Touched Up My Old Portrait Of Jon A Little

touched up my old portrait of jon a little 🖤

“All in black, he was a shadow among shadows, dark of hair, long of face, grey of eye.” 

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Hello, this is my sideblog for ASoIaF/GoT and HotD. I follow back from c********g. Things to know:

I am a 26 year old woman living in the US.

I’m a big fan of Daenerys she’s my girl and I think she’s a very complex and nuanced character and most takes on her don’t grant her enough complexity one way or another. I don’t think the show adapted her well and I do not like the ending the show gave to her. You are welcome to follow and engage regardless of your opinion on her, though.

I like Jonerys but I’m not into shipping much and I only like a very specific “they escape the narrative together” version of it. Neutral to other Jon ships and I enjoy following people who ship other things because the metas are still fun to read.

I used to be negative about Sansa and JxS but I no longer hold these opinions. I love Sansa now and I’m neutral to the ship.

My favorite characters from the main series are Dany, Jon, Cersei, Sansa, Jaime, Arya, Sam, Asha, Brienne, and Arianne.

Other favored ships include: Sansa/Podrick, Cersei/Rhaegar, Brienne/Sansa, Jon/Satin, Theon/Robb, Ned/Cat.

Only ships I really can’t tolerate (censored to keep them out of the tags) are Dany/Dr*go, Dany/J*rah, Arya/J*quen, Sansa/Tyri*n, and Sansa/P*tyr

My favorite Fire and Blood character are the dragon twins Rhaena and Baela, Nettles, Saera Targaryen, and Viserra Targaryen.

I love house Targaryen but it’s because I love doom and horror. I don’t think the Targs are like. Ontologically evil or anything. But I firmly believe the readers are supposed to be critical of Valyrian/Targaryen practices and the series is simply more interesting that way.

Other favored houses include Stark, Dayne, and Whent.

I do not identify with “stan” culture be it a character, ship, or house.

I prefer team black in the books but hotd has failed them so badly and I find myself more interested in Aegon II and Alicent just because the show has given more interesting characterization. They’re not good people and Rhaenyra is still rightful heir I’m just compelled by characterization

You are welcome to message me or add commentary on any of my posts.

If you find anything I post objectionable, I would love to talk about it. I’m always open to being wrong. I follow many blogs that post things I disagree with for a reason. It’s intellectually engaging and fun to compare differing thoughts. I’ll never tell you not to block me because you have every right to curate your own blogging experience to be enjoyable for you, but just know that I’m always open to discussion and I never block people just for disagreeing with me.

I thought they (Emma) knocked it out of the park in episode 10 with the birth scene and when Rhaenyra prepares the body of her child. I seriously applaud Emma’s talent because the birth scene was hard to watch and probably unimaginably hard to film.

I think the writers just don’t like older Rhaenyra that much as a character and it shows. I so totally agree that I wanted to see Rhaenyra being ruthless. I wanted her to rip that page out of Otto’s hands and throw it to sea. That stupid scene with Daemon choking her was such a disservice to both characters. And honestly the final scene when she finds out about Luc’s death just fell flat for me. I think about the scenes where Cersei lost her children and this just seemed lackluster in comparison.

She’s given much more by the writers than all other team black characters aside from Daemon, at least. It’s so obvious that the writers just do not care much about Jace, Luc, Baela, and Rhaena. And the writers have even taken away character-revealing scenes from Daemon!! They’ve made team green unambiguously the villains (at least in my opinion… I literally cannot imagine ideologically siding with the greens. Preferring the characters, sure, but actually believing Rhaenyra should be disinherited?? I don’t see how anyone could think that. Maybe the writers genuinely expect the audience to believe that Rhaenyra did something wrong by taking lovers and having Harwin’s kids but if so, they failed to convey that. Rhaenyra did nothing wrong and I actually think that’s a flaw in the writing itself) but they’ve given them way more character. This is like my third or fourth post talking about this but the more I think about it, the more it bothers me!

All my frinds prefer younger Rhaenyra, and I feel torn. I love older, mature Rhaenyra, I love the actor, Emma is fantastic for this role, their performance is top. Still, younger version made me So nostalgic when I watched the first episode. Those Dany-like features (deliberate by the writers, I'm sure) hit hard and I'm not ashamed to say I liked them.

I think I miss a "happier" version of Rhaenyra, too, with fire not diminished by Greens' scheming and insults. She seems slightly broken and alone, even in ep8 she begged her father to protect her, in ep 10 she got tons of pain and betrayals.

And we got too few of scenes with content older Rhaenyra in 6-10 eps. I wanted to see her triumphant, smiling, enjoing her life. It is mostly angst or fear and I'm dreading the future season. It is like watching season 8 Daenerys but dragged out in 2-3 seasons. "I've seen this film before...And I didn't like the ending..."

Ohhh that is a delicate question anon. So Milly's version was spectacular. Partly because of talent and partly because of the writing.

Milly's Rhaenyra was young, carefree, entitled, vibrant, sassy, arrogant, radical. She revelled in her position, didn't hesitate to defy older men, had fun, did her own thing, enjoyed sex, was sarcastic and annoying AF to everyone around her, butchered wild animals with a knife, she was SAVAGE. I am absolutely obsessed with her. She is everything that Dany would have been if she was raised in a castle with her family on the Iron Throne. She encapsulates every single Targaryen trait, she is the perfect Targaryen princess : ethereal and ominous, a delight and a menace. Just look at her face and expressions.

Milly is extremely talented but as I said, it's partly her talent and partly the writing that made her so so cool.

