On one hand it makes sense that medieval european social relations imply, well, medieval european social relations and it makes sense to use your novel (or your show) to examine those.
On the other I can relate to many people wanting to see women in medieval fantasy to be represented in some other way than constant misery porn.
It's not a matter of thinking that the show endorses it (though the show does sometimes luxuriate in it in uncomfortable ways), but that even when it's being depicted as a bad thing, it's still kind of exhausting
Then don’t watch it? There’s definitely an element of moralism at play here that goes beyond taste and “exhaustion”
I mean, I'm not watching it. I stopped watching GoT after Season 2 for that reason too.
I think it's kind of weird that I'm being portrayed as angry online about this tbh. When the topic comes up and I explain why I stopped watching, the responses to that are always way more angry than I am
Well in this thread I had someone accuse me of “really enjoying portrayals of rape” for having a different literary analysis than them and not condemning GRRM to hellfire. Not your fault, but people get extremely mad online about this on both sides and I have never had an ASOIAF fan call me a rapist for disagreeing with them
But then how would I get angry enough to post about it online?