I'm so tired of 'feminist' retellings and adaptations taking powerful and ambitious women and turning them into perpetual victims who refuse to act unless pushed by evil men.
The two recent examples that come to mind are Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid and House of the Dragon (based on Fire and Blood by George R R Martin).
Lady Macbeth takes a powerful, cunning and ambitious woman and makes her into someone completely different. A woman who is completely defined by the men in her life.
HotD does the same thing, taking characters who are ambitious and ruthless and making them into perpetual victims of the patriarchy. By trying to make their female characters more 'complex' they took away all their agency and made the male characters infinitely more interesting. All Rhaenyra and Alicent seem to do is complain about how powerless they are despite their positions of great privilege. They blame all their failures on the men around them when they never fight for anything. 😫
I'm just frustrated with this and needed to vent a little 😅
by talesofabookworm