Latest Posts by evagreen-stories - Page 4
“helaena does not ride, she has no taste for it”
incorrect, wrong
she was riding dreamfyre since age eleven and only stopped due to her depression and grief. dreamfyre awoke, broke her chains, and roared so loudly that the entire dragonpit shook when she sensed that helaena jumped to her death. they LOVED each other﹠ this show is insane for ignoring their bond.
House of the Dragon Review
The Good:
- Aegon and Tom Glynn Carney. Aegon is the one compelling character this season, and his arc is great. He tries to be a good King but can’t protect his son. He tries to get Alicent’s love, but can’t no matter what. He tries to save his people but he gets destroyed in the process. He trusts his brother who betrays him. And Tom acts with his whole heart and soul. They’re truly the only good this season and the only reason I’ll keep watching
- Larys, Matthew Needham, and his relationship with Aegon. Just *chef’s kiss* The best relationship on the show. So much manipulation but genuine growing fondness too. Can’t wait to see Tom and Matthew inevitably do press for season 3 together and talk about the relationship in depth
- Ramin’s score. He is the only thing that’s consistent through GOT and HotD
The Meh:
- Rhys Ifans is a great Otto, but they criminally underutilized them
- Rook’s Rest was an amazing episode but they still had Rhaenyra be the hero by giving her a “divine” reason to go to war
- Episode 1 also was meh because Blood and Cheese being botched ruined what would otherwise be a great episode
- Ep 2 is similar to Ep 1. LOVED the Green scenes and the Twin scene, but they had Rhaenyra feel bad about what happened which is SO out of character. I also don’t like the propaganda angle they took with Blood and Cheese with Otto
- Aemond becoming his book self was great, but it was done rushed and sloppily. They underutilized both Aemond and Ewan
- Phia and Helaena are also great but again, criminally underutilized
- Olivia is a fantastic actress, despite what they did to Alicent
- The Dragon seeds being burnt by Vermithor would be in the Good if they didn’t try to brush it off and still claim Rhaenyra’s innocent
- Daenon and Alys scenes were either incredible or a total snooze fest. No inbetween. They were repetitive and not all the Daemon haunted scenes were necessary. Matt and Gayle are great though
- Criston and Fabien are underutilized, especially post Rook’s Rest
The Bad:
- What they did to Alicent. It is unforgivable. They threw her character away in favor of Rhaenyra. They can’t stand the thought that a woman doesn’t worship Rhaenyra
- Everything with Team Black. This is not hyperbole. The scenes were dull, designed to sanitize them so they are the Good guys and destroy them in the process. The actors, I’m sorry to say, are not on the level of the Green actors. Even the better Black actors (Emma and Steve) have stiff moments through the season
- Sexual humiliation and degradation of the Greens. This isn’t the place to get into it, but people have talked about it elsewhere
- Sanitizing Rhaenyra still, even after episode 7 and trying to make her a hero
- Sanitizing Viserys. The man raped Alicent and abused his children that weren’t Rhaenyra. Why are the Greens holding him in high regard?
Overall, I’d say a 5/10. All it took was the show having Black centered episodes to descend into GOT season 8 levels, since the Green episodes are SIGNIFICANTLY better
"Your beauty never ever scared me"
You tell me it's not about Aemond Targaryen? The scared insecure child that he is inside? The one who deems himself unworthy because he didn't get a dragon as fast as others? The one that a second something worked for him (claiming Vhagar) he lost an eye? Making him "ugly" and "scary looking"? Aemond whi covers his eye so they don't look at him with disgust? Insecurities turning into rage/hatred
And there is the Reader who loves him despite the anger and hurt he carries inside of him. Reader finds it beautiful.
I really want to like HotD because I really like The Dance in F&B. But as the season went on, it became less of an adaptation of a story I remembered fondly and more of a prequel to a show I did not want to be reminded of. Please stop trying to mcu-ify the show and just tell a self-contained story. I absolutely do not care how this relates to characters who won't be alive for the next 200 years. Your plot and characters should matter and have stakes and motivations that are relevant NOW.
“A son for a son”? After her faction killed a baby in its crib?
Otto was right from the start, Rhaenyra always intended to murder her brothers if it meant she’d get her hands on the throne.
Looking forward to this horrendous woman and her pathetic whelps getting annihilated.
They all laughed.
So much for "main cast" lol
As many of you know, I've been keeping tabs on Aemond's screen time this season of HotD. With the finale now aired, I can share the final tally.
