A Trans Ode to Sheepstealer, The Unsung Softboy of House of the Dragon

The breakout character of House of the Dragon’s third season isn’t any of the people the show spent all of last season hyping up. No, it’s a dragon who looks like he’s been through some stuff. Sheepstealer has a pronounced underbite, ragged wings, and plenty of other deformities. Despite his name, Sheepstealer also looked rather gaunt when he made his first appearance at the tail end of season two. Clearly he was not stealing enough sheep.It was Sheepstealer’s first engagement in the Battle of the Gullet that won the hearts of the audience, and earned the ire of Queen Rhaenyra. Despite just meeting, with no training whatsoever, Rhaena flew Sheepstealer into an active war zone, with predictable results. The wild dragon had no idea which side he was on, left to guess which ships to burn. In a deviation from the source material, Sheepstealer’s actions resulted in the deaths of Jacaerys Velaryon and his dragon Vermax, causing Queen Rhaenyra to put out an APB on Sheepstealer and his new rider, whom she doesn’t realize is her stepdaughter/cousin. Rhaena probably wishes she didn’t take Nettles’ place in the story. What a mess.Like Sheepstealer, Rhaena spends the first half of the series lost and on her own, without any real place in the war. She escapes a plan to escort her much younger half-brothers to safety in Pentos to seek out the wild dragon roaming through the Vale. While other dragons engulfed potential riders in flames, Sheepstealer takes an instant liking to Rhaena, embracing the very queer concept of found family. Rhaena is the unwanted stepchild of Team Black, and Sheepstealer is a kind of busted-looking dragon who does not fit neatly into the typical Targaryen mold, but all they really need is each other. HBO Is it any wonder that some trans viewers, myself included, have really imprinted hard on the unsung softboy of Westeros? The manosphere has wrought a twisted version of masculinity upon our culture. Most of the other dragons are battle-h