can the take "stannis misguided and just too dutiful for his own good/wants to be loved and has the right intentions" die already? besides the fact that this grace is NEVER offered to anyone else, especially no female character, its also just an admission that you have fallen for his own copium. Stannis is the embodiment of the generic man who has flung himself into megalomania and forces himself onto others in an desperate attempt to compensate his inferiority and irrelevance. This man is no heir, no one's king, no one's prophecied hero, no one's beloved savior and one's choice and he knows. All his whiny monologs in which he tries to justify his atrocities and his dismissal for the people's rejection of him should cut through beaten loyal dog™ Davos' POV. He knows Robert was nothing but a usuper, he knows Dragonstone is not his, the prophecy isn't his, the kingdom doesn't want him, not even the Free Folk he "allowed" to pass the Wall respect him the same way no one south does despite allegedly being such a seasoned military Commander. He is not a tragic vicitm or the warnings of a (misled) messiah (lmao) His sacrificial lambs are the vicitms and he is but a man who won't take no for an answer and has no bottom when it comes to seeing everyone and everything as expendable. a man for whose complexes and egomaniacal aspirations people have been burnt. The fact that there is a considerable segment of people trying to whitewash/woobify him will never not astonish me, especially when they crucify Daenerys for accused crimes he actually committed (every accusation is an admission with them)
🔥 Daenerys, dragons, House Targaryen - why is the focal point, the embodiment of love, passion, sexual ardor, and all of humanity best quality so irrationally despised? Where does the shared feverish need to villianze and see them exterminated come from?
Funnily enough its the readership inability to accept GRRM's subversion: their shattered preconception of the relatively cookie-cutter perfect family as the series' uncontested sole protagonists we have been introduced to this world. The ❝inbred❞ exiled princess (and the hideous imp) of the evil house(s) were only ever allowed to play their parts in humankind's salvation; but only ever as helpers in a quest for redemption for their sins, their percieved own or ancestral (a standard no one else is held to)
And yet: with each new installment in which the said little foreign exiled princess of the alleged evil extinct house becomes more and more prominent, a nexus of their world, more and more recognized as the Chosen One and to amass all the typical resources and characteristics –military power/supremacy, the masses' attention, mystical titles and prophecies, characters crossing half the globe to sought her out, entire schemes hinging on her participation– reserved typically exclusively for the proper able-bodied noble-adjacent male character from the "wronged' family that preconception gets ✨️shattered✨️ more and more.
Furthermore by GRRM's insistence to tailor his detailed lore around the allegedly overthrown evil house (Targaryen). As well as by the consistent subversive deconstruction of i) the war that ultimately dethroned them –initially sold as this rebellion fought for the betterment of the realm and devine justice motivated by denied love– demasked as simply another instance of ❝the games❞ that will go to subsequently trigger even more instability and wars, ii) the ❝horrible crime❞ demasked as ❝forbidder love❞, the one supposed ❝taint❞ on the silver prince's character iii) the supposed galant knight-turned-king demasked as a glutinous rapist whose hedonism bankrupted the realm and whose bloodthirst terrified even his loyal best friend (and patriarch of the proper family)
However, the ultimate nail in the coffin of their preconception is their own bitter disappointment in their alleged ❝favorites❞ arcs.
Despite the remaining children being the most prominent POVs, learning and coming-of-age, with factions periodically rallying behind their claims, their inherent magic etc... it seems as though their constant struggles for survival forcing them to go into hiding are percieved at best as trajectories of depressive stagnation compared to the continuous phoenix rise over five books Daenerys has been given, and to which huge chunks of the fandom feel other characters entitled to.
In conclusion that perceived deprivation turns into bitter resentment which in turn manifest the hatred of the (❝thief❞) character they love to stress is "utterly detached from the main story anyway", and subsequently her house (a house that is and allgedly will remain extinguished and thus should not be threatening them but oh well–) With most of discord around members of House Stark being almost entirely comprised of speculative phoenix rises and their future return to power than the actual arcs GRRM has so far written.
