Women In Fiction - Tumblr Posts
Hotd is an excellent example of benevolent misogyny. All the women have to be victims and can't have ambition of their own or do morally gray things separate from men. They exist as props for the men in their lives, Alicent for Otto, Rhaenyra for Daemon (and Viserys), even Rhaenys is reduced to just a support for Corlys.
Alicent only goes to Viserys, opposes Rhaenyra, and helps organize a coup because Otto told her to. Rhaenyra doesn't want to be heir, she doesn't order Vaemond's death, and she doesn't want to fight for her crown, these are all initiated by Viserys and Daemon. Finally Rhaenys always goes along with Corlys' plans even if she doesn't agree with them, everything she does in the plot is because it's what Corlys or Viserys would want. She doesn't want to betroth Laena to Viserys, marry Laenor to Rhaenyra, support Lucerys as heir, or support Rhaenyra for the crown but goes along with the ideas every time.
In the name of feminism, Condal and Hess removed the agency and ambitions of the women. They do this because women are apparently all good while the men are all evil and lead the women astray. This is such a clearly misogynistic view. Feminism is not taking away women's ambitions and wants in the name of making them victims.
I have seen a lot of people saying that the show makes Alicent more sympathetic and it honestly pisses me off. Why all of those changes? Why couldn't she be an ambitious woman to be sympathetic?
Many say that the books aren't canon or that we don't know what actually happened, but the book has less abuse towards women than the so called "feminist" show. The Alicent of the books was eighteen and married a twenty eight widowed king, an adult woman who chose to marry and have children and oppose the heir. She was the leader of The Greens, she set everything in motion, not her father.
Now, Alicent in the show is a perpetual victim. She is a sixteen year old forced by her father to marry an old King, forced to have children, forced to raise her children to oppose the heir and forced to start a war. Even adult Alicent is nothing but a victim. She isn't a leader, everyone controls her one way or another, she has no agency.
My question is, for a "feminist" show, how is this better?
How is turning an ambitious woman into nothing but an idiot who doesn't know what the council was planning (despite being part of it in the previous episode) feminist?
Does she have to be abused by everyone in order to produce sympathy?
Are they really so bad at writing that brutalizing woman was the only way they could make people feel for them?
While I did not like book! Alicent, I respected her. Show Alicent just bores me and doesn't even seen real.
From Alicent, to Laena and to Rhaenyra, in the book they weren't mistreated by their husbands, but in the show all of them were.
How is taking away their agency better?
Alicent, Rhaenys and Rhaenyra are active characters in the books and are the ones who want to kill their enemies. In HotD all of the leadership and decision making that belong to the women they gave It to the men.
They really love their "women are peaceful" agenda. Women can be evil, they can be violent, they can be political, they can't want what was promised to them, they can be proud, they can want to marry, they can want to have children, they can want the same that a man wants.
If a woman has traits typicaly asociated with men, they can be sympathetic?
DOMINIQUE FISHBACK in SWARM S01E04
Mia Goth as Maxine Minx • X (2022)
🎄 25 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS → DAY THIRTEEN 🎄 BATMAN RETURNS (1992), dir. Tim Burton "How can you be so mean to someone so meaningless?"
You can’t win as a woman in fiction. Be too positive, you become a Mary Sue, have flaws and those flaws are why almost nobody likes you. Be moderate, you have wet-cabbage personality, be exuberant, you are an unrealistic example. Have strong morals, and you’re badly developed, be morally corrupt and you’re hated with such vigour fans will send hate mail to the actress who plays the character. Be kind and soft and in love, you’re a representation of sexism, be cruel, harsh and cold and you’re just a bitch. Be a complex, realistic, ambiguous character, and either your flaws or your positive traits will be ignored or blown out of proportion and into oblivion. There is no winning for female characters.
You can’t win as a woman in fiction. Be too positive, you become a Mary Sue, have flaws and those flaws are why almost nobody likes you. Be moderate, you have wet-cabbage personality, be exuberant, you are an unrealistic example. Have strong morals, and you’re badly developed, be morally corrupt and you’re hated with such vigour fans will send hate mail to the actress who plays the character. Be kind and soft and in love, you’re a representation of sexism, be cruel, harsh and cold and you’re just a bitch. Be a complex, realistic, ambiguous character, and either your flaws or your positive traits will be ignored or blown out of proportion and into oblivion. There is no winning for female characters.