in an enchanted forest somewhere

Issy | 20s | She/her | Curious fan of many things | pfp by Justin Sweet

[veteran-ranger]

There are few things as painful and frankly, heartbreaking as seeing a female character who has existed for decades, who has been appreciated on her own for who she is by the fandom for over half a century, be reduced to the female love interest in a dark romance ship because of an adaptation. And now 80% of the tags about her are about said ship. Makes me want to jump off a cliff.

[balrogballs]

never have i been proven more right about my predictions for a tv show than today, when i looked at the ‘sneak peeks’ of easterlings from the rings of power season 3 and realised with a sinking feeling that i was indeed right in my predictions as to what route they were setting up to go with this plotline in season 2, ie taking tolkien’s deliberately constructed racist elements with the haradrim and easterlings and adapting it uncritically for the post 9/11 anglo-western racial imaginary where the audience catered for want surface level representative diversity yet cannot sleep at night if they don’t find a jihadi in every foreign villain, belying a lack of any of the deeper engagement with race in the text like they’ve been claiming to do for the last five years. literally do not have the energy to type it all up again so please enjoy my rant on the matter from elsewhere

[pepelinkri]

thinking of that scene in agot where ned tells robert that actually, lyanna would have put his stupid fucking nonsense right down too but its about him wanting to participate in a tourney so i love that ned is like "come on man, not even my sister (noted tourney participant, not that you know it) would have thought that was smart. thats how low youve fallen". and the perception of lyanna as someone who shoots down stupid impulsive nonsense can only means she was on brandon's ass so much ned got to hear about it all the way in the vale bc realistically there was only one person in that household that lyanna "hold my lance and watch this" stark might have told to chill tf out. much to consider.

[kisses-in-the-void]

Okay, even though watching all those insufferable people cry crocodile tears is incredibly satisfying (that's what you get for harassing and insulting fans who did nothing wrong to you except not liking your crack ship), I have to stop now because seeing all these posts about "jealous Sauron," "Sauron being the third wheel to celedriel," "Sauron throwing a tantrum because they kissed," and yada yada yada is doing way too much damage to my well-being.

Have your fun, I guess, but that's #NotMySauron. He doesn't want to fuck your elves, and he wouldn't be pining after any of them!!! He's not interested in them except as objects to manipulate and torture. To him they're just animals walking on two legs.

[kisses-in-the-void]

It makes me foam at the mouth, actually. This is a character who lived among Incarnates FOR SO LONG, yet never were ANY of his decisions motivated by carnal desires. Tolkien is famously known for rewriting his drafts and changing things, events, and the personalities of his characters, yet NOT ONCE did he feel the need to mention Sauron having or wanting to pursue a lover, no matter whom: another Ainu, an elf, or a human.

And even if some people want to analyze his dynamics with the male characters he corrupted and manipulated through a queer lens, it still won't change the fact that it was NEVER about him feeling infatuated, amazed, or obsessed with any of them! It was all about getting something in the process, and not about the process itself or any "enjoyment" from it. He saw them as tools, as instruments meant to play a part in order to fulfill his plan, where the final goal was world domination with him literally worshipped by all inhabitants as a godlike figure. And there wasn't a place for anyone else near him, only below, much, much further below. That was the only right hierarchy in his worldview. If he didn't agree to perceive you as his superior, as with Melkor, then you were his subordinate if you agreed to obey, or an enemy if not. The enemies must be destroyed at all costs, and he always did it without any doubts or regrets. The subordinates were doomed to be basically stripped of everything that made them their own persons, with goals and wishes that might differ from Sauron's. It's just that simple!

He isn't a "violent possessive passionate lover" who wants to keep you in his tower because "he couldn't live without you". He's a merciless, evil, otherworldly ancient creature whose thoughts and desires are not alike to humans'. He wants to plunge wires into your brain and make you his puppet, whose purpose of existence is to serve him and worship him. Yes, it's not that "sexy" but that's how it is!!!! And it's one thing to change his personality in fanfics (which is no one else's business), but now people genuinely believe that CANON SAURON IS A SHADOW DADDY, and I can't stand that.

