👋 ☁️ 🐾 - for the headcanon questions thing!
@ahdova : sent 👋☁️ 🐾 ( HEADCANON QUESTIONS )
[ 🖐️ ]ㅤ what do their hands feel like: soft, calloused, trembling ?
her hands are long fingered and calloused, a musician's hands - and best used for the handling of strings, whether it be a bow, or an instrument. they're lightly scarred on the palm, from the times when she fell again and again, in her attempts to mount syrax successfully as a child. they're very faint, for the most part, though she does have a long one that stretches width wise across her left palm, that you can feel when you hold her hand. a bit of rougher, raised skin - no thicker then her pinky that she got when she fell one morning, and threw her hands out to catch herself, and cut herself on a medium sized jagged stone that was on the cave floor in syrax's nest. her hands are warm, and for the most part steady. deft when she's doing something with them that requires it. she has a predominantly soft touch - when it comes to people that she is getting to know, it's always polite, very light, and tentative. when it comes to people that she cares for and people that she loves, it's very reassuring and very familiar, and ever and always tender. her hands are prone to trembling, and did so very frequently when she was a child, so much so that she would accidentally poke herself with her knitting needles or her embroidery needles in her lessons, because they would shake so badly when she was a child ( predominantly due to her anxieties when it came to failure and being unable to perform to an unreachable standard that she had set for herself ) they still tremble, even now, and that is when she begins to fidget, and begins to worry at her rings. and this ? helps to ease the rush of excess energy that flows through her whenever she does feel nervous and which she buries, often, so it doesn't show on her face, and doesn't leave herself open for any sort of attack. though it does not show on her face, it does show in her hands, and with more then just nervous. her hands are a funnel for any sort of huge display of emotion that would not do to be seen in public being expressed, and which needs to be buried so she does not seem vulnerable.
[ 🌧️ ]ㅤ is there a pain they refuse to heal from ?
i don't think there's ever been a thing that's pained her that she hasn't at least tried to move on from once it was at an end. she doesn't like to dwell, in suffering. it is not something that she likes feeling, so she will at least try to cut her losses and move on and not sit in that bitterness. she does not like feeling stagnant, it makes her feel as if everyone who's ever wished her ill is winning in some sort of way because she won't let it go, or can't move on. she does not like to think that the continued scrutiny and insults thrown her way have succeeeded in making her shy away from things that are natural and things that are meant to be enjoyed ( like sex, like displays of sexuality ) it's the strongest display of defiance that she can muster, that she will take things and move on, and she will be kind, and caring and compassionate. and she will love and be loved, because they didn't succeed in squashing that. she refuses to let that bitterness rot the person that she is. she refuses to become a person that they want to make her, someone who is twisted and angry and who lashes out in response who has been successfully hurt by them to the point that she has become unrecognizable when she looks in the mirror. it's kind of like that last reach toward remaining autonomous, and being an autonomous individual. it's the thing that she controls, even when every other choice is ripped from her grasp. she has not forgotten her mother, and what happened to her mother. but it's ? she's made that pain into something productive, into a thing that she hopes will make a lifetime of suffering that she endured for duty's sake matter. it is not something that she can really blame on anyone, because what happened to aemma and the life that she spent attempting to give viserys an heir is sadly normalized in their universe, and it is something that would have been 'expected' of her. and it's also ? she's not likely to blame her only surviving parent for something so monumental because when her mother dies, she's not even eight years old, she's seven. she can't ? she can't even begin to unpack whatever sort of blame viserys would have in any of this because she needs him. she's a child and she needs her father, and she can't acknowledge any of that because that would push her away from him and she needs him.
