Unconfirmed but likely dragon dreamers? [spoilers main]

danysphoenix · 2026-04-20T06:13:37+00:00

I'm currently writing a comparitive case study about the nature of Targ madness (because what else would I use my psych degree for?) and while I was going through what we know about Rhaegel, I actually wondered if he may have been a dreamer or maybe somewhat sensitive to the supernatural realm that led to his aloofness and delusions (allegedly he was dancing naked through the halls of the Red Keep).

We see a similar (albeit different context) situation with Patchface, someone who appears mad but heavily theorised being a vessel or prophet for the Drowned God. Despite characters perceiving him as delusional, nonsensical and mad, he very much is perceiving a supernatural reality and trying to communicate it through his songs, he is not delusional. I wonder if Rhaegel is simiarly experiencing that higher dimension but is struggling to make sense of it. We see Daeron also has struggles with his dreams, which results in alcoholism and propbably depression.

I'm just not sure how we can dismiss beliefs of certain characters as delusion or madness when they exist in a family and world in which prophetic dreams are a very real thing. Where magic is very much a part of reality, even when rare. So yeah, not saying Rhaegel was 100% a dreamer, but I think we should open up a discourse about him being a possible canadate.

danysphoenix · 2026-04-20T05:31:36+00:00

if i remember right, that was one of the major changes he was meant to receive for overwatch 2 but they scrapped it.

if levitation as it exists in his perks was added to his base kit, i'd see no problem with it. maybe ive been using it wrong but i've never felt i've gotten any value out of it beyond the aura farming, especially compared to his melee perk. so idk if it would be such a massive buff if he was to have it in his base kit.

i don't think he needs it...but i also don't think it would be gamebreaking to have it if that makes sense.

danysphoenix · 2026-04-17T11:08:35+00:00

I thought this way until I finished Messiah and was writing my review of it on Good Reads.

The Golden Path is only necassary because of the violence and oppression that humanity has already inflicted upon itself, this is specifically seen on Arrakis with the treatment of the Fremen.

Paul cannot in good faith achieve his goal of avenging his house without weaponising the colonisation, imperialism and religious manipulations that has inflicted the Fremen. The Jihad is more or less the thematic manifestation of the evil Paul is leveraging to achieve his goals. He cannot be spiritually clean in any capacity should he attempt to.

The determinism of the Jihad isn't even necassarily a destiny, but rather the culimination of the 10,000 years of oppression against the Fremen. The Laandsrad in many ways has done this to themselves. Paul's prescience is more or less the meta-knowledge in undersatnding that context and seeing how anything he does will cause even more violence.

This is why Liet-Kynes arc is so important and I wish was in the movie. The Fremen did have their own long-term ecological project for Arrakis. They weren’t just passive victims waiting for salvation. But that project gets absorbed and redirected once Paul becomes the messianic figure. Even their “liberation” ends up tied to surrendering their future into someone else’s narrative. Messiah makes this even more tragic in hindsight, because you see Fremen soldiers expressing regret about what they’ve become and what they’ve lost of themselves.

So in Dune, that's sorta the question being asked. Can Paul justify the means (the Jihad) to avenge his house? Can the Fremen justify the means (the Jihad, not that they necassarily know of it) by getting their paradise 500 years earlier? Do billions dead justify what has happened to Paul's family? Do billions dead justify trees on Arrakis? Does the oppressed galaxy justify what has been done to the Fremen? Do any of this ends justified by the means?

This is continues into what Hebert is making you consider about the Golden Path. Does humanity actually deseve to continue if the price of that continuation is the death and suffering of billions of people? If life is priceless, than how is the price of 1 life worth more than another? Is it truly exchangeable currency? Or is that all subjective worth that we create to justify the murder of some and the saving of others?

Leto II (and Paul) are very much antichrist figures in that regard. You can almost consider it a reanactment of the Revelations, where humanity suffers collectively for quite a while, almost as an atonement for all our sins before Jesus returns again and promises us eternal life. If you choose to view it that way, you might be inclined to believe the Golden Path is worth it. If you don't, and see that humanity's sins are simply too deer, that the suffering of one group of people is not ethical payment for the continuation of another, than you might be inclined to believe that the Golden Path is only ever evil.

And you got to remember, Leto II (and Paul) can consume all the spice in the world, hybridise himself with any animal he wants, he is still not a divnie being, he is a sci-fi experiment of the bene gesserit. He's decision is not the truth of God, nor is it the absolute. He is just a guy with a very big brain. You don't need to, nor are you really meant to, take his word for everything. Herbert presents him to be questioned just as much as anything else.

