Disaster

I honestly love the grrm interpretation of magic more than whatever game of thrones had going on, specifically with the Targaryens. In got Daenerys is this almost superhero-like person who is literally flame-resistant. Screw the “-like”, she is a superhero. And it’s all tied to this dragon-not dragon thing and supposedly some Targaryens are generally resistant to any heat. But in asoiaf and f&b the Targaryens are just closer to magic in general than anybody else. Old Valyria is this supposedly very magical land, and dragons are definitely magic, and Targaryens are the only connection to both, so it makes them magical by extension. But not superhero-magical, it’s more mythos-magical. They look eerie: white hair, violet eyes, it’s fae-like. And the Targaryens are just slightly more resistant to heat than normal people, which is almost like balancing between two worlds: westeros and old valyria. Which is exactly the struggle of the Targaryens: they are not of this world, and yet at the same time they were born there, they rule it, they have to belong in the present, but the past devours it all. Targaryens in the books are these mysterious, mystical people whose biggest magical connection is dragons. The rest is very vague and hard to trace: unusual looks, slight flame resistance, the gift of foreseeing, they also almost never get sick. And that’s the nature of Martin’s magic — it’s vague. Does arya have warg abilities or are they but dreams? Like, magic is very much real, but the relations to magic are different. It’s always a blessing along with a curse, it’s always a thing to be feared, it’s always a key to going home, it’s always the thing that won’t let you ever again be who you were there, it’s a pathway to abilities and yet there is no peace in magic. Instead of magic being practical or “cool” it becomes a metaphor for longing and loneliness, and I think that’s a great choice.

01.05 // We Light The Way (dir. Clare Kilner)

This is soo f&b

Something about this scene…. The first time we meet daemon and the first time we see them interact. And we already see so much! Like this is an extremely common filming technique but it’s usually used in close-up dialogues, and this is a very big scene with long distances. It’s the duality! He is sitting on the throne but she is the true queen he will kneel to in the future! They are shown as gothic doubles in the very first scene, which is beautifully straightforward.

Idk if this would make any sense from any point of view but. Alicent cannot process her desires and emotions and reactions properly due to the fact that her identity doesn’t exist outside of duty. She cannot process and, hence, act OR get over her love for Rhaenyra, because she has never been taught to do that. Not love, but treat love as a normal emotion that you can operate with and call real. She can’t process her trauma of child marriage, because she doesn’t want to be a child bride or give birth to children or care about them at such a young age, but wanting is not in her vocabulary. Like she says to Otto in ep 9, she never knew what she wanted because her desires were guided by him from the start. She can’t process her marital rape or hate for viserys because she can only love him. There are no words or mechanisms to even contemplate the fact that she was hurt both physically and emotionally because they are all tied to the concepts of bodily autonomy, personal tastes, personal wants. Alicent cannot want consciously, so all of her deep likes and dislikes remain unconscious, and she can’t move on or heal or act on them because then she’d have to go back to the very start and admit that it wasn’t the way she wanted. She’d have to admit that she can want, and that goes against the identity that she’s created for herself. You put that part of the mechanism in, and the mechanism as she knows it falls apart. She loves her children subconsciously (you imbecile). She wants them on the throne first of all because that’s what Otto wants. So it all stays inside of her and makes her life hell. That love for Rhaenyra that is revealed THE MOMENT Rhaenyra tries to make peace. That book page she’s been holding onto for ten years. It would be healthy to move on, but Alicent is incapable of that because moving on is tied to letting go of desire but how can you let go of something you cannot admit that you have?

So not normal about this

Viserys Targaryen // episode 8 “The Lord of The Tides”

Daemon Targaryen // episode 8 “The Lord of The Tides”, episode 10 “The Black Queen”