#NOTTTTTT_MY_SAURONNNNN

[setulose]

Whatttt is with the tendency of Tumblr users to seek absolution from every single person who offhandedly posts about disagreeing with something they do

[setulose]

I say this not unkindly, but firmly: to function as a member of a social species, you have to get comfortable with the idea that not everyone will like you

[7bitter]

most stories are about land relations. if you don't think they are, look more closely. & if it claims not to be, i wouldn't trust it

[legsdemandias]

Do you think tumblr will ever learn the difference between “I’m defending this person because I agree with them wholeheartedly and I am also like this person” and “I’m defending this person because your behavior is dangerous and you need to stop”

[legsdemandias]

IMO, blurring the lines between “I’m defending them because they’re right” and “I’m defending them because you’re taking this too far” is step numero uno to cutting down the very existence of fair trial and democracy–even in places where saying that might seem a little dramatic. 

Mob mentality is extremely strong in humans and it’s also extremely dangerous. Mobs don’t think things through. Mobs kill and they destroy and they can’t be reasoned with. Someone trying to calm a mob down isn’t someone defending the ~problematic party~ It’s time we re-learn that.

[branwinged]

(apologies if you've discussed this before but) do you think that the lack of smallfolk povs in asoiaf works to its detriment as a work which condemns their suffering as a byproduct of political conflict? it's a perspective i've only encountered recently and i've been pondering it

that depends on what you think the books are doing and i would say asoiaf has never attempted to do a serious critique of monarchy as a mode of governance, it's mostly a work about intra-aristocratic conflict in a fantasy world. martin's commentary on power involves acknowledging that yes all power structures are kept in place through systemic violence but it might be possible to redeem that power, so to speak, by using it well. a really obvious way i find this to be true is that the ideal of kingship in asoiaf is somewhat in play with the divine right of kings.

gods may or may not exist within the world of ice and fire but magic/prophecy is real. “if the world of men is to survive, a targaryen must be seated upon the iron throne” and “there must always be a stark in winterfell” are suggesting the same thing, that both families are divinely appointed (prophesied, that is) to be protectors of the realm during the long night, something that's owed to the fact of their magical bloodlines. this is something the fandom elides because it's a regressive fantasy trope that has its roots in biological racism—blood as inherent destiny—it's true within the text though. i believe martin has attempted to complicate this by implying that the valyrians magically altered their dna to be able to bond with dragons and that the starks' ability to skinchange is owed to their history of conquest in the north. i remember there was this paragraph in twoiaf about them taking the daughters of the warg king (skinchanger) and the marsh king (greenseer) as hostages/brides and the implication very much was that this is how they introduced those traits into their line. but it strikes me as, you know, to be able to have your cake and eat it too.

so both families have historically come to power through brutal, magical subjugation of other people but the narrative never actually frames the dragons, the weirwoods, or wargs as corruptions of the natural order of the world, instead the present generation of the starks and the targaryens just have to reckon with that historical abuse of power, and they're only able to do this because of their access to the same magic, not by their rejection of it (substitute "magic" for "political power" here and the sentiment remains the same) dany has to end the imperial legacy of the valyrian freehold with her dragons, bran as the last greenseer has to help the children of the forest to do what i don't know, that'll be revealed in twow, but he has to help them after they were originally subjugated by his stark ancestors, jon as lord commander must put an end to centuries of violence against the free folk in the north, and arya's story is most likely leading up to a restoration of order in the riverlands after it was ravaged by her brother's armies. i think we can all agree that if this was a seriously leftist work of speculative fiction we would be getting the povs of these subjugated classes and their own attempts at resistance, instead of it all being told through the lens of these nobleborn characters who're simultaneously positioned by the narrative as their saviours to varying degrees. but martin's not interested in that, he is interested in telling a story about the fantasy of a good king who'll heal the land and its people. and that's fine. asoiaf has never pretended to be anything else.

