guy who only experienced torture: i don't like this because it's too unlike the torture

Foolish heart, heed my warning

You've been wrong before

Ryan Condal only does this specifically with Alicent. He doesn’t subject the other female characters to the same kind of repeated sexual violence and humiliation - only Alicent.

Aliceny is SA’d by everyone, got incest SA’d by her own son and was sexually humiliated just to blame her for B&C (even Ryan Condal doesn’t hide his bias toward the Blacks, saying that in the books Blood and Cheese is TG propaganda against Rhaenyra, which is why that scene was adapted the way it was.) Olivia Cooke talked in interviews about how heavy and uncomfortable some of Alicent’s sexual content has been to film. It really raises questions about how sexual violence is used in HotD, especially when it keeps happening to the same character in ways that can start to feel repetitive rather than narratively necessary.

Condal just hates Alicent because she’s prudish. And I think that speaks the misogyny disguised as “criticism” of prudishness, religiousness, or traditional behavior in women by using their sexuality to punish them. So you hate Alicent because she’s… religious? Because she’s prudish? I know modern audiences, with 21st-century lenses and zero knowledge of history dislike women who don’t express sexuality or power in a “liberated” way, but that doesn’t justify sexually humiliating them this is very disturbing and disgusting.

At the same time, you have Rhaenyra, who is written with a much more openly “sexually liberated” energy and is written in a way where her sexuality is not used against her in the same punitive way. That contrast is what makes the treatment of Alicent stand out more.

And what makes Rhaenyra sexually liberated? Because her so called sexual freedom or extramarital affairs were literally the fallout of Daemon’s grooming? Isn’t it true that he groomed her for his own ends, “liberating” her to sleep with him and others, and in doing so destroyed her own reputation & claim to the throne? And because it looks “exotic” or “liberated” next to the fantasy Catholics coded Alicent?

Bk!Alicent is certainly written within a world that is hostile to women, especially women at court, but her arc is not around sexualized punishment or humiliation as a thematic goal. She’s actually one of the more politically respected women of her position.

Condal need to understand that for a noblewoman living in a quasi-medieval world chastity wasn’t just a matter of personal morality it was political. Her reputation affected her family’s standing, her husband’s authority, and her children’s legitimacy. A scandal could damage her entire house, and even a rumor could cost her safety, influence, and dignity. Modesty wasn’t simply “prudishness” in that world, it was a strategy for survival. So why punish that kind of character through sexual humiliation in the narrative?

When a character is repeatedly written through sexual punishment or humiliation while another is written through sexual empowerment, it just shows the biased written of who gets to be “liberated” and who gets to be degraded and humiliated.

that's what the nuclear family model protects, what online safety acts protect, the number one abuser of kids: their own parents.

Queer advocates and like generally leftists have usually no problem understanding that indeed the law is often not made in the interest of people, but rather as a way to oppress them. Like, people have no problem understanding that a lot of laws that somehow take bodily autonomy from people are actually harmful.

Until you talk about the bodily autonomy of children. A child wants to make a medical decision? That suddenly is bad. And what if they decide wrong? What if the child does make a decision that has bad outcomes for them, what then?

But somehow the same people are not asking about the bad outcomes from decisions parents make. Which, indeed, do happen a fucking lot. Again: anti-vaxx parents are very fucking widespread these days.

Newsflash: people make bad decisions. Surprising. I know.

That does not mean they should not get to make them.

There is adults who decide for or against medical treatments based on wrong medical information every day. And we fucking let them.

It is so fucking creepy how many people do clearly not consider children to be people but things or animals. Children are people. Minors are people.

How is it, that you are okay with treating a group of humans as non-people? How is it that y'all can understand that treating women, or queer people, or disabled people, or Black people as non-people is bad, but as soon as it is about kids you will go into robot mode and go: "But what if the child makes a bad decision." Like, I don't know Janet. What if 48yo John makes a bad decision? What then?

And I just have so much hatred for people who parrot ideas without even putting effort into understanding them. If you actually read the associated papers, you would know actually what abilities do develop over time. But you would also know that a lot of how those abilities develop and at what point is actually very clearly bound to culture, and cultures that do not treat minors like things actually generally show different brain development in them. Because, guess what: brains develop very dependent on cultural context.