shadowsandbloom

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“Sweet Jude, you're my dearest punishment” 🖤🗡️🌿

Hello there 🙋🏻‍♀️ Just in case anyone was wondering if I’m still alive - yes I am 😌

I spend the last few days listening to the folk of the air series again and it was a true delight so I thought maybe someone might enjoy the result of me being lost in elfhame 💖

Jude & Cardan belong to the amazing mother of all faeries @hollyblack 🖤

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ALICENT HIGHTOWER and AEGON II TARGARYEN HOUSE OF THE DRAGON ⁠—⁠ 1x09: “The Green Council” (2022)

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I love you "boring" female characters. I love you ingenues. I love you female characters who aren't "modern" enough. I love you female characters who aren't "badass" enough. iI love you female characters who aren't "empowering" enough. I love you quiet female characters. I love you unappreciated female characters. I love you polite female characters. I love you female characters who "can't appeal to modern audiences." I love you frightened female characters. I love you female characters labeled as not complex just for being nice. I love you female characters who get criticism just for not being their tomboy or femme fatale counterpart.

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Cardan and Jude - The Cruel Prince

Artist: @jansumalla

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I love a vicious pretty boy ❤️‍🔥

#hotd

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no i will not make separate blogs for my fandoms, everyone who follows me must experience ALL my insanity

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I find it pretty funny how such a huge portion of the HOTD fandom insists on Show!Criston being an evil woman hating incel, because he hates one woman. So if I hate one man does that make me a misandrist?

He feels used by Rhaenyra and he holds a grudge about it, and I don't approve of him calling her a cunt, but she's the only woman he's disparaging about.

Daemon calls Rhea Royce "his bronze bitch", Mysaria "a common whore" and Alicent a "a whore of a queen" and yet he's, checks notes, a devoted malewife?

#hotd

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do you ever think about how the people in the house of the dragon fandom that criticize alicent for her "eye for an eye" mentality are the same ones that cheer whenever they hear daemon say "a son for a son"?

#hotd

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alicent comes across like a massive hypocrite in how she handles dyanna. like i do understand she herself has been a victim but that just makes it worse. like the second she's greeted with another victim she just gaslights her and literally does not hold aegon accountable?

sa tw

okay i COMPLETELY understand why you feel this way. as a survivor of sa myself, that scene was really uncomfortable to watch. i'm sure i'm not the only person who noticed the parallels to rich white boys having their parents pay off their victims and continuing about their lives irl. that being said, the more i tried to think about how i wished alicent had handled things, the more i realized i couldn't think of another response that would have been better. i think this is unfortunately one of those cases where there IS no right thing to do, and you simply have to choose the lesser of two evils no matter how sick it makes you feel. there are two hugely important pieces of context to alicent's actions here:

alicent is not the person with the ultimate authority here. as episode 9 makes clear, otto and the council have more power than she does.

at this point in time, alicent thinks that the lives of ALL of her children- not just aegon- rely on her successfully using aegon to usurp rhaenyra. see my meta here for the justification of this.

so with this in mind, let's imagine what would happen if alicent wanted to hold aegon accountable.

let's say she takes dyanna's side publicly, and accuses aegon of forcing himself upon her. what happens?

remember, at this point in time, viserys is on his deathbed and is completely unable to rule. and as mentioned above, alicent isn't the one truly in power in his stead- otto is. he's the one who has the council in his pocket and who works with them behind alicent's back. so now otto's the one handling the investigation and the punishments. and do you know what otto does? he accuses dyanna of lying, possibly of being paid off by rhaenyra to slander aegon's name. here are the possible outcomes otto would demand after that point:

dyanna is executed for crimes against the royal family

dyanna is tortured as part of the investigation to get the "truth" of what happened. she is either deliberately killed or forced into a false confession and then killed

dyanna is threatened and forced to withdraw the accusations, resign, and move far away. otto would either threaten her life or her family to do this.

alicent might TRY to stop this from happening, but as episode 9 makes clear, at the end of the day she is still a woman, and otto will always have more power than her even if by title alone he should not.

but bella, you might say, why doesn't alicent have larys spirit aegon away somewhere or kill him? here's where we get into the second piece of context. aegon is THE only real alternative to rhaenyra that alicent has. she's spent over a decade, in conjunction with otto, laying the foundation for aegon in particular to become king one day, long before there's any canon evidence of him being a rapist. there are resources that have been irrevocably invested in aegon in particular: helaena, the twins, and maelor. aegon is the only one on team green with a targaryen wife and two male heirs.

because of this, aemond or daeron simply cannot hold up to the credibility presented by rhaenyra, who has a targaryen husband and many male heirs. all of team green's eggs are in one basket, aegon's, by necessity since there was only one of helaena. even if alicent remarried aemond to helaena, it would take years for them to produce heirs of their own, and that's time alicent simply does not have because at this point in time, viserys is clearly on his deathbed.

remember, alicent was an end-of-life caretaker for jaehaerys. she knows how to recognize the signs. she knows they're running out of time. if she tries to switch tracks to aemond or daeron right now, right when viserys is about to die and they need their claim to be at its strongest, it will doom team green's attempt to usurp rhaenyra, and therefore (in alicent's mind) sentence all of her children to death.

should a survivor of sexual assault sentence a fellow survivor to inevitable torture, intimidation, and/or execution? no. should a mother sentence her two youngest sons and her grandsons to death for a crime they had no part in? also no.

