Dany: our two houses were allies for centuries, and those were the best centuries the Seven Kingdoms have ever known, centuries of peace and prosperity.

Me: Totally. Maegor the Cruel burning people at prayer. Aegon II and Rhaenyra fighting over the throne like two spoiled children. Daeron I’s ego getting thousands killed in the Conquest of Dorne. The Blackfyre rebellions. Rickard and Brandon Stark and their entourages. Much peace. Much prosperity.

Okay, I really do want to know what Tyrion heard about Sansa. Like, did he hear about how she somehow married someone else despite being already married? No?

Honestly, what is Sansa’s marital status right now?

Can you tell me why do you enjoy Glee? I’m not one of those who hate on the show for being LGBT-friendly, it’s just that the characters are so inconsistent, the pairings are often forced and the storylines can be cringeworthy to really bad. Not that there isn’t talent on the cast. I liked the earlier seasons, but I thought it became so nonsense later on… Maybe I’m not watching the way it should be watched, idk…

I’ve been sitting on a similar message for months now, trying to figure out how to respond. The problem with these messages that always leave me in a bind is that I do not think my answer would be really satisfactory to you. We all respond to media in different ways, have our own lines in the sand as to how much we can suspend our belief, like different things, etc. So I don’t know if I can really give you a different perspective on the show or anything; all I can offer is my own viewing experience.

I did not like the first season of Glee. I almost quit so many times during that first season but I was always pulled back and convinced to give the show another chance. Every time I planned to stop, a magical moment would happen – Mercedes singing I Am Beautiful, Burt telling Kurt that his job was to be himself and Burt’s job was to love him no matter what, the kids pulling a setlist out of thin air as Will listened and cried, the Glee club singing Lean on Me to Finn and a pregnant Quinn, Quinn giving birth to the tune of Bohemian Rhapsody, to name a few – and I’d be so moved that I’d decide to stick it out with the show for a little while longer. That’s not to say the first season was necessarily bad, I just did not enjoy it. The WillSue rivalry did not sustain the season on its own, I hated the WillTeri story, I did not think the team gelled, and I wasn’t pulled by any of the characters.

Come season 2, things changed. I fell in love with the characters. My starting point in any show is the characters – if I can’t even like the characters, I can not go on watching even if the story is phenomenal. Season 2 got me interested in these characters as people, really delved into the characterization of the students and their stories which was a million time more interesting than Will, Teri and Sue. They introduced my favorite character, the writing got tighter, and they did a marvelous job with Kurt’s and Santana’s arcs. This was the season that cemented my love for Glee, aided by how much I started relating to these characters. I started to watch the show between seasons 3 and 4 when I was fresh out of college and feeling pressured to make it, scared that my academic success would not translate to a good career “in the real world” or that I just was not enough. So I understood these characters and their struggles. I saw my own fears in theirs. I related to them and rooted for them.

Now, I know that lots of people did not like the latter seasons but honestly, seasons 4 and 5 are my absolute favorites in this series. I genuinely enjoyed them despite some glaring problems. See, I watched Glee with my eyes wide open. I knew its problems and was infuriated by some of them:
storylines that didn’t really go anywhere, stories that were set up
perfectly but wrapped up sloppily, some obvious pace issues, big name
guest stars that tended to become a plot black hole – if a big name
guest star appeared, often the plotlines of the regulars got shelved in
favor of showcasing said guest star – the writing even became reactionary at
one point as some shippers took to social media to hound the writers over
their ships, and Ryan responded by making a point through the writing. I
saw all of that.

But while I admit that there were issues worthy of criticism in Glee, I also think that there came a point where it became “cool” to
disparage the show, and that fed to a widespread feeling of negativity
towards it. I’d see someone lamenting how Glee stopped being silly
and fun and now took itself too seriously but when the show did a
cracky ridiculous episode like the ones it used to do in earlier seasons, it was
criticized for being too silly and not taking its audience seriously. The
writers got flayed for doing PSA episodes and I’d read think pieces on
how they should employ subtle storytelling and not throw their themes in our face, but when they did so with their story about race – one of the subtlest and longest running storylines – it largely got dismissed because people simply did not notice it since Glee did not wave a red flag saying “this is a race story” (though honestly, when it did explicitly tell us it’s a race story in Asian F, some still failed to understand that yes, this is about race.) At one point, there was no winning for the show, everything was criticized.