With the funniest by-product being the behavior of the least self-aware readers; who vilify, discredit, crucified and dismissed Daenerys, her dragons and her house only to turn around write platitudes and essentially Targaryen-cosplay and swap-out their ❝favorites❞ – example; all the speculations of any male character overtaking Dany’s resources, claims and prophecies as well as any female character getting awarded platitudinous or literally stolen titles like ✨️mother of mother✨️ or unique features be it her silver hair or dragon dreams by their fandom.
can we acknowledge that Stannis is NOT the competent seasoned military Commander GRRM tells us by any stretch of the imagination? He endured siege- okay great got saved entirely by Davos and Eddard, he "secured" a vaccant Dragonstone after Willem had already smuggled Viserys and Dany out, he had to cheat-murder his brother because he would have gotten clapped on the battlefield, he did get clapped at Blackriver and is about to get clapped by the Boltons with the Karstarks about to shank him in the back?? His only two victories were riding down the emaciated wilding refugees on foot Jon was fending off with his boy scouts of 20 and defeating the Iron Fleet on sea...which would be a feat if its captian wasn't VICTORIAN 🤡 and let's not even start to compare this 35+ year old man to the teenage prodigies of this universe-
rhaegar antis are such indictments of this fandom's illiteracy... there are millions ways from a doylist perspective to level valid criticism at GRRM as how he wrote him... what isn't, is yelling at people who are correctly reading as to what GRRM sees Rhaegar as –his last dragon, his silver prince that died, a king who never was and would have been better– and thinking GRRM would actually echo your opinion. You fundamentally don't understand what Rhaegar's purpose within the story is if you think vou can debate as to how he should be perceived. Screeching how Rhaegar is actually a pedo deadbeat is not going to make GRRM stop treating him as his valiant martyr.
Them treating House Martell as their vengeance avatar is especially funny because the fact that its members NEVER ONCE level criticism at Rhaegar and are actively working to reestablish House Targaryen on the Iron Throne doesn't even give them a pause in their delusional tirades-
Its also funny watching these people make the propagated error of thinking; ❝well GRRM keeps on comparing Daenerys to him so this must be some insidious indictment on her nature!❞ like honey ✨️no✨️
its really funny how this fandom thinks the commoners general apathy as to who rules them is a one-way street ... like between them dieing under House Stark "ancient" supreme rule in masses during winter for millennia or suffering centuries long wars of expansion dubbed the ✨️worthless war✨️ or under House Targaryen supreme rule with them putting an end to petty wars between the kingdoms, funding the only freaking road, bothering to send aid, outlawing the right of the first night, enacting women's protection and widow's law they would deliver their liege lords' precious ancient crown themselves 😂
ngl its so funny how no one actually believes Jon is a Targaryen (prince), the heir to the throne, Rhaegar’s son, as valyrian as he is First Men, the fulfillment of any prophecy in truth cause otherwise the fandom's consensus wouldn't be all the Targaryens are either mad or cruel or incompetent fucks, House Targaryen is the embodiment of rot the continent needs to be cleansed of, Rhaegar is the depised racist pedo devil responsible for all the sorrow and grief, view the dragons as WMD that need to be slaughtered, Azor Ahai actually is the anti christ/the sacrificial lamb and the Iron Throne is the root of all evil.