[ilynpilled]

the most glaring thing when it comes to misogyny with female vs male characters isn’t even just the difference in the amount of sympathy granted to them (though these two things might in the end be very tied up in each other), they are genuinely not afforded complexity and dimension either. there are so many male characters that people understand as reprehensible, but they are simultaneously heralded as complex and incredible masterworks. yet, when it is a woman in a similar spot, they are treated like they are simple, two-dimensional, and are not afforded the same grace and effort when it comes to analyzing their writing. i’m not saying that writers are totally exempt from misogyny when it comes to the writing itself, but lord does the audience demonstrate it way more in my eyes

[ilynpilled]

Fighting Cersei opinions is so hard because I hate when people call her dumb but she actually is dumb, it's just that her delusion and paranoia is making her make these stupid decisions and it is fact that her training and education was mostly what suited a lady so she isn't exactly taught some political things but there isn't this considerable Tywin - Cersei gap where Cersei is just so stupid, she isn't dumb that way at all.

ive said this before but we get inside of her head by a point where she is overcome by grief and paranoia. her shortcomings and incompetence at ruling and politicking can be tracked back to how she was withheld the education that her brothers had access to, was shoved aside by her misogynistic father and reared to be his submissive chess piece to be sold to serve and please the men in her life, and that she thoroughly internalized her father’s flawed world views. she is self-centered, impulsive, arrogant, traumatized, paranoid and inexperienced with being in a true position of power, not to mention how utterly terrified she is of losing power so she is hesitant about trusting or following advice from anyone. on top of that nobody respects her or takes her seriously at all because of her gender, which is an incredible disadvantage.

[ilynpilled]

#tywin's delusions manifest more in cersei and tyrion than jaime because he /controlled/ so much more of their lives #tywin moved cersei strategically between casterly rock and the court until her marriage. and she was no freer with an abusive husband. #jaime left casterly rock as a preteen and served (for better and worse) men who were not lannisters #but cersei and tyrion's outside influences in childhood were visiting lannister aunts and uncles who ultimately deferred to tywin #and cersei's right in a way? there are factions seeking to exploit and undermine her at any opportunity #tywin's vicious but ultimately short-sighted model of government is more appealing and effective than robert's drunken blundering #those are the models (in the absence of the kind of education reserved for men) she learned from via @fortunate-hal

[branwinged]

why is there so much anti dragon sentiment in the asoiaf fandom?

i was going to leave this at "fifteen years with no book and two divisive adaptations results in way too much inane discourse". but instead i'm going to talk about metaphors.

i've noticed a desire for neat, didactical, metaphorical readings for everything that makes people uncomfortable about these books. and discomfort with a topic is something i understand, but it cannot be resolved by forcing a reading on the text which may align with your personal or political views, but is actually misconstruing the text. in asoiaf, this usually centres around the targaryens because the incest, the dragons, their alleged magical bloodline, the lost mythic empire, and that someone from their line is prophesied to quite literally save the world - are all divisive story elements. people have correctly identified that despite the power fantasy of their conceptualisation, martin is not writing them as merely self indulgent, aspirational figures, but they've also overcorrected that into 'actually every element of their characterisation reveals one true didactic intent'. so, every instance of incest must be a metaphor for auto cannibalism, the dragons are only a nuke metaphor, the sense of superiority is a stand-in for supremacist ideology etc.

and the thing is, yes martin has sometimes used these elements as such. the dance is a story about the family self cannibalising itself, in part, as a consequence of the institutionalised incest, since under that practice every claimant to the throne was obviously going to be a close family member, which led to all the kinslaying. and the dragons historically have been used to maintain the hegemony of the crown through the threat of terrible, magical violence. this is true. but it's also not all he has to say on the topic. this is one idea he's exploring among a lot of other (often contradictory) ideas. yes, their habit of forgoing exogamous marriage alliances forced them into a precarious position post-dance once they lost their dragons and there is a point being made here about their dynastic decline. but at the same time, egg's failed attempts to forcibly marry his sons (one of whom was gay) out of the family is also saying something about both arranged exogamous westerosi and endogamous targaryen marriages being materially oppressive in almost the exact same ways, and that simply pivoting to the former wouldn't have saved them because the real enemy is westerosi feudal patriarchy, the system under which daughters are exchanged for securing political (or dragon) power and all second sons are subordinate to the first. that in a way, everyone is eating their young. someone very much into the 'all incest as auto cannibalism' metaphor is ignoring this, the way someone who only thinks of dragons as nukes is ignoring the very obvious reworking of them as a symbol of change and freedom in dany's storyline. and this is the problem at hand. the thing about metaphors is that they work up to a certain extent, but often people treat them as the only acceptable reading of a text, instead of something that is in conversation with a lot of other ideas simultaneously being explored by the story. all this leads to, is the flattening of a complex story into a reductive, didactic message of their preference. and, of course, to reduce every fantasy element in these books to simply an analogue for some real world topic, is to take the fantasy intrigue out of the fantasy series.

