My Hot Take On The AOTNR Project: A Huge Portion Of The "tHiS IS SOoO DIsReSpEcTfUl TO THe AuThOR" Commenters

Literally this.

How can I feel any sort of sympathy for the man who is to blame for everything that happened. HOW

Viserys Targaryen Rant Part 2

Rhaenyra, the King’s Heir

After episode eight of House of the Dragon aired, there were a lot of people cheering on Viserys for his support of Rhaenyra’s claim.

I will admit, the scene was heartwarming to me at first,- a frail old man on the brink of death, getting up solely to defend his daughter in front of a court that may have had grievances with her being a female-heir. That kind of fatherly support, means a lot in a misogynistic society like Westeros. But, what does that moment of support truly mean for a man that had not performed his duties as a father?

Let us refer back to episode one. This scene in particular:

Aemma expresses to Viserys that she does not wish to have another pregnancy after the birth of the child she’s pregnant with.

According to Fire and Blood, Viserys and Aemma married when she was eleven years old. Their marriage was not consummated until two years later, when Aemma had flowered. Aemma in both Fire and Blood and House of the Dragon would go on to suffer multiple miscarriages, that some of Maesters suspected were due to her being bed too young.

Refocusing on the scene above, Aemma tells Viserys that Rhaenyra suspects that the unborn child might be a girl. Viserys is insistent that it is a boy.

In episode one, Rhaenyra was fifteen years old. If she were male, Viserys would have started preparing her as his heir,- taking her to council meetings, send her as a messenger, etc. But he doesn’t, because he wanted a male heir. He spent almost two decades brutalizing his wife and ultimately killing her for a son. He spent almost two decades neglecting his daughter and putting her aside because he wanted a son.

Aegon, Second of his Name

In the third episode of House of the Dragon, we meet Aegon, the first child between Alicent and Viserys.

For a majority of the episode, Aegon is being celebrated as it’s his name day, and he’s the king’s first born son. The King now having son would usually signal a change in succession, since for most of Westeros, sons inherit over daughters. However, by the end of the episode, Viserys’ position does not change: Rhaenyra is his rightful heir.

So what happens to Aegon, the long-awaited son?

Let’s look at some word from the screenwriter, Ryan Condal:

"Aegon is a great example of neglect and indulgence," Condal says. "This is the medieval version of the millionaire's prodigal son. His mother was 15, and his father never paid any attention to him. His father deeply, deeply loved Aemma and Rhaenyra and was [only] having [more] kids to carry on the line. He really didn't want Aegon — he wanted Baelon, the son that killed his first wife."

When we first meet Aegon he was being celebrated. After hoping for a boy for years, Viserys finally got a male heir.

We don’t get any scenes of his early childhood but we see Aegon again when he’s a teenager. He’s disinterested in most things, he’s blunt, he teases, he masturbates by the window sill, but most of all, he’s disinterested and lackadaisical.

After another time skip, we see Aegon again. He’s still disinterested in most things, he drinks, he’s a rapist, and is overall not really a good person.

Within the fandom, most of the blame for the way Aegon has turned out has been directed to Alicent.

Now, Alicent being a child-bride does not excuse all of her actions, but it does explain a lot of them.

In scene where Alicent speaks with Dyana, I interpreted her reaction as one filled with shame, frustration and disappointment. All of the traits I used to describe Aegon, can be applied to Viserys. Aegon is his father’s mirror and Alicent is the only one who is trying to break it. Immediately after meeting with Dyana, she confronts Aegon, and disowns him(well,not really). Were her methods rash? Yes, it was rash and abusive, but who else was checking him? Where was Viserys during his formative years to correct this behavior?

I do not condone any of his actions, but I grieve the person Aegon could’ve been if Viserys had not been his father.

Aemond, the Kinslayer

I’d reckon that Aemond’s birth wasn’t quite the spectacle that Aegon’s was, he’s the second son, who inherits nothing.

When we first meet Aemond, he’s miserable. He has a very low self esteem mostly due to all of his peers having dragon, while he doesn’t. His father, Viserys was the last mount of Balerion, the Black Dread. Balerion represents the strength and history of House Targaryen in Westeros. He’s the last dragon to have come from Old Valyria, and his first rider was the man who united Westeros under one crown, Aegon the Conqueror. Viserys took Balerion on one ride, and the old dragon died shortly after. He spent all of his rule as a Targaryen king without a dragon. We get no indication that he had negative feelings about not being a dragon rider, in fact, he finds power in the dreams and prophecies of Targaryens and Old Valyria, than the man power of dragons. Had he been around to salvage any feelings of unworthiness Aemond felt when his egg didn’t hatch, or when the riderless dragons in the dragon pit rejected him, Aemond would’ve been less resentful about not having one.

