Quote (thesnipa @ May 22 2019 06:01pm)
https://people.com/politics/elizabeth-warren-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-game-of-thrones-finale/Warren claims the show failed its female lead by not having Sansa "go for the big one" and try to be queen of everything.
Season 1. SEASON FUCKING ONE. Started the plot for an independent north. The first season! It's a central plot of the show. NOT the north winning and runing all. The north being it's on kingdom, as it was for thousands of years before Aegon's conquest. The north doesn't want to rule the south. Winterfel is 10x closer to the wall than it is the Neck. "Whats the neck" asked Lizzy Warren? it's the southern border of the North. Not the south, the south OF THE NORTH. Winterfel is likely a months hard ride from Dorne. you want the dornish to slog up to Winterfel any time they have a problem.
the problem with the show is the writing, and its due to "fans" like this. people who dont care about it making sense, they care about cool plot points and woke results.
The women in the show were being written badly, but that's because the writing in general is bad. Not because it's mysogynist.
This post hits it squarely on the head regarding the writing of female characters in the show:
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This is something that has been bothering me for a while, but it became too evident to ignore in the last couple of seasons.
The show tends to suggest (since season 6 or so) that the only way a woman can be "strong" is through embracing violence, or showing how much better they are at things than the male characters. Think about it: Sansa was portrayed as a victim and almost unable to make her own strong decisions until she escaped Ramsay after enduring his torture and later killed him. Then she started to be portrayed as an amazingly intelligent and capable character able to put everyone in their place. Daenerys began embracing violence and using her dragons with the dothraki (although, to be fair, that has always been a part of her plotline and the issues with her "madness" are not strictly related to that). Cersei as well, but this has always fit with her character. Lyanna Mormont was great but she was never allowed a moment of insecurity or a second to remind the audience that, despite her "badass" estatus and how much she was liked, she is still a child. Arya... Arya deserves her own paragraph entirely.
I think one of the main problems with Arya is that, as they merged her plotline with Lady Stoneheart's, they ended up having a character with two opposite roles in the story. Arya's storyline has always been about the pain the smallfolk have to deal with in war and loss of identity as she abandons who she was, finding herself and her home again and how revenge can only lead her to more suffering. Arya is a character that needs to see that embracing that dark side will only make her lose herself even more, and coming back to Winterfell should have proven that she is willing to try to heal even if all wounds will never heal completely and find herself again as Arya Stark of Winterfell. She said so herself when she left the House of Black and White in the show; however, the person that came back didn't change from who she became in Braavos, and kept on embracing violence. They should have had her be conflicted over all she had to endure and all she did now that she is finally home and in touch with the little girl she used to be. By adding Lady Stoneheart (the literal embodiement of inhumanity)'s plotline to her own, her character was not allowed to feel any sort of remorse or insecurity over her own actions, because that is not part of Lady Stoneheart's direction nor character. Merging a character whose story is about regaining identity and finding herself and her home to the embodiement of violence and inhumanity creates a character whose personality by the start of the series doesn't fit with the one she has by the end of it, because Arya by the end has taken on a personality that was never her own. There have been plenty of moments when they could have humanized her and shown that she still has some flaws or insecurities, or that she is willing to open up to someone without keeping the "badass" facade: when she flirts and sleeps with Gendry (something that ended up serving no other purpose to the story or her character development than fanservice), when she is with Sansa, when she meets again with Jon...
The other main problem that not only affects Arya but that becomes incredibly evident with her is that, if the character is a hero, they are not allowed to be wrong or make mistakes. They are always right and they know it and everything they do, they do perfectly well. Compare this to Jon who was completely shat on this past season, to Jaime who got his character development thrown out the window as foreshadowed by the first episode, and to Tyrion who has literally not made a single good decision since season 5. Arya suddenly becomes this incredible assassin despite not really doing all that much assassin training in Braavos, defeating even Brienne who has way more training than her and would be on a completely different level just based on size and strength alone, somehow being able to run on snow without being heard, surviving the destruction of King's Landing. She is always portrayed as a badass and edgy in the way she talks and carries herself even though it's not even human-like. Sansa kills Ramsay and suddenly becomes the smartest person in Winterfell just by making basic logical statements with a serious face, and talking down to Tyrion. Daenerys, at least in seasons 6-7, was almost always portrayed as being right and ready and her mistakes during those seasons were because of someone else (Euron's fleet, the Night King killing Viserion because she was saving the Fellowship of the Wight). Even Cersei has somehow been right in every decision she's made. They are hardly ever allowed a moment when they are not expressionless and show hints of humanity, like affection, insecurities, flaws or just putting down their walls. Hell, one of the most intimate moments of season 8, Brienne sleeping with Jaime, was done solely for the same reasons Arya and Gendry hooked up: for fanservice, and to indicate that a woman is somehow not "complete" if she hasn't slept with anyone. At least, that's what I thought it meant, given Arya's reasoning of wanting to do it in case they didn't survive and Tyrion shaming Brienne for being a virgin despite the fact that she is a highborn lady and it's probably not that easy to find birth control while on the road. It didn't serve to advance any plotline of character. Jaime even regressed as a character entirely.
