🌸

1 - Aemond and his "I worshiped him".

I'm sorry, but where?

When they were kids/teens, they probably got along one way or another, but the screenwriters didn't show us any "worship" from Aemond's side. And when they first appear as adults, we get literally this:

So um...worship much?

2- "And yet our mother..."

And what about your mother?

She treated you like this:

And protected you like this:

And Aegon... Well...

COME OOON.

3 - Tournaments, tournaments, tournaments.

When the fuck did this happen, seriously?

The end of the first season, we see the adult Aemond for the first time:

So Aemond hasn't started participating in tournaments yet. And what does he answer?

And then the war starts, so what is it all about?

-Sexually humiliate team green for shock value by inventing non-f&b scenes.

-Turn a civil war into a psychosexual lesbian story between one bad (victim) woman who needs to be constantly punished and one good (victim) woman who is constantly restrained by her gender.

-Glaze girlbossified victim rhaenyra, her feminist sex-trafficker advisor and to an extent her pdf daddy husband (ironically even GRRM was not up their bottoms as much as ryan condal and his writers are).

-Humble alicent through SA by framing her as constant victim of her own side to 1) justify her supporting rhaenyra over her kids 2) for #them to go > she deserves it for daring to support her son against queen rhaenyra, the greens are SO horrible, this is what inventing patriarchy does!

-For the gazillionth time, show how immoral criston cole is.

-Repeatedly depict all of tg as deviant evil misogynists and all tb as goody two shoes feminists by adding more non-book scenes, nuance be damned.

-Milk daenerys and asoiaf prophecy as reserved quota.

-Give most tg screentime to alicent who isnt even tg anymore but another rhaenyra stan.

-Add plagiarized dialogues to show how simultaneously girlbossy and victimised all hotd women are, particularly rhaenyra.

-Allude how every medieval woman against rhaenyra MUST be a pick-me hypocrite woman for trump and every woman for rhaenyra is the most perfect badass feminist ever lived, there is no inbetween.

-Only and only rhaenyra is allowed to love, cry, feel for her children in this show.

-Bare minimum characterization for the velaryons. Their portion of tb screentime is given to rhaenyra, daemon and mysaria.

-Make the greens weaker, more divided and pitiful for #their gratuitous gooning.

-Remove all f&b nuance that GRRM wrote and reiterated in his blog to turn the story of the entire dance into tb best, tg worst propaganda for fave self-inserts.

Ryan Condal only does this specifically with Alicent. He doesn’t subject the other female characters to the same kind of repeated sexual violence and humiliation - only Alicent.

Aliceny is SA’d by everyone, got incest SA’d by her own son and was sexually humiliated just to blame her for B&C (even Ryan Condal doesn’t hide his bias toward the Blacks, saying that in the books Blood and Cheese is TG propaganda against Rhaenyra, which is why that scene was adapted the way it was.) Olivia Cooke talked in interviews about how heavy and uncomfortable some of Alicent’s sexual content has been to film. It really raises questions about how sexual violence is used in HotD, especially when it keeps happening to the same character in ways that can start to feel repetitive rather than narratively necessary.

Condal just hates Alicent because she’s prudish. And I think that speaks the misogyny disguised as “criticism” of prudishness, religiousness, or traditional behavior in women by using their sexuality to punish them. So you hate Alicent because she’s… religious? Because she’s prudish? I know modern audiences, with 21st-century lenses and zero knowledge of history dislike women who don’t express sexuality or power in a “liberated” way, but that doesn’t justify sexually humiliating them this is very disturbing and disgusting.

At the same time, you have Rhaenyra, who is written with a much more openly “sexually liberated” energy and is written in a way where her sexuality is not used against her in the same punitive way. That contrast is what makes the treatment of Alicent stand out more.

And what makes Rhaenyra sexually liberated? Because her so called sexual freedom or extramarital affairs were literally the fallout of Daemon’s grooming? Isn’t it true that he groomed her for his own ends, “liberating” her to sleep with him and others, and in doing so destroyed her own reputation & claim to the throne? And because it looks “exotic” or “liberated” next to the fantasy Catholics coded Alicent?

Bk!Alicent is certainly written within a world that is hostile to women, especially women at court, but her arc is not around sexualized punishment or humiliation as a thematic goal. She’s actually one of the more politically respected women of her position.

Condal need to understand that for a noblewoman living in a quasi-medieval world chastity wasn’t just a matter of personal morality it was political. Her reputation affected her family’s standing, her husband’s authority, and her children’s legitimacy. A scandal could damage her entire house, and even a rumor could cost her safety, influence, and dignity. Modesty wasn’t simply “prudishness” in that world, it was a strategy for survival. So why punish that kind of character through sexual humiliation in the narrative?

When a character is repeatedly written through sexual punishment or humiliation while another is written through sexual empowerment, it just shows the biased written of who gets to be “liberated” and who gets to be degraded and humiliated.