As a history buff who's been most interested in Henry 8th and his quest for a male heir and all the inheritance messes after his death, I was real fucking excited for HOTD.
The Iron throne should go to Aegon II. By all logic it really should.
Viserys got the throne by being Jaehaerys' second son's oldest son because the man didn't want his eldest son's daughter on the throne basically. That sets a president for shit:
Throne should go to the eldest son available, not to a daughter or through a daughter
Aemma dies in childbirth because Viserys wants a male heir. He wanted that boy so much that he fucking had c-section done on Aemma with no regard for her, he just wanted the son. That son would have been his heir.
Then he names Rhaenyra heir because he doesn't want to give the throne to Daemon (me neither). Viserys names Rhaenyra heir but he doesn't make a decree or law that the oldest child should inherit the throne regardless of sex. This is an exception for Rhaenyra and Rhaenyra alone.
Back to Henry 8th whose basically only known for wanting a son. Both his daughters Mary and Elizabeth went down in the line of succession when Edward was born. Even though Edward was born from a third marriage and had older sisters, he was the heir.
It's not complitely the same situation and Westerosi politics are a little different than in our medieval/early modern period but the princible is the same.
Also in a famously and unrelentingly misogynist world like Westeros a lot of people will favous Aegon on the sole point of him being a man. No matter which one is on the throne both are in danger.
Rhaenyra on the throne:
If she herself doesn't give a shit and doesn't wish Alicent's kids any harm, someone does
Aegon and his siblings are in danger by just being Viserys' children and having a very strong claim to the throne
Someone in Rhaenyra's camp will get the idea of offing Alicent's kids in the name of Rhaenyra's claim
Also Daemon is on Rhaenyra's team and I would not trust my kids' safety in his hands, he killed his wife. I would not trust him not to kill his nephews
Aegon on the throne:
Rhaenyra will be in danger by just being alive and Viserys' child
Someone in Aegon's camp gets the same idea to kill her in order to protect Aegon's claim even though he nor Alicent would want no such thing
All about the coming war could have been prevented by A) changing the inheritance law, B) not making Rhaenyra an exception and getting a male heir by second marriage, or C) making Aegon heir when he was born. Or Aegon and Rhaenyra could have married (horrible age difference but a solution) and ruled as an equal pair.
Many people are claiming "Just way for Blood and Cheese, justice will be served" That's nasty,what justice? Luke was an 18 yo adult ENVOY with a fire-breathing WMD at his disposal,making him an active participant in the conflict of Blacks VS Greens. His war machine was the one who attacked first and died on an accident. Jahaerys,Jaehaera and Maelor were not combatants. They had quite literally 0 sway on the conflict.They were 5 and 2 years old. Who's on the sane mind could call that "justice"?
These stans are so dumb. Look at the reaction to Luke's death - it was far from the reaction to Ned's death. People were shocked and devastated when he died, it literally put GoT on the map. No one really cares about Luke. He is more like an NPC than a character. When he died, we were making jokes about it - Vhagar having bad eyesight, Aemond going home in silence, Alicent's horrified reaction to the news, Aegon's oblivious reaction to Aemond's remorse, etc.
People were making fun of Luke for coming to Storm's End so unprepared. A good amount of people were thirsting after Aemond like their lives depend on it. All of this is largely in part thanks to Aemond and Luke's ages being close and their pre-established beef that resulted in Aemond's disability.
Blood and Cheese will involve 2 toddlers and a mother who is at the very least coded as autistic. The kids were made even younger than they were in the books. In the show, they babble instead of talking that's how young they are.
You also have Helaena who is sweet and shown to be childlike. When the two assassins threatened to rape one toddler and murder the other, all while their poor helpless mother watches, who will laugh at that? What jokes can you even make about a situation like that? You don't even have to care about any of these characters, they can be NPCs too but this is a horrifying act involving babies. Plus, in the books you can pretend Daemon cares about Luke but in the show, he has a contentious relationship with Jace so it's doubtful he had a good relationship with Luke.
So no, Blood and Cheese won't be seen as 'justice' by anyone besides a small group of weirdos.
Is it evil of me to want something,,,like Mike being absolutely done with party's half-baked plan so he starts getting shit in gear?
By that I mean he starts being more stern. (I know this may or may not be a bit ooc for Mike in S5 since he's pretty backstage eversince S3 where he just got yelled at for his plans, but bear with me.)
Mike hears about their plan back in S4 and he's like "oh god why did you do that." So he starts being more authoritative towards the party, not in a dictative way or anything, just his voice being "no room for argue."
Imagine Mike making out a plan in S5 but Nancy keeps objecting his ideas like in S3. So Mike, having enough of it for the first time says
"I said end of discussion."
That has everyone shocked because, yeah Mike's usually pretty snarky or sarcastic, but hexs bever been authoritative. And that voice left no rook for objection.
Also i think he has a really mean stare, so that would pair well??
It's just my self-fulfilling fantasy alright? Just Mike finally taking a stand in his leader position whether they like it or not, eventho he's not a demanding person.
Or like them not listening to Mike when he tries to tell them not to do something, and so that ends up backfiring on them.
