I Saw A Tiktok Comparing Paul Atreides To Daenerys And It Made Me Want To Gouge Out My Eyes And Break

I saw a tiktok comparing Paul Atreides to Daenerys and it made me want to gouge out my eyes and break my phone.

I just don't understand how Dany and Paul are comparable in any way. For one thing, Dany's ending in GOT only happened because of bad writing. There's no foreshadowing, no buildup, or reason for her fall.

Disclaimer: I haven't actually read the Dune books yet, just watched the movies and read Wikipedia stuff. So anyone who has read Dune, please please please correct me if I'm misunderstanding things.

From what I saw in the movies and read from secondhand sources, Paul was never meant to be a hero. Sure, he was a good kid, but his arc isn't that of a fallen hero. The moment Paul chose to exploit the fremen and the Bene Gesserit's false prophecy, he solidified himself as anything but a hero. He was set on vengeance and survival.

Paul is a fascinating character, but he's not a hero in any way, and wasn't at any point in his story (to my understanding).

Dany is a hero, whether you like it or not. From book/season one, she's been protecting those weaker than her to the best of her ability. She sacrifices her own desires and ambitions for the sake of others.

...this Mother of Dragons, this Breaker of Chains, is above all a rescuer. (ADWD - Tyrion VI)

Dany chooses to prioritize the innocent and the oppressed in her mission. Paul chooses to lead a holy war that will kill billions of innocents.

They're not comparable characters, because they're very different archetypes and communicate very different things from the authors. Dany is an underdog and someone who fights for justice while maintaining her gentleness. Paul is someone who basically embodies "for the greater good", sacrificing billions for the future.

Dany is written to be a hero, Paul is not. Dany is only turned from being a hero because of bad writing and sexism. Paul's descent is well written and clearly foreshadowed. Paul's story is what D&D wanted to gaslight the viewers into believing Dany's was. Unfortunately, that seems to have worked for certain parts of this fandom. Also, the poster had a Sansa pfp, so I think it's easy to tell why they view Dany this way.

Paul and Dany's characters aren't even in the same ballpark as each other. Comparing them is stupid.

First off: I did read the book, I don't know where you got that I somehow didn't? Literally everything I said is from the book, you just seem to not like the facts of the story lmao.

"...You were a fool to come alone." [Aemond]

"Were I not alone, you would not have come," said Daemon.

"Yet you are, and here I am."

Fire and Blood: The Dying of the Dragons - Rhaenyra Triumphant

Wow, look how brave Aemond is: he only came to fight because he knew Daemon would be alone. Such an amazingly brave man. And that's not all: the whole story is full of Aemond's daring deeds, like killing an unarmed thirteen year old envoy, and burning defenseless villages. What a paragon of bravery and honor, no wonder you love him!

Moving on, Aemond wasn't the threat, Vhagar was. Daemon was concerned with getting rid of Vhagar permanently, as she was the biggest threat to the Blacks. Aemond was just the unhinged bitch boy who hid from Daemon until he was sure he was alone.

Yes, Daemon did make it a suicide mission, because to kill a dragon of Vhagar's size is extremely difficult and usually costs the killer their life. We saw this with Addam Velaryon when he went to kill Vermithor, though he wasn't as big as Vhagar, he was still one quite a bit older than Seasmoke. If Daemon knew he could draw out Aemond without their dragons, he would have, but Aemond was too much of a coward to meet him without Vhagar.

Also where the fuck did you get the idea that Aemond was unarmed? He literally came in his armor ready to fight, that typically means having a goddamn sword. If Aemond came to a fight without a sword then he's a complete idiot as well as a coward. Just because he had chained himself down and didn't think to go for the sword, doesn't mean he was unarmed.

GRRM has claimed Daemon as his favorite Targaryen to write in F&B. He wrote him to be a great warrior, so it's not me and other TB stans calling Daemon a badass, it's GRRM himself. If you don't like how the story was written, go cry to George.

As for Jaehaerys: how is a sword fight comparable to a fight on dragons? That's like comparing hand-to-hand with an archery contest. If Daemon had met Aemond in a sword fight, Daemon would have won much easier.

The reason why Daemon had the victory was because he chose to die, Aemond was killed. The choice is the defining factor here. Aemond was killed, Daemon let himself die, those are two very different fates. I don't know how else to explain this to you, but in my experience all Aemond stans lack media literacy so it probably doesn't matter. GRRM himself could tell you this and you'd still be bitching about how Aemond died a coward's death.

Just saw a tiktok about how Aemond dies in the Battle Above the Gods Eye and the comments are full of Greenies complaining lmao. Here's the tiktok for those who can't/don't want to follow the link:

The comments are full of people going, "Well Daemon died in that battle too😠." Like bro (gn), Daemon was in his fifties during this fight and Vhagar was over twice the size of Caraxes; it's not that impressive that Daemon didn't survive. It wasn't even Aemond who killed Daemon, that was gravity lmao. Aemond just sat there looking scared.

TG stans will always try their best to minimize just how pathetic their faves truly are. Even when they're admitting that Aemond was being stupid, they try to defend him.

☠️

https://www.tumblr.com/littlemisssatanist/743617554466144256/on-the-topic-of-me-being-team-green?source=share

I love how this person's excuse for "I'm not a misogynist" is that they take the woman's side in the AITAH tiktok videos lmao. Like this person is out here preaching media literacy while misunderstanding Rhaenyra and her story fundamentally.

This person is just regurgitating the same old TG bullshit. "Rhaenyra stole Baela's birthright. Rhaenyra had bastards. Rhaenyra wanted to marry a man of her own choosing. Rhaenyra wasn't a perfect modern feminist. Rhaenyra didn't do enough. Rhaenyra didn't roll over and take it. Rhaenyra went to Dragonstone. Rhaenyra thought she was the exception." But also "Alicent is a victim therefore everything she did is excusable and ok. It's ok that Alicent actively endangered her children over and over again. Alicent upholding the patriarchy constantly is ok because she's a victim. Criston Cole isn't an incel, Rhaenyra victimized him." Like do TG stans not have any original thoughts?

