, acting like nothing was wrong. This was normally the best way to go, she found, even if she had to smile with gritted teeth and clenched hands, “Rough day?”

Aza made some vague, incoherent noise in the back of his throat, “Yeah.”

“Wanna talk about it?”

Aza looked back at his tankard and said nothing.

Bluebird took in a slow, deep breath, “Okay.”

She refused to sit here in silence again, though. Telegraphing her movements, she scooted her chair towards him, letting the legs scrape noisily over the floor. A few of the loser drunkards gave her irritated looks, but like she gave a fuck what they thought. Aza was looking at her irritably too, which she liked, because it was better than that creepy, blank staring. Irritated Aza was an aware Aza.

“Could you be any noisier?” he muttered.

“Yes,” Bluebird said, settling her chair next to his with a triumphant clatter. She bared her teeth in a wide smile at Aza’s wince, his ears flicking back, “Do you want me to do it louder? I can go back and do it again.”

“Don’t,” Aza groaned, rubbing a hand over his face. He looked drained, “What time’s it?”

“Three or four in the morning, thereabouts,” Bluebird rested an elbow on the table, her cheek pressing against an upturned palm as she observed her brother with heavy-lidded eyes, “You were doing that creepy staring again.”

“It’s not creepy,” Aza said, abruptly pushing his tankard away. Bluebird quickly claimed it for herself, before he changed his mind and decided to chug the whole thing. He looked… alarmingly sober, “And I was… thinking. Deeply.”

“Hmmm…” Bluebird dragged the sceptical hum out, “About?”

“Nothing.”

“You were thinking deeply about… nothing,” Bluebird drawled, “Geeze, Aza, are you saying you’ve got just empty air in between those hairy ears of yours?”

Aza grimaced, and Bluebird smiled a little more sincerely at the childish expression. He hated walking into traps like those.

“C’mon, tell me,” she ordered.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Aza said snippily.

Bluebird poked him in the ribs, carefully gauging his mood. Normally it was difficult to tell if he was in a ‘I will break your hand if you so much as exist in my close proximity’ mood or ‘ugh I’m not in the mood but fine I’ll tolerate you because I love you for some inexplicable reason’ mood until one made physical contact and had to rapidly save their fingers from being broken. Luckily Aza just glowered tiredly at her. Tolerable mood, then.

“Tell me,” she poked him again, grinning when Aza’s upper lip curled enough to bare very sharp fangs at her. It was like baiting an ill-tempered dog, she loved it. But, there was a time and place for Aza-baiting, and now wasn’t it, sadly, “Or I’ll start guessing.”

Aza watched her warily but said nothing.

“Fine,” Bluebird sat back in her seat, tapping her bottom lip. What had happened recently? Too many things, honestly. There was Estinien running for the hills without so much as saying goodbye. Thancred was back, edgier and broodier than ever, and so was Y’shtola, except now blind. Minfillia was one hundred per cent dead (in Bluebird’s expert opinion when someone says ‘she no longer has a physical body as she now serves as the Mothercrystal’s voice’, it’s pretty much the same as ‘she’s pretty fucking dead, bro’). Haurchefant had also joined the Dead Peoples Club, which was a shame because she never got a chance to rematch that arm-wrestling contest with him and win back her title as Having The Buffest Arms In Ishgard. The Warriors of Darkness were now a thing, being edgy tryhards and interrupting sexy dinner dates with sexy Lord Commanders…

Hmmm.

“Those Warriors of Darkness sure are cringey, huh?” she tried, “They’re so transparently bad at being, well, bad.”

Aza’s shoulders relaxed a fraction – damn, her blind shot missed, but she was rewarded with her brother’s mouth curving into a very amused smile, “You think so too? I almost gave myself an aneurysm rolling my eyes at them. So edgy.”

“Clearly not natural born villains like us,” Bluebird scoffed, “You’re more menacing after just waking up with serious bed hair.”

“Crisp says I’m a monster before morning coffee.”

“Ugh, a bitey monster,” Bluebird muttered, bearing many scars on her wrists and hands when she, in her stupid youth, thought it was fun to bait a just awakened Aza. She very quickly learned otherwise, “But they, uh, don’t bother you?”