Now Emma's Rhaenyra. Not so obsessed, and it's not because of Emma's skills being inferior to Milly's. Emma has the perfect face, the perfect voice (obsessed with her voice), the perfect presence, they too encapsulate everything about Targaryens. I personally like to think that during the casting process, the writers looked for a specific Targaryen look that kind of resembles a dragon. Like, if a dragon was transformed to a human, that's how they would look like. I believe Emma and Matt have this distinctive dragon look in their face. They are both stunning of course and not at all monstrous, I'm talking about a particular dragon-like fierce vibe that their facial traits give off. The hooded, light, piercing eyes, the strong profile, the sharp facial angles, the pronounced forehead. Examples :

Also, Emma's kind of androgynous/not very feminine persona is so flawless for Rhaenyra in the book. It's also something different that we have never seen, we've only been used to young and conventionally feminine Targaryen princesses like Dany and young Rhaenyra, but here we have a mature, kind of androgynous woman with a beautiful yet menacing, fierce, otherwordly look. We have never seen such a female character in all Game of Thrones. Cersei had some hints of the menacing part and was very majestic, but she too was very conventionally feminine and also she didn't have this eerie, magical aura around her, because she was not a Targaryen. So, yes, Emma's Rhaenyra is something completely original and the casting department did amazing on that.

The problem is that this very heavy front needs to be backed up by the script. In Emma's case, this didn't happen. They had the perfect actor and they didn't put their skills into good use. The only strong moments Emma's Rhaenyra had were the first scene with Laenor when she went up the stairs (fuck, move, MOVE), and her scenes in episode 7. Ok, also the scene when she's crying at Viserys' bed that was tragic and the one look she gives when she learns Luke was murdered. That's it. Emma is spectacular as an actor in every scene, but their character does not shine through as she was supposed to. Apart from the scenes I mentioned, Rhaenyra is too grey, too dampened, too passive. Especially the last episode and her scenes with Daemon and Otto, oh my God what an absolute disaster for her character. Sure they could show her being ruthless next season, but in this season they should have showed her more triumphant. Girlie had a super hot paramour then chased her oncle like he was prey, fucked him, plotted a fake murder and a real one, married her oncle, did her thing and she was very very depressive while doing all of that. That is purely the script's fault and the director's fault. They could totally show a triumphant, vibrant Rhaenyra that is also angry and traumatised by what is going on around her. Real people are like that, their mood changes all the time.

So yes that is my criticism. You say that all your friends prefer Milly. Maybe they think the same way as me, but let's not fool ourselves : for most people, locals especially, Milly' version is more popular mainly because she's a young cis female. So ageism and transphobia are big factors in the comparison.

More validation for this analysis from Sansa’s first chapter in A Clash of Kings:

Sansa felt that she ought to say something. What was it that Septa Mordane used to tell her? A lady’s armor is courtesy, that was it.

I doubt we’ll get a rosy ending, but in my dreams, Sansa will apologize to Arya and Arya will push her into the mud and they will laugh about it and have fun and Arya will teach Sansa and Dany the names of all the flowers in the north

After finishing reading AGoT, I have a brand new hope for a way the books may differ from the show. I want to see Sansa snap. I want Sansa to be violent. I want her to get her hands dirty!!

In the show, yes, she’s responsible for the deaths of Ramsey and Littlefinger, but they’re detached kills carried out by someone else. I’d much less likely she’ll kill Ramsey in the books since I know that her marriage to him was a show exclusive, but I wouldn’t mind a bit if she did it on behalf of Jeyne. And I can only hope she kills Littlefinger with her own two hands.

To me, Sansa seems like a character who has believed her whole life that that beauty, politeness, and grace are the keys to her safety. If she can be ladylike, she will be safe. I interpret her desires for Arya to be more of a lady as, at the heart, a desire for her sister to be safe. The songs tell of lovely, happy things, so if she can keep things the way they are in the songs, it will bring safety and happiness and the heroes will win. This is a reasonable conclusion a kid might draw. Kids often fail to recognize what they actually want and misidentify the true sources of their anxiety because they simply lack the self awareness. It wouldn’t be a stretch for a child’s internal, subconsciously narrative to take “the gentle and graceful ladies of the stories are happy and safe” and conclude that “beauty and manners will make a girl happy and safe.” Combine that with a desire for her family to be safe, and it all gets expressed as a desire for Arya to be ladylike. I could imagine that at her core, it’s not politeness that Sansa truly values. She has no reason to care if Arya likes dresses. It’s safety she wants, but she’s a child who doesn’t know how to voice that.

But it seems to me like the books are setting her up to learn that these things, these “feminine” qualities, will not save anyone. To be a lady means nothing. Lady was murdered. And I want her to be ANGRY about it. Angry that she wasted so much time and energy trying to be the perfect image of a noblewoman. And I want her to lash out. I think she definitely has it in her, based on her last chapter in AGoT. She thinks multiple times about wanting to hurt others. She is FURIOUS.

He did not hate her, Sansa realized; neither did he love her. He felt nothing for her at all. She was only a … a thing to him. “No,” she said, rising. She wanted to rage, to hurt him as he’d hurt her,

Sansa stared hard at his ugly face, remembering how he had thrown down her father for Ser Ilyn to behead, wishing she could hurt him,

A kind of madness took over her then, and she heard herself say, “Maybe my brother will give me your head.”

And my favorite:

All it would take was a shove, she told herself. He was standing right there, right there, smirking at her with those fat wormlips. You could do it, she told herself. You could. Do it right now. It wouldn’t even matter if she went over with him. It wouldn’t matter at all.

I can only hope that’s foreshadowing. I hope that, in an impulsive act of violence and rage, she pushes Littlefinger off the Eyrie. Nothing proper or calculated. A simple moment where that madness overtakes her and all the rage she’s had comes out in final shove.

Some of the tags on my last post were interested in Daenerys dress I designed for my own S8 re-write AU. Just an idea of what a wedding dress could have been…