So in this scene here, where he claims Vhagar, and rides her for the first time, it’s a moment of legitimacy for him. He’s a Targaryen, with a dragon. He fits in with his siblings and his nephews, finally.

His claiming of Vhagar came with a price, his eye. I’m not going to delve into the mishap that took place between him, the Dragon twins and the Strong boys, because they were children. Baela and Rhaena had all right to be angry about Aemond claiming Vhagar, Luke had all right to defend his brother, Aemond had all right to react to their insults. Was he a bit insensitive ? Yes, but he’s a kid. They’re all children. They do not have the same awareness and consideration adults should have.

The aftermath of that scene is a confrontation between Rhaenyra and Alicent.

There has been a lot of discourse about this scene in particular, but Emma D’arcy and Olivia Cooke’s is the one I resonate with the most :

ED: It’s such an interesting scene, right? My sympathy is fully with Alicent. On the page I was like, Well, she’s fucking right.

OC: Someone’s lost an eye.

ED: Someone’s lost an eye! I’m so amazed every time Paddy basically tells you to let it go. Simultaneously, Rhaenyra is playing quite a basic game: Lie hard, do not back down, and weaponize this word “treason.”

OC: Alicent’s being gaslit massively and she fucking explodes. In friendships or relationships, when it gets to the point where you feel you’re going mad, there’s no route out other than complete volcanic annihilation.

ED: There is something resentfully delicious in it for Rhaenyra, in that she so rarely gets definitively the backing of her father. Early on, she loses both her best friend and her father because they get married. These moments where she gets publicly chosen, and chosen instead of you — there’s a really violent quality of vengeance for her.

No Alicent should not have asked for a five year old’s eye. But her son, has just lost one. And his father, is more focused on the fact that his grandchildren were called bastards. Now I’m not discounting the fact that Westeros discriminates against bastards, but that could have been addressed afterwards. Viserys spent the entire scene promising his court that they’d lose a tongue for even uttering a word about his grandsons, while his son is sitting in a chair with his eye in front him on a plate. Aemond now has to learn how to maneuver around with one of his five senses damaged. (Honestly, I think a few scenes with Aemond struggling a bit with this would’ve been great).

If Viserys had just acknowledged Aemond’s detriment in that scene, maybe give him some reassurance, comfort, literally anything, he wouldn’t have remained vengeful years after the incident.

Helaena, the Dragon Dreamer

The parenting of Helaena is the best representation of Viserys and Alicent’s dynamics with their kids,- Alicent struggling to connect with her child, while Viserys the parent who would’ve had a better shot at connection is nowhere to be found.

Helaena has correctly predicted several events in House of the Dragon so far, the loss of Aemond’s eye being the price of his dragon, Meleys bursting from beneath the dragon pit, and the Dance of the Dragons. The thing is, no one in universe is paying her any mind. The weight of prophecies in ASOIAF is a topic that George likes to explore, and he’s given us a few tragic characters like Rhaegar, who met their doom by interpreting a prophecy ‘incorrectly’.

Helaena is a dragon dreamer. She’s also a dragon rider, but we have no scenes with her on Dreamfyre. She represents the more mystical part of House Targaryen, as she possesses the power that prevented them from the Doom. Yet her father, who is a deeply interested in these aspects of being Targaryen, doesn’t speak to her about these things.

If Viserys had made an attempt to understand or simply bond with his daughter, none of the atrocities his family faced would have happened the way it did.

My sympathy for Team Green stems from the fact that literally every single one of them would’ve been way better people if not for Viserys.

for the theory rubric - jon snows real name is aemon

i have gotten so many jon name ones i am just going to rank the contenders i’ve seen so far:

1. Jon has no secret targaryen name- He’s Ned’s son more than he ever was Rhaegar’s and Ned named his adopted son after his adopted father that’s literally everything that’s love that’s Ned’s promise. He has no secret Targaryen name because you can’t look back there’s no grand prince-hood to return to and just like he learns in his per-book identity crises he has always and only ever been Jon Snow, just himself.

2. Jon has no secret targaryen name but Lyanna happened to give him a secret stark name before she died and that name happened to be Theon- lol. lmao even

3. Jon’s real name is secretly Aemon- My favorite targ contender, I think the connection is knight of the laughing tree Lyanna being a little bit of a knight nerd and naming her kid after Aemon the dragonknight is cute (even though i’m an aemon hater). But where it comes through for me is jon ending up being named for maester aemon it IS cute :)

4. Jon’s name is really Jon but after Jon Connington- Hilarious, but cannot see Lyanna being down for this and it’s not like Rhaegar was there to name his own kid. Or that Rhaegar was even that emotionally attached to his closest friend to do that.

