Get Em Horizon-verizon!!

Get em horizon-verizon!!

I find it interesting how the Targaryens' flaws and issues are made out to be all their house is and what make them "evil" in certain fans' eyes. Meanwhile the Starks can do no wrong lmao.

The fact that so many people think the Starks are honorable anticolonial fighters and the pinnacle of morality is absolutely insane, they literally built a massive wall to isolated a bunch of people they considered as “savages”, they hunted and slaughtered the Free Folk, the Children of the Forest, giants, exterminated whole houses and clans and took their daughters as “prizes” while conquering the North, etc. The Blackwoods were originally from the North and ruled most of the wolfswood, before being driven out by the Starks and forced to flee south. The Starks are the OG COLONIZERS in ASOIAF.

Even this did not give Winterfell dominion over all the North. Many other petty kings remained, ruling over realms great and small, and it would require thousands of years and many more wars before the last of them was conquered. Yet one by one, the Starks subdued them all, and during these struggles, many proud houses and ancient lines were extinguished forever. — The World of Ice and Fire – The North: The Kings of Winter.

I recently finished a Tiktok series that will probably just be as lost to the internet if we lose TikTok but I had to get out in response to a particular creator who bashes Rhaenyra while also proclaiming themselves as black stans. I think they are really more black stans because they hate Alicent personally and feels the thrill of the side-taking, but that's neither here nor there. 😏

Tiktok

#stitch with @fantasticfrankey I won't be restitching the prior video, that would give me more work. And I don't want this series to take as much time as my Rhaena Queen Dowager one. #targaryen #targaryens #thetargaryens #westerosihistory #westeros #asoiaf #asoiaftiktok #fyp #dragons #westerostiktok #rhaenyratargaryen #alicenthightower #danceofthedragons #fireandblood #houseofthedragon #hotd

To quote one of my mutuals here [rhaenin]:

It just rings so familiar to the way so many people view the other in real life. Because the Targaryens are overtly, and intentionally written as the other. It's the reason so many people identify with them, and it's the very same reason that other people vilify them. They're not just the in-universe other to the 'default' culture established in the text, but they're also given characteristics that we, the reader and audience, can recognize as other and even sometimes anathema to Western Christian culture. To paraphrase the annoying people that love to cite Ramsay when they feel like it: If you look at a morally complex family surrounded by other morally complex families in a morally complex world in a story that's famed for seeking to challenge your underlying assumptions, and think that their association with fire and brimstone is meant to signify their singular satanic evilness, rather than say... challenge that very Eurocentric assumption, you haven't been paying attention. This vilification mindset where the Targaryens are the singular evil of Westeros is so common to people who seem to want to consume ASoIaF without engaging with the criticisms of the Eurocentric worldview of history at the heart of it. And they end up using the convenient “others” to project all the wrongs of that world onto so they don't need to examine it any deeper. ........... It comes from the same place with how someone pointed out that the baffling bastardphobia that would have medieval peasants giving the side eye is so often people jumping at the chance to “cosplay” as bigots who base their arguments in misogyny and bio-essentialism. Because it's an acceptable channel to indulge in that mindset in a way that they'd often otherwise question, or at least hold back from expressing out of caution.

sara hess:

daemon:

crowns rhaenyra, hold her hand when she sees Alicent for the first time since she cut her, touching her tummy while she’s pregnant with visenya, holding laena’s hands when she’s pregnant with their son, deleted scene of him hugging Baela and Rhaena after laena’s death, deleted scene of him grieving visenya, him getting kiss on the cheek from Baela while she’s teaching her high valyrian, him helping Viserys to the throne and putting on his crown

also sara hess:

oh and

NEITHER DID SHE

The Demonizing of Change

A trend I've noticed in modern media is that many stories have the message of "protect the status quo". Whether it's a Marvel movie or a fantasy book, the fact that so often the villains are the only ones who fight to change society remains the same.

We all know the story: they were hurt by the system's flaw(s) and so they rose up to destroy that harmful system and in the process destroyed themselves. I'm not saying that this character type is wrong or bad (definitely overused imo), but the framing of the narrative and the protagonists is the issue.

The narrative typically shows the villain's first wrong doing to be the act of rebelling against the system. From the moment the person chose to reject the harmful system, they were in the wrong, or so the narrative frames it. Meanwhile, the protagonist may question and see injustice but they never fight it; it's just accepted and blindly defended. What's worse is the audience chooses to completely accept this telling and sides with the harmful regime the protagonist defends.

I find that some of the most drastic examples of these issues are Daenerys in GOT and the Darkling in the Grishaverse/SaB.

Daenerys Targaryen

One thing I want to specify before I go into this is that Dany's GOT ending is purely bad writing. It's not foreshadowed or justified in any way, so I'll be addressing how D&D tried to frame her past after S8e6 aired and how her antis interpret her.

