Many Of My Issues With People Calling Alicent/rhaenyra ‘weak’ Or ‘not Autonomous Enough’ Really

many of my issues with people calling alicent/rhaenyra ‘weak’ or ‘not autonomous enough’ really do hark back to the arya/sansa divide in game of thrones and what you all seem to think a ‘strong’ character is. and it is so similar to the way that no one could sympathise with/understand/respect sansa as an autonomous or realistic character until she started murdering. and the way people were cheering on arya’s descent into bloodthirsty killer/assassinhood instead of recognising what it was: a tale about the trauma of war and violence against children, and the radicalisation of horrors it begets. and in order to understand those horrors we needed to understand that as women they were not free to move as they would like, which in part fed the monstrosities/violence they were driven to, and in part made their ascension to autonomy more interesting. but in the end arya proved to be a Decidedly Bad example of ‘feminism’ in tv/fantasy, and sansa a surprisingly good one. meanwhile fans who took ‘strong female characters’ to mean ‘willing to commit the same crimes as the men do’ or ‘able to kill kill die kill’ rather than ‘fully fleshed out humans’ thought that having a literal child commit mass murder in response to seeing her father brutally murdered, hearing about the brutal murders of her mother and brother, and the subjugation of her sister, followed by years of intense brainwashing, radicalisation, and training by what is essentially part of the MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX was not a tale about trauma and war and the horrors that would follow her for the rest of her life, but a #girlboss #feminist moment for Women Everywhere. once again arya stark (in the show, at least) was not a win for ‘feminist storytelling’. it was a net loss for anyone who wanted to see the full complexities of womanhood on their screens, instead of just women killing indiscriminately in response to trauma and not having that fully or properly explored