[branwinged]

attributing all failings of house targaryen to 'rot' they have inherited from their valyrian ancestors, to me, feels one metaphor away from interpreting generations of one family as ontologically predisposed to ruin. i understand the intent here is to speak of the general decline of their monarchical power, but dynastic declines don't happen in a vacuum because of there being something specifically, inherently wrong with one family. they're all actors within a violently misogynistic, feudal society. this obviously isn't an extraordinary observation, and discussions involving other noble houses get this, yet when it comes to the targaryens everything has to be chalked up to 'valyrian supremacy'. sorry but i don't think this achieves anything beyond simply moralising their behaviour in itself without recognising how it has been influenced and enabled by westerosi society.

[branwinged]

like the thing about language such as this is that it's ceding all ground to aesthetic vibes based analysis. i'm obviously not saying nobody should ever use metaphors, the books do it as well. tywin's corpse visibly decaying in the sept despite the silent sisters' efforts to preserve it for his funeral in affc anticipates the lannisters' downward spiral in that book, that underneath the thin veneer of respectability, tywin lannister's legacy is nothing and will not last. and that's all there is to it, the metaphor doesn't extend beyond it. decay is a natural, vital process of life. a corpse decaying in itself is not saying anything, but that the lannisters cannot give tywin a spotless and clean funeral is symbolic of what his legacy will be. we are also given material reasons for the decline of the lannisters and the gradual collapse of westeros's power structures, tywin is not being served some kind of divine retribution. there is no divine retribution in these books! dynasties don't naturally collapse, the dance is commentary on gendered violence within westeros's feudal patriarchy and the institutional violence practiced by the crown to maintain their power, the combination of which results in a ruinous war of succession. the incest and the dragons are there to heighten the family drama aspect of it, not to prove that they're an anomaly, that such a conflict could've only ever occured within this one family.

[branwinged]

sorry to keep doing this, but like, the reason a lot of targaryen analysis is frustrating is because it's invoking the nebulous 'cycles of abuse' thing wherein the post has correctly zeroed in on the theme of generational abuse in the text, but it's never talking about how that abuse is made possible and perpetuated. and the answer is obviously feudal patriarchy. everything wrong with the targaryens is also wrong with westeros at large. this isn't an attempt at whataboutism, but anything asoiaf has to say on the targaryens (or the lannisters, or the greyjoys etc) is also commentary on westeros's feudal patriarchy, because in a system where ultimate power is in the hands of a family, the politics of the state is family politics. abuse of daughters is made possible through a system in which they're viewed as property of the patriarch, to be exchanged for the continuation of bloodlines. abuse of sons is made possible because power flows down from the patriarch to whom they must defer to and serve in perpetuity.

this is why i'm not a fan of 'supremacy' / 'rot' readings because they always resort to pathologising individual characters or families, that there is something uniquely, deeply wrong with them in isolation. like the popular interpretation of incest in the books is that it's criticism of blue-blooded narcissism specific to certain families. that because joanna and tywin were first cousins and because tywin had a 'family first' ideology, the twins' incest is a symbol of 'lannister supremacy'. and that reading has some merit because there is an element of irony here, as the incest is later a source of scandal for the lannisters, certainly not something tywin would've ever wished for. but it's also ignoring the way cersei thinks of jaime as herself, not out of egotism, but because she's suffocated by the gender role of the perfect lady she has had to perform her entire life. and self recognition in jaime is a means of surviving that experience. she lives through him, in the belief that a part of her gets to perform the westerosi ideal of masculinity. and the first time they begin striving for self-definition is in affc, immediately after the death of tywin - the family patriarch, when their story arcs begin questioning whether it's possible for them to exist outside the socially decreed (and enforced by an authoritarian father) roles of the knight and the lady. there's a lot happening here, why reduce it to just character-specific delusions of superiority.