i don't have a good or satisfying answer here for what alicent should have done. i think that's kind of the point: she didn't either. she did what she could for dyanna, without condemning dyanna or her children to death. alicent is the ONLY explicit sa victim in hotd; and she does for dyanna what no one did for her. she hugs her, she tells her she believes her, she ensures dyanna won't have to carry and birth the rape babies alicent was forced to, she gives her a way to escape her abusive situation the way alicent was never able to. within the power that she does have, she chooses to be kind, and she chooses to spare dyanna the fate she herself suffered.

it's an awful situation, and i think it goes to illustrate just how trapped and desperate alicent is. she doesn't like aegon. she doesn't want him to be king. she can barely stand to look at him, knowing what he's done. and yet she has to push down her morals and put him on the throne anyways because her other children's lives depend on it.

unfortunately, there's a recurring theme in this fandom where people would rather hate a woman for her actions at face value, without comprehending that the real villain here is the system that has created these awful, inescapable situations. the conversation between alicent and rhaenys in episode 9, which i've talked about here, is another example of the point just flying over most people's heads. but i hold for all hotd women (yes, including rhaenyra, for all the people who assume defending alicent means i must hate rhaenyra because clearly you can't like two women at once) that the true villain behind all of their morally grey actions is pretty much always the patriarchy.

#hotd

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Alicent will never be in the wrong for looking out for herself and her four children that Viserys fathered and neglected. Give Rhaenyra as many nonsensical “Now they see you as you are”s as you want, this show and its very feminist audience isn’t brainwashing me into thinking she’s the big bad for not willing to be used and then silently disregarded.

#hotd

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Something so important to me about Alicent's characterization is that she is Viserys' second, least favorite wife. All she wants is to be important to somebody, and they won't let her.

One of the many things that drives Alicent into a comparative villainy driven by despair is that she is the least important person in her own life. She's the Queen, a crucial figure in the history books, but barely anyone seems to care. This is reflected after Larys' offer for friendship in which she deflects "I am the Queen," and in no need of allies.

But she's the second Queen. And Viserys only cares about the first. This is reflected not only in the fact that he calls her "Aemma" in front of the whole court years before he's properly senile. But also in how he treats her and her family.

Take for example her caregiving of him. In episode 6, when Lyonel Strong speaks to Viserys, he makes a blithe comment about Alicent fluffing his pillow, joking that he's surprised he can use the privy without assistance. So firstly, the king has used toilet humor to refer to his wife's devotion to keep up appearances that he's a virulent King, and she's just a fussy wife. But as soon as Lyonel is gone, he says "aren't you going to help me?" when sitting back down. He wants her help in private, and mocks it in public.

This circles back to her unimportance to her entire family. Regardless of each character's background and trauma, Alicent is the Queen. And regardless of whether or not he inherits the throne, she is the mother of his firstborn son. As well as an additional Prince and Princess, no small thing when heirs are better in numbers. But still, Viserys does not give her reverence or respect. Instead she is his nursemaid, and he feels no protectiveness over her children that he fathered on her when she was their age.

Can we really blame Alicent when she snaps and demands the true order of things? Aemma is dead, a victim of Viserys' desire for a son. She is alive, and gave him two, but she is ignored. Her on-paper position should award her respect, and she has not received it. So, she keeps playing her role as though the respect will come, but it never does.

It is also not surprising that she accepts the idea that Viserys whispers his change of heart to her with his dying breath. Lord Beesbury seems to think this is ridiculous, probably because he knows how Alicent is treated, but classically, this makes sense. A wife is a confidant, someone who sees Viserys at his most vulnerable, of course she's privy to important information; she's his wife.

But she's his second, least favorite wife, and so of course he would never tell her the family secrets.

#hotd

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aegon, being dramatic: you're the WORST aemond. i'm CRYING. you made me CRY. aemond: baby aegon: pet names won't make me feel better! aemond: what the actual fuck? i'm calling you a baby because you're crying. i'm insulting you. aegon: aemond: now why the FUCK would i ever call you baby-

#hotd

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aegon, gesturing to jace and luke: these are my nephews. i don't know their names. i don't wanna know their names.

aegon: i simply refer to them as bastard 1 and bastard 2

#hotd

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Scalett and Donatella Dragna

#caraval

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Impressed at how majority of hotd fandom denies or totally ignores the trauma the Blacks characters have gone through under those close to them.

Is that not something worth discussing to give them more depth and make them more realistic as characters (not Disney/Marvel coded)????

Rhaenyra has gone through a lot of shit under Viserys and Daemon but they are apparently good men and never did her wrong?

Rhaenyra shuns Jace and Luke continually for their questions about Harwin, gaslighting them for most of their life, but she's apparently 110% a flawless mother?

Daemon leaves his grieving daughters injured and unattended in Driftmark but he's the 'dad that stepped up' to his stepsons (never mind his grieving daughters)?

Corlys tries to marry Laena off at 12, and cares little that she was barred from coming back home by Daemon yet he's praised endlessy for being this great, flawless man?

Rhaenyra and Daemon sleep together and marry when Laena is freshly buried and her daughters alone and mourning...but apparently they're this big happy family??

Part of the appeal of the Game of Thrones universe is that the characters are heavily flawed (seriously messed up) but they either try to make it up to others OR descend into total degeneracy.

Light and dark. There's a balance. And characters have both sides to them mostly.

Denying characters' flaws makes them not only boring but also so unrealistic. If people continue on this Disney trajectory for characters im HOTD, I'm afraid many of us will be disappointed when shit gets real in season 2. This ain't a soap opera. We're in murky waters lol.

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Elriel

Art: Lunart.s