Its ALL Daenerys’s. HER House before anyone else's, HER throne before any resurrected wanna-be nephew, Rhaegar is HER brother before he is anyone's father, HER dragons as HER sons, Azor Ahai Reborn is HER, its HER prophecy
Six tomes detailing how, after the rebellion shredded the fabric of a relatively unified realm under the Targaryens, Westeros regressed back into the permanent meatgrinder it had been before the evIL cOnqUerOrs came. And yet this fandom collective brainchild, the intended fix-it-all endgame and validation for their entire assessment and consumption of this fictional fantasy epos IS LITERALLY THE CURRENT SAGA = The Targaryens dethroned and swapped for a lesser paramount house(s) buT buT BuT yOu seE THIS TIME peace, prosperity and justice will ensue...and somehow we targ stans are the delusional ones🤡
you know all that "white savior" criticism about Daenerys is just preformative chirping when GRRM literally wrote the children of the Forst building Brandon Stark a weirwood throne 🍂...the natives to have been ethnically cleased by this boy's direct ancestors...GRRM really made a stark prince their last greenseer, their last men...AND NOT A PEEP ANYWHERE
jon's "ice and fire" parentage argument for him to be TPtwp needs to die already:
George R. R. Martin to Adria's News: I mean… Fire is love, fire is passion, fire is sexual ardor and all of these things. Ice is betrayal, ice is revenge, ice is… you know, that kind of cold inhumanity and all that stuff is being played out in the books.
No house, no human, no fucking living sentient creature is "ice". It is literally the antithesis of it. They are all encapsulated under "fire" because it represent life. House Stark with its hot temperament "the wolf blood", the ones to "endure" winter, to be the North's Warden IS a flame, an ember, a part of that fire that burns against the Ice. More so than any other andal house, less so than any valyrian one.
You would have more a leg to stand on was your argument that Jon has been touched by ice as he has died but will be brought back but I guess that doesn’t make Jon ✨️special✨️ enough for numerous characters have been brought back; Beric, Catelyn, Drogo, Patchface, etc...
The Jon-is-asoiaf clowns are also the same ones to turn the goody snowflakes/grrm gift to the world/the most oppressive uwu puppies the Starks into Ice, the literal evil of this world, and the same ones who proclaim fire is as bad as ice, two extremes the world must be delivered of when talking about Daenerys but suddenly being the product of these extremes is the solution if its Jon. The brain gymnastics are on Simone Biles's level of wild. 🤡
Truly wish dany/targaryens stans would stop bothering. The amount of daily posts that aim to "counter" or even pander to nonsensical anti bs is excessive and after years quite honestly boring and tedious.
Quite frankly I fail to understand what we gain from this, adhering to a holier-than-thou moral code, especially since no one else is compelled to even pretend to do so? Is the goal here for them be completely distorted to the point they resemble other characters? antis supposed favorites? As uninteresting to us as they subconsciously are to their stans? Which is the real problem here and the reason why they are the way they are (hypocritical stealing clowns and nuisances?) But perhaps I have a completely different less-morality-bound approach to consuming media in my free time than the rest of my fellow stans.
No downplaying/refuting Valyrian blood purity, empathizing non-Valyrian marriages, pointing out the origin of slavery are found in Old Ghis and not the Freehold, no opting for the most gracious interpretation of members of House Targaryen will ever stop antis from painting and hypocritically single out everything Targaryen/Valyrian related as kkk- or "imperialistic" coded or whatever woke buzzword of the day. They live to pretend-clutch their pearls and hold only them to modern standards of a fantastical utopia, while every other feudal character can be as archaic as expected from their pseudomedvial upbringing with their houses being wardlords
Speaking for me, I STAN their blood purity and incest. For me, IT IS a defining characteristic of House Targaryen that makes them unique, no matter how "problematic" it may be. I STAN it because GRRM fabricated scandalous, passionate love stories that I chose to interpret as consensual and politically advantageous, that brought forward incredible, magical gorgeous characters able to ride dragons that inspire love and envy alike. Who shine all the brighter when one contrasts them with literally any other characters and unions that are and breed doomed mediocrity and are born out of stale duty. I perhaps have a bais for pure blooded Targaryens that look the part than any prefect bastards or half breeds, or targ x targ to any other couple.
I also stan cruel Maegor, particularly for showing Oldtown its place and declawing the Militant Faith because I enjoy reading about the presumptuous Christian Vatican equivalent getting its ass handed to them. I stan Rhaenyra and she still can be a pampered proud princess-turned-queen. The same way I prefer canon Daemon as a rogue, an ambitious prince who seduced his brother's heir with perhaps also political hopes in mind and because he wanted his gorgeous niece as a bride instead of his cold barren wife. A legend that slay the pathetic cunt that was his nephew.
