sonyaya

I really think the GoT show-runners appeal, whether consciously or unconsciously, to a male fetish for violence against women. There is no reason why multiple instances in the book needed to be warped into sexual assault. And yet its a pattern that only continues as each season is developed with no sufficient reason or added value to the plot or character development. Sure, this did happen in wars throughout time/women are always bear violence at the hands of men/historical accuracy yada yada but why is this “historical point” reiterated so much more than anything else, such that almost every prominent female character in the show is victimized by it? I’m sick of male directors enacting violence against our bodies for the sake of “art” and subversive “grittiness.”

Aliens (1986) is another unusual but definitely applicable example of everything you describe. Interestingly, it is a science fiction, far future story exemplifying exactly these same fears of women’s power, desire and single maternal childrearing but exacerbated by fears of where feminism will take us in the future. This appears in the form of the alien Mother Queen alien whose sexual insatiability and virtually limitless asexual reproductivity is so grotesquely androgynous through all of its vaginal imagery and yet phallic and penetrative through its ability to essentially rape humans. The result is a truly horrifying femininity which can only be defeated by the nuclear combination of Ripley, Newt and Hicks.

The non-linear storyline of the game is actually my favorite aspect because it gives more agency to the player who can tailor the gameplay to their style and in the order they prefer. For example, when I played Breath of the Wild, my interest lay more in world-building and exploration than in the main quest and so I spent the bulk of my time running around and collecting items and solving shrines before tackling the main quest. I can see how many players might be frustrated by the lack of linear direction but it made the systemic game design more immersive and real as a result because it leaves the direction to the player. In a sense, this aspect made the main quest ultimately more compelling, because every supposedly unrelated quest, like the celestial dragons or Satori Mountain for example, made the world more expansive and beautiful and therefore worthy of being saved. Furthermore, the centrality of Hyrule castle and the ugly red smear over it, glimmering constantly in the distance serves as a reminder of the main quest, even while the player is engaged in a less important but no less fun task of say, collecting mushrooms.