I’m Just So Bored

Darlene, Italy. (Sideblog of @lelephantdanslechapeau)

[hauntedbythenarrative]

Exit, Pursued, Dalton Day//House of the Dragon (2022-)

[hunterschafer]

OLIVIA COOKE as Lou SOUND OF METAL (2019) dir. Darius Marder

[caroldanversenthusiast]

Olivia Cooke with her bleached eyebrows is something that can be so personal

[twinpeaksfireblogwithme]

dynamic of all time fr

[twinpeaksfireblogwithme]

[artemideaddams]

the whole “Aemond was the child closest to their mother” VS “Alicent actually despise who Aemond is/is becoming” is so boring, because it implies that if one of these affirmation is true, the other must be false. Why can’t they be both true? Both true is more interesting.

[twinpeaksfireblogwithme]

the key thing that people miss out when talking about alicent and aemond imo is just how similar they are. they both carry so much repressed grief and resentment and anger at the injustices they’ve suffered that they themselves can hardly contend with or even comprehend it. their victimhood and experiences of neglect and abuse (in aemond’s case facilitated in part by alicent) and suffocating sense of loyalty and duty (and sacrifice) are all things they share; there’s even a parallel you could draw between alicent being married off at fourteen and how aemond is groomed and fashioned into a weapon of war. in many ways aemond is a reflection of his mother and her pain and is also significantly the only family member who’s ever tried to protect her (and vice versa). all of this contributes to her complex feelings of terror seeing what he’s becoming and how his upbringing has shaped him; terror of aemond is also by extension terror of herself. i’m interested to see how the aftermath of ep10 will unfold in s2 and whether or not aemond will tell the truth about what happened (my hunch is that he won’t)

[alicentloyalist]

ALICENT HIGHTOWER & AEGON II TARGARYEN in HOUSE OF THE DRAGON 1.08 and 1.09

[lena-luthor]

- Geeta Patel

[starkslydia]

HOUSE HIGHTOWER is a noble house founded by Uthor of the High Tower during the Dawn Age. Their seat is The Hightower of Oldtown, on the Reach of Westeros. The Hightower heir is to be named Lord or Lady of the Hightower, Lord or Lady of Oldtown, Beacon of the South and Defender of the Citadel, historically its heir also assumed the title of King or Queen of the High Tower. Their sigil is a white tower crowned with green flames. The Hightower family words are “We Light the Way”. 

A short HISTORY of the NOBLE HOUSES of WESTEROS (6/11)

[hauntedbythenarrative]

Cold Solace, Anna Belle Kaufman//"Flood", Wideawake Field: Poems, Eliza Griswold//House of the Dragon (2022-)

[ella-of-ravenclaw]

People talking about that line of Viserys going “Rhaenyra my only child” as if it’s supposed to be something very moving and tearjerking and even calling it his moment of “redemption” makes me so fucking pissed I can’t even. Why are we not talking about how disrespectful and callous this is towards his VERY REAL OTHER CHILDREN who are currently still existing?? How disrespectful this is to Alicent, his WIFE who was forced to marry him as a teen and who gave him these children whom he clearly doesn’t give a shit about? I simply don’t get anyone who wants to paint Viserys in a sympathetic light and consider this such a ~touching moment in which he shows his love for his daughter. He is a fucking callous asshole who never gave a shit about his other children to the extent that he considers his daughter from his first marriage his “only child”. And you want me to see this as his moment of redemption?