Aza shook his head and started picking at a scratch on the table, “Well, they do, but… compared to Nidhogg imminently burninating the entirety of Ishgard…”

“Point,” Bluebird said slowly, narrowing her eyes – she skirted close to what was bothering him then, she could sense it, “They haven’t really done that much to us, have they? Well, they almost poisoned Alisaie, yeah, and interrupted your dinner date with the Lord Commander-”

There. Aza twitched.

Bluebird grinned broadly, “That’s it, isn’t it? The dinner date.”

“Bluebird,” Aza said in a very strained tone, “Drop it, please.”

“No,” she dug her heels in, scenting blood. When Bluebird saw weakness, she went for it no matter what, “Now, let me think on why you would be sitting here, sulking-”

“I’m not sulking!”

“-after having a dinner date with the hottest bachelor in Ishgard. From what I heard, you two were having a good time… even flirting, according to some…”

“Bluebird,” Aza hissed, starting to go a rather damning shade of pink. Bluebird’s grin eased into a very lazy smirk.

The thing was, while Bluebird didn’t understand Aza, she did know him. While she couldn’t follow the fucked up twists to his mind to see how he came to his stupid conclusions, she could kind of guess things or recognise certain behaviours and tells. This… the last time she saw him like this was when he and Haurchefant got half-drunk and slept together, and Aza had a near meltdown when he realised he liked him. Really liked him.

Aza was fine with casual flings… in a way. He was very particular, and only on certain days when he was in certain moods, but he did have casual sex. But that was it: it was casual. Anything resembling a relationship was treated as some terrifying thing that needed to be handled like it was an unstable bomb. Aza had too many issues to pin it on one specific thing, but long story short he had a veritable cocktail of traumas and issues that meant Aza and romantic relationships were as compatible as oil and water.

Still, Aza got cravings, she supposed. Everyone had a desire to be loved and cherished, even abused, scared children like him.

“He seems decent and he really likes you,” she said, gentling her tone, “I bet he’s the kind to write disgusting love poetry though.”

Aza looked away from her, putting his elbows on the edge of the table and burying his face in his hands.

“I can’t,” he whispered into his palms.

“Why can’t you?” Bluebird asked, then grimaced because she could think of several reasons why, “I mean, aside from the obvious stuff like, he’s the Lord Commander and blah blah blah?”

Aza dropped his hands, puffing out a short breath as he muttered, “Those are pretty big reasons why.”

“Well, yeah…” Bluebird trailed off. Right, the Lord Commander was more firmly in the public eye than Haurchefant ever was. While one could ignore what some bastard son of a noble was doing under his own roof out in the frozen countryside, the Lord Commander was always scrutinised and needed to keep a very impeccable reputation what with his opponents keen to sling mud at him. Taking a Miqo’te to bed would… ruin that, wouldn’t it?

“Just drop it,” Aza said, looking so worn down at the edges that Bluebird didn’t have the heart to needle him further, “I know it won’t go anywhere. So, don’t… please don’t speak to me about it anymore.”

Bluebird hesitated. It kind of rubbed her wrong to let Aza give up before he even tried but, she was also painfully aware that pursing Aymeric would hurt him too, if it went all wrong. Aymeric clearly liked him, you’d have to be fucking blind to miss the looks he gave Aza, the way his voice dropped an octave when he spoke to him – but Aymeric was also so utterly devoted to Ishgard that he was willing to kill his best friend to save it. If Aymeric had to choose a potential romance with the Warrior of Light, and serving Ishgard, Bluebird knew which one he’d choose.

Maybe it was for the best, for Aza to give up on this one?

This was so beyond her abilities to puzzle out, Bluebird thought exhaustedly. It was too early in the morning to try and figure it out. She’ll hassle Crisp with it later…

“Fine, I’ll drop it,” she said, mentally tacking on for now.

After all, while she was out of her depth dealing with Aza’s bullshit, that didn’t mean she shirked from it. As frustrating and confusing he could be, he was still her little brother… one that she genuinely wished to see happily in love with someone so they could help him out too. Bluebird was just one woman here, and she could only satisfy his emotional needs in one way. So, maybe, they could try with Aymeric...? Possibly, if she...

“C’mon,” she said, nudging her brother’s shoulder, “Let’s get you to bed. You can cry over your pitiful love life tomorrow.”

“Tactful as ever,” Aza grumbled, but he looked relieved at her dropping the issue.

How cute. If only he knew what she had planned.