there is another big narrative use of incest in the books and it's craster's keep, which also operates within the exact same framework. craster's daughters are his property, and his sons are sacrificed to the white walkers as a ritual for his own personal security at home—almost the same role westerosi sons are expected to fulfill as knights, sacrificed to institutions of war and violence. the night's watch being willing to overlook this and instead offering him protection on this side of the wall and then protecting the people of westeros on the other side of the wall where all this is being played out on a continent-wide scale—all done in the name of dehumanising and making war with the free folk. unaware that the real threat is something else, something that is probably, allegedly being strengthened through craster's human sacrifices—an evil they've made peace with. does that say anything about the evil having been here along, the evil being normalised. the evil being perpetuated through apathy, giving way to a cataclysmic event in the future. and that it won't go away with specific people dying out because it is foundational to the institutions of westeros.

[branwinged]

dragon discussions are usually about the dualism of dragonfire's destructive capabilities and fire as an element of life in the fight against eternal winter, which is also what i've focused on before. but reading fire & blood rn and realising their ability to fly is an overlooked aspect of the way dragons are being used in the story. flight in f&b serves two major purposes. dragons are, of course, their main claim to power, dragons made them kings. flight then becomes a way of placing them quite literally above the rest of the population because they're not simply nobility, they're royalty. flight also signifies a disregard for all enclosure—it's the way aegon, rhaenys, and visenya begin the conquest by effortlessly flying inside castle walls. emphasised most in the burning of harrenhal ("Those walls are strong and thick" / "But not so high as to keep out dragons. Dragons fly.") —flight here is put to use as both invasive entry and a show of dominance as aegon takes balerion and descends well within castle walls to set harrenhal ablaze. but this goes both ways, because the castle also signifies (gendered) entrapment. which is why flying is consistently described as the one great love of a great many targaryen women, because on dragonback they're the equals of targaryen men, capable of fulfilling the same role in warfare. but back on ground they're eventually expected to fall back into the gender roles demanded of them (and i think hotd's opening is doing both with rhaenyra. she's a targaryen princess and the privilege of flight is hers alone, contrasted with alicent remaining on ground. and rhaenyra is free and wild and happy in the air, but two scene changes later, on ground and inside castle walls, aemma tells her she's destined for the birthing bed)

in the main series flight is always, unsurprisingly associated with freedom, and not simply from gendered expectations, because unlike her royal ancestors dany's life has been defined by dispossession. forced out of her home and on the run, under the primary care of an abusive brother until that brother sells her for an army—dany has never truly known material safety or independence. which is why flight is the great appeal of her dragon dreams in agot (Flying, she thought. I had wings, I was flying. But it was only a dream) and something first made obvious with silver, the horse drogo presents her with at their wedding.

The silver horse leapt the flames as if she had wings.

she said, “Tell Khal Drogo that he has given me the wind.”

And for the first time in hours, she forgot to be afraid. Or perhaps it was for the first time ever.

silver represents the modicum of freedom she acquires through their marriage. yes, she is thirteen and is sold to drogo as his property and he rapes her nightly, but her status as khaleesi is what finally frees her from viserys. drogo kills him not out of any particular love for her, but because viserys threatens to hurt the mother of his child. silver is a symbol of that protection drogo provided but being khaleesi won't truly liberate her—she loses everything the moment drogo dies. but what does free her in the end is her dragon dreams.

