#I like romance because im a human person who doesn't think every story has to be about me to be interesting.

[bitchfitch]

I have the general rule that I just, don't let myself give a shit about other people's dumbass opinions but I have one pet peeve that I just. Can Not let go of. and it's posts that go

How to write [Minority Group]!

Step 1: Make sure all your characters are exactly like me the op, or are exactly what I like to see in media.

Aside: Anything else is impossible, unrealistic, bigoted and you'll go to hell forever.

Step 2: They also have to use the exact language I do to describe themselves btw, no matter the time period or setting. See the above aside for further explanation.

Step 3: you should never ever even think about the actual mechanics of what makes a trope problematic in its impact in the real world. J ust memorize this list of things that should be banned in all fiction (for being problematic because I don't like them/someone else I agree with said they should be banned)

Step 4: Nuances in identity don't exist <3

[godsandvillains-if]

just for you author

about the red flag person.....we. all have red flags it is part of human personality and physiology, life experiences.

I love your story, I love the complex characters AND their red flags. Thank god there are authors like you that are not afraid to write about dark things, because im a bit sick of rainbows and butterflies- they are all fake and lies.

And honestly people like that that say "I cant romance anyone because of the red flags" - they ARE a red fucking flag!

I couldn't have said better myself. Even though I'm writing fiction, I try to imitate real life as much as possible, and that reflects in the way that a RO won't blindly trust the MC just because they are in love with them or that a villain will change their way of thinking and acting because the person they are in love with asked them to. It doesn't work like that.

Every character has had their own traumas and challenges, and they are who they are at present because of that. Yes, everyone has red flags, and part of being in love with them is accepting who they are or trying to convince them that there's a better way to cope with their trauma that doesn't involve being a crazy genocider. But things like that take time.

Thank you for the question!! 🥰

[mrsfrecklesmarauders]

Responding to this post:

No, love. Not every single character has to have a romantic partner to be interesting. It is okay for characters to end up alone. Or not have romantic experiences at all. No matter their sexuality. Aromantic and Asexual characters can exist and be a good representation of the queer community. Not only gay couples represent queer struggle.

---

Preach!

Also, I'd also like to give another facet of this idea: NOT EVERY ALLOROMANTIC/ALLOSEXUAL NEEDS TO BE IN A ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP. People can be attracted to others but simply choose not to enter relationships because of a variety of reasons: 1) maybe they don't think they'd make a healthy partner and need to focus on their other non-romantic relationships first, 2) being in a romantic relationship isn't in their priorities/values (as opposed to career, family, etc), 3) literally any reason at all.

I hate how one of the only ways to convince a fandom not to ship a character with another is to make the character not attracted to the other's gender--- regardless of whether it's a hetero or homosexual relationship. (im not talking about casual shipping, that's fine with me. im talking about those who get irrationally angry when someone does not agree with their ship, even going as far as harassing the content creators because the ship won't happen).

Because it's possible to have a character whose personality/aspirations do not align with a future romantic relationship. And disregarding this is like disregarding their whole character??

I've seen some creators make their characters/OCs aroace purely to avoid them being shipped with another. (I HATE how that just sounded. Let me be clear that this is NOT criticism towards anyone under the aro and/or ace umbrella. Aromanticism/Asexuality is REAL and valid. This is criticism towards those who have made romantic relationships seem like "THE goal" one should aim for.)

Even making characters siblings or relatives to avoid shipping, even if being an only child/having a small family shaped who they were as a person.

this isn't me screaming at you btw this is me screaming in general. no aggression was intended with the all caps.

i hope this didn't come off as offensive. please let me know if it did.

---------- orchard

Hey! You are totally right with all your points. This is exactly what I am talking about.

Characters are given romantic arcs or stories just to make them interesting without the neccesity of them needing a partner in that particular story. No matter their sexuality. Like you said, people would choose not to be in a relationship for a various of reasons. And that is fine. What I've seen in stories or fanfics is that the character who ends up alone in the end, has a sad ending or is tragic thing to have ended alone. (The phrase: They would find their one eventually. But for now they are happy...)