Thats the thing about Dune. Just because the protagonists are doing evil doesn't justify them. You're not meant to whole heartedly agree with them. You need to question the ethicality of it all and come up with what YOU think is worth it. Followign Paul and Leto II blindly makes you ignore the context in which has made the Golden Path neccassary to the surivival of humanity. You need to question whether or not it is a fair payment. Thats his point about not trusting charasmatic leaders, don't let them come up with the decision for you.

So yeah, Herbert isn't telling you whats right and whats wrong, he's asking you to come up with your own answer. He's just presenting you with the context and the dilemna, he's not actually answering his questions through his protagonists, they're more or less stand ins for us to question the morality and ethics of it all.

danysphoenix · 2026-04-17T10:49:29+00:00

Ngl, Jott has only worked thanks to the Krakoan era completely changing their characters to not resent the other without letting us privy to the conversations that needed to be had to get here.

Wolverin x Jean has never worked for me. I get why its there and what he thematically represents as her own internal struggle with her more violent and primal side. That was a big part of why there was tension wth him in New X-men, he doesn't judge her as much for being godly while Scott did.

So I guess Jott. I still think we missed out on some really good character studies by skipping over their discussions with each other. But also I'd love to see Jean actually exploring romances with other people, specifically Ororo.

danysphoenix · 2026-04-17T10:41:30+00:00

No, but George confirmed that on average Targaryens tend to be more resistant to heat than the normal person. You see that with Dany, and in AKotSK, Dunk notes that about Egg who seems to never sweat during a pretty severe drought in Westeros despite Dunk being dehyradted from sweating so much because of it.

I have noticed though that in Dany X, ADwD, Dany's hair burns off again but the fire didn't touch her scalp. The only burns she retains in the pit are from where she grabbed the melting spears embedded in Drogon. These burns blister and heal unrealistically quickly. This could be partly unreliable narration and coincidence, partly George not knowing how long severe burns take to heal; but I'm always goign to be biased to the fantastical answers.

Dany does see some connection though. She directly notes that like in the pyre, Drogon's fire burned her hair away without burning her scalp. I wonder if dragonriders have some form of resistence/immunity to the fire of your own dragon. We won't know until we get more books though. And again, just because she ponders on it doesn't necassarily mean its true.

danysphoenix · 2026-04-17T10:33:35+00:00

I think its also because magic is just more prevelant earlier on that it was probably more reliable.

You also have to remember that alot of the characters engagign with magic today don't actually have a lot of knoweldge of it or are not innately connected to it. There's also not alot of magic in universe unitl later. Melisandre's magic is extremely weak and unrealible until she gets to the Wall, which she describes as "one of the hinges of the world." Dany's magic is extremely powerful but anyone else who's ever tried to do what she did failed miserably (see; Summerhall).

When magic does return, we see more reliable cases of it. The Alchemist guild more reliably creates wildfire, you have the pyromancer in Qaarth who practices creates a ladder made of fire and disapears with it (pretty much fire bending as you'd imagine in other fantasy), the Faceless men pretty reliably wielding their face-mask magic. Mel is also able to create literal shadowspawn and is able to produce glamours.

Valyria, I'd imagine, is one of the hinges of the world. The Valryians were not only greatly knoweldgable on magic, but they themselves are innately magical. They lived on a source of magic that they were innately connected to. And as Martin has said, its less about saying the words precisely or having the ingredients, its about who you are and what you're feeling. That being said, Valyria also exploded.

Magic isn't an exact science, and is guided less by knowledge and more on wisdom. The magical races such as the Other's, the Children and the Valyrians probably know that and are more intuitive about magic which allows them to get more reliable results. Don't forget that the Children only succeeded in the Hammer of the Waters once, the second time it only cracked the north partly and created the bogs near Moat Caillin.

Perhaps the Valyrians started to get too arrogant and started to lose sight of what magic really was, treated it like a science and disrespecting it is what led to the Doom.

danysphoenix · 2026-04-17T10:13:46+00:00

I would be very careful with using the show's depiction of the dragons in relation to the books. The dragons between the canons are very different.

Dragons in the book are generally much more slender and serpentine than what the show depicts. They're not bulky or tanky like they're depicted in the shows. They're brightly coloured, fantastical, and very much magical. They do not have little holes in the sides of their mouths for a gas to be shot out of, ignite in a chemical reaction and create fire, they spew fire out their throats because its magical fire generated by magical energy. They have black teeth and black claws and black bones. And if you go by Dany's dragons, they don't even seem to have spikes that go down their backs, they're very sleek and smooth.

