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.
Haven’t seen the new slop but I assume it sucks ass like the latter portions of the show. Would just be nice to have a conversation about exploitation versus exploration, the role of criticism, etc. without getting so wound up people are calling me a rape apologist
My take is exploration can become exploitation, first unintentionally then by design, especially when the profit motive is involved. The most glaring example of that is the shows.
Basically the only way to avoid this is just by having no diversity, at least nothing bad happening to women, and going back to noblebright.
My opinion is that it’s ok if art steps on some toes and makes some mistakes.
I think this is an unfair presumption.
If the narrative voice was either one consistent sympathetic one or at the least swung back to one even while the "exploration" happened, there'd be less hog readers snickering about "the cow" and getting off to the half a hundred committing sexual violence on her. Yes, unreliable narrator is a thing, but it was still the writer's choice to do that and keep doing that over time in a way that consistently fed the hogs long after the first book. Is it really exploration after it becomes well-explored territory in the books and keeps happening?
I feel it is less okay if those mistakes kept getting made with no significant changes and gradually seem less like mistakes and more like deliberate choices that become brand identifiers over time.
I don't think this is an either/or thing and it doesn't need to be.
The shows, for example, could have very easily "explored" a bleak and cruel medieval fantasy setting, sexual violence mentioned or off-focus, or perhaps presented as horror and atrocity or even done from a grotesque cinematic point of view instead of the :awooga: treatment with corresponding camera angles, focus, and even narrative alterations to the books' story to further emphasize hog feeding.
Honestly of every argument in this thread, and every point made; that request to NOT be called a rape apologist really ought to be the takeaway. I don't care who anyone agrees with here on narratives and portrayals, that line should not even come close to being crossed, and everything else should become secondary