Episode 1 - 158 seconds / 2.63 minutes
Episode 2 - 123 seconds / 2.05 minutes
Episode 3 - 96 seconds / 1.6 minutes
Episode 4 - 159 seconds / 2.65 minutes
Episode 5 - 168 seconds / 2.8 minutes
Episode 6 - 325 seconds / 5.42 minutes
Episode 7 - 93 seconds / 1.55 minutes
Episode 8 - 200 seconds / 3.33 minutes
1,322 seconds / 22.03 minutes
so, now that the season is over, can i just vent about how useless and borderline tasteless those aemond/sylvi scenes were? maybe not tasteless, as ewan wasn't filmed naked against his will or coerced like the og GOT actresses were, but i certainly didn't feel whatever it was they were trying to get me to feel by watching those brothel scenes. while i can empathize with the plight of the smallfolk and will always stand up for sex workers, it just didn't work for me in this context. yes, as a big fan of aemond, there was a part of me that wanted to see him express some degree of vulnerability this season, but with his own fucking family and not at the expense of seeing the brothel madame from s1 again! anyone who is in or even on the fringes of the HOTD fandom knows what an issue the conversation surrounding sylvi was back in 1x09, and i feel like this was a move to capitalize on aemond's popularity, set the stage for his preference of older women once he meets alys, or maybe even just filling the nudity quota as per hbo's standards. i mean, damn, if they're going to put aemond in a position of romantic or sexual intimacy, can they just save that shit for his semi-canonical love interest? hell, i would rather he be demanded to bring floris baratheon to court, which would do that job of opening up conversation about whatever is going on in the stormlands and how borros is choosing the handle the war effort on his end! sylvi is not a character we know or care about on the same level of the main cast and i doubt she's going to leave a significant impact on who aemond is going forward, so why shove this glorified extra in our faces and attach them to a character who was/is kinda the dark horse breakout fave of s1? she adds nothing to him or the story beyond another smallfolk pov - which we already have with mysaria and the dragonseeds! what a waste of time. 😒
I agree. The purpose of these scenes was to humiliate the character or make him laughable for having "mommy issues" and literally drinking milk and laying in an older woman's arms. And all that so they could also include Aegon bullying him for it because otherwise he had no motivation to want to kill him all of a sudden. It is extra icky with the implication that this is the first woman Aemond was ever with as a literal child when he was brought to her to "get it wet." I don't think the show handles discussion and portrayal of sex in this show at all. Despite its "sex positive" attitude toward Rhaenyra it seems it shames every other character when it comes to sex: Aegon having his penis exploded, Aemond having mommy issues cuddling his abuser and drinking milk, the voyeuristic sex of Alicole included only for shock value and shaming the characters for being hypocrites, the lack of recognition of Alicent's inability to refuse Viserys and that marital rape scene seemingly just used to contrast with Rhaenyra's sexual liberation... To say this show is weird about sex and mixed with its messaging is saying the least.
At least no, Aegon can't rape anymore, karma is real 😌🥰
1) If your gut instinct to an actor being uncomfortable with lines about their genitals being mutilated is to say they deserve it because they play a bad person, you are objectively a bad person. Aegon isn’t real, Tom is. And he has to say lines designed to humiliate his character about his penis in front of the whole cast without being warned beforehand and then forced to talk about it despite being uncomfortable. Objectively, that is gross
2) Aegon isn’t a rapist in the real version, it’s Black propaganda in the show (If they can call everything that is in book, the real canon, propaganda, than I can do the same to the show, which is shitty Pro Team Black fix it fanfic at this point). Aegon is a rapist for one reason and one reason only: To make the audience Team Black without question
3) Tom actively tried to stop Aegon from being a rapist in season 1. He read the book and knows the story, and therefore knew that people would never find Aegon sympathetic because there’s no coming back from rape, so this weird, gross “Gotcha!” you think you have Is pointless
The same little boy
Broken Bonds | Maelor x f!highborn!reader x Aemond x Aegon
Moodboard for upcoming One-Shot (dropping this weekend!)
Summary: Betrothed to Prince Aemond before the war and having fallen in love with the one-eyed prince, the young lady Celtigar’s heart would shatter into pieces as she learns of his betrayal in taking a mistress and siring a bastard with her while away at war.
Unable to cope with being forced to marry him anyway, she chooses to run away, using the chaos of war to disappear forever, or so she thought.
When fate sends her into the town of Bitterbridge one day, she finds herself caught up in the chaos of a giant riot, sheer terror overwhelming her when she spots a familiar toddler screaming amongst the greedy crowd.
Barely escaping the scuffle alive, she takes the boy in as hers, living as mother and son ever since.
The duo grows inseparable until a decade later, when an unfortunate coincidence would result in the two torn apart forever.
Word-Count: 15k
GIVE HER BACK!!! GIVE HER BACKK!!
GIVE THEM BACKK! GIVE THEM BACKK!!!
They butchered them. They butchered them really bad.
