Let's be honest, and I say this with full offense, Lucerys Velaryon is the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of the Dance of the Dragons. He is meant to be a sacrificial lamb to kick off the entire war proper. If we had gotten a full season of development with him like we did with the younger cast in Game of Thrones, I guarantee more people would've felt something. The only reason I personally feel bad is from a baseline level of empathy, because he was a child who was placed in an unwinnable situation due to his mom being completely irresponsible with him and his brothers.
However…
The comparison between Lucerys and Aemond is no contest. Love him or hate him, Aemond has an actual personality and goals when we first meet him. There's enough dimension in Aemond as a child to showcase the potential for sympathy between him and Jace at the funeral, a scene they didn't need to put in, but they did, which emphasizes his own innocence. Even before he breaks bad fully in S1E10, he's still far more compelling to watch due to the number of scenes allocated to him and his dynamic with other people.
This is where you and I are going to disagree just a bit, because Lucerys does do something in S1E07 and S1E08. He gouges out the eye of a family member and petulantly whines that he “didn’t do anything!” when confronted with the possibility of getting in trouble for it, then years later has the nerve and complete lack of sense to giggle at the person he permanently maimed only hours after his legitimacy was publicly called into question (again) and resulted in a murder. The narrative (perhaps unintentionally) glosses over these moments in favor of portraying him as good, whereas if you read between the lines, you can see that as being an oversimplification. The problem is that because S1 was truncated, secondary characters like Lucerys don’t receive screentime dedicated to portraying anything other than a single personality trait. Unfortunately, because of his role in the text and the way it was adapted for television, there was never a chance that Lucerys would be interesting.
I don't even have anything to add, this is just objectively correct.
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Please, if you can, take a moment to read and share this because I feel like I'm screaming underwater.
NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder) stigma is rampant right now, and seems to be getting progressively worse. Everyone is using it as a buzzword in the worst ways possible, spreading misinformation and hatred against a real disorder.
I could go on a long time about how this happened, why it's factually incorrect (and what the disorder actually IS), why it's harmful, and the changes I'd like to see. But to keep this concise, I'll simply link to a few posts under the cut for further reading.
The point of this post is a plea. Please help stop the spread of stigma. Even in mental health communities, even around others with personality disorders, in neurodivergent "safe" spaces, other communities I thought people would be supportive in (e.g. trans support groups, progressive spaces in general), it keeps coming up. So I'm willing to bet that a lot of people on this site need to see this.
Because it's so hard to exist in this world.
My disorder already makes me feel as if I'm worthless and unlovable, like there's something inherently wrong and damaged about me. And it's so much harder to fight that and heal when my daily life consists of:
Laughing and spending time with my friends, doing my utmost best to connect and stay present and focused on them, trying to let my guards down and be real and believe I'm lovable- when suddenly they throw out the word "narcissist" to describe horrible people or someone they hate, or the conversation turns to how evil "people with narcissistic personality disorder" are. (Seriously, you don't know which of your friends might have NPD and feels like shit when you say those things & now knows that you'd hate them if you knew.)
Trying to look up "mental health positivity for people with npd", "mental health positivity cluster bs", only to find a) none of that, and b) more of the same old vile shit that makes me feel terrible about myself.
Having a hard time (which is constant at this point) and trying to look up resources for myself, only to again, find the same stigma. And no resources.
Not having any clue how to help myself, because even the mental health field is spitting so much vitriol at people with DISORDERS (who they're supposed to be helping!) that there's no solid research or therapy programs for people like me.
Losing close friends when they find out, despite us having had a good relationship before, and them KNOWING me and knowing that I'm not like the trending image of pwNPD. Because now they only see me through the lens of stigma and misinformation.
Hearing the same stigma come up literally wherever I go. Clubs. Meetings. Any online space. At the bus stop. At the mall. At a restaurant. At work. Buzzword of the year that everyone loooves loudly throwing around with their friends or over the phone. Feels awesome for me, makes my day so much better/s
I could go on for a long time, but I'm scared no one will read/rb this if it gets too much longer.
So please. Stop using the word "narcissist" as a synonym for "abusive".
Stop bringing up people you hate who you believe to have NPD because of a stigmatizing article full of misinformation whenever someone with actual NPD opens their mouth. (Imagine if people did that with any other disorder! "Hey, I'm autistic." "Oh... my old roommate screamed at me whenever I made noise around him, and didn't understand my needs, which seems like sensory overload and difficulty with social cues. He was definitely autistic. But as long as you're self-aware and always restraining your innate desire to be an abusive asshole, you're okay I guess, maybe." ...See how offensive and ignorant that is?)
Stop preventing healthcare for people with a disorder just because it's trendy to use us as a scapegoat.
If you got this far, thank you for reading, and please share this if you can. Further reading is under the cut.
NPD Criteria, re-written by someone who actually has NPD
Stigma in the DSM
Common perception of the DSM criteria vs how someone may actually experience them (Keep in mind that this is the way I personally experience these symptoms, and that presentation can vary a lot between individuals)
"Idk, the stigma is right though, because I've known a lot of people with NPD who are jerks, so I'm going to continue to support the blockage of treatment for this condition."
(All of these were written by me, because I didn't want to link to other folks' posts without permission, but if you want to add your own links in reblogs or replies please feel free <3)
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i see this jason todd who actually looks his very young age (instead of the 30yr old man that comics like to portray)
and feel my heart breaking just imagining bruce beating him up, almost killing him, mind-breaking him, and just overall being a total piece of shit father towards him.
a huge chunk of the reason why people don't view bruce's actions towards jason as abusive or wrong is because jason doesn't look his age. he's drawn to be this 35yr old father of three who looks even older than dick (and way too on par with bruce) that people see their fights as one between batman and any of his regular rogues. when they fight, it just looks like batman is fighting a man his age and not an actual young person. it doesn't look like batman is fighting his son who's barely even drinking age (and who def wasn't drinking age in utrh). their fights are portrayed in a way that eliminates the very real power struggle between them.
this applies to jason's entire character as well. a lot of people don't sympathize with how he died or his actions as robin or his fights with the other bats because he doesn't look his age. he always looks older and scarier than everyone else. tim has many sympathizers from the titans tower incident because jason just looked like a grown man fighting a 12yr old (even tho i disagree, tim was built and like 17 lmfao).
anyways, i just wish comics would actually draw jason to look his age, which literally ranges from 19 to early twenties. he's young- so young, and it's so annoying to see him drawn and written as someone older than even bruce.
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Okay I need to have a quick word with the fandom here, guys.
So, ‘dear boy’ does not mean what some of you think it means. Not from a guy who’s LARPing as an older English dude, anyway. It’s kind of just a phrase men use for each other, not exclusive to loved ones or even people you actually know. It’s also not necessarily a nice saying - quite often it’s a veiled way of saying ‘you absolute pillock’. Picture it being said in the most passive-aggressive tone humanly possible for the full effect.
Point is, Aziraphale probably says it a lot. There’s no point getting hung up on who he says it to, because the way he’s using it is not actually an endearment. Not like the way he says Crowley’s name, which I could probably write an essay about.
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