5. Jon’s name is secretly Daeron after Daenys the dreamer- Like all Daerons before him, Jon is bisexual, so this is definitely plausible. Plus he’s named after the young dragon his personal idol. Fun but unlikely

6. Jon’s name was supposed to be Visenya but he was a surprise so his name is Viserys- I think his name was supposed to be Visenya regardless but I refuse to believe Jon is a Viserys they can’t do that to me

7. Jon’s is a secret second (seventh) Aegon- The show was so foul for this one come on. Not only is Aegon the most boring option for a Targaryen name, but Rhaegar deciding the first Aegon wasn’t cool enough so he went out and made a second is just comically terrible.

8. literally anything else

9. Jaehaerys- i cannot STAND this one. NO teenage girl (Jaehaerys’ greatest enemies) would ever consider naming a child after him. I think naming him after the misogynist dynasty-builder runs counter to the whole theme that Dany is the last of the targaryen dynasty and there is no monarchical restoration coming because she is going to break that wheel. Pretty sure it is just a contender because of the alliteration but it’s just unbelievably corny to me. booooo

Erementals: I dislike AoT no Requiem because the idea of creating an alternate fan ending to someone else’s story simply because you were disappointed with how the actual conclusion was handled is extremely disrespectful to the original artist and their creative vision.

Also Erementals:

Just admit you only defend the ending because Isayama confirmed Eremika was canon at the last second and you despise Requiem because you’re salty that the most well known and popular fan fiction in the entire fandom at the moment focuses on Erehisu instead of your precious OTP, you absolute fucking hypocrites.

aemond, to helaena, while lying face down on his bed and regretting everything: and then i called him dad.

criston, to alicent, crying tears of joy: and then he called me dad!

my poor pathetic meow meow returns

Aand you just completely missed the point. I already talked about why he slept with her, the consent issues and power imbalance. Also what does Aegon have to do with this? He was never in the kingsguard.

Hot take, but I personally think all the Criston Cole hate is bs. He's probably one of the most despised characters in hotd and the slander is so unjustified.

Like damn, are you guys really going to hate on him for despising Rhaenyra after all she put him trough?

I'm 100% certain that if the genders were swapped almost everyone would side with him.

Just imagine a girl that owes her dream job on a prince that is in a significant position of power over her. One night, after things don't go his way, he makes sexual advances on the girl. She feels like she has to sleep with him, because of how he helped her achieve her goal. Also because if she refuses, the prince may be enraged and make up a lie to get her executed. Afterwards, she feels dirty, she knows she broke her oath, and that if caught she would be tortured and murdered, so she deludes herself into believing they love each other and should run away together. At least that way, she won't have ruined her life in vain.

But when she tells the prince her plan and confesses her feelings, the prince tells her that he's not willing to give up the throne for her and that all he wants her for is sex. She's pretty much just his glorified whore.

I bet all I have that in this case everyone would call Rhaenyra an evil fuck boy misogynist who only sees ladies as objects to sleep with. But since she's a girl, then the fandom views her as an enpowered, sexually liberated girlboss who takes what she wants. Even if that leads a man to almost committing suicide.

The fact that the fan base also has the nerve to call him a pathetic incel is just the icing on the cake.

Guys, I'm not sure if you now, but hating a woman for something that has happened between you is not the equivalent of hating all women.

Criston hates her and her only, while treating every other lady in the show with great respect, hell he worships the ground on which Alicent walks! And scolds Aemond for how he treats sex workers, 'Cause for him they should all be respected like the mother! He's probably one of the least sexist characters in hotd lmao.

Sometimes I wonder if Rhaenyra stans can't stand him because they genuinely can't fathom a man receiving her advances, being offered to be her lover, and rejecting. Like "how dare him break our queen's heart!"

Poor dude never stood a chance

WHY THIS FANDOM IS SO FUCKING WEIRD TOWARDS JAEHAERA TARGARYEN

TW: SCA, MURDER, CHILD MURDER AND CHILD DEATH, ABLEISM, SUICIDE MENT

People know that I love Jaehaera Targaryen and try to keep my mind in positive things about her, just reading headcanons and seeing art of her and Aegon, or her and her brothers and her mother. But I'm tired of even trying to do that, because this fandom is so weird about her, people still come after us at the minimum possibly of her surviving or at the first sight of someone saying they want her to live (the first two screenshots are from a Reddit post in which I shared an art or Jaehaera and Aegon III, that's all)

I'm tired of this "oh to keep her alive would be so cruel with her and Aegon" like they care for her.