According to D&D, we should see the beginning of Dany's "madness arc" from the very first season. Namely how she reacted to Viserys' death. While this isn't Dany rejecting a harmful system, her choosing to not defend Viserys (why would she??) is also her choosing to leave behind the cycle of abuse of her early life. It also sets the precedent of Dany killing/allowing the deaths of evil men.

Speaking of evil men, D&D also tried to paint Dany's campaign against slavery as a sign of her "megalomania and madness". This is where we get to the actual fighting against the system. Dany is leading a slave revolt and forcefully overthrowing the masters and the oppressive governments.

The way D&D tried to spin it was that Dany was wrong for using violence, and Tyrion's peaceful method was more successful. Except Dany did try peace in Meereen, it didn't work. She made concessions, she made agreements, she locked up her dragons and they weren't working. That's the whole point of her last chapter in ADWD.

However, the show chose to make it so Dany was failing because she was "too violent" and ultimately made the freedmen hate her. This choice, a clear deviation from the book, is the beginning of them trying to make Dany fall into the trope of "as bad as those you're fighting". In her fight to end slavery, she becomes as oppressive as the masters.

Which is just blatantly wrong. We see in the show that the freedmen are still free, they sit in her councils, they can come to her with their complaints and she listens. Dany is a queen, not a master. The show was already trying to gaslight its audience into believing the opposite of what they wrote. The same goes for her supposed violence. The violence she exerts is almost always towards the slavers, except when she executed Mossador for murder. That was her carrying out justice, why that was portrayed as a bad thing is beyond me.

The implications of the choices D&D made in adapting Dany's Meereen arc are very disturbing. They're basically saying that systematic and centuries old oppression should never be addressed with violence. The people who actively fight oppression are just as bad as the oppressors. If you can't magically fix a system that's been flawed for centuries immediately, you're a tyrant.

The choice to resolve the arc by having Tyrion come in with some great peaceful solution was plain stupid and sexist. We have seen in history that trying to unobtrusively phase out slavery doesn't work. By leaving the elite slave owners in peace, they are allowed to simply find ways to get around or wear down the changes. We see that in ADWD in Meereen by the way. Also the whole idea that a wise man had to come and fix the irrational woman's problem is so gross.

So basically: D&D took an arc about fighting oppression and learning that concessions only continue the cycle of violence and made it into a story about how violence is bad and you can actually just reason with slavers.

The disgusting ideas continue in season eight, where Dany torches KL for no reason and is put down like a rabid dog. Dany is the only character who wants to end oppression in this show. She's the only person to see and experience the suffering of the oppressed and chooses to do something about it. Season seven is full of her talking about leaving the world a better place and breaking the wheel. But in season eight "breaking the wheel" is turned into th deranged battle cry of her desired empire.

Let me restate that: the one character who fought to end systematic oppression is turned into the "true oppressor". Dany's desire to tear down the system that the entire show established as being unjust and awful is made into a sign of madness. Even in season seven, people were rolling their eyes at her talking about breaking the wheel.

Meanwhile, the protagonists of the show end it benefitting from the same system that tortured them the whole time. Westerosi society is shit, but the show ends glorifying the sexist, homophobic, classist, and feudalist kingdoms. They even laugh at Samwell Tarly when he suggests destroying the monarchy. All this sends the message that embracing the system is good, rebellion bad, and shut the fuck up if you're not happy.

Dany was reduced to a cautionary tale against fighting the system. I've seen people frame it as "seeking power is bad", but that doesn't make sense, as characters like Sansa actively seek power and are rewarded by the narrative. Dany's mistake was trying to change the world, rather than supporting it as it is.

The Darkling

The Darkling is a very different character from Dany; he's an actual villain. Aleksander is someone who has already reached the "become what you hate most" part of the trope, so he spends the whole story committing atrocities. The issue with his portrayal is the fact that the narrative and protagonists never address his very real reasons for fighting in the first place.

The grisha as a group are persecuted all throughout Ravka, they have been for centuries. The whole reason Aleksander begins his fight was to protect his people. By the time the series begins, the grisha are more protected, though only because they have become weapons of the state. That was only through Aleksander's mechanisations.

Aleksander became a villain in his attempts to save his people, making him a tragic character. So he has perfectly fallen into the trope, and, unfortunately, so do the protagonists. Alina and her allies all have seen and suffered under the cruelty of the Ravkan monarchy, however, they quickly dismiss just how awful it is. By the end of the story, the Darkling has become, in their eyes, the sole perpetrator of evil in Ravka.

