miscellaneous musings

one of many things i really loved was how anticlimactic rhaenyra taking kings landing is. there is barely any action, barely any spectacle, barely any dragons. they just walk through the halls functionally unimpeded and all we see is their silver targaryen hair as they walk through halls that are familiar to us by now but where they feel out of place. there is tension in the fact that there is no tension at all. we know daemon is a better fighter than any hightower guard. we know they have more dragons. even the goldcloaks rushing in lasts barely more than a second. otto's death is imperfect and unsatisfying. there is no revenge or catharsis behind her swing. all of this build up her entire life the moment she has been waiting for through all of the death and grief and she hobbles up to the throne in tears because there is absolutely no glory in taking the iron throne, none of it matters, but its too late to do anything else but sit.

So much of the HOTD fandom (I use that term very loosely) just refuses to interact with the material, and it is such a shame. There are so many delicious themes set up right from the start about trauma, motherhood, religion, misogyny, queerness, disability, racism, power/dragons, and miscommunication and people just ignore it all in favor of going "that's not what a fictional historian said :\" like a broken record as if that has ever been the point and as if they are incapable of creating a thought beyond that.