I really loved the questions that it asked about violence and protection, and what it means to be able to protect someone at the cost of violence. It also offered a lot of interesting perspectives on what it means to be a monster and what we make of monsters. So, I had a really great time taking the historically-inspired setting of this myth and integrating it with all these questions that are really interesting to me, especially [using] a fantasy lens.
"We know there's an outrageous, horrific rise in violence against women, sexual crimes and rape," she said. "Now there's the rise of incel culture and the likes of Andrew Tate pushing ideas of men's power and what they're entitled to. It's really sad that those pushing the anti-trans narrative don't realise that's exactly what they're playing into."
He enlisted a whole bunch of Ideology-patriarchy; social conservatism; utterly fake upside-down Christianity-in service of those basic motivations, not only to justify his own appetite for and personal acts of sadism and domination but to cast punishment and predation as far out into the world as he could manage. He studied psychology and the Bible so that he could borrow their authority and instrumentalize them to do widespread cruelty more effectively.
What would writers do without problematic patriarchs? From King Lear to Logan Roy, they are the linchpins of countless family dramas: adored fathers who dominate and damage their children in equal measure.