“Team Black are already sharpening the pitchforks 😬”
They are literally the worst part of this fandom, even more so than the Greens stans!
Do you know what they’re mad about? Jace’s death 🤦🏽♀️
George RR Martin KILLED him yet the way they’re whinging you’d think he’d still be alive if it wasn’t for the evil Ryan Condall and Sara Hess 🙄
Also can’t wait to see how they blame Alicent for his death, they’ve already spent the past four years blaming her for Harwin and Luke’s!
Taking this as a prompt for a long(ish) rant.
I don't necessarily blame the marketing team for using Team Black vs. Team Green as a strategy to promote season 2, as it seems like it was/is the best way to capture the attention of an audience who's only expecting fire and blood (pun intended) from HoTD. At the same time, you'd expect this audience, since it's made up of adults (allegedly), to be capable of seeing through it because of the show's very clear and all-encompassing anti-war stance. Guess they overestimated their audience's discernment quite a bit.
This anti-war stance is at the core of many people's hostility towards the show. The creators aren't interested in the bloody conflict as such but on how it tears people and families apart. The dragons here are a metaphor for weapons of mass destruction, as even Ryan himself has stated, so the dragon mythology becomes secondary. You won't be able to appreciate the show if you fail to grasp this in the first place.
As for the teams, Team Black supporters are on average the most vile I've seen, as Targaryen loyalists are in general, which is not to say Team Green's are much better. Here I should make it clear I'm not speaking of people who have a stronger preference for characters on either side, which is perfectly valid, but people who make everything about who should sit on the Iron Throne while viciously attacking the "opponent" and ignoring all other themes. As I've touched upon before, engaging with the show primarily on these terms is misguided, and perhaps deserves its own separate rant.
Which brings me to the next point. I'm starting to notice a growing animosity within Team Black's supporters against Rhaenyra and Team Green's against Alicent. Both are blamed for not going full beast mode against the other team and for their aversion to war. This resistance to bloodshed isn't just due to their love for each other (however you wish to define it, it has been confirmed multiple times by the creators and actors themselves, so I'm not going to bother arguing for the obvious here) but also due to their distaste for the violent patriarchal society which has always deprived them of full agency on the basis of their gender. (This should go without saying but since I've seen it repeated a bit too often, this is NOT liberal feminism, it is NOT based on an gender essentialist view of "women" as inherently non-violent beings). Although, of course, this disdain can't be fully articulated and acted upon by any of these characters precisely because of own enmeshment in that society.
As much as asoiaf fans pride themselves on enjoying morally grey characters, I haven't found much of that over the years. Arguments against specific characters that don't rely on moral — and often maniqueist — terms are increasingly rare.
Alicent is by far the preferred target in HoTD. Turns out she's not a two dimensional evil stepmother, so if you really want to hate her (and obviously we can't hate the war-thristy pedo abusive groomers because we love morally grey characters, especially if they're cis white men, am I right?) you must reject the narrative that's being presented and come up with your own. Because surely your version of a book with unreliable narrators is the correct one, Ryan's is just bad fanfiction.
And this is where book accuracy comes in. I'm not surprised they're blaming Jace's death on the show, and ultimately will blame it on Alicent. They select passages and events to defend their points, even if the act of selecting parts while ignoring others contradicts their basic premise of the book as the ultimate source of indisputable authority. Notice how there's no difference between this type of people and religious fanatics except for their book of choice (Fire & Blood/Bible) and the entity they worship (George R. R. Martin/God)?
Ultimately, there's a point in a person's journey to irrationality that makes any attempt to reason with them futile. So my best advice to anyone discontent with the show is to just stop watching. To the F&B worshippers, well . . . read another book!
