#hotd fans

[sophiemariepl]

Okay, I know that I’m most likely gonna sound like a boomer, but hear me out:

Today’s HotD fans are a perfect example to me of what is wrong with a large proportion of modern audiences and the way people consume pop culture and media in general.

Ever since the premiere of the Season 1, I am becoming convinced that going beyond black-and-white perspective is… well, beyond capabilities of a growing number of folks out there.

Like, to so many of them it is either Team Black or Team Green.

Either Rhaenyra or Alicent. Or either Rhaenyra or Aegon. Either Daemon or Aemond. Either the Targaryens & the Velaryons or the Hightowers. Et cetera.

And once someone leans more to one side of the story, they just seem to idealize their team and completely demonize the other. Once you love Rhaenyra, she becomes the perfect heir, progressive and feminist, and Alicent becomes a cruel, back-stabbing b*tch and servant of patriarchy. And vice versa, once you prefer Alicent, she is a 100% victim of her circumstances with no agency whatsoever and Rhaenyra becomes a spoiled b*tch who is unable to make anything good out of her opportunities.

And it’s just so beyond the point for me.

People, this is not some football match where you pick your team and wish all the worst to the other.

It’s a fictional historical fantasy chronicle about a downfall of one of the greatest houses in the history of this universe. Nobody here is perfect to rule; in fact, every faction here is in one way or another bad and makes decisions that are just incompetent.

The whole point of George R.R. Martin writing about the Dance of Dragons story is to ask the question:

What happens when among all the heirs to choose from, none of them is good?

And let’s finally stick to that.

[sophiemariepl]

I know I’m gonna sound like a boomer again, but I really miss the times when we could appreciate a fictional character without having to morally excuse their actions. And yes, this is again about Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon.

(I know that someone already wrote it here, but I feel like we need to stress it out more.)

Like, one of the main reasons why I find the HotD fandom so annoying and unbearable is that way too many individuals active in it conflate how well a particular character is written with how moral they are as a person.

But here it does not even seem to stem from any good deeds that they do, as it was in the case of Daenerys fandom (or at least, most of the time it does not seem to stem from it). Here, basically, all that matters is personal liking towards the character - if someone likes a particular character, they immediately jump to idealize them. Almost as if people were ashamed to admit that they like a character that is morally flawed or imperfect??

I already wrote in one of my previous posts about the Rhaenyra-Alicent dichotomy which is a great example of this phenomenon in the HotD fandom. I’m not gonna repeat myself here, so if you wanna know about which dichotomy I’m talking, go check out this post.

Coming back to my main point that is complaining, I miss the times when people could freely admit that they loved the Lannisters specifically because they are toxic, cruel and cunning (maybe except for Jeoffrey, I think that Jeoffrey was less appreciated and more universally hated 😜). Because they still appreciated the way the Lannisters were written. The political mind of Tywin, Tyrion’s wit, Cersei’s and Jamie’s toxicity, and the complexity of their characters.

Did they commit awful things, either to advance their family politically or for their personal gain? Yes.

Does that deny that they were extremely well written, as three-dimensional, multi-layered people? No.

Of course, I’m using the Lannisters only as an example, because I cannot list every single character of that sorts in here.

Having given this example tho, it makes me wonder why people cannot adopt the same approach to HotD. What’s the problem with using it in one was or another towards Otto Hightower, Alicent, Rhaenyra, Corlys Velaryon and Rhaenys Targaryen, or perhaps even most importantly, to Daemon?

Does this approach make you feel bad about yourselves, HotD fans? Are you ashamed to think that you like a character that is actually an awful person? Or is it that you just assume that every character that you like has to be a morally good person?

I’m genuinely asking.