One of my favorite things about Glee, though, is that it managed to sell me on things I thought I’d never accept and made me love characters that I wasn’t a big fan of even four and five seasons in. For the love of god, Glee somehow managed to make me really care about Dave freaking Karofsky which is a damn feat. Like, Finn and Santana were two characters that I’ve always struggled with. I outright disliked and resented Finn at the end of season 3, and then season 4 happened and my god, did I fall in love with Finn – that goofy, stubborn, supportive kid who stepped up, learned from his mistakes and became a rock to the younger generation. Santana was just intriguing in that season and she drew me in in a way that she hadn’t done before. Season 4 had its problems, but it’s the season that genuinely made me so attached to Glee. Blaine was a bloody revelation and a joy to watch. Sam somehow managed to steal my heart. Tina had really good material that I enjoyed to death to make up for three seasons of sidelining. The NND had a very rough start and the show struggled in the beginning to give the newbies distinguishing characterization that did not echo the graduated characters’ but once they found their groove, they became a team that I loved with all my heart, one that I enjoyed seeing interact far more than I ever did the previous team. Season 4 was primarily about friendships and support, it allowed the characters to fly their nerd flags and they felt like real teenagers in their silliness. And hey, very little Will. That was always a plus.

While season 5 was heavily impacted by Cory’s death, and despite how that forced the writers to throw away their plans for the season which unfortunately led to some storylines getting axed, I found it a solid season with some excellent episodes that capitalized and improved on the relationships they set in season 4, and that did a much, much better job with its pacing. I find it admirable that they managed such a good season after a heavy personal and professional loss as Cory’s death.

As for characterization, I disagree that it was inconsistent. Obviously I have no idea which characters you have in mind but the two characters I often saw this criticism directed at are Blaine and Tina, and I just don’t agree. The bones of Blaine and Tina’s later characterization are laid in seasons 2 and 3 if one looks for them, and can we really call them inconsistent when they were only truly fleshed out in the same season that prompted people to criticize their characterization? Because both characters were underdeveloped in earlier seasons. But
characters are
constantly developing and I can’t expect the characters to be the same
four or five seasons in as they were in season 1. As long as the change falls in line with
previous storylines or expands in them in a non-contradictory way, then it’s not inconsistent. That’s not to say that I enjoyed every bit of characterization from every character (I was very vocal in my dislike for s4!Rachel’s characterization), but just because I did not enjoy it does not necessarily mean that it was inconsistent.
That’s a line I had to find while watching.

But it all comes down really to the fact that I still found magic in Glee despite its problems. I found as much joy in On Our Way as I did in Ride Wit Me and as much beauty in If I Were A Boy as in I Am Beautiful. NND were even more important to me than OND were, Blam meant the world to me, as did Blaine’s struggle with his insecurities, Kitty’s journey, Jake’s anger, Ryder’s ridiculousness, Marley’s steadiness, Unique’s bravery, Rachel’s stumbling, Tina’s resentment, it all meant something to me. I loved these characters and was invested in their happiness and their success. I started watching Glee for the story of these underdogs standing up to the world around them and picking themselves up after they were knocked down again and again, I stayed for the sense of community and support they built against all odds which is something the show never lost, and I ended it with them, with Rachel Berry accepting that Tony, with Kurt and Blaine happily married with a baby on the way, with Mercedes successful and fulfilled. It ended with a show of friendship as these kids who stuck by each other through thick and thin gathered to support one of their own, and with that weird, crazy, dysfunctional, flawed group of people coming together to honor the person who made Mckinley just a little bit brighter for many of them. Perhaps he never got the chance to walk these halls as a teacher, or to become the teacher that future Mckinley students deserved, but he still left a legacy behind.

Moments like these are why I enjoyed Glee, and why, despite all of its problems, it remains one of few shows that touched me the most.

Rhaegar is born a girl. What changes?

What doesn’t?!

The two obvious changes that immediately jump at me are Steffon And Cassana Baratheon’s drowning, and Robert’s Rebellion. If Rhaegar is a girl, Steffon and Cassana do not go to Volantis in search for a bride for the crown prince, and thus do not go down with the Windproud in Shipbreaker Bay, neither does Lyanna Stark get snatched leading to the Starks’ murder and sparking the rebellion. But there is a lot of changes beyond that.

