rhaenys is such a hypocrite. she is an actual claimant to the iron throne and has a female, egg-laying dragon at her disposal, thus allowing her to provide dragon eggs for her own children, which she absolutely does! at one point, house velaryon ends up with two dragonriders (rhaenys & laenor), the exact amount house targaryen has (daemon, rhaenyra). when laena claims vhagar, the balance actually becomes 3-2. 

she is married to corlys velaryon, a very rich man with the ability to summon a very impressive fleet - military might few other lords can dispose of. this grants her a high amount of privilege that no other woman in westeros has, not even aemma or alicent (a half-targaryen with no dragon and a lowly andal woman with no special magical blood, daughter of a second son, not even the lord of oldtown).

yet rhaenys spends the entirety of her life kowtowing to the men around her, even acquiescing to the batshit crazy ploy of marrying her 12-year-old daughter to the king, just because her husband is obsessed with the idea of being the future king’s grandfather. she allows rhaenyra to make a mockery of her adoptive house by having 3 obvious bastards. yes, laenor should be giving part of the blame because he accepts to be cuckolded in such a conspicuous manner, but it creates very real, very valid feelings of disgruntlement within the velaryon cousins when it comes to succession rights. passing off jace as a legitimate heir to the iron throne could be brushed off as the targaryens’ problem, but pushing luke as a claimant to the driftwood throne is absolutely house velaryon’s problem. rhaenys ultimately accepts her granddaughters to be relegated to the status of wives, when they should be heiresses in their own right. she bends over backwards to accommodate rhaenyra when she believes she had her own son killed, just because her husband wants bragging rights for being the king’s “grandfather”!!! this is insane!!! 

jace won’t even be a velaryon when he becomes king, since viserys insisted he revert to the surname targaryen. his kingship isn’t even guaranteed, since he is so obviously not laenor’s child, that a succession war is very likely to be fought over his illegitimacy. so what exactly is all of this tomfoolery even for? 

and then she has the gall to lecture alicent about serving the patriarchy. girl, please go out and touch some grass!!! 😭

how could alicent “imagine herself on the iron throne” when she has zero claim to it? rhaenys, like rhaenyra, has done nothing for the rights of womankind, but enjoys lording over other women, mocking their coping mechanisms. 

how about she start imagining baela on the driftwood throne instead and actually does something about it

i think the reason why house of the dragon's treatment of alicent breaks my brain is because it's unironically written from the perspective of, like, a tyrion bro, but hidden under the cover of (targaryen) women's empowerment.

it's written from the position of not simply someone who identifies with tyrion as a nerdy misfit, but rather someone who would sympathize with tyrion more than sansa in their marriage to an absurd degree. someone who would valorize a grown man for resisting his attraction to a thirteen-year-old hostage and vilify said hostage for resisting or humiliating him during their wedding/marriage.

to them, a man being inconvenienced is worse than a woman (or girl) being abused. a wife resisting a husband's wishes is worse than the husband maritally raping her. a teenage girl with zero social capital surviving courtly intrigues is weak and annoying, but a girl burning all her problems away by dragon is badass. it's this exact brand of misogyny that is not only passively woven into hotd but also actively informs how the characters' actions are endorsed or condemned.

the most generous excuses are made for daemon and viserys because the show views them as victims of alicent's nefarious manipulations (because politicking is evil when a woman does it but clever and funny when a man does it). daemon realized it was wrong to groom rhaenyra as a teen... after bringing her to a brothel and molesting her there... so he's really a good guy. viserys chose to marry the 15-year-old over the 12-year-old so he's really not that bad. meanwhile alicent is the true misogynist for going along with her father's plan and getting married. it's like reading 2015 asoiaf reddit but in $10m-per-episode form

calling alicent an internalized misogynist for not resisting her marriage to viserys at age 15 is like blaming shiv for not knowing that cruises women were getting murdered and dumped into international waters when she was 15

who is the first david you think of when you hear the name david

You can take the apartheid out of South Africa but you can never take it out of a white South African

fun thought experiment. for this purpose, you have to move back with your parents because it's an in-person job in the same city they are in. of note, this could be a temporary thing (as you can move out) but you would be expected to stay at this job for at least a year.

you have no idea the sacrifices made to put you on the throne.

GALADRIEL & ARONDIR 🍂 Scene from the seventh episode, “The Eye” THE RINGS OF POWER (2022)

[+] MORFYDD [GIF Collection] 🌻 [+] ..more on Galadriel ✨ [+] “The Making of The Rings of Power”

Requested by anon

tar miriel dreaming the fall of numenor add so much depth to her tragedy. here she is dreading the future, because she received an omen about her beloved kingdom. then, come the future where ar pharazon took her throne and let his arrogance lead his mind. then, her council and her people will be consumed by sauron influence which lead to the destruction of her city. then the blasphemy that comes after.... there's nothing else she can do about it but to watch in fear. all that she worked for- gone.

1.05 | 1.07 | 1.08 | 1.09

FINALLY

🧑🏿‍🔬🧪

A POST-TRUTH

CRIME DOCUMENTARY

If your goal is to normalize gender-nonconformity you’re gonna have to accept that some people will fuck with gender as hard as they can while still being unequivocally, 100% cis and that is okay. There’s no egg to crack or callout to write. This is a good thing actually.

Reblog for larger sample size. Feel free to indicate in the comments your generation, approximate region of residence, your length of experience with fan fiction, or when/where you first encountered these terms.

Hundreds of Jewish anti-war demonstrators have been arrested during a Passover seder that doubled as a protest in New York, as they shut down a major thoroughfare to pray for a ceasefire and urge the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, to end US military aid to Israel.

The 300 or so arrests took place on Tuesday night at Grand Army Plaza, on the doorstep of Schumer’s Brooklyn residence, where thousands of mostly Jewish New Yorkers gathered for the seder, a ritual that marked the second night of the holiday celebrated as a festival of freedom by Jews worldwide.

The seder came just before the US Senate resoundingly passed a military package that includes $26bn for Israel.

adult life is truly just thinking “I NEED TO CLEAN” while dealing with the 17 other things that have a hard deadline