Dude, she is just an innocent child, as much as Aegon III. They say "how can you want them married, her father killed his mother". And his father orchestrated the murder of her twin brother who led at the death of her mother. But we all know that that have nothing to do with her.

Both comments are from the same person 💀 they start like "she wouldn't survive because that would be so cruel" (yeah, it is not cruel killing a 10yo girl) but then they can't stand the possibility of someone liking her and wanting her to live and they talk in the most despicable way about her and how she deserved to be replaced as soon as she died.

Why is it so difficult to accept the fact that the little girl has supporters who want her to live? But they can't, they need to be an asshole for free.

Jaehaera is a child, prone to cry, but happy. Her murder was cruel and unnecessary. It has nothing to do with her being the daughter of his mother's killer or with her being a green.

Even if you doubt of Elio Garcia's words, it has never been stated for George that the reason to kill her was because she, as a green, needed to die.

Like why, what did the little girl to deserve to be minimized? Just to exist and be from the TG.

They really think that everyone is like them, that everyone is going to lose their mind for the possibility of a little child from the other team surviving.

Joffrey's death, even while the dance was still happening, was unnecessarily cruel and of course I won't get mad for the possibility of him surviving. The only criticism I would make about that is that it would be so biased to have 5 kids of the TB surviving and killing all the TG kids. But not because of that I will be like "he NEEDS to die" and will get mad for people wanting him to survive. If that happens it would be fair for me wanting Jaehaera to survive too.

And god, the ableism here is so unhinged.

It is so fucking ironic how they can be like "how can you like a character with two lines" and "she is a r*tarded child and she was never gonna give Aegon III heirs" like decide, she "only has two lines" or you can know everything about her, her mental state and how would have been her life?

And lets start with the cruelty toward her: it is so fucking weird

They want her to suffer like what, what did her to deserve that???

I will add more screenshots but I've reached my limit in this post 🫡

They have gone so far as to wish her little brother to be raped and murdered, to mess with the actress who plays Jaehaera (who is a little girl) and to compare her to rats or stray dogs.

People who know me knows that I am on the "separe between fiction and reality" side, but talking like this is too much, getting angry for people not thinking like you because they want her to live and commenting their posts mad because she NEEDS to die is too much, and messing with the actress who plays the girl is too much.

THEY CALLED ME CRAZY FOR STANNING BUT WE ARE WINNINGGG!! RAHHHHHH💚💚

It wasn't really stated when Eren developed feelings for Mikasa, honesty that confession scene with Armin felt forced.

And I always thought and saw Eren as being dense on romance in general. More interesting in fighting and killing than looking at girls

Yeah exactly. One of my main gripes with the shitty rushed finale is this out of nowhere love that Eren allegedly has for Mikasa.

Where did it come from? Where were the hints? How can you possibly tell me that he loved her romantically?

Don't get me wrong I don't think two characters have to aggressively blush at each other for 3 seasons straight before believing they like one another, but this plot twist is bullshit.

After the time skip Eren got more and more distant from his friends as a result of his future memories and the genocide he was destined to commit. He knew Armin and Mikasa wouldn't understand him, so he kept them at arm's length.

When it comes to Mikasa in particular, he showed a lot of irritation towards her, for how she constantly babied him throughout their lives.

I mean come on have you read chapter 112?

( I know he didn't mean it, but still, that's a pretty fucked up thing to say to a person you love.)

Trust is also one of the most important aspects of any relationship. And Eren never trusted Armin and Mikasa with pretty much anything post time skip, which is specifically why he pushed them away!

His love for her has always been platonic, so much so that in an interview from a few years ago Isayama said that their relationship was similar to that of a mother with her child.

But I guess Yams kinda forgot how Eremika worked for 130+ chapters uh?

That confession scene wasn't just forced, it was pathetic. It completely erased who Eren was as a character and replaced him with the cheapest copy on sale at Walmart.

(It's been three years and I'm still salty about that panel how is that possible?)

When it comes to Eren and the concept of romance, well.. Yeah pre time skip he was kinda dense, in the typical Shonen protagonist way, buut after the time jump you can clearly see that it's no longer the case from the convo with Falco in Liberio. Pre time skip Eren would have never reached that conclusion.

(Wow, it's almost as if he understands Falco's struggle of not wanting a girl he loves getting titanized, I wonder if it's supposed to mean anything, uhhh.)

Leaked tWoW plot