And while I'm at it: I also refuse to care about every "likeable"/pitiful character simply because it would be the "morally right" thing to do, nor will I root for the characters I like to do it. I don't care for Helaena and her children, nor the strong boys or any half-considered-"poc" Targaryen, nor will I even pretend to see "reason" in the greens actions, nor do I even want to see Dany "overcome her hatred"/bais against the usurper's dogs and any descendants of them. Or for her to be that altruistic to turn away from the throne to save humanity.
No amount of "call-out-posts" what a misogynist, racist, cultist, classist or elistist I am will change that because why OH WHY should I give a fuck about what anyone online thinks of me. Why should I allow anyone to bully me into streamline my enjoyment?
Especially by the people that do not even have the decorum of pretend to have any sort of decency. So they can use the most misogynistic, classist language and expect submission to their attempts to rule fandom spaces with iron fists and delusions, and canonize their favorites' sainthood and entitlement to feudal supremacy often only because they ✨️suffered prettily✨️ and fit some anesthetics while I must tolerate them trying to scold me into caring so greatly about fictional grey faceless mass of common people that would die were my favorites to pursue their ambitions. Meanwhile the same people would have any would-be-subjects die of famine and cold as long as their favorites get their crowns GRRM would never grant them in canon anyway. Give me a break. And let's not even start on how dragons and incest are suddenly the solutions as long as they don't belong and is not practiced by Targaryens.
To make this clear: this post is NOT a not-so-subtle incognito-anti post of ✨️i lOve all mY wAr CrimInaL eUqally!;' LeT tHeM bE mAd AnD unHinGed uwu,"! love all mY mOderAte chAsTe hoPes Of the fUtUres and mAd imPeriAlistS. 🥰✨️
I simply wanted to say; perhaps we should NOT GIVE A FUCK, "own" the """""bad""""" and be "problematic" and "irrational" in our selective love for characters and houses like EVERYBODY FUCKING ELSE.
Dragons, their unique and extraordinary bond and why the binder is a red herald.
“If you read Fire and Blood, you’ll know there’s definitely a bond between the dragons and their riders and the dragons will not accept just any rider,” says Martin. “Some people try to take a dragon wind up being eaten or burned to death instead, so the dragons are terribly fussy about who rides them.” - Grrm November 2018
We shall not pretend to any understanding of the bond between dragon and dragonrider; wiser heads have pondered that mystery for centuries. We do know however, that dragons are not horses, to be ridden by any man who throws a saddle on their back. - writings of Gyldayn
Most speculations around dragons, the dragonbinder and any potential riders are blatantly rooted in nonsensical delusion and pure envy of House Targaryen and the power it derived of their dragons, and the deranged need to see the dragons fight and wreak havoc to finally villainize them all once and for all the eyes of the realm as the clowns of this fandom all do in their posts, so their excessive hatred is finally validated by canon. Nowhere is all this more apparent than in the ridiculous popularity of the theories that have Stannis Baratheon, Young Griff, Victarion and Euron Greyjoy become dragon riders, and more specifically all in context as enemies to Daenaerys.
It's truly astonishing what loops people jump through to make these theories appear even the slightest bit feasible;
Even if Stannis Baratheon would survive long enough to set eyes on Dany's dragons and even if the theory in and of itself wouldn't be a pathetic attempt by his delusional stans to still present him as a viable candidate for Azor Ahai Reborn. There was not one recorded incident of a Baratheon riding a dragon, and mind you Orys Baratheon was likely Aegon’s bastard brother yet neither he nor any of his closest descendants have been dragon riders, and each of them had more blood of the dragon than Stannis. The prerequisite of even being one.