"Isn't it great writing and super feminist when a cunning and ambitious political influencial woman willing to do anything for her children gets adapted into a meek, politically inept character who praises her abuser and condemns her children, grandchildren, father and brother either to death and/or lifelong imprisonment for the sake of a woman she only had contempt for in the source material! ❤️❤️❤️"
That's what some of you guys sound like right now
so your mother has been telling you and your siblings for years that your lives are at risk if their older sister takes the throne, you see this threat, you feel it the moment you lose your eye, you spend your whole life preparing yourself for this war, and when it's time to make hard decisions to win and survive your mother tells you "not like this"? and somehow you've become the villain in this story. what. the. fuck. is. wrong. with. this. writers.
"helaena? she does not ride, she has no taste for it."
Ewan to the question: ''And when you said she can be the mom he always wanted her to be, what does that look like?'' has answered.
''I think one that just has love for him. That's how we beat Aemond, it's with love. We gotta give him a hug''
Crying, I knew it, Aemond just wants love, he's dying to be loved, my baby. And I add of my own making, his love language is touch.
Ewan Mitchell interview for TVGUIDE
Reminder to everyone here that the actors have no control over the writing. None.
Tom Glynn Carney went round and round with Sara Hess about making Aegon a rapist. He lost greatly.
Nikolaj Coster Waldau had an interview a few years back where he talked about going to D&D and the rest of the writers time and time again, begging them to stop making Jaime such a big waffler. They told him he is an actor and to act, let them do the writing.
The actors have no power. They are contracted for multiple seasons as actors and if they tried to quit, they'd be sued for breach of contract.
Only good to come of this season are the Aemond visuals 🥰
Aemond Targaryen in the council room - requested by anon <3
“A son for a son” and Alicent just nodding her head. Are you kidding me? The same woman who drilled it in her children’s head that Rhaenyra would have them all killed if she became Queen. The same woman who fiercely protected her children time and time again. The same woman who forced her son who never wanted the throne to be king. To give in to the opposing side that had her innocent grandson killed in front of the daughter she wishes to protect. And she so readily would allow Rhaenyra to take the throne and kill Aegon?
Book!Helaena that was so lost into the madness of grief because of her child's death to the point she unalived herself.
VS
Show!Helaena helping the very person who orchestrated the death of her child.
It kind of make senses now why B&C was so tame. B&C reflects extremely poorly on Daemon & Rhaenyra by extension so they tried to diminish the atrocity of it all and make it as ambiguous as possible so they could move past it in the finale. Daemon realizes “he messed up” and Rhaenyra is allowed to “bring him back into the fold” without it being such a “big deal” add in Alicent’s humiliation where she begs forgiveness without mentioning her dead grandson and betraying even her brother and “kind” youngest unseen child and it all makes sense.
For contrast Aemond’s atrocious action against Lucerys isn’t explored beyond “Aemond regretting it” but then is very much built on by the narrative as he goes on to attempt to kill his brother, physically assault his sister, diminish his mother, and burn a village of innocents. Helaena Targaryen who previously had very little understanding of her dragon dreams blatantly tells her brother without remorse how he will die and then appears to the man who had her son and daughter brutalized (Daemon)in a vision to assist him.
The more we think about Alicent character assassination. The more it get worse.
Anyways no amount of waxing poetry and pretending to intellectualize Ryan Condal & Sara Hess’s terrible writing will make it any less terrible and they will never be anywhere near GRRM. You love Ryan Condal & Sara Hess’s fanfiction not GRRM’s work and that’s valid for some of yall. 💞
I lowkey support everything and anything he does next season.
listen i am not a very smart person but am i supposed to assume Helaena is more angry at Aemond than at Deamon who MURDERED HER SON????
I’m 💯 on Aemond’s side though. I know the writers tried to make him seem all insecure-man-goes-and-rage-kills-people, but all it does is remind me of what the showrunners did with Aegon’s introduction. Try to make them cartoonishly evil. And people just ignore it because it’s dumb AF.
With Aemond I see a desperate person cracking under pressure, while struggling to keep his family and himself alive. He is literally the ONLY one on the side of the Greens who is keeping them afloat.
Even if he hadn’t burned Aegon at RR, it’s not like Aegon was a competent combatant anyway. Helaena would rather sit around and drink tea and guide her son’s murderer through her dreams. His mother is off on her touch-grass walk, busy betraying the whole family. Criston Cole is monologuing in the woods with his uncle and his youngest brother is still not available for him to take to battle. Who else is doing it, if not him?
The demonization of men in this show is actually starting to exhaust me. Rhaenyra leads an active sex life and it feels like liberation, like a rebellion against society. Aegon does the same thing - of course he's a rapist and a pervert. Rhaenyra wants to fight for the throne - she's a strong and independent woman, it's so feminist, even if she burns people for a higher purpose. Aemond wants to fight for the throne - he's a psychopath and a maniac with anger issues. A completely unbiased show.
Book!Alicent / Season 1 Alicent , you are so deeply missed. I will forever love you.
ryan condal you will not see heaven