She could smell home, she could see it, there, just beyond that [red] door, green fields and great stone houses and arms to keep her warm, there. She threw open the door. And saw her brother Rhaegar, mounted on a stallion as black as his armor. Fire glimmered red through the narrow eye slit of his helm. “The last dragon,” Ser Jorah’s voice whispered faintly. “The last, the last.” Dany lifted his polished black visor. The face within was her own.

it's interesting the way the red door in the house with the lemon tree is meant to be her version of security and stability and personal freedom, that's home. when she imagines king's landing she imagines every door painted red. but what she finds within once she opens the door is herself. perhaps then, home for her is not a material location she must look for. instead security and freedom for daenerys is her identity as the last targaryen, the last dragon and when she understands that truth (the fire is mine), she walks into that pyre and sets herself free.

it's not yet a role she's entirely, unhesitatingly stepped into. adwd is the book in which dany struggles most with her targaryen heritage, represented in the way she locks away her dragons once drogon eats that little girl, but the solution doesn't lie in rejecting it. chaining the dragons led to her own entrapment in meereen, which is why drogon appearing in the fighting pits is so obviously a rescue. what she must to do is redefine what it means to be a dragon, and i think she will, she's already halfway there in the way dragons and the magic they embody are being redeemed through dany righting the wrongs of her valyrian ancestors. flight as a symbol of dehumanising oppression in the freehold with the dragonlords in the sky as the slaves toiled away in the mines underground vs flight now as a symbol of enduring hope and freedom for the dispossessed.

[branwinged]

no i agree incest would warp someone's psyche but the way i've seen it disscused, as the targaryens being incapable of regular family relationships and being normal about their family members is not true and as you pointed out we also see incest among the other westerosi houses. it's another things that gets treats as unique to the targaryens when the only difference is how (some) forms of incest are sanctioned/allowed. incestues abuse and inappropriate relationships exist among other houses, you don't need to look any furher than jaime and cersei.

cw: csa mention

yes, i'm familiar with that line of analysis. the general argument is that they're born into a family that practices institutionalised incest, which means they're raised to view siblings as potential sexual partners, something that complicates the possibility of having 'normal' familial relationships—which is correct, but i also agree that you can't make sweeping claims about the psychology of every single targaryen using this reasoning. and people identify this as a problem unique to the targaryens because they're not considering what enables and motivates their incest practices, there's some gesturing at it as a cyclical issue but ultimately they're also being framed as sexual deviants, individually pathologised - which is not all that different from attributing child sexual abuse to the spectre of the pedophile, as a rare perversion and not something that is enabled by the way children are rendered structurally (legally, economically) disempowered. and the reason people construct a unique pathology for the targaryens is because they don't view them as actors within westeros's feudal patriarchy just like every other great house, they view them as valyrians. which is why their motivations for everything they do in the books have to be sourced back to the freehold. and i won't deny that there's a special narrative thread of family magic and curse running through their line (my brothers dreamed of dragons too, and their dreams killed them, every one.), you are being invited to look at them through that lens, that there's a specific burden and tragedy but also awe and glory in being a targaryen. they've socially constructed a divine self-mythology because they're kings and your kings are also your gods, but it's a politically convenient lie they consciously tell their subjects (there are very few targaryens who actually, wholeheartedly believe in the superiority of their own valyrian race), because ultimately they're just as human as any of them and just as subject to and motivated by social forces.

so why is the incest happening, because marriage is a way of forging political alliances and in turn accumulating military power during both times of peace and war. military power for targaryens means dragons, you don't give the lannisters a dragon (it goes deeper than that, dragons are their symbols of legitimacy and authority you simply cannot give another house a dragon, it undermines their entire image as sovereigns), so you keep your dragonrider daughters within the family structure—just as daughters from other great houses are commodities on the marriage market, exchanged for political power and the propagation of bloodlines. materially there is no difference between the two situations (there's a good point re avenues of escape from abuse just not being there in incestuous targaryen marriages, but i've covered it here and concluded that it's also not really available for exogamous marriages), because this is how westeros's feudal patriarchy works. marriages between very young girls and much older men are normalised, we see it happen multiple times in the main series but there's this line in mystery knight which has stuck with me, because it was a detail casually dropped with no objections attached by dunk, the second closest thing to a true knight in the books: "The girl was fifteen and freshly flowered, her lord husband fifty and freshly widowed."

