sometimes I find myself confused by the way people react to changes in hotd, especially when criticism is met with responses like "why are you upset that alys isn’t a war prize? why do you want to see another woman get raped?"
no? nobody wants to see a woman violated or reduced to a prop for shock value or "character development" through suffering even. the issue is more nuanced, some of us just don’t want a story that explicitly depicts a character as a brutal murderer, someone who coldly cut a defenseless old man in pieces, orders the slaughter of every man and boy until the heads pile three feet high, takes a woman as a spoil of war, and is ultimately sent to his death by that very woman, to be reframed as a misunderstood, soft-hearted figure in a gothic romance.
It’s like asking why someone wouldn’t want to see, idk, lolita as a love story because "why wouldn't you want it to be consensual?". there's little indication alys was some helpless victim or that she was even a witch in the way the show presents her. in f&b aemond is clearly a dangerous, unhinged figure in the books, and alys is not merely his victim - she is his executor too.
I saw people claiming a lot about her and it often about how she is such a powerful witch but suddenly she was also a victim of their house, they mistreated her, even forced her to endure miscarriages to have her as wet nurse, so her detachment from their massacre makes sense. they'll say she's powerful enough to kill aemond, but she didn't, so she must have wanted him in the same damn sentences too. so she's formidable when it suits the romantic reading, and powerless when it comes to the strongs.
what do they think she was even doing if someone else ended up murdering them instead?? 🧍🏻♀️
the show's attempt to make her more sympathetic only complicates things for me. empathy and indifference to mass death don't coexist easily, and then there's the weird reading of her dynamic with daemon - like actress claimed she felt betrayed by her friend, ally and its like breakup, as if she's just moved on to the walmart version of her targaryen because the original didn't hand over harrenhall out of his ass.
shit was gothic, but not romance. there are plenty of clues in book that alys probably was using her circumstances strategically, and in the end keeping rabid targaryen man-freaks out of her home, because book-daemon wasn't even affected by whatever magic in any clear way. she reminds me a bit of skade from the last kingdom, in books all beautiful, seductive, alleged to be a powerful witch capable of curses, but with just as much suggestion that she was simply shrewd/had a little bit of power to see things, but people projected their fears and beliefs onto her, so she understood that reputation was its own kind of power, and she worked it accordingly. so yeah, alys fits idea how men were superstitious from the moment they see woman looking younger for her age
alys might have been a witch, or at least someone with visions, like a seer, but that doesn't mean she could blow someone's head off, turn into a dragon maleficent-style, or commit atrocities on a whim. people can believe what they want about her, but to some of us, she reads as a woman who took full advantage of a terrible situation.
there are details that often get overlooked like her children were stillborn, her only "living" child is a bastard of dragon's blood, and she declared him king. that's not nothing, I think she was a strong person (irony unintended) with a life of her own, but her house was overrun like cockroaches by others, eating from the inside. ahe was in a victim's position, but she used the hell out of the man who put her there. she got a child, she got a shot at a better life, clawing it out if she must, and the source of that opportunity was sent beautifully and tragically to his death, probably hoping/knowing his ass wouldn't return. it makes sense to me more than "oh they were so in love blah blah".
so no, it’s not about wanting more suffering for women on screen. It’s about wanting the story to retain its moral weight and complexity at least in something, rather than sanding down its edges into something safer and more palatable, especially when that softening comes at the expense of the very characters the narrative claims to uplift. personally i don't find it interesting that characters who commit crimes are victims dramatically and those who didn't commit get this stuff abruptly. we had it more than twice and it's annoying. the show seems to be blending contradictory impulses, trying to make both characters a victim and powerhouse, both detached and emotionally invested. like my girl alys, are we manipulating here or you really just want your shot with walmart daemon 😭
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