I saw Oscar wearing a cowboy hat and my brain wouldn’t let it go until I made it everyone else’s problem. so, here’s my Moon Knight western AU featuring spooky cowboy Marc Spector + horse Khonshu (i started calling him Horseshu while drawing this and now I can’t stop 🤣).
I got to see the Moon Knight costume up close and personal today and guys it is SO cool. Did you know there are columns of hieroglyphs on the inside of the cape and around the edge of the chest plate??
Sapochnik: It’s the idea that Daemon is using Rhaenyra as a way to get to her father. Ultimately, his impotence in this scene is a reflection of the fact that he knows deep down that what he’s doing isn’t right.
Clare: He thinks it’s shocking to her. But she doesn’t just get shocked, she gets excited by it. And when that happens, he has nothing. And he, basically, he can’t handle not being in charge or in control.
something i really admire this in this show is how subtle the writing it- i’ve noticed this consistently in every episode, how each one has an underlying theme around which the dialogue is centered. if ep3 focused on how marriage makes meat of women, this episode showed how the culture works to ensure that this happens. daemon in ep3 himself becomes “an offering of flesh” for the crab king, while simultaneously rhaenyra ceases to be the delight of the realm and instead to be a piece of flesh paraded past and for men who see her only as a marriage match and not as a person- a piece of chattel, from which her position and privilege cannot protect her but instead exacerbates her circumstance. ep4 sees daemon attempt to break her out of this, or at least to initiate her into his own world where, as an heir, as a son (”he thought i was a boy!”), she has the freedom to do whatever she wishes without consequence. but daemon and viserys are inherently alike. viserys loves rhaenyra so deeply he does not recognize that problems the issue of her succession is going to cause once he’s gone. daemon loves rhaenyra so deeply he does not recognize that giving her a taste of freedom will backfire because, no matter what his intention was, they are still at least ostensibly divided by gender, and rhaenyra will always be punished for her transgressions on account of being a woman even if daemon, exhibiting the same behaviour, is not. and what fascinates me about this dialogue is how viserys sums up the entire problem with rhaenyra being heir in five words: she is just a girl. she is just a girl. why can’t she behave as daemon and viserys- first and second in the realm- did as young men? because she is just a girl. and daemon doesn’t see her as such- he sees her as a king. and his behaviour was attempting to initiate her into the freedom of kingship he knows she ought to have, but which she can never have simply because she is a woman and reduced to her childbearing abilities, her virtue, her maidenhead, a burden a man in westeros has never borne nor sought to understand. the villain of hotd isn’t alicent, rhaenyra, daemon, otto hightower, or anyone else. the villain is the patriarchy, and it makes meat of us all.
was requested to make this into a post so- i hate that this is one of the most erotic scenes i’ve ever seen on television. because ultimately there is nothing more attractive than a man showing restraint even though he wants something and a young woman recognizing and pursuing her own sexual desire because it’s what she wants.
ultimately i find it very moving because on a number of levels that can only occur in this context because both daemon and rhaenyra exist outside of the patriarchal norm- this whole scene is about that, daemon exhibits restraint which is normally a woman’s trait. meanwhile rhaenyra is delighted to be seen as a boy (”he called me boy!”) and to experience the freedom over her sexuality and sexual behaviour that men usually do- there is a reason we see this scene juxtaposed between alicent and viserys almost shot for shot, first with alicent’s hand being dominated by viserys’ hand:
and then rhaenyra controlling daemon by the neck, but moreover that he allows her to do this:
and then the same shot where viserys touches alicent’s face, either notes and ignores or doesn’t notice her unhappiness, until she smiles and he continues:
mirrored with daemon touching rhaenyra’s face specifically to notice her reaction, her desire, and her consent- because this whole scene is structured to offset rhaenyra’s consent, and the fact that alicent has no choice whatsoever:
what happens between daemon and rhaenyra- which again, hinges on the sensuality of a man with desire showing restraint for the good of the person he is with instead of succumbing to his own lust, something that is almost never seen in media, let alone in this universe- is the beyond, and specifically what lies beyond patriarchy itself, and this is shown to us by intercutting the brothel scene with those disgusting shots of alicent and viserys. which curiously! no one seems to have a problem with- but lots of people have a problem with what happens in the brothel, despite the fact that rhaenyra is clearly empowered by this enough to oversee the loss of her own maidenhead rather than preserve it as a bargaining tool for marriage.
daemon recognizes and defines the issue of gender to viserys. he’s a fool and shortsighted like viserys is but- also like viserys- not malicious. so i find the criticisms of this bizarre because it’s clearly people who don’t know how to analyze media. because yes, we know incest is bad, especially given that incest-based madness is what marked the entirety of game of thrones from the mad king to daenerys (albebit poorly and with no real thought behind it but the desire to produce shock value). but read anything about theory to know that incest represents the other:
More narrowly, the passionate loves and hatreds, the sadism and the incest
of later Gothic literature certainly imply a deep-felt objection to the shallowness
of eighteenth-century empirical or associationist psychologies. The passion of
incest, with its attendant complications of motive and behavior, was especially
appropriate for this purpose, since it is not only immoral, but in the deepest
sense “unnatural”: it implies by its very existence loves and attractions which
cannot be explained by “natural” psychologies and theories of sympathy, benevolence, or simple sex… (Peter L. Thorslev, Jr., “Incest as Romantic Symbol”)
the use of incest in house of the dragon is not what it was in game of thrones: if game of thrones, two hundred years after aegon’s conquest, was set in an age of reason, a dismal age where young women were regularly raped and taken advantage of, and men had no control over themselves whatsoever. if game of thrones is set in an age of reason, then house of the dragon is- by dint of being set in a different time- one where magic still exists, the epitome of the gothic (something which @princessrhaenyratargaryen has already pointed out in this excellent post) where the natural rules simply do not apply. house of the dragon is a different time. and it is a fictional time, so we can suspend our own ethics to recognize incest as a rhetoric device that offsets the looming patriarchal structure of westeros that is slowly swallowing up the targaryen dynasty and creating the dark, terrible, misogynistic world, bereft of magic and femininity as a source of power, that we witnessed previously in game of thrones. this is the beyond: it lies beyond patriarchy itself. this is not a story about incest. this is a story about how the patriarchy finally crushes a magic it cannot control.
there are few things more erotic than a man who can stop himself. and one of those things is a young woman taking ownership of her sexuality.