Young Griff [or FAegon or Aegon VI] tho the most feasible of all the "candidates" it is ridiculous which lengths the proponents go to, to craft scenarios, where he, always a political enemy of Dany, somehow obtains one of her sons. It's often argue that, regardless of who Young Griff truly is, Targaryen or Blackfyre, due to his blood he must be a dragon rider! An equally bold as unfounded hypothesis: i) the concept that House Blackfyre would have been dragonlords as well had the dragons not be extinct by the time the cadet branch of House Targaryen was founded is purely speculative! Neither House Celtigar nor House Velaryon, two ancient Valyrian House, had been dragonslords. Hell, not even all members of House Targaryen had been. ii) Young Griff surviving long enough to set eyes onto Daenerys's dragons is as hypothetical as Stannis's prior, and given how he is currently risking an all-open war with only 5000 sellswords at his disposal with no prior war experience against the current reign is just as unlikely. iii) However, let's assume Young Griff indeed survives long enough to do so and ends up fighting Daenerys; as already stated dragons aren't mere mounts, they choose their riders and need to bond and for that, they need a considerable amount of time, training is time-consuming as well. So how exactly would Young Griff even get the chance to bond with either Rhaegal or Viserion? In addition, Daenerys's dragons are unique to their ancestors all of them having bonds to her as their cherished mother. Despite what the fandom argues, dragons are not nuclear bombs, they would never bond with someone who would want to severely harm or even kill their mother. Lastly iv) which is purely theoretical but IMO a very solid theory: @luchibelle theorized that Magister Illyiro Mopatis put the eggs into his son's cradle after the Targaryen fashion and hoped they would hatch. The man likely attempted several times to hatch them. In vain, he gifted them to Daenerys as bride's gifts. In all likelihood to make the marriage with Daenerys for Khal Drogo more desirable, for Dany's bride's gifts are his property, which the Magister needed for his scheme of Viserys as the evil invader with his foreign army of savages for his son to defeat as the gallant Aegon VI Targaryen. However, it does further contradict the speculation of Young Griff's potential being able to bond & ride a dragon.
So far Euron and Victarion Greyjoy are the only ones actively perusing Daenerys for her dragons, name and beauty, something none of the other "candidates" do which should at least be the bare basis on these speculations if you want to call them that way. However, the unquestionable fact that the iron borns do not possess a drop of the blood of the dragon should end all speculations then and there. The unfounded idea that Euron possesses unnatural power and/or uses the horn he proclaims is a tool that can subjugate dragons should serve as a substitute for the lack of valyrian is a jump through a loop unparalleled: i) While GRRM can stress as much as he wants that Euron is much more than what he appears to be; a megalomaniac sadistic busy-body. The Forsaken shows that Euron sacrifices humans and uses tortured captive priests to perform their magic FOR him. The power does not come from him, unlike Daenerys and some of the Starks. ii) the unwillingness of this fandom to see Euron's tale of him traveling to Valyria as a lie is on the same level as its unwillingness to see Petyr Baelish's one. Valyria after the doom is hell on earth. GRRM emphasized this more than once in his lore; Princess Aerea Targaryen, Garin the Great. Hell, he even wrote this scene. Yet because some really want to see their super specific unfeasible(!) fever dreams to validate their need to punish Daenerys and House Targaryen and their dragon for being perceived as obstacles to their favorite character's rise to power, Euron Greyjoy, a minor character introduced to us in ADwD, is the first to set foot onto Valyria after more than 400 years. iii) Since we have established the truthfulness of Euron's tale, let's extend the same skepticism to the "Dragonbinder" as well; true dragonbinders were used by pure-blooded Valyrians to tamp even the ill-willed and oldest dragons. In the millennia of wars between the dragonlords of the Freehold and the rest of Essos dozen of such horns must have been lost by riders and found by other folk. If the possession of one paired with enough magical expertise and lust for dragons would been sufficient to make anyone a dragon rider, the Freehold of Valyria would not have been the only civilization to tamp dragons. So why would two Greyjoys make the exception? On top of that, why would Euron let the horn out of his sight and more importantly give it into the custody of his brother he knows has wronged and slighted more than once? And if Euron is indeed an agent of the Others, of Ice, GRRM won't have him subjugate one of the embodiments of Fire, which shall be triumphant at the end of the series. Lastly, the speculation of Victarion Greyjoy as a dragon rider is a misunderstanding, likely deliberate, of Moqorro and the dialog between him and Victarion; Moqorro is a red priest sent to Daenerys so she might know she has been identified as Azor Ahai Reborn by his temple. If he is even half as frantically loyal as Melisandre is to Stannis, Moqorro would never actively try to sabotage his Chosen One by helping someone, a non-believer at that, to rob her of her dragons. Creatures that are sacred to the religion of R'hllor. Not to mention who is Victarion to Moqorro? A pillaring slave catcher who worships an agent of the Others for everything that isn't R'hllor.