And speaking of Cersei, her character is another one that got a personality change for no particular reason except to indicate that her caring about her children shows that she is actually a good person and misanderstood and loving all along. She doesn't kill Tyrion when she has the chance in season 7 or 8 for no reason, and her baby didn't serve any purpose to the story except to remind the audience that being a mother means that you are capable of love and loving those who you seemingly don't... and Catelyn Stark and Selyse Florent should have been an indicator that this was going to happen.
Catelyn got that scene back in season 2 or 3 talking about how Jon got the pox and she prayed for him not to die, but was unable to love him. Despite the fact that that scene proves that, when faced with death, she did care about Jon as she did for her other children. Maybe not as much, but she still cared for someone she was supposed to hate, because somehow motherhood solves all flaws related to love. Selyse, who was a complete fanatic of the Lord of Light and took pleasure in watching people burn alive, and didn't care at all about her daughter, somehow became caring after watching her be executed and killed herself, showing that her love was above her fanatism. So what do they do to Cersei to have her be in a scene with Tyrion and not kill him right away? Remind the audience that she, as a mother, cared about her children, and Tyrion saying she is not a monster. That obviously must mean that she is capable of love and therefore even loves Tyrion deep down. This is such a disservice to who Cersei used to be. And it angers me even more because Cersei being a mother and caring about her children doesn't make her less of a monster and an unredeemable person. But suddenly, now that she is pregnant and "able to love again" she gets humanized and gets to have a tragic ending à la Romeo and Juliet with Jaime.
Which leads to what, in my opinion, is the biggest problem with Dany's sudden descent into madness. If all female characters are "strong" and "empowered" by the use of violence, and a character like Cersei can be redeemed, why is Daenerys own use of violence prior to episode 5 so unnaceptable? The show started going for the "good guys" vs "bad guys" route and making everything much more black and white with the characters, especially the Starks vs Cersei. So whenever Arya or Sansa used extremely violent methods, like feeding Ramsay to his dogs or the genocide of House Frey (which is a plot point that will probably be a part of Lady Stoneheart's plot in the next books, not Arya's) which would probably have made things even worse for the Riverlands, it is because we had the clear "good guys" vs "bad guys". And the audience cheered because we all wanted those who made the heroes suffer to suffer as well. I mean, I smiled when Joffrey died, although it's quite fucked up because he is, at the end of the day, a child dying in the arms of his mother. Cersei blowing up the Sept and killing the Tyrells solidified her as a villain even more. But then suddenly everyone was concerned about Daenerys' own use of violence. It is understandable, because the dragons are massive weapons of destruction, but as far as everyone could tell Daenerys kept them under control. The only moment that hinted at her "madness" this past season was when she burned the Tarlys, which only served to create more conflict between Jon and her. And then comes episode 5. Daenerys has lost a lot of people she cares about and learns Varys and Tyrion are plotting against her for no reason. And suddenly she hears the bells and goes crazy. And d&d go "oh, she was always mad, she burned people and didn't react when Viserys died". But Sansa smiled when Ramsay died and Viserys was also incredibly abusive towards Dany, and Arya killed and cooked people into pies and slaughtered an entire house with no consequences. Her violent actions which made her "strong" in the first few seasons are supposedly an indicator that she will go mad when they are in par with other violent actions by characters the season wants to portray as heroes. And then Cersei, whose actions have portrayed her as a villain, gets a sudden change of personality and is humanized when she did probably the worst, most violent act among all female characters (blowing up the Sept of Baelor), and Daenerys gets dehumanized despite most of her violence being used for what she believed was doing the right thing. When the heroes commit the same atrocities as the surprise villain and only her gets punished for it, and the main villain of the story commits horrible acts of violence as well but is humanized because she is now a mother and to make the surprise villain look even worse, the twist is not going to work because the reasoning behind it isn't particularly noteworthy.
I'm sorry for the rant, I just had so much to say and didn't word it very well (English is not my first language), but I'll try to edit a bit tomorrow.
tl;dr: the show tries to imply that a woman is complete when she is no longer a virgin, that she only becomes a strong character when she embraces violence and has no flaws, and that being a mother can redeem any bad actions and make you a good person despite everything else proving otherwise. The reason why Daenerys's madness does not work is because her use of violence is condemned when characters who are labeled as heroes have done the same or worse without punishment, and the villain is humanized despite her own terrible violent crimes to make Dany "the surprise villain" look even worse.