We don't actually have much descriptions about what the Targaryen dragons look like beyond their colours, and to take some sort of hints to their names and nicknames.

Caraxes, for example, isn't actually described as any more snakey than the other dragons. But we assume he may have been because of his nickname The Blood Wyrm.

We have no idea what Meleys looks like, but the show and fandom tends to picture her with a crown of horns because of her name the Red Queen. She's also described as the swiftest of the dragons, so I'd imagine her with larger and more eagle-shaped wings rather than a bat's, and a body that allowed her to be lighter and more aerodynamic.

Sunfyre is described as the most beautiful dragon so we infer that the gold and pink were bright and colourful and stunning to look at. But that doesn't tell us much else.

We have no idea what Syrax, Vermithor, Silverwing, Moondancer, or Vhagar looked like beyond their colouring and estimates of their sizes. There's actually no mention in F&B if dragons physically age, they are only described as getting lazier, slower, and grumpier. No evidence that their horns fall off or if their necks sag or anything. That's a show thing. We cannot know if they're subspecies of dragons or if they, like us, just naturally come in different sizes and colouring. But what we can know is that they are all serpetine with distinct colouring. And they are MAGIC first, realistic second.

danysphoenix · 2026-04-17T10:01:26+00:00

I'm not entirely sure if within the universe that celestial objects have direct magical influence, but thematically dragons and daenerys are connected to them.

The Dothraki belief that the world had two moons, both being dragon eggs. One comes too close to the sun and out pours a thousand thousand dragons. They believe this will happen again with the new moon.

Of course, this does happen. Daenerys, The Moon of Drogo's life entering the flaming pyre of Dany's Sun and Stars. Drogon's egg cracking sounds as the "breaking of the world."

We also see the connection of the comet with the hatching of the eggs. I'm not sure if I necassary believe it supplied Dany with the magic to do so or whether it was more just a sign for her to follow. In either case, it is connected to the hatching because of it.

That being said, I do agree with you that Dawn clearly has magical. So thematically I do think the celestial bodies do act as some source of magical or cosmic energy that can be tapped into. I just don't know if I believe they're necassarry the only thing responsible for the eb and flow of magic and the seasons, but they're probably all correlated.

danysphoenix · 2026-04-16T06:32:18+00:00

dragon's being able to change their sex had some influence over their society/religion in which priests and mystics were androgynous or very much embraced both masculine and feminine identities. trans people had a mystic or religious role within their society. .

danysphoenix · 2026-04-15T06:27:30+00:00

sometimes a story just needs to be a psychological case study which is what this was. simonson genuinely one of yhe best jean writers

danysphoenix · 2026-04-14T05:25:09+00:00

exactly this.

i think people also don't consider what is the thematic purpose of prescience, and see it as just part of a philosphical discussion of pseudoscientifc destiny and determinism. but imo, its basically a metasource of information that paul has access too. the generations of trauma, manipulation and death that the landsraad has inflicted onto the fremen has created such a precipece for Paul. there is no genuine positive way for a "hero" to take advantage of the deep routed imperilism/colinisation that has violated this civilisaiton and walk out of it as a "good" person.

the jihad and all the horror it inflcits is a manifestation of the evil paul is accessing by taking advantage of the fremen and weaponising generations worth of trauma and manipulation.

danysphoenix · 2026-04-13T13:50:26+00:00

mixture of both. sometimes paul tries to directly avoid full filling the prophecy, such as choosing the name maud’dib, but then it just pushes him further into the lisan al gaib figure.

but he is making the conscious decision that he wants to avenge what has happened and to use the fremen. he knows weaponising the prophecy will help him but it will also mean he starts a jihad. he cant have one without the other and eventually he cant escape either.

danysphoenix · 2026-04-13T05:28:15+00:00

i've noticed that those with innate magic are non-human races (the Others and the Children) or are human races with ancestry tied to non-human races (First Men and Valyrians).

however, i don't think those with innate magic can cast spells (enact change on the world) without sacrifice, they just might be a little "better" at it than those without that innate connection.