There are no attempts made to rectify the constant damage done by the Apparat, in fact he's left to run free. Alexander Lanstov and Tatiana Grimjer are simply shipped off to a private island where they never are made to pay for the awful things they have done. There are no political reforms done to ensure the safety of grisha in the future; they're basically relying on the goodwill Zoya and Alina have bought with the people.

So basically, the minor villains who all had no reason to be completely atrocious receive basically no punishment from the narrative. Meanwhile, Aleksander, who had very valid reasons for wanting to overthrow the government, is ultimately given a fate worse than death. All his reasons for hating the Ravkan government and the power it has are ignored, even though the story set up that he's not wrong. The resolution of the story leaves the grisha just as, if not more, vulnerable to the prejudice and hatred of the world than they were before.

The narrative is communicating that Aleksander rising up for his people is worse than the centuries of corrupt Lanstovs. Aleksander is worse than the man who stirs up religious fanaticism and exploits the people through it. Yes, Aleksander did horrible things, but so did every other antagonist in the series, but he's somehow the worst because...well, he's grisha.

That's the only other difference between him and the others, aside from his motives. So either Bardugo is supporting the in-universe prejudice against grisha or she's saying rising up against an oppressive system is wrong. I don't expect her or any other author to have complex political and social commentaries in her story. However, she chose to create a world containing those elements and a main character who suffers from them. She chose to make the issues with the system have a prominent place in the story. And she chose to ignore them in the end.

Aleksander did awful things in the name of a just cause, this creates a complex moral issue that the story just never addresses. The established injustices and sanctioned atrocities by the Lanstovs are all ignored in favor of bringing down the dangerous rebel. That kind of message is pretty fucked up. Yes, Nikolai is a better man than his father, but what about his descendants? The propaganda of the Apparat and his church are extremely strong, it's only a matter of time before that propaganda once again starts turning people against grisha. The hatred of grisha is still embedded into Ravkan society.

Aleksander was the only character who was actually set on protecting and bettering the lives of the grisha. His original mission was still extremely important, no matter what he devolved to. The fact that the protagonists just blatantly dismissed just how dangerous Ravka still is for grisha is frustrating.

The treatment of both Dany and Aleksander by their writers and narratives show a hatred/mistrust of rebellion against the status quo, no matter how atrocious it is. The message of the trope is that people who fight against a system are worse than the system itself. I'm not saying that was Bardugo's intention (D&D I'm much less sure about though), but the way both the Darkling and Dany were written combined with the endings of the stories support that idea.

Is it just me or does TG's argument that Criston Cole is a victim of Rhaenyra seem like really demeaning? Like the fact that their argument hinges on the fact that Cole is played by a poc/is Dornish. Pretty much everything I've seen from them about that scene is how Rhaenyra, who is white, took advantage of a defenseless poc. It's just infantilizing him purely due to his race. I might be reading too much into it, after all every TG argument is them grasping at straws, but this one just really rubs me the wrong way.

@pessimisticpigeonsworld

"Infantilization":

over-simplifying explanations, using demeaning nicknames (e.g., "sweetheart" or "honey"), or suggesting that the infantilized person would not understand a topic without reason to treat a person as if they were a prepubescent child with no experience whatsoever in worldly matters treat (someone) as a child or in a way which denies their maturity in age or experience

Yes, it should be demeaning, but it is away of them applying victimhood where there was none in either show or book. Its more uwuing him bec he's a man than PoC, as he's not PoC (the Dornish are "spicy" "whites" in-universe, "olive" skin is a trait many Mediterranean Europeans have). Even if he was, it'd still be more bc he's a man then bc he's PoC. to them.

They make as if Criston was totally helpless when he is both Kingsguard and a man where the girl approaching him is a girl in a court that some think she should never be heir on account of her gender, and women/girls both already have to fear their entire reputation being ruined by mere well placed rumors (and have less chance of marriage, bc marriage was the way they most likely could stay economically secure for their futures). Criston could threaten Rhaenyra quite easily to make some gains on her. Or get into an affair with her, sleep with her while she's inebriated, and threaten her and she'd be the one blamed by both her father ad larger society! She'd be labeled the seductress largely, and Viserys would, like he did abt Daemon, that Rhaenyra's "desires" or "allowing" to have her virtue ruined even just by name and repute hurts herself & the monarchy. Viserys explicitly tells her the truth doesn't matter, only the image in epi 4. Really, the only good thing that we can draw from his image-loving self is how he decides to protect her and her kids…but even then a lot of it is also so he retains his chosen heir…and yet it's is true that he genuinely loves her and his grandkids [bk and show]. (What a mess)

So it's not really the same sort of infantilization people commit against grown women to make them seem weak and thus "need" a man to "guide" them, but closer to the sort of "infantilization" that is designed to give white women the "privilege" of being seen as the eternal victims who can do no wrong as well as masters of others' bodies (Cole can demand Rhaenyra to run off with him & abandon eveything bc she "owes" him; she can't request him to sleep with her when she teased him). And I mean that it mirrors this by the green stans' intent, not necessarily the nature of the infantilization that is not infantilization--green stans intend to make Cole seem helpless and cutely dumb in order to make Rhaenyra seem a predator and that become the lynchpin of her being bad for rulership. Bec she somehow reinforces all that classism, instead of Alicent/the greens reinforcing all that classist-sexism for personal, baselsss "revenge" and order-keeping.