If speculations around potential dragon riders do not serve to despite Dany, then they are handed out as rewards to favorites. Nevertheless, GRRM has written to many hints for the other characters to become riders, likely Tyrion and Jon Snow, despite it being incredibly repugnant to me for numerous reasons; it has been Daenerys who has to do all the hard work, who figured out how to birth them, how to raise and feed them, how to train them, protect them and deal with all the moral dilemmas. No matter what, it will always be cheap, offensive and lazy to me that two characters will swoop in, become legendary as the first dragon riders alongside Dany and reap all the glory, and depending on their heritage, a violation of GRRM own lore and rules of physic. The excuse of 'its the ending of the world' is cheap and contrived.
To conclude its despicable how something as unique as the bond between dragons and their riders and the otherworldliness being of the blood grants is cheapened by all these speculations, which are almost exclusively petty fantasies that should be impossible to happen.
there is something to be said about the pathetic and ridiculous stansas' strawman argument that Sansa is being hated for enjoying romance and fantasy stories and songs 😂;
When i) I have never witness this, its only ever said by her stans that she gets hated for that. So much so it's her most prominent hate that has to be called out.
ii) The idea alone that she; one of the most safe character in the series: a passive status qou conforming highborn girl with the most disproportionated popularity amongst the fandom, is single out in the series and hated for THAT is so ludicrous her stans should come up with a better strawman argument. She is not in the least unique (which is were her actual problems lies) for that; a lot of female AND male character in the series do so.
iii) What takes the cake however is the hypocrisy (as always); childlike naivety is something to applaud when Sansa displays it, it makes her promising for any power role ("emBodImEnt Of hOpe foR fuTUre") a romantic idealist, but with Daenerys? Oh honey no, in that case its pathologize as megalomaniac delusion, first displayed trait of the genetic madness that slumbers within her. Sansa's qoute "If I am ever a queen, I'll make them love me" gets her rewarded with the fandom's marxist nobleprize, meanwhile Daenerys gets thousand edits from them with the qoute "the way to hell is paved with good intentions" and is a cult leader and tyran unseen before for wishing to be beloved by her subjects for her ACTUAL work and sacrifices.
all targ antis are acting like rejected incels; constantly running their mouth no one ask or cares for, recirculating whatever anti theory and nonsense woke buzzwords for the millionth time like anyone cares, inventing and canonizing their pathetic headcanons and then unironically turning whatever irrelevant bitchass fave they have into a Targaryen OC with AUs of them getting dragon eggs, being secret half Targaryens, dragonriders, getting all of Daenerys forces and prophecies + dozen atrocious ai edits of olivia or sophie in an elsa wig like pls 🤡
smartasses; pOweR cOrRuPTs aNd abs0luTE p0wER cOrRuPTs AbSoUTely, invariable and with no regards to good intentions (funnily enough is only ever said in the context of talking about Daenerys and her ancestors)
also them about their favs; 🙈 or. "he is sUch a MaNNis" 🤤 (meant unironically) ThE kIng wHo cARed as Stannis runs around burning everbody left and right because he is megalomaniac, sucks strategically and nobody gives a lick about him or his cause + "I want my oh so gullible, naive fave of a litEtaL cHild in an absolute power position" 🤡
same goes for the dragons; when their mother commands them she is hitler with nuclear weapons but any able-bodied joe in the series is just the man™ when they get them in their incels power fantasies