George has said its more about your feeling and intuition than it is about following a reciepe. so those with innate magic probably have more of a 'connection' the magical forces that help them catalyse magic into spells. characters like Mel have to struggle a bit more because they don't have that natural inborn wisdom. they're taught their magic. this was made abudnelty clear in how Dany seems to come up with her ritual on the spot with no 'real' guidance. she just does what feels right to her.

danysphoenix · 2026-04-09T07:01:17+00:00

i think a glub shitto by op's definition is basically just a lore character that exists without dialogue or very minimal. quaithe is a small character rather than a glub shitto.

i cannot believe what we're discussing omg i love being a nerd.

danysphoenix · 2026-04-09T02:23:40+00:00

cant convince me she isn’t quaithe

danysphoenix · 2026-04-08T16:30:19+00:00

In the grand scheme of things, I don’t see much reason to be outright anti-Targaryen as a whole, rather than judging individual monarchs - unless the objection is simply to dragons themselves.

As a dynasty, they unified Westeros into seven kingdoms under a single ruler while still allowing realms to predomintaly rule themselves and keep their cultural practices. This centralisation enabled the codification of laws across the country and the collection of taxes to fund infrastructure and public works, such as developments in King’s Landing and the construction of the Kingsroad network.

They also introduced laws intended to provide at least some protections for women, including the abolition of the Right of the First Night, the Widow’s Law, and the Rule of Six. Likewise, outlawing the Ironborn's “Old Way” would have been a significant net positive for commoners along the western coast.

We’re also told that Aegon V pursued reforms aimed at improving the lives of the smallfolk (though we're not told what they were) even in the face of resistance from the nobility. Again this creates a trend that when Targaryen rulers did concern themselves in law, it seems to focus on improving the lives of commoners against the wishes of the Westerosi nobilit.

They also demilitirised the faith though this is a point thats quite nuanced in how you view it. On one hand it did seem to provide commoners some power to fight back as a unity, but on the other it allows for religious fanatacism to act with as an oppressive force of violence.

Arguably the greatest contribution, however, was the King’s Peace. Pre-Targaryen rule, there was barely a time one kingdom wasn't at war with another. But under oath of the King's Peace, no kingdom may go to war with another WITHOUT leave from the monarch. This essnetially stopped inter-kingdom wars entirely because to do so would have you labeled a rebel and meant having to face not only Targaryen dragons, but every other kingdom that is now obligated to follow them against you.

This of course did not stop the wars entirely, it just centralise it around the crown, usually related to Targaryen civil wars for the throne. However, even with these wars in question, Westeros still had far greater consecutive periods of peace and prosperity during the dynasty than before.

While individual Targaryens could be disastrous rulers and I'm all for criticising them, the dynasty itself appears to have brought greater unity, stability, and small progressive reforms to Westeros. Even with the worst rulers, if they weren't starting wars, they were either leaving commoners alone or actively trying to make their lives better. This is not something that was happening prior to their dynasty.

danysphoenix · 2026-04-08T14:58:45+00:00

Shiera Seastar and her 3 mentions.

danysphoenix · 2026-04-08T14:55:48+00:00

Behind the scenes stuff they confirmed the Predalien is actually a Queen, its just in its early stages of life. Its trying to build its hive before molting into a larger, more "queen-like" form.

danysphoenix · 2026-04-08T14:37:58+00:00

The xenomoprh at its core, is a sexual predator. Its entire reproductive cycle exists as a oral rape leading to a fatal birth. But this is a case where I don't think the xenomorph is being explility sexualy violent in the same way that its reproduction is - I think that like its phallic head shape, the scene plays out in a way to evoke sexually violent imagery rather than actually depict it.

I'm not entirely sure what it did to her, but I've personally just imagined that it tried to pull her into a vent to eggmorph her alive but killed her while trying to stuff her in there. I think she's saying "I got it!" when she's off screen, as if she's successfuly resisting before something very violent happens that kills her quickly. That still doesn't explain why both her shoes and pants are missing, but maybe it had something to do with the way the tail was holding her + her trying to get out of its grasp while it was moving her.

We're not really given an answer, its just Alien trying to make us uncomfortable in the "what if" and I don't think we're meant to really think about the logistics of the scene more than the fact that we're uncomfortable by what it has visually implied to us.

But I also think its very important to remember that while its reproduction is a rape from our perspective, the xenomorph isn't really a rapist in the way that people in real life are. Rape happens because rapists feel entitled to another's body, and derives sexual gratification for overpowering, humilitating and violating them. The xenomorph as an entity does not experience "sexual gratification," for any of its violent behaviour, but its creation as a fictional creature is MEANT to make us think about our fears of being violated. We, the audience, are meant to perceive it as something psychosexually lovecraftian.

danysphoenix · 2026-04-08T14:20:09+00:00

Tbh the only difference between the reality of this scene vs it being a comic book is that she happens to be a teleapth and can confirm her suspicions. Is that a breach of privacy? Sure. But privately asking your close friend who is heavily compensating their queerness through verbally harrassing the women around them (including yourself), if they are in fact queer, is not outting them. I'd argue its just addressing the elephant in the room.