It's the green stans doing something that I learned concerning peoples switching between ideas or phrases in bad faith to support another contradictory thing--something integral to bigoted talking points.

The "human heart in conflict with itself"

More often than not, when I see or experience an exchange with somebody arguing that Jon and Dany are "more interesting" as enemies/"rivals", that person ends up being a Jonsa.

For instance, this is a classic view:

It's funny how many who would identify themselves as a Jonsa fan would say the same of Jonerys: "more interesting" as enemies, as "rivals", as antagonists. No "stale bread conflictless romance" for Jonsas!... Unless it's Jonsa, that is. These are the same people saying Jon will come back hyper fixated on protecting Sansa, reset his personal preferences and characteristics, will play "Beast" to Sansa's "Beauty", the "Prince Eric" to Sansa's "Ariel", and will literally manifest Sansa's happily ever after (or Sansa must sadly and gracefully let go of it and her love Jon as a selfless sacrifice for the independence of the North...) Jonsa fantasies aside, what exactly makes an antagonistic relationship between two strangers "interesting"? What dynamic exists here? It's just, at its most passionate, hate. There's no contrasting emotion, no push and pull, no exchange with another set of feelings. It's just one thing -- bad. Even if Jon found out he and Ramsay were blood related, I don't think Jon is going to have much of an inner conflict over killing the guy. This is the only "humanity" Jonsas allow Jon where Dany is concerned (a bit of shame of kinslaying), which I think is telling. More telling still is how Jonsas want Jon to deal with this and Dany: to sexually exploit, use, abuse, deceive Dany before deciding to coldly kill & dispose of her. And this is one of their leading theories. Most, if not all, of their theories depend on Dany going dark/"mad" -- they seem to involve more of Dany than Sansa. Sansa's chapters have both positive and negative contexts when 'sweet' is used but who's going around claiming how this means Sansa will be betrayed by a lover and killed by his hand? Yet, for Dany, this means Jon will betray her with a knife to the back during their intimacy so he can marry Sansa.

The word 'shadow' has been used 657 times in ASOIAF throughout all POVs and chapters -- it has been used descriptively, to convey mystery, uncertainty, it can be physical blocked light or a metaphor. In Jon's case, it's often used in terms of his mysterious/uncertain/unknown identity. But who cares? When it comes to Dany, it now means betrayal and ulterior motive and Pol!Jon. Jon will betray her with a knife to the back during their intimacy so he can marry Sansa. Sansa throws a feast for the nobles with a lemon cake "just for her" while famine spreads across the country? Queen. Dany feels hungry in the middle of nowhere, malnourished, and feverish? And the wolf cry didn't stop her from being hungry? She's Aerys come again. That's why it'll be a-ok when Jon will betray her with a knife to the back during their intimacy so he can marry Sansa.

But seriously, I don't have any expectation that Jon/Dany would be without conflict, especially in ASOIAF because it's GRRM and things are messy. However, ASOIAF's relationships are always full of emotion, though, and that's what I'd expect and really love to read. Lots and lots of emotions, conflicting, confusing, surprising, fun fun emotions. Jon and Dany are both very young and they're both pretty scarred with one currently dead. And you know, maybe it's Dany who'd have the issue with Jon rather than Jon clutching his pearls at Dany because what if a child does die due to Jon's actions/commands or Jon is pushed to execute a wildling hostage? Yeah? What if it's Dany clutching pearls and Jon telling her to deal with it. And then they go into the back and Maybe maybe that's what we'll see one day, hey. I need to get sober.

I am convinced that Alicent Hightower either has multiple personality disorder or a colossal hypocrite or she is just badly written. It's either "Aegon is king " or "no it's Rhaenyra" by the next episode. "Now let's usurp Rhaenyra's throne and cause a war because my drugged dying husband told me" ." Oh no war is bad and people die in it, I had no idea".

I personally think it's bad writing. Condal and Hess can't seem to decide what direction they want her character to go, as you pointed out. Alicent makes no sense as a character with how she's been written in the show.

It literally feels like there's a new writer every episode, and that writer doesn't know what happened in the story before. It definitely seems like the writers might have finally settled on a personality for Alicent in season two. However, that personality just happens to be the dumbest and most hypocritical one.