LMAO but seriously the way it says Arya raised her voice right there in the text but Arya reflexively blames Sansa (who was talking quietly) for getting the Septa’s attention, and readers still don’t get it through their thick skulls that Arya has a tendency to blame Sansa for shit she didn’t do and to exaggerate herself as the victim in every situation because she’s 9 (and because the adults around Arya legitimately are emotionally abusive to her and Sansa). No, fandom says Arya’s POV is the only valid one and it’s Sansa’s fault Arya hates her for being pretty and good at sewing - when Arya insults and physically attacks Sansa, it’s justified but when Sansa calls her names often after Arya has done something to instigate that it’s bUlLyiNG. People in this fandom say “unreliable narrator” but have NO clue what it means and it’s so clear.

It truly is selective reading because in the Sansa chapter right after she bemoans the fact that Arya would rather spend time with the butchers boy than come chill with her. Sansa obviously wants to spend time with Arya and genuinely enjoys the company of other girls/women. Yet people always ignore that part.

An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar.

The 1st orders a beer.

The 2nd orders a half of a beer.

The 3rd orders a quarter of a beer.

The 4th begins to order, but the bartender cuts him off, saying "You guys need to know your limits." He puts 2 beers on the bar.

If you have a sister and she dies, do you stop saying you have one?

Big brothers and their lost baby sisters :(

KIT HARINGTON The Beast Within (2024)

KIT HARINGTON "Il Mattino ha L'Oro Bocca" — Industry (3.01)

If you don’t have hope, what’s the point of living?

Bts of Slave Play

📸 Jeremy O Harris

This Kit Harington for The Dreadful 👀 🙏

not giving a “depends on the media” answer cause i feel like ppl will automatically go for that one lol. if it does depend on the media for you, pick which one u USUALLY fall under. polyshipping counts as multishipping 🫡

being hot isn't only for pretty people btw

FABIEN FRANKEL photographed by Kosmas Pavlos for The Glass Magazine. July 2024.

KIT HARINGTON Industry Season 3

HBO's Continued Insistence on Dumbing Down Westerosi Politics

So there have been countless thinkpieces already on how GOT simplified the feudalist politics of Westeros (by giving a lowborn sellsword lordship over The Reach, by having no consequences for destroying the Sept of Baelor, etc.), but I haven't seen a lot of people talking about that for House of the Dragon.

The worst being that the show presupposes that Rhaenyra is the lawful heir when the books showed there are plenty of lawful arguments why she wouldn't be.

Mind you that I've been enjoying the show a lot so far. This is just to vent out my frustration with the writers' failure to fully engage with the values and protocols of the Middle Age-inspired setting. The show seems uninterested in laws of the Realm in a story ostensibly about politics, save for when they're using it as an excuse to amplify depictions of sex and violence.

Blacks vs Greens wasn't a matter of misunderstanding of who each side thought Viserys wanted on the throne. It was the Targaryens' belief of their absolute authority clashing with the Realm's established traditions. Everyone always knew who Viserys chose as heir. In Fire and Blood, Grand Maester Orwyle said as much when he was parleying with Rhaenyra on behalf of the Greens.

(For non-F&B readers: Munkun is the Grand Maester who served Aegon III, the king who came after this civil war. Munkun's book, The Dance of the Dragons, A True Telling, is one of Fire and Blood's source texts. Mushroom is the King Landing court jester from Viserys I to Aegon III's reign. One is a source written with academic rigor but is secondhand at best. The other is a firsthand eyewitness account but is from a literal fool who will take every chance to make things more scandalous and sexual to please the crowd.)

In House of the Dragon, they replaced Orwyle with Otto and Orwyle's discussion of legal precedent with Otto handing Rhaenyra a book page from Alicent. It's quite evident here that the writers, much like Mushroom, thought a discussion on the actual laws of the Realm were negligible in this story about a succession war.