This person says she hates being called a misogynist, fine. But she's blatantly holding Rhaenyra to ridiculous standards. She defends Alicent for all her deplorable actions in later life because "she's a victim", acknowledges that Rhaenyra is a victim but expects her to be a proto-feminist and condemns her for not.

Another example of the double standard OP sets against Rhaenyra is how she calls her "stupid" like ten times during the post. However, she defends Alicent's objectively dumb decision to "protect" her children by causing a war and teaching them treason. Like, the fact that OP can't see how ridiculous these arguments are is...amazing honestly.

The fact is, the Greens are fundamentally sexist. They usurped Rhaenyra because of her gender, Otto literally admitted it at the beginning of the show. Literally none of the hoops she or any other TG stans and Rhaenyra antis jump through to justify the Greens change the facts of the story. It doesn't matter that they don't like Rhaenyra, it doesn't matter that they hate Daemon, it doesn't matter that they love Alicent. The fact is Rhaenyra was usurped because of her gender. She could have been literally perfect and it still would have happened.

A final thing I want to touch on is how OP condemned Laenor for not impregnating Rhaenyra? Like OP says she's queer, so I would think that she would understand Laenor's situation, but apparently not.

HOTD established that Rhaenyra and Laenor tried to have kids and couldn't. That implies that Laenor just couldn't do it, whether it's infertility or he simply couldn't have sex with Rhaenyra. Like I'm sorry, but blaming Laenor for the situation his parents forced him into, knowing that he was gay, is fucked up.

OP wrote a long, self-righteous post about how TB stans are sooo wrong and Rhaenyra is soooo awful. However, anything criticizing Alicent is sexist and OP is always on women's sides ok? Except of course when a man willingly sleeps with a drunk teenager and decides to hate her because she won't throw away her life and safety to soothe his pride.

Today (April 8) is The International Romani Day. The Romani people (also called Rromani, Romany, Roma) are Europe's largest ethnic minority with an estimated 10-14 million people, though knowing exact figures is hard because the Romani often live on the fringes of society and many Romanis choose not to disclose their ethnic identity. The Romani are unique among peoples in the sense that they've never identified with any territory or claimed they have a homeland where they came from. Their origin was somewhat a mystery for a long time (the slur "gypsy" comes from Europeans thinking they came from Egypt) but later genetic research has traced their ancestry to northern India and more specifically to the casteless Dalits. The Romani arrived in southeastern Europe by the 1300s and in western Europe by the 1400s, and in modern times the live in every continent.

The Romani experience a very high level of discrimination and marginalization and are among the most persecuted groups of people in the world. The entire history of the Romani people has been filled with ostracization, deportations, slavery, and systematic abuse ranging from segregation to forced sterilizations. Anti-Romani sentiment reached its peak during the Holocaust when 25%-50% of the European Romani were killed in the genocide called Porajmos, and some countries' Romani populations were destroyed completely. After the war the communist Central and Eastern European states tried to forcibly assimilite and suppress their Roma populations. In the present day anti-romani racism continues to be extremely common, with the studies showing most Europeans (especially Eastern Europeans) have unfavorable views of Romani people, hate crimes against them being common, and many of them living in poverty and marginalized.

People have many misconceptions about the Romani that often trace all the way back to the Middle Ages. The Romani are often confused with other itinerant groups like Irish travellers which are culturally and ethnically a completely separate group. Despite being almost synonymous with the nomadic lifestyle most Romani nowadays are not migratory, and with those who are it's often not by choice but because of persecution or homelessness. Most Romani are Christians or Muslims and they don't usually practice witchcraft, and if they do it's never to try to curse of hex anyone. There is a prevailing conception that Romanis are seductive and hypersexual despite that Romani communities tend to be fairly sexually conservative. Fetishization harms especially Roma women who are often victims of sexual violence. While it may be true that there's more crime among the Romani populations (there are conflicting studies about this) majority of Romanis are not thiefs or otherwise criminals, and it's important to understand that the crime is a direct result of poverty and deprivation, with it often being almost impossible for the Romani people to get jobs or higher education and being generally rejected by the society around them. The Romani themselves are frequently victims of crime, for example being extremely overrepresentated among the trafficked people.

Despite all this, the Roma people have persisted for hundreds of years and managed to retain their culture and identity. The Romani populations around the world have very diverse cultures and traditions but have many similarities too. A very high value placed on the family and deep love that the Romani people have for each other is something i think has helped them to survive. Despite all the challenges i'm optimistic about the future and i believe that the Romani will continue to survive and the things will get better even though it may take time.

D&D: "It was chilling how calm [Dany] was about her brother being killed," and using this reaction to her abuser's death (the same one who had just threatened to cut out her unborn child from her womb) as one of her "first steps to madness". Ahem, also D&D on Sansa killing her abuser Ramsay:

 “At the end of Battle of the Bastards, when Sophie does a walk away. You don’t actually see the death; you see some of it in the background. You don’t really see the death, but what you do see is Sansa's smile. And it was all in one shot,” he said.

"We did it, you know, seven times. I remember standing there with Dan [Weiss]. When she finally nailed it on the seventh or eighth time, it was just that feeling of, ‘That’s so epic.’ Sophie was so good, and when she got that shot, I felt like, ‘I can now die happy.' Maybe I should have died happy right then."

And we all know what D&D gave unto Sansa in the end (ie. a crown, a kingdom, and of course "the smartest person I ever met") while Dany got... yeah.