she does still grapple with a feeling of guilt, of not being worthy of sitting the iron throne because she was only given it after her mother and her brother died ( she doesn't think that she's allowed to feel any sort of positive emotion about it, no surprised satisfaction over finally being recognized, no happiness, no any of that - and she does not feel them, in regards to it. mostly she just feels lost and confused and frustrated and puts on a front of feeling grateful for the longest time before it actually sinks in, and it is something that feels genuine - but that only contributes to her feeling as if there is no relinquishing this ) she's took her pain, she's took her confusion, and frustrations, and she's made them into pure, iron will. she's solidified her stubbornness and she cemented her ressolve. she's taken it and she''s put it toward fighting to sit the iron throne in her own right. she's taken it and she's put it toward maintaining her position and making it so that aemma did give viserys a true, capable successor. and that has ? eased a lot of the persistent uncertainty that she feels, and how lost that she truly felt growing up without a mother. the one thing that she has not healed from, and hasn't even began to try to heal from, was the loss of her first, and fifth born children. the losses of her sixth and second born children affected her monumentally. her daughter, visenya was what made her declare war in the first place, and it was the rage that she felt at her loss that made her get up, and made her carry on and push forward despite the fact all she wanted to do was lay there. she absolutely did not want to get up and attend council. but her other children needed her to be present, and needed her to get up and fight for them, so she did - and did so fueled by the memory of her little girl and the loss of her, and the notion that perhaps she could get justice for her. but at that point she still wanted to make peace with the greens, and still offered mercy readily to her siblings. lucerys' death broke her, and left her ? inconsolable. she collapsed when she received news of his death and she ? did not leave her chambers. could not bring herself to attend council for weeks, and just needed a full stop to heal before she continued with anything. and yet even at that point, she was still reluctant to attack her half siblings.
it was jacaerys and viserys that made her completely forgo the costs of what it would mean to throw all of the dragons in her yoke at her half siblings. it was jacaerys and viserys that made her let go of her fears and revulsion on the matter of kinslaying and filled her with anger and hatred in its place. it made her resolve to tear aegon down from the iron throne, or die in the attempt; to unleash fire and blood on his allies. at that point it was not about the throne anymore, it wasn't about making sure that she sit it above anyone else in the realm, it was about putting down this huge threat to her surviving children, no matter what she needed to do to ensure it. there was no price, at that point, that she wouldn't pay to keep them safe. even if that meant killing her half brothers because they would always, always represent a threat to them at that point. there's no coming back from that point. there's no moments where she attempts to heal, and she attempts to recover after that point - afterwards, it is ? the promise of vengeance that drives her, and the want for justice for the continued loss of her children ( it's the fact that seemingly no matter what she does they continue to die that ? sends her into a permanent fight or flight mode. everything that she does after that point becomes wholly reactionary, and she continues to lash out as a result in a manner that becomes increasingly common as time goes in the capitol ) the degradation of her mental health is just exacerbated more and more by increasing paranoia that is verbally enabled by her councillors and turned toward the dragonseeds. which inevitably leads toward her destroying her eldest son's legacy which just, makes her feel more and more guilty and fills her with such grief. like she's very aware, of how low she's fallen and how her character has twisted since and it makes her feel very unrooted. it makes her feel so detached, and unsteady and the continued loss of her children means she's both losing the people she has to love and she's losing the only people that she's trusted wholeheartedly, and loosing that tie to her humanity that they represented just... the anger and the bitterness and the loathing feels as though it's going to cave in her chest and going to make her drown in a sea of poison. she feels as increasingly see through, nothing more then a shadow, the way she had felt as a child. after what happened to joffrey, saving aegon became her only task. it became the only thing that she sought to do, no matter the rest of it, no matter the fact that she could have stayed queen if she had gone to the vale and not dragonstone, she was willing to sell her crown to take him home. that was her last reach toward clinging to the version of herself that she recognized, and that her children recognized and she only wished she had done it sooner instead of cleaving toward this idea of security that the throne represented, that it could never be.
[ 🐾 ]ㅤ ㅤdo animals like them instinctively ?
honestly ? yes. because she approaches them in somewhat of the same way that she approaches the dragons. she approaches any animal with respect, above absolutely all, and an openness. she makes certain to remain calm around them, and to be very careful when she reaches out toward them, and moves around them. if it's an animal like a dog, or a cat, she'll reach out her hand and allow them to sniff, and / or she'll have a treat for them that she can offer that will draw them a bit closer to her and make them begin to realize that they can trust her. if it's an animal like a horse, she will have a treat, and she will slowly approach, and very gently place her hand upon its snout to give it a pat. if it's an animal like a snake, she's a bit more weary. but she very much does treat it with the respect that it deserves, even though she never interacts with the venomous ones, she never wants a creature to feel in danger enough with her that it feels like it needs to bite. i think it was likely the most difficult to learn how to gain the trust of her birds, and she did that by going to visit them day after day, and bringing them little treats and then leaving, gradually increasing the points of contact with them so they did not feel as though she were being overbearing in the attempts. they don't like her at all, however, when she's fresh out of the dragon saddle and she still has the scent of dragon on her. animals react very adversely to the scent, and usually before she interacts with any of them she makes a point to bathe, so they will be more inclined to let her approach them.
