myownsummerhall

always gets my hackles up when people talk about the EVIL INVADING FOREIGN TARGARYEN DYNASTY and how westeros just needs to retvrn to the pure unblemished past free from subjugation.... with each of the seven kingdoms having their rightful monarch LOL ok alright

of course instantly it is framed as given that dragons, again living beings used by human beings for their violent, political, social purposes, are straightforwardly corrupting their riders, as a metaphor for the sinister corruptions of power. i think this is just a first, ethically questionable way to look at it re humanity’s relationship to the non-human - if humans are changed by these animals, it is only because they changed these animals first! the animals are not evil, so to reduce them to a metaphor for evil is frustrating (insofar as the series plays this straight, it is and will be frustrating). second, it is dull to me. to look at this suggestion - these people magically bond with these non-human magical, intelligent beings, and this changes them, makes them less human somehow, in turn, a mutualistic process of transformation - for a didactic, moralistic, predetermined end. rather than an open question about the perils and pleasures of such a disturbing form of symbiosis. i guess what i wish is hotd fandom would look at things through a butlerian (octavia) lens.