Me Sitting Down To Discuss Asoiaf With Targaryen Criticals, Sansa Understanders, Theon Enthusiasts, Elia

me sitting down to discuss asoiaf with targaryen criticals, sansa understanders, theon enthusiasts, elia lovers, rhaegar haters, cersei scholars, stannisdavos girls and infertile conqueror truthers

No, but if we stop to think about it, indeed the set up for the dance is so weak, specially when George had a better set up right then and there that he solved with the council of 101: Rhaenys vs Viserys. The daughter of the eldest son and heir vs the son of the second son. This should have been the configuration of the dance.

Then he had the second best set up: Rhaenyra vs Daemon. The daughter of the king vs the brother of the king.

He screwed over both scenarios and went with the worst one, one that would never really make much sense, especially when you consider the reasons why Rhaenyra was chosen as an heir (to avoid Daemon ascending to the throne). Not only Viserys fixed this problem by marrying again and having not only one, but three sons… Rhaenyra went to marry Daemon. Like, there’s no realistic scenario where she wouldn’t have been disinherited right then and there, or where the realm wouldn’t rally behind Aegon instead of her, especially when she fucked off to Dragonstone instead of trying to assert herself as heir and future queen in KL.

George just made really bad choices overall, that’s why the dance feels kind of weird and some plot points are very forced to fit into the narrative instead of feeling like natural consequences of what was happening.

I spoke about this on twitter, so I will speak about it here as well. I've had issues with making Rhaena and Baela (and Laena) black because I felt that the show very much underutilized them as characters and essentially made the plot devices for Daemon and Rhaenyra without giving them agency outside of those two. In general, their presences are heavily reduced to make them building blocks for the whit characters.

So this issue with Nettles’s arc being given to Rhaena is even more unsettling because these two are both Black women, who deserve their own separate narratives. This thing where they make characters Black only to reduce their plot importance is already insulting enough, but ruining storylines for two Black women is just lazy and disrespectful.

Rhaena deserves her own narrative. She deserves to be the last Targ woman who was able to hatch a dragon egg before Daenerys, her connection to Daenerys is supposed to be prophetical, so let it be. Let her have her own character and her own arc. They are both the mother of dragons, so let's not suddenly forget that. And having a Black woman as the predecessor to that title is important.

Nettles deserves to exist. Don’t erase a Black woman’s whole existence just to lazily slap it on another one who has an established arc. It's important to showcase a non-targ able to actually ride a dragon and tame one and to also show her importance to the Dance. She is a player even if she doesn't have Valaryian blood in her. And she is Black! That is important too.

Black characters shouldn’t be interchangeable, and making a character Black shouldn’t come at the expense of completely ruining the plot or taking away their agency in a narrative sense. 

I am a graphic designer by education and profession. Looking for modifications and manipulations in graphics is my hobby. You can see the most in graphics when they are properly exposed. For example, using the exposure tool in Photoshop. I set the sliders to: first one: + 13.65, second one: +0.0096, third one: +1.65 and this is what my eyes saw.

Each application has its own way of encoding images and text. Here, apparently, when writing text, the application created transparent rectangular frames under each text, which you can clearly see below.

But I noticed something strange in some screenshots. Text without such borders. Text I think was added in a graphics program. There are only pixels around it.

Here, in turn, I noticed a different relationship. When the text comes from the original screenshot, the pixels around the text surround the text so that it floats on long letters like "d,t,l,b,k". However, somehow magically in others, the pixels around them are perfectly even and take the shape of a rectangle.

These screenshots come from the wonderful houseoftheassholes.

Now let's look at the couple of screenshots Em published. You can clearly see after I overexposed the area that she blurred in the program to obscure the data. Apart from that? Clean screenshot in very good quality. Eveything looks the same.

In graphics, nothing happens without a reason. The applications are created automatically and operate on the basis of numbers and calculations. They don't make mistakes, it's impossible for one text to be displayed one way and another another.

I haven't checked all the screenshots because I don't have the strength to do it anymore. I just felt that as a graphic designer I owed it to everyone to check it out.

No one told me to do this or asked me to do it. This is my personal opinion on my personal blog. I leave it to you to decide what you think about it.

POV characters: AFFC

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[agot]

[acok]

[asos]

Rhaenyra’s genuinely an unlikable character when you really get to the root of it. Not because she’s coddled, arrogant and entitled, but because aside from that she’s so…boring. She has no unique traits or qualities that make her really stand out, we don’t really know her true motives or intentions behind anything outside of just being short sited and mistakenly believing her position as heir will be enough to shield her from consequences and her complacency fueled by arrogance.

Plus we don’t really know the reasons behind wanting to rule outside of “i will be queen because daddy says so”. Why does she want to be queen? What kind of ruler does she intend to be? What legacy did she wish to leave behind? Entitlement aside, without these things being made clear, it’s impossible to really root for her when you don’t know what they intend to do or stand for as a ruler.

Part of the problem is that we’re often told that she would complain about her duties but we are never shown her actually doing so or told why she does it either, which is a major issue with hotd as a whole. Too much telling but not enough showing to add context to situations, especially when the context was present in the source material.

In comparison, we are shown glimpses of what lead to alicent being how she was in later years which made me gravitate to her more though i have some grievances with her character, i don’t find her boring because we at least have some understanding of her character. Meanwhile rhaenyra just gives the impression of “I’m technically the protagonist so you’re supposed to like me” which…is honestly not something i can blame on her as a character entirely but on bad writing.