He's just standing there with a raised eyebrow like "I told you so."
youth have a right to be educated about the world regardless of what their parents/caretakers believe. youth have a right to learn accurate information about the world for themselves, including information that allows them to disagree with their parents/caretakers. we have got to destroy this mindset that everyone under 18 is essentially sentient playdough for parents to mold however they want and its violating "parent's rights" to allow their children to be educated on basic facts of the world (like that queer people exist or that america is founded on genocide) because it would mean they lose the slightest bit of control over their child's reality. imo schools have a moral responsibility to protect youth's right to knowledge and freedom of thought over their parent's "right" to control everything they know. your children should be allowed to fucking disagree with you, and restricting their access to knowledge in order to prevent that is abuse.
Another strange scene I have in my head
Hellfire ending same time as basketball practice. Jason being a little dick. Tommy is there too since he is the freshmen's/sophmore jocks ride. Anyways, Jason is being a bitch, trying to be the new King™. Steve is fed up with his bs and is like "You do know you'll never be as good as I was...and still am" or smth like that. Jason is like "you wanna go" Steve is like "I'll fucking destroy you" he does! Tommy sing-songs "King's back~" Eddie is like "wtf do you mean?" And one of the older jocks explains "part of the reason we called him king was because we were terrified of him" meanwhile, Jason is getting his ass kicked hysterically in the background. The younger party is wide eyed hearing their stories of times Steve has been kind of frightening. The scene ends with Nancy being like "GUYS! JASON IS BLEEDING ON THE FLOOR CAN SOMEBODY GET HELP!" The scene ends and it cuts to Steve in the back of a cop car with sirens in the background (other than that, complete silence) it's filmed from the rear view mirror and you can see hoppers eye and and Eddie's hair in the shot as well.
That's all I got really.
Sometimes I think about Tim having trust issues after Bruce's 16th birthday gift fiasco, just him wanting so hard to trust in his family, but never being fully able to do so.
Imagine Tim sitting at the table during dinner suddenly wondering if maybe Alfred poisoned his food because maybe today, Bruce decided he wanted to test Tim's tolerance to them. Or Tim chucking a gift from Bruce into his closet just in case it's another doomsday message. Tim adding stuff into his family and friends' schedules on his birthday so everyone will be too busy to remember and he can pretend it's just another normal day. Tim preparing for the worst case scenario in every mission and patrol, surprised every time someone backs him up or comes to help him because he was genuinely not expecting it.
Literally when I start thinking about how White Collar tried to make their main character a pretty playboy womanizer and at the same time gave their other main character a healthy loving affectionate marriage and the two things combined to make an unignorably poly throuple because Neal can't not flirt with El and Peter and El are obviously in love and Peter and Neal literally joke about being a couple several times and yet there's no jealousy anywhere just three people in love I lose it. "I made a perfectly straight FBI procedural" you've made a poly love story actually congrats that's an upgrade <3
When you're a famous rock star but you also live in Finland
When you're the president but you also live in Finland.
Currently obsessed with the idea of a Jaskier’s-immortal, it’s-modern-times-now AU where some of Jaskier’s songs have survived to the modern day. They’re not like, widely sung or anything, but people know they exist. Most of them survived as scribbled lyrics but in one or two cases the music survived as well. Those get sung at ren faires by the REALLY dedicated people.
And like, some of them are barely even the same songs anymore- verses got added and changed and lost over the years, somebody added a The Moral of This Story Is verse to “Toss a Coin” like a century after Jaskier wrote it and to the horror of everyone involved, it stuck, the second verse of “Her Sweet Kiss” got lost to time aside from the first line, so everybody knows it’s supposed to be there but nobody knows what it was-
The academic debates surrounding these songs are furious and intense. People kinda know who Jaskier was, in the sense of “we know there was a bard, at about this time, named Jaskier. We know when he was born, he flits in and out of the historical record for close to a century, and we can attribute these seven songs to him.” But then you’ve got the people saying “these songs are autobiographical and we can work out the details of his life from them” vs. camp “he was clearly just making shit up,” you’ve got Shakespeare-style authorship debates (”these other ten songs were also his!” “this song is weird and bad so clearly he didn’t write it!” “this song is weird and bad and that’s probably because it’s the earliest song we have from him!” “Jaskier didn’t write his own music!”), you’ve got some historians who study witchers very politely asking if they can play with the songs for a minute-
So. Many. Theses. Have been written about “Her Sweet Kiss,” with subjects ranging from “how many people is this song about, actually? Two? three? four?” to “who were these people to each other” to “can we pin down specific historical figures for these people”
Meanwhile Jaskier’s a super obscure indie musician who occasionally tweets things like “The subject of whether or not I am gay is the subject of much scholarly debate. This isn’t just invasive, it’s stupid, if you’ve heard any of my songs you know I’m bi” and has REALLY STRONG OPINIONS on what those obscure, seven-century old ballads are about.
He sings “Her Sweet Kiss” at some open mic night and everybody’s like “Oh, that’s cool, you made up a second verse” while he grumbles under his breath that he made up the first verse, too, but nobody ever gives him credit for it these days
“You’re going to go through life thinking that women don’t like you because you’re a dwarf. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won’t be true. It’ll be because you’re an asshole. (And a Lannister.)”
—
Sansa Stark to Tyrion Lannister at some point probably (via clara-the-slytherin-graduate)
This is the greatest thing in the history of the asoiaf fandom.
(via bluecichlid)