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.

When you think about it, why is a Targaryen alone in the world a terrible thing? Is it because they will eventually descend to madness, unable to comprehend or share the restlessness? Their hubris will devour them without a stronghold of family traditions and culture to make a place for it? Will they burn themselves simply because the fire is so tempting and nobody ever explained why? Or will they burn everything around them in a desperate try to find some shade of belonging among the smoke and ash?

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

something something gothic

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”

A little obsessed with themes of haunting and ghosts in asoiaf. Characters are surrounded by ghosts, they are ghosts, they love ghosts, they are part of ghosts, they live in places that are ghosts, they unleash ghosts and they bargain with ghosts, most importantly they are haunted by ghosts. Ghosts and curses and prophecies are all very closely tied together in the narrative. Arya who is a ghost in Harrenhal, already a place full of them, Harren and his sons, countless lords and servants, burnt by wildfire, burnt again and again, because the place is said to be cursed. The Red Keep with bodies of its builders buried somewhere within, the Red Keep full of black cells with some half-men, half-ghosts still waiting for justice and sunlight. With skulls of dragons beneath its floors, a defeated legacy. Winterfell with its crypts, full of dead starks, and they are more than just crypts: they are a shelter, a haunted house, a sept in a way. The whole of the riverlands one single haunted space, as if executed with one giant hand of Tywin Lannister. He unleashes a curse with deeds so vile they start haunting lands and fates and houses, Westeros itself. That story Bran tells, about the rat cook who killed guests in his own house, and was cursed to devour his own sons; Walder Frey murdering his guests at the Red Wedding. Drogo is taken from Dany through a bargain with the dead. The dead haunt her: Rhaegar on the Trident, dragons and hundreds of her Targaryen ancestors. House Targaryen is a ghost. Westeros itself is haunting Dany, something she cannot remember. The entire white walkers story is literally the dead getting up from the graves, from the ground and walking, killing. Not alive, not dead, not exactly ghosts. What harm can Lyanna Stark’s ghost do us? Catelyn Stark back from the dead, mute. “She don’t talk but she remembers”. Idk it all seems very consecutive, as if the ghosts are active parts of the story, even from the grave navigating the characters, affecting reality. “It all goes back and back to our fathers and mothers and theirs before them”. Jenny dancing with her ghosts.

Daenerys was around the same age as Rhaenyra in the first five episodes of hotd when she conquered Essos, birthed dragons and freed slaves. She was a ruling queen, the last targaryen, the only thing truly holding the world she was trying to build together — all at age sixteen. Rhaenyra says to Luke “I wasn’t ready to be heir”, she tells Viserys “I thought I wanted it. But the weight is heavy. It’s too heavy”. Rhaenyra is a strong woman, she would be fit to rule, what I’m getting at is that I think it’s really under-appreciated that Daenerys was doing all that, young as she was. It’s not a special Targaryen characteristic, being queen at seventeen. Most Targaryens were crowned at an older age, at least eighteen. But Daenerys has no choice. She is the heir of House Targaryen itself, she is the only dragonrider in the world, she is city sacker, the breaker of chains, she was wed to a khal, the point is — there is a reason why Tyrion calls her “Aegon The Conqueror with teats”. She is great, great and glorious at an age during which many other Targaryens were, well, teenagers. They fucked up, they were given power, and quite often they brought ruin with it. Not Daenerys. The weight is hard, and there is no one to defend her, but if she looks back, she is lost.

Alicent’s sacrifice of her body. Alicent giving up her virginity, her womb, her freedom, her whole being to the king, to her father’s ambitions, to the crown. Alicent who is locked in a room and can’t get out, and so she doesn’t dream of getting out, only for a window. She can’t dream of getting out because then it would mean that all this time getting out was possible, and all of this misery and loneliness could have been avoidable, so instead she turns to faith and righteousness and makes herself believe with even more passion that her way is right. That Aegon is meant to be king, because then at least a bit wasn’t pointless.

Alicent believing that Rhaenyra is forsaking all of her own duty, Alicent who loves Rhaenyra, Alicent who can’t be with Rhaenyra, Alicent who sees Rhaenyra out of the room and can’t help but turn to envy. She accuses her of trampling duty, sacrifice under her “pretty foot” while all Alicent has been doing is giving and giving and giving without asking in return. And then her son’s eye was taken as well. Rhaenyra, for whom duty and sacrifice is as a great deal as for Alicent. Who has been carrying the duty of an Heir, the duty of holding the realm together so that years from now it could protect itself against utter destruction. Rhaenyra, for whom sacrifice was in childbirth, for whom sacrifice was in her children’s deaths. Rhaenyra who, just as Alicent, has sacrificed her identity for the indentity of an heir, for kicking and screaming and roaring, fighting the roles that are put upon her against her will. In the end, Rhaenyra and Alicent are in the same cage of womanhood. In the end, Rhaenyra’s escape is in her Valyrian heritage and dragons and Aegon’s dreams and the genderless heritage. In the end, Alicent’s escape is in faith, righteousness, usurpation, in the belief that whatever she has been doing since sixteen years old was all for the upholding of the realm. The irony is that both of them come from the same background of womanhood and both of them are doing things for the same purpose: to hold the realm together against destruction.

I have to applaud the casting of hotd. Milly Alcock does have a striking, yet low-key resemblance to Emma D’Arcy. It’s entirely believable that she is a younger Rhaenyra. The same goes with Alicent. The acting of Olivia, Emma, Paddy, Matt is all incredible. And also I love how the Targaryens don’t look like supermodels, I believe that it was implied in the books somewhere that the Targaryens gave off an impression of beauty (not all of them were beautiful, but a Targaryen is rarely described as “uncomely” or “ugly” by Martin or his characters). The cast is diverse, they all have really interesting, expressive features (idk how to say this without sounding weird but I’m glad that they look like real people instead of botoxed Bella Hadid or some shit). They also do look a bit eerie with their wigs.