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“If you think Rhaenyra’s kids should have inherited, you’re also saying that Joffrey Baratheon should have!” Yes. The issue with Joffrey isn’t that he’s a bastard it’s that he’s a cunt. If he were Joffrey the Gallant and was unfailingly kind to Sansa and fair and just, Ned would come off like the biggest asshole in the world for yelling about bastardry
Muting Hotd again because I've been seeing too many Aegon2 stans whining again how unfair it is to stan Aerion but not Aegon2 and how Aegon2 should have a redemption but Aerion is way to evil to get one like as if TGs didn't write fully length novels denying that Aegon2 is a rapist, it didn't happen, it was off screen, he just fondled women. Like okay dude we didn't make an AO3 tag for Aerion saying he's not an abuser, guess the character who has one lmao. Fuck them and their morality contest.
Imagine if Aerion had legions of fans calling Aelora an unworthy whore who should shut up and take it (“it” being both misogyny and unwanted sex) and let Aerion have the throne because it’s “not all about her”
follow up!
☕️ + thoughts on hotd 3x1 and how they do gender and misogyny?
I always thought that while it can be pretty dated in how they speak about it, how it works is still pretty tight in the show. alicent holding power through her children and losing as her two more political powerful children fall from her and seeking something else makes sense to me as well as Rhaenyra having a certain internalized misogyny due to not only her position but with how men talk so casually about it, like how Jason mentioned how “women are always late due to them needing to get ready” which may or may not be a small callback but I don’t know.
Yeah all of that makes sense to me. I suppose what grates on me in HOTD is the association made between violence and impulsivity as masculine and peace-seeking as feminine... I understand what they're trying to say and I think what they're trying to go for is that women, having had to weigh more consequence than men all their lives, are more prone to rational thinking? But in practice I am finding most of the characters kinda boring because of it. Daemon wanting to use their dragons immediately and getting shut down by Rhaenys is a good example as it's a total role reversal from the books, where she wants to, and he says we can't be that reckless with them
☕️ + hotd?
also have you seen the new episode?
coffee cup
I've seen it!
I'm kind of lukewarm about HOTD... the way it portrays gender + misogyny has never really worked for me. Hate that they cut Nettles. I'm not a particular fan of Rhaenyra/Alicent either which doesn't help because it's so central to the show... But I like Jace and Baela and I like the dragons. And I particularly liked Ewan Mitchell's performance in that last episode although I think he's been awesome the entire show
I do however really enjoy HOTD fanfiction, much more than I like the show itself, I think it's a lot of fun both to read and write. It reminds me of HP fic in a way and I used to love HP fic as a teenager so it's nostalgic for me
I still cannot get over Olivia Cooke being one year older than the guy playing her onscreen son. Especially not whilst GOT the show had age gaps of decades between Fairley & Madden, Headey & Gleeson, etc
I may be a little off with the nettles ( genuinely because I forgot she existed because I forgot this book existed) but… i think the answer to it is very simple in a way people don’t like to admit: they gave her storylines to two characters who have been introduced and genuinely are off screen in the book until the very end expect for one instance for baela and nothing for rhaena.
I don’t think baela and rhaena are being seen as interchangeable, I think they realized a while ago that these two important late game characters have sparse to do in the actual war they are covering and decided to splice nettles into two halves for them so they have something to do.
nettles is a character with a great story, no doubt and the addition of a young poc in a series that literally has none to the point that they are often race swapped is nice and i say this as a poc. BUT.
not only does nettles storyline possibly go into something that is never going to finish and wasn’t in the showverse but above all, the use she has for the questioning of targ + dragon relations is done in the show without her.
“she proves you don’t have to look like a targ to ride a dragon” rhaenyras sons do that.
“she proves you don’t have to have targ blood to be a dragon rider” addam lowkey does this.
I absolutely think she’s an interesting character and believe her character as a whole does add something but I’m not at all surprised she got cut. rhaena having her storyline with daemon makes sense especially since they were already going into the dad-daughter stuff with him last season. baela having her gullet stuff and sadness over Jace makes sense for the same reason. atleast to me.
No, I agree with all of this. I think all of your thoughts here are well reasoned and they are undoubtedly why they cut Nettles. I don't think anyone at HBO was condensing black characters into one with the intention of being racist
But I do think that optics wise it's still quite iffy to merge her away with Baela and Rhaena. It does make you think that someone behind the scenes had to think, "well, they're all black, so we can do that without being accused of whitewashing" the way they would have been if Baela and Rhaena were white here
Hot take - subsuming Nettles into Rhaena wasn't just racist, it was misogynistic and classist as well. And the worst part is I suspect it was only done so they wouldn't have to make Daemon a cheater.
I’m not sure how much I believe that they’re trying to sanitise Daemon/Daemyra—this is the same show, after all, that added in a scene of Daemon strangling her in a rage and Rhaenyra’s association with Mysaria having a more romantic element to it, as well as pinning B&C entirely on him and making him run off to Harrenhal and have sex dreams about his mother. And he’s constantly calling Rhaenyra weak and useless whilst she calls him pathetic. And of course they could easily have kept Nettles and simply removed the romantic aspect, making it more of a rumour that Rhaenyra believed
But I do agree with you that it’s an odd choice, for a show that is so concerned with the smallfolk in season two (Ulf, Hugh, Rhaenyra saying she can’t rule over the ashes, Helaena saying that peasant women lose their children every day) to erase Nettles, the only* lowborn dragonrider who remains loyal until the end. You’d think her perspective would be relevant and tie in with those themes, but I guess apparently not
*Not counting Addam; he’s Corlys’ son and gets legitimised as a Velaryon
Nettles being removed and then merged into Rhaena (and, judging by that screenshot, Baela) really did sour me on the entire show. Every time I like anything it does it’s tinged by how racist that decision was