Even Alicent made no pretense that Viserys chose Rhaenyra over her children and I have no idea why the HBO writers decided to make her mistakenly think otherwise. Maybe they thought a queen regent pushing her son to take the throne over another woman made her appear unsympathetic as a character, but if anything, this only makes show!Alicent less politically savvy and more delusional than her book counterpart, fully believing an addled king's vague muttering on his deathbed was sufficient grounds to change heirs last minute.

Book!Alicent following Andal laws instead of her husband's wishes makes sense given her Andal upbringing, her devotion to the Faith of the Seven which enforces said laws, and her desire to protect her children from Rhaenyra given that Rhaenyra has shown she's not above murdering family (see: Laenor).

In the books, there was a long discussion between the former king's council on who should succeed Viserys.

Here are the arguments for Rhaenyra:

Here are the arguments for Aegon II:

Once again, the show chose to cut out this long political discussion. Instead, the council had already made up their mind and decided to stage a coup (when in their perspectives from the books, it would definitely not be a coup).

For all their marketing how two sides are equally grey, HotD is actively delegitimizing Aegon II. The strongest argument for him is how his claim follows the laws of the Realm, but the show doesn't care about the laws of the Realm. They didn't even cast a master of laws.

Instead, the show focuses on Viserys's relationship with his daughter and the mysticism of the Targaryen bloodline. In doing so, they emphasize Rhaenyra's strongest arguments for succession — that she's more of a Targaryen than her half-brother and that her father prefered her.

And what for? Because in our modern-day, we don't have male-prefered inheritance and people can only imagine misogyny as the only injustice here? What about the injustice of a monarch exercising absolute control, thinking that his "superior" heritage makes him above the established laws of the native people?

This is not to say Aegon II is unquestionably the heir. Precedence isn't the end-all-be-all of succession.

But this is to say that the show removed the political nuance of why people are questioning in the first place. By glossing over the boring bits of social world-building and historical precedents in favor of salacious scandals and shoehorning a magical prophecy justifying the Targaryens' right to rule, they follow in the steps of the fool Mushroom instead of Fire and Blood as a whole.

There are also several things I noticed after having that discussion a few times:

1. People don't get what customary law and common law are and how they work, especially in medieval settings (and I don't think GRRM gets it either) and are constantly parroting "traditions aren't laws" as some sort of gotcha

2. People are parroting "King's word is law" with no critical thinking or understanding how feudal kingship works. They also seem to believe Westeros is an absolute monarchy of 17th century France.

3. People don't understand the difference between "legal" and "moral" which is just sad. Everytime you try to talk about TG legal arguments you get "the killed people!1!1!!!" as if that's the point

4. The show does all of the above going as far as having Aemond call it usurpation

The Targaryen blood purity and more dragon blood idea is the dumbest thing ever and I'm so mad they don't address it. Interfamilial marriage was never about keeping Targaryen blood pure and making them closer to the dragon. That is a convenient excuse.

It's about keeping dragons in one family. So that dragons aren't in every corner of the kingdom. You don't want more people being able to claim dragons and coveting the throne.

That's the whole problem about Rhaenys. She is a dragon rider, and she's a Velaryon. That makes the Velaryon's threats when before they were just sea lords. And any marriage with the Vale or the Baratheons were calculated risks with people who weren't dragon riders. Aemma wasn't a dragon rider. And even then, they were immediately married back into the mainline.

I mean, this is a whole thing in normal nonfantasy history. Either you keep your sisters close and unmarried, or you marry them yourself.

It upsets me that they don't address this, and instead put so much stock into this idea of Targaryen supremacy and blood magic. The show doesn't address how much the maesters and the faith are confused and disgusted by it. And even a lot of Targaryens weren't into it and saw through it, while there were many, like Daemon, who wholeheartedly bought into their own exceptionalism.

At this point, I'm glad that Arya was the one who killed the Night King just to make their theory about their 'chosen one destiny' complete bull. But I'm petty like that.