[peixesoluvel]

"If I'm on fire, you'll be made of ashes too"

[jayynella-deactivated20230304]

Poetic cinema

[awildwickedslip]

i love how sympathetic the show is making all sides here. i felt so horrible for criston: he is being so dumb in his grand proposal to rhaenyra, but it’s so easy to see how you’d get there when you are lost in the sauce of westerosi concepts of honor; it is genuinely heartbreaking when he says all he has is his cloak and he’s dishonored it - and a really brutal reminder of the disparities in class position that led to this moment. and yet i also understand exactly where rhaenyra is coming from, and why she is so blindsided by how her plan to have the kind of sexual freedom that daemon can enjoy falls through, and the carelessness with others feelings she has learned from daemon, from viserys, from everything about her position as a targaryen. and i absolutely totally understand why rhaenyra lied to alicent - what choice did she have, faced with alicent’s clear revulsion? but i also can see exactly why alicent feels so monumentally betrayed by it. it’s good stuff

[hellshee]

frank o'hara, from selected poems; “meditations in an emergency” \ maggie nelson, bluets \ i.b. vyache, excerpt 03.01.20 \ joy katz, from “december, fever,” \ ann brashares, girls in pants: the third summer of the sisterhood \ agustín gómez-arcos’ “the carnivorous lamb” (translated by william rodarmor) \ letter to my rage: an evolution, by lidia yuknavitch \ sonia sanchez, homegirls and handgrenades

[sentientheat]

— the dedication (detail) by edmund blair leighton | phia saban as helaena targaryen in hotd 1x09

[lheautontimoroumenos]

House of the Dragon + Iphigenia in Aulis, Euripides 5/7

[derangedaenerys]

[queenmotheralicent]

I'm fascinated by how Alicent's and Rhaenyra's stories are so different and yet, in the end, so similar.

Allow me to elaborate:

Alicent's story is the story of a woman making herself small so that she fits into the world. Her father pushes her towards this, never allowing her to act as she pleases, controlling her every move.

Rhaenyra's story, on the other hand, is the story of a woman refusing to turn herself into something she's not and trying to bend the world to her will. Her father encourages this, allowing her to act as she pleases (for the most part).

Alicent doesn't have high ambitions in life. She just wants to live, to serve, to do her duty, to be good. Or does she? She could never truly know. She only ever wanted what her father impressed upon her to want, after all. She doesn't know how to be happy anymore. Her last moment of happiness was years ago, when she was a child, sitting under a tree with Rhaenyra's head on her lap. If she was ever given freedom she wouldn't know what to do with it.

Rhaenyra is ambitious. She wants it it all or nothing. She wants to be a dragon. To be a man. She wants to be free. To be happy. And for most of her life, she is. She is allowed to be.

Rhaenyra is also allowed to have as many kids as she wants with whomever she wants in her 20's. While Alicent is forced to have 4 kids with a man as old as her father when she's only 16.

This affects their parenting styles to an almost ridiculous degree.

And yet, they both love their children dearly.

And so Alicent is forced to live with her ghosts, while Rhaenyra refuses to live with her ghosts, she refuses to look back for even a second, because she can't. If she looks back she's lost.

And Alicent wasn't a feminist. This is self-explanatory. But Rhaenyra wasn't a #girlbossfeminist either. She didn't fight for women's rights. She didn't try to smash the patriarchy. She fought for the throne, for herself. For her rights, and her rights only. That wasn't very feminist of her.

This is as true as the fact that the reason no one wanted her to be queen was BECAUSE she was woman. That was also not very feminist of them, either.

And so Alicent never rebels, because she tries so hard not to. And by the end, when all she's left with is sorrow, she realizes that it was all for nothing. All her efforts were for nothing. A life destroyed. A life wasted.

While Rhaenyra tries so hard to rebel, and she does, but when all she's left with is sorrow, she burns so bright, until her feeble human body can't take it anymore and her rage, her fire, burns her from the inside out. All her efforts were for nothing. A life destroyed. A life wasted.

They might have been as different as the sun and the moon, but in the end, it didn't matter. The patriarchy destroyed them both. (Yes, that is an Arya and Sansa quote, and yes I did use it on purpose)

There is no right way to live under a patriarchal society that seeks to destroy you. In the end it'll destroy you, no matter what you do. You just get to choose how you go.