in westeros everyone is match made from birth, if not immediately from birth then well before the age of majority (catelyn was betrothed to brandon at twelve), being uniquely horrified by the targaryens also matchmaking their kids at a young age does not make sense to me. "they are raised into" yes well eleven year old sansa was also raised into internalising this: "I love him, Father, I truly truly do, I love him as much as Queen Naerys loved Prince Aemon the Dragonknight, as much as Jonquil loved Ser Florian. I want to be his queen and have his babies." and i brought up the greyjoy brothers because that's a clear case of non targaryen incestuous abuse made possible because of the way power flows from the patriarch, to whom the younger sons defer to, are sworn to obey—the same power hierarchy that enables aerion's sexual abuse of egg. the forces at play here are the same, yet people will seek to identify the latter as the consequence of the targaryens' uniquely fucked up child rearing practices and psychology.

all marriages in westeros are founded on those principles, because the family structure hinges on gender ideology and the patriarchal ownership of women and children. the targaryens are doing what everyone else is also doing, doesn't mean it's not bad, doesn't make it excusable, but it's important to recognise the way it's culturally encouraged across all of westeros. and since this begun as a discussion of the hotd ask, i'll also add that incest is a narrative tool and can obviously be used beyond imparting moral lessons about Incest Bad, asoiaf is clearly interested in incest as a mode of patriarchal domination (among other things, see jaimecersei), but hotd is exploring both the intergenerational trauma caused by it and daemon and rhaenyra's marriage resembling a relationship wherein they both find mutual gender affirmation through one another (what is said about the trans reading). again, people will be really resistant to the latter reading, but it's undeniably there. and the discomfort with it will not make it go away!

[branwinged]

what do you think about the argument that the incest and dragons make the targaryens so much worse compared to the other houses that the comparisons between them are basically useless?

i will address the incest first, but i'm not interested in any argument arising from disgust. disgust has no moral value and should not be the basis for any ethical/political positions. incest is often predicated on abuse which is the material reason for why it's bad.

so, the argument is that targaryen incestuous marriage is innately more harmful than your average westerosi non-incestuous marriage. the strongest point in favour of this is: when your in-laws are also your natal family, there is no possible recourse for the bride in the event of abuse. i agree with this, maybe ned and brandon would've aided lyanna against robert, but that's one isolated (hypothetical) example. this is not the reality of many women in the main series. not for cersei and not for lysa. in fact, i don't think there is a single instance where the bride's family moves to interfere with a lawful marriage. the martells couldn't do much when rhaegar humiliated elia at harrenhal and then again when he disappeared with lyanna. hoster did nothing when catelyn's new husband returned from the war with his bastard son and shamed her with his decision to raise jon at winterfell. one can hold up margaery as the exception to this, olenna seemed certain that loras would've been outraged enough on her behalf to immediately kill joffrey and to avoid this eventuality they poisoned him beforehand. which was good for her, but why was margaery in such a position to begin with? because she was used as a commodity by her family in their political maneuvering, first with renly and then again with joffrey/tommen. and understand that the tyrells' chief worry here was loras becoming a kingslayer, any concern for margaery's prospective abuse was still secondary.

and this is why the argument doesn't work for me. because within the culture of westeros all women are a commodity, valued entirely for their reproductive capabilities, exchanged by men to maintain the male line. this is the very basis of patriarchy. which is why the real evil here is the institution of marriage. yes, we've established that targaryen women are trapped within their endogamous marriages, but noblewomen in exogamous marriages also have very little hope for recourse. they don't have anywhere to go but pray for their family's aid (which happens rarely or never, as i've pointed out) or their husband's death. this is not me going to bat for incest, just that there really is no significant material difference between targaryen incestous marriages and other westerosi marriages. but to speak of the former as a unique kind of evil, one has to tacitly go to bat for normal westerosi marriages. and that obscures what the text is communicating. the targaryens are not an aberration. westerosi society as a whole is built on gendered violence perpetuating systems of gendered oppression. rarely is anyone not brutalising their daughters. the targaryens do it by keeping daughters within the family structure for consolidating dragon power and the other houses do it by trading their daughters for political power. both cases involve using young girls to bolster male power. and as i've said before, intergenerational violence is an overarching series theme.