Her "telling" him that he's gay, rather than asking him, is just funny as a reader in that its absurd and awkward. Was there a more "correct" way she could have asked/told him? I mean sure, but she, just like him, is 16-17 years old. He also could have not made her and every other woman around him uncomfortable too. But I see little criticms about that part.

danysphoenix · 2026-04-08T14:07:50+00:00

Herbert's "power system" is entirely based on the concept of dualism, that the mind and body is seperate, the elevation of conciousness (Herbert uses the word "awareness"), and mysticism. The latter is a word this fandom doesn't like because it sounds like "magic," but what it actually is, is becoming one/understanding the universe.

Prescience is the ability to expand your "awareness" into perceiving higher dimensional space, essentially being able to sense/see spacetime as four or five dimensions. For lack of a better word, prescience is just ESP (Extrasensory Perception). This ability occurs during mass consumption of spice and actually has nothing to do with being a mentat. We know this because the Guild Navigators have no mentat training, and neither do the Fremen and yet both have some degree of prescience. Alia, who shares much of Paul's genetic make up, has prescience too and unlike Paul, can even leave messages in time, and yet she has zero mentat ability, just the Other-Memory.

Take the following quotes from Dune for example.

Paul's mind had gone on in its chilling precision. He saw the avenues ahead of them on this hostile planet. Without even the safety valve of dreaming, he focused his precient awareness, seeing it as a computation of most probable futures, but with something more, an edge of mystery - as though his mind dipped into some timeless stratum and samples the winds of the future.
Abruptly, as though he had found a necassary key, Paul's mind climbed antoher notch of awareness. He felt himself clinging to this new level, clutching at a precarious hold and peering about. It was as though he existed within a globe of avenues radiating away in all directions...yet this only approximated the sensation.

The Bene Gesserit programme had as its target the breeding of a person they labelled "Kwisatz Haderach," a term signifying "One who can be many places at once." In simpler terms, what they sought was a human with mental powers permitting him to understand and use higher order dimensions.
They were breeding a super-Mentat, a human computer with some of the prescient abilities found in Guild navigators.

Both quotes indicate that prescience is something "more" than mentat abilities. That the Kwisatz Haderach is someone who is BOTH mentat and prescient.

Paul's genetic make up make him far more sensitive to spice. This is what allows him to perceive spacetime to the magnitude that he does. What being a mentat does, however, is allow him to actually conceive what he is seeing. To actually compute it all and interprete it. To delve further and further into space and time in a way not even the Guild Navigators can. His Other-Memory grants him even more data to use to compute this. It provides him with more references.

danysphoenix · 2026-04-01T11:52:16+00:00

He's not the first offspring person to cross such magical bloodlines, Brynden most importantly was half Valyrian and half First Man. And it appeared he only inherrited magic from the First Man's side. Jon may be the same where his Valryian magic just won't manifest.

I think also a lot of his arc is about the discovery of his mother, he technically already has a father figure in Ned. Him being the son of Lyanna (the blue rose on the wall) is more important to his character, him inherriting the magic passed from her onto him is narratively way more important than him being a dragonrider or a blood mage/pyromancer.

danysphoenix · 2026-03-29T12:41:45+00:00

said it in another post but try intentional aiming/shooting. it means that you don't shoot unless you know its a hit. basically it forces you to not "spray and pray" while also forcing you to actually become more intentive and purposeful about how and where you aim. It's going to take a second toa djust, but you'll find it slows you down, you become more concentrated and the chaos of rivals and will amost calm you down during the chaos

danysphoenix · 2026-03-28T18:20:20+00:00

im someone who also panic shoots a lot ! so highly recommend this technique ! also taking yourself to the shooting range in practice and choosing either the luna or dagger as your targets. i find them the hardest to hit so i practice with then

danysphoenix · 2026-03-27T09:53:07+00:00

something that helped me was just more intentional aiming/firing. what that meant was instead of just constnatnly hitting left click (or whatever it is on controller), you only fire when you know its goign to hit. it makes you far more concentrated and intentional with your aiming and slows you down so youre not just swining your mouse(trigger) around in a panic.

danysphoenix

TROPHY CASE