On the magical front, Rhaegara would be far less prone to think of herself as the savior figure in the prophecy, since everyone was looking for a male prince. While this does not mean she would be any less interested in the prophecy, at least she would not live her entire life with the expectation of this grand destiny or feeling personally responsible for it; she would not get herself all twisted up in the burden of being the only one who could save the world, which could make any political actions on her part more rational and prudent. That’s not to say she’d necessarily think that the prophecy has nothing to do with her – after all, she exists because of the prophecy and as an attempt to acquire the prophesied savior, and the circumstances of her birth match the “born amidst salt and smoke” part too well for her not to make the connection. While this is one of the signs that is supposed to herald the Prince that Was Promised, in the absence of any specific qualification to identify the other two heads (at least as far as we know), the princess might take the similarities between her own birth and the prophecy as a sign that she is one of the three heads of the dragon. More so, perhaps, if she harbors any negative feelings about herself for not being this promised prophetic figure that her parents married specifically to produce and that her family paid a hefty blood price to aid in a tragedy that marked her own birth, only for their efforts to result in a princess who is decidedly not the person that they all sacrificed so much to acquire. That might lead her to cling even more to the idea that she does have a part to play in the prophecy, and that those sacrifices were not for nothing.

On the political front, the nature of the relationship between Aerys and Rhaegara would probably
change. While I do not imagine the princess would be any less
dissatisfied with her father’s growing instability than her male
counterpart (or any less invested in preparing for the Long Night which
would require royal authority to help bolster the Night’s Watch),
Rhaegara stands little chance of being the target of her father’s
paranoia
and contempt in this scenario as her gender would make her significantly
less threatening to his throne.
With
the damaging historical example of Rhaenyra’s short queenship and what
it meant for the Targaryen succession working against her, the
princess would have a hard time finding any substantial body of support
that could counterbalance her father’s, or establishing anything
resembling the
court her male counterpart kept. Oh she’d definitely win hearts with her
beauty and courtesy, and she’d have nobles vying for her hand and her favor,
but not the support that would enable her to do something as drastic as
overthrowing her father, especially as she’d be battling precedents of
royal succession and the popular patriarchal view of how one queen’s
misrule was a decisive affirmation that women should not have the
throne. No one would look at Rhaegara as an appropriate replacement for her father, which makes the possibility of her posing any danger to
Aerys’ throne very minimal indeed.

On a wider scale, Rhaegara being the king’s only surviving child for 17 years means
that the Targaryen dynasty would be in serious trouble with no male male-line
heir to continue the dynasty after Aerys, which makes the dynasty look quite
vulnerable to the nobles, not least of all the Southron Ambitions bloc. While Rhaella’s many pregnancies might sustain the hope that the queen would produce a healthy male heir, the repeated losses the queen suffered would cause many to worry about the succession in the absence of a clear heir. Never in its near 300 years on the throne has the Targaryen dynasty faced a situation where the succession was between a woman or a male descendant of a woman. In the event of the king’s death, not only would the realm almost
certainly face a succession crisis prompting a Great Council to convene, but the question of succession could see the royal succession adjusted once more as the “iron precedent” of the Great Council of 101 gets overturned by necessity. No longer would it be
said that the throne can not pass to a woman or a male descendant of a
woman. With the future of the dynasty on the line and with the political
ramifications of not producing a male heir in mind, the pressure on
Rhaella to produce a healthy male heir would be astronomical. I would
not be surprised one bit if some voices advocated for Aerys to put her
aside and take another, probably proven fertile, wife. 

That situation works really well for the Baratheons, though, as Steffon Baratheon would become quite the powerful lord, and extremely important to both the crown and the Southron Ambitions bloc; he’d be an ace to whoever allies with him. While that might lead to the SA betrothals to happen a little earlier as Rickard Stark and Jon Arryn move to cement their alliance before Robert, the most valuable marital prize in the land at the time, could get betrothed to another, it’s how that new influential position could affect the relationship between Aerys and Steffon that interests me. Steffon enjoyed an amiable relationship with Aerys in canon (at least it appeared so on the surface, though admittedly we do not know all that much
about Steffon’s personality, how involved he was in the SA bloc, or what his view of his cousin was). But while we don’t really know where Steffon stood, we know that Aerys trusted him enough to entrust him with the search for a bride for Rhaegar in OTL, and it’s even speculated that Steffon and Cassana tried to produce a girl (who turned out to be Renly) for the crown prince to marry. If that relationship remains the same in this au, it’s a given that Robert would be betrothed to Rhaegara: not only does he have Valyrian blood and would make a more traditional match for the Targaryen princess as her cousin, but that betrothal would be a smart dynastic match as it consolidates Targaryen power by binding the two competing claims to the throne in a show of unity between the two Targaryen-blooded factions, lest anyone think the crown weakened by the lack of a male heir (prior to Viserys’ birth) and open to conspiracies and schemes, or susceptible to yet another civil war.