now, the dragons. and inevitably this notion of 'valyrian supremacy'. incendiary take, but i don't think it's a useful concept. the targaryens are obsessed with their bloodline, but it's not a fundamentally different type of obsession than that of the starks, the lannisters, or the baratheons etc. they all believe in the inherent superiority of their bloodlines, it's impossible not to when their inheritance is dependent on a continuous line of ancestry which they can trace back to remote times. yeah, then what of the doctrine. the doctrine of exceptionalism is actually doing something else. the doctrine is in-universe propaganda. (most) these people aren't simply egomaniacs with delusions of grandeur, they're shrewd political actors. this is a conscious play to deify themselves in the eyes of their subjects, as royalty is wont to do. there is historical precedent for this with the ptolemies whose sibling marriages were equated with that of zeus and hera and isis and osiris. grrm is very interested in exploring power structures and how they derive their legitimacy. giving his crown family dragons (and then taking them away) is a fantasy extension of that pursuit. see, "dragons are fire made flesh and fire is power". this is a world where the kings are in possession of terrible magic which they claim is their divine mandate.

grrm is using the targaryens to investigate the realities of kingship in his fantasy world, not to make a didactic point about this one noble house being the enemy. as the crown family they must be narratively distinguished from the rest, this he does by introducing the dragons, and as a result of that the incest. both simply heighten the violence already present within feudal power structures. devastating war campaigns for the benefit of the nobility have always existed, the dragons just make it possible to spread that devastation on a more massive scale. the dragons in itself aren't the problem. if that was true, dany—the last targaryen wouldn't have had her entire arc based around recontextualising them as a means of liberation. the power which previously served the authority of kings, now serving the dispossessed.

[branwinged]

What do you think embracing fire and blood will look like for Dany?

well on the point of whether we're going to get some kind of "how far is too far" theme wrt the use of violence in her arc, i'm not sure i agree with that. her adwd arc is already a meditation on violence once she's made aware of just exactly what her dragons are capable of (drogon kills a little girl), she doesn't need to indiscriminately or accidentally blow up a bunch of people to learn that lesson, we'll be retreading ground the story has already covered. we know the dragons are a force of destruction, instead the central question for her going forward is, is this all she can do? can she only bring forth destruction to her enemies? adopting violence against the slavers is the right answer here but she reaches that truth by first giving in to a lie—that she is only capable of destruction because dragons plant no trees. i've already talked about that here and i'm pretty certain she'll be proven wrong on this point, like, what dany is forgetting is that she is also responsible for the most transformative life-giving event in the series—the rebirth of the dragons—which will help humanity survive the long night. because the dragons are intended to be deeply dualistic creatures ("I am looking into hell, but I dare not look away." // "[W]hat does it matter when you can fly? I would do it all again.") and so is she, she is the last dragon. dany (and in turn, the targaryens) embodies the contradictions at the heart of asoiaf best she is given the power to cause both great harm and revolutionary change. she displays boundless empathy for the dispossessed and in the same breath unforgiving fury for their oppressors. i think this is something a lot of readers struggle with because feudalism. is bad. yeah absolute monarchs shouldn't exist and nobody should have that kind of power, but this just happens to be a story interested in the possibility of power being wielded justly, especially by people who were once powerless. so as the last targaryen and as the arbiter of their legacy, dany will have to redefine her house words and the kind of self-transformation needed for a dragon to be able to plant trees is, well, a dream for spring—the time of rebirth. i expect dany embracing fire and blood will end with her helping create a new world. the ambiguous phrasing of the final book - "a dream of" kind of leads me to believe that they (as in, the new generation of children) will be successful in planting those seeds of renewal but might not necessarily get the chance to stay around to watch them bear fruit, doesn't have to mean death (i think most of them will survive), just that it will take a while to correct generations of harm.