Leyz

.

.

.

i was fully behind alicole at first but in hindsight it’s so clear that their relationship turned sexual to rub salt in the wound once criston inevitably chose aemond over her. team green is a little more open to the idea that criston wasn’t loyal to alicent just for anti rhaenyra reasons but out of genuine kinship and affection but the general public isn’t so his choice in the small council wasn’t just insubordination to alicent but -from her pov- a romantic rejection.

but alicent selling out the greens isn’t even the problem for me, sure let her divorce her sons, they suck. but i’ve seen people talk about how she’s finally choosing herself and helaena over the awful men surrounding them (and kinda choosing rhaenyra?) and she’s liberating herself and that’s not even what’s happening???

like, i can see her disowning aemond completely but shes not even fully turning her back on aegon. she clearly cares enough about him to still ask rhaenyra to spare him. but she’s going about it in such a stupid way that relies purely on rhaenyra being a saint (she’s not and she spoke the truth when she said she still has to kill him). no, alicent is not separating herself from all the men in her life, she’s still asking for mercy for them in a very dumb way that’s frankly ooc for her. considering she’s been living with the fear that her children will get killed for 15 years.

also, i feel like many alicels see her renouncing her sons as some moral triumph (apart from the freedom of it all) and i’m sorry to tell you this -as an alicel- but she already knew aegon was a rapist in s1 and she still crowned him. he has done nothing since 1.09 that’s much worse that would warrant her turning her back on him (the rat catchers don’t count since clearly she and otto saw jt mlre as a PR disaster than an actual atrocity).

just wanna add my two cents to the criston cole discourse and say that i think his pov of how things happened circa rhaenyra's wedding is very interesting #tome. i see the fandom reducing his view of alicent-rhaenyra to the madonna-whore complex for criston, and while there's some of it there, i think it's more complex than women having sex=bad.

beyond being one-time lovers, him and rhaenyra were close they bonded and talked about their upbringings, their hopes, anxieties, etc. and due to this she knew that honor was a big freaking deal to him. and she still "took" it. and then there's alicent, who by that point has barely interacted with him and has no real reason to care about him. she sees him at his lowest and yet she shows him so much mercy and trust to the point of making him her sworn protector.

#RHAENICENT: let’s exchange the experience

first off, i’ve been a jopper soldier since day 1, i was seeing their potential since the first scene they ever shared and are in my top 2 stranger things ships. and that’s why i absolutely hated their arc in season 3. prepare for an essay.

hopper and joyce’s bond was so different from every other couple in this show because of their age. the teens and kids have angst and miscommunication because they’re hormonal and most ships are people getting to know each other. jopper doesn’t have that. they’re old friends who have known each other for decades. they came of age, grew up, built their own families and in the end life dealt them a bad hand. they’re hardened by life but within all that bitterness and resentment they feel they have a soft spot for each other. and they don’t need to put up a façade because they appreciate each other for who they are and trust each other the way two soldiers at war do. the trust that you only develop with years of knowing someone.

but come season 3 and the writers are finally going for the jopper relationship in a romantic way and and think that the only way to sell it is through belligerent sexual tension. and i love that trope, i love it when people fight instead of admitting their feelings. but that’s not jopper. i get that their dynamic gets a little more complicated when feelings are involved but we didn’t need to see them acting like teenagers to understand that they like each other. their build up was already there. they have always been a great team and all of a sudden we throw away two seasons of love and understanding for cheap jokes.

jonathan hasn’t always been like this and the show has made it very clear that he’s basically spiraling and pushing people away so it baffles me that everyone is ok with his character arc being him starting the show off as a loner with trust issues who slowly starts to let people in and to follow his aspirations only to go back to being a loner with one (1) friend who will essentially give up on his aspirations.