But I find it possible that Steffon might find himself the new target of Aerys’ paranoia in light of
how much more powerful he’d be in this scenario. Looking at canon, it
does not seem like Aerys’ suspicion of Rhaegar or Tywin was
precipitated by any particular action from either. It was more a matter
of them overshadowing Aerys and earning growing prestige and esteem
in court. Which means that Steffon could fall victim to the same
paranoia that caused Aerys to deliberately sabotage his heir and alienate his Hand so openly in OTL. It’s worth noting, however, that Steffon would still have a much better shot at avoiding
Aerys’ paranoia in this scenario than canon Rhaegar or Tywin did
considering his distance from court. His residence at Storm’s End means
he would not be in close proximity to Aerys for the king to start
obsessing over how much power his cousin has or how the nobles at court
perceive him. But it’s not a sure thing, especially if Steffon’s
presence in court grows as the probable heir
presumptive.

Steffon wouldn’t even need to do anything for
Aerys to start distrusting him. After 17 years with a daughter as the king’s only surviving child, I would not be surprised if those dissatisfied with Aerys’ reign flocked to Steffon as an
alternative
possibility for a better and saner monarch in the same way they flocked
to Rhaegar in OTL, though it’s unknown how receptive Steffon would be
to them. But as the years pass, some might
start seeing Steffon as the
de-facto heir to the throne, and with his connections to the Starks and
the Arryns, it might be his cousin, rather than his son, whom Aerys
would fear usurpation by. Indeed, Steffon would
make for a very attractive prospective king: he has a
very strong claim to the throne as the closest male heir to the
Targaryen
king; he has (at least) two healthy male heirs which secures the succession in a way that would make him more appealing
than Aerys,
or even baby Viserys after he is born; he grew up in court and has strong relationships within the
Red Keep including a friendship with the Hand Tywin Lannister; he has
strong allies in the Arryns and the Starks (and later, the Tullys) based
on his heir’s fostering in the Vale. And if Steffon’s presence in court
increases in this au, he’d have a front row seat to Aerys’ rapid deterioration,
and might start capitalizing on his existing connections, just in case.

But regardless of what Steffon and Aerys’ relationship would look like, the Baratheons would still be a much appealing prize to the Southron Ambitions bloc, especially as the years pass with no surviving crown prince in sight and they figure it’s unlikely that the royal couple would produce one. Of course, if Aerys starts distrusting Steffon, the king could start looking too closely at the SA bloc, and might even try to stop their
betrothals to prevent Steffon from gaining a substantial power bloc, same as he did with Rhaegar in OTL.
In the same vein, his requirements for his daughter’s bridegroom would be vastly different from canon as he’d look for the most advantageous marriage he could make for her to bolster the power of the Targaryens against the Baratheons. I wonder if he’d even consider officially recognizing her as the Princess of Dragonstone prior to Viserys birth, in an attempt to circumvent any attempt to put Steffon on the throne, though this would not be a sound political move because it would bear too much of a resemblance to Rhaenyra and would bring the Dance to mind which really would not help the princess’ bid for the throne, which ultimately defeats Aerys’ purpose.

I’m afraid I can not really expand on this au more than this, otherwise I’ll just twist myself up in endless possibilities (trust me, I tried. You do not want to make me start going about the prospective power blocs during the Defiance of Duskendale, and what each faction might have hoped to gain. Somehow I ended up talking about the Great Council of 233, which was how I knew I needed to stop here.) I’ll say, though, that the political landscape in the face of Aerys’ rapid deterioration means that something is bound to happen sooner or later even without Robert’s Rebellion – whether that something is Aerys committing another form of catastrophic political blunder and sparking an uprising, or someone finally making a move and calling a Great Council to set the throne to right – either of which could easily lead to the Targaryens losing the throne to the Baratheons, because Viserys was as mad as Aerys and showing signs of it even in childhood according to Barristan Selmy, and because even if Rhaegara already has a son when any of that goes down, the kid would still have a bad track record with a mad grandfather and a mad uncle, not to mention he’d be a child going against a man grown who has heirs and quite the power bloc at his back. So the Baratheons still stand a rather good chance of gaining the throne in this scenario. It’s only that Rickard and Brandon do not die, Ned and Cat do not wed and neither do Jon Arryn and Lysa, our current generation of Starklings does not get born, Jon Snow does not exist, and the world would have to make do with only two heads of the dragon, probably without actual dragons.