This is my biggest disappointment with the show — that they seem to be wholesale pushing the concept of Targaryen exceptionalism by shoehorning Aegon I having a prophetic divine mandate.

It's a fantasy story so it's not unlikely that Targaryens do have magic genes. But the chaos of the Dance showed that the Targaryens aren't exceptional. Non-Valyrians, bastards, and lowborn people can control dragons just as well, if not better, than royal Targaryens. If this bastard dragonseed also has a dragon, why not crown him instead if he's offering us more rights and protection?

Rhaenys herself, with her Velaryon last name and non-Valyrian features (in the book), was a threat to the concept of Targaryen exceptionalism. Jaehaerys had worked so hard to sell the Doctrine of Exceptionalism to the Faith, of couse he would prefer Baelon over her regardless of gender.

Because the Targaryens aren't held up on a pedestal because of masculinity or patriarchal values — it's always been about "the blood of Old Valyria." The books do well to problematize and explore this through Danaerys's journey and the many, many people calling out their eugenicist practices.

Aegon V himself, having spent time with the smallfolk in Dunk and Egg, thought the Doctrine of Exceptionalism was bull. Exceptionalism spread these myths that Targaryens couldn't get sick or be burned by fire, that they themselves were as powerful and special as dragons — and he knew that wasn't true. He knew that without the raw power of actual dragons, a Targaryen was a human being like anyone else.

But HotD, on the other hand, is just accepting Exceptionalism wholesale. Of course a Targaryen should rule because of a magic prophecy. Of course Rhaenyra is the true queen because of the divine/magical mandate she inherited through her purer blood. Of course the king's word must be taken as absolute regardless of how it goes against other institutions because.....that's just how feudalist monarchies work, right?

(Spoiler: They don't. Most medieval European rulers' legitimacy and right to rule comes from the endorsement of the Church, the power of their armies, or the support of their vassals (who can give them armies and endorse them). A royal lineage by itself doesn't mean crud without any of these things. They could just replace you with another noble family that the Church can give their divine mandate to.)

Of course, we'll always have viewers and readers who uncritically accept the Targ's inherent exceptionalism because the fantasy genre is filled with super-special, unquestionably noble "true" kings chosen by magic/god/ladies in lakes. People have been conditioned by centuries of nationalist epics, religion, and pop culture to love that sort of thing. The narrative that some are entitled to rule over others due to some inherited superiority is ingrained into human history through colonialism, imperialism, and all the other -isms, and there's just no escaping it.

But what I love about A Song of Ice and Fire is how it pushes back against this trope. It shows the reality of a what a magical royal bloodline would look like: resorting to incest to keep their power to themselves, their empire and family cannabilizing itself, and desperately using the glory of a long-gone, imagined past to justify their rule.

I'm hoping that once the show focuses more on the dragonseeds, we get more perspectives being critical of the Targaryen dynasty. But I do think it's going the right direction with giving time to the smallfolk and emphasizing the food shortage (the Dance is followed by a 5-year winter where most of fields have been burned and men of working age were killed in battle). Praying for more Team Smallfolk rhetoric (let's go, Lady Misery!) on the show.

ALICENT HIGHTOWER and CRISTON COLE HOUSE OF THE DRAGON — 2.02 "Rhaenyra the Cruel"

Not a soul has to answer but I was randomly reminiscing about my early obsessive Jonsa fanfic consumption days in 2016 (yes, the glory of that Season Six High) with @amymel86 earlier. I would scour the ao3 tag as a guest a dozen times a day and read every new thing posted. We mentioned fics that grabbed us by the throat and ones that left us with emotional damage.

Whether you're an old or new Jonsa, i thought I'd throw this out there and ask what fic first hit you like a freight train? Comment or hit up my inbox if you wish to share but there's no pressure at all (I'm just looking for an excuse to procrastinate on the money stuff today lmao)

This fic killed me the first time I read it and Jonsa has had me in a chokehold ever since. Still my favorite.

all these gifs from the beast within is really speaking to my jon snow covered in blood kink help me