Which shouldn't be true!

Also, just because a character or some characters don't have romances doesn't mean they fall under the aro / ace / aroace umbrella.

Again, characters that are headcanoned as Aromantic / Asexual or both are most of the time not interesting enough. They are not attractive enough. They are portraited as childish or cold, almost not human. These characters should be interesting enough.

If we are improving the type of queer rep was that the only arc of the gay character was that they were gay, we should improve that for aro/ace/aroace characters as well.

Another important thing you mention. It is annoying that characters are instantly shipped when they have a good relationship or chemistry, without the premise of there being anything romantic between them. I mean, people are allowed to ship whatever they want to ship (regardless if is Canon or not) but we have to practice to see friendships or platonic relationships as well. I don't want to make characters siblings, or for example make them one attracted to another gender, or clarify that they are not romantically involved for them to not be shipped. People tend to just ship whatever they can. Pair characters with characters just because.

I don't know, this is mainly amanormativity's fault. It ruins the way we prioritize relationships. (Thinking the romantic one is more important than others). Just like heteronormativity ruined homosexuality before.

Let's give friendships and queer platonic relationships the importance they deserve as well. Characters should be interesting despite their sexuality, if they get into a relationship or not, or they end up with someone or not.

And if two characters get along, they should not be instantly shipped or pretended to end together. They could have another type of relationship as well.

[nixotinix]

4, 13, and 20 from the MH list thing...

ok boos im gonna start with 13/20 because i have some THOUGHTS on 4.

13: How do you feel about the live action movies?

-they're giving old disney channel movies. they arent GOOD by any means, theyre actually really really bad. but for what its worth i liked sitting through the first one just because i could point out certain things and go "that's bad". the second one was mindnumbingly boring though.-

20: Random character headcanon!

-Ahem. Frankie makes tiny dolls of their friends and sews them tiny clothes. They have all of the dolls on their desk. Draculaura has nails with red bottoms. Clawdeen teaches the boo crew about different human holidays and they all celebrate in their own little monster ways. Lagoona is CRACKED at pumpkin carving. oh and deuce is bisexual. -

4: Are there any aspects of G3 that you dislike?

-Hoo BOY this is about to get long. You can opt out now if you don't wanna read my super long winded thoughts. But if you do, keep reading.

I have 2 major grievances with G3. First is the overall sanitization of EVERYTHING. (I'm mostly talking about the cartoon here, the movies do this surprisingly well.) One of the reasons I liked G1 so much is that it actually tackled real-world problems. Bullying, racism, sexism, unhealthy family dynamics. And it had actual villains like Valentine, Nefera, Whisp, etc etc. G3 has a horrendous lack of both.

So far in the G3 cartoon, the biggest conflict we've had is Draculaura coming clean about witchcraft, which is an allegory for coming out of the closet. And that is a super important issue and coming out of the closet is a huge deal to a lot of people. But the conflict with Dracula is resolved in exactly one episode, and the only other person who isn't cool with it is Toralei. But A: Toralei doesn't count as a villain because none of her actions have genuine lasting consequences and she isn't an actual threat + she gets a mini redemption arc and B: she also comes to accept the witchcraft in that same episode.

Another aspect of this, and who I believe are the biggest offenders of the sanitization of MH G3, is the recharacterization of Nefera and Manny. Sure, seeing Nef be nice to Cleo is great. Seeing Manny as this shy nerd kid is great. But I liked the dynamic a lot better in G1. Most of Cleo's problems and character development came from her troubles with her father and sister, and both of those are absent in G3, which leads to Cleo being a very static character with no real character progression outside of her romance with Frankie. Same with Manny. The only real "bully" character is Toralei, and like I said, she got a mini-redemption. There's no Gory Fangtell, no mean girl Toralei Stripe who actively goes out of her way to sabotage the ghouls in actually meaningful ways, and there's no Manny Taur. I liked Manny being somewhat of a bully in G1 since it introduced people to that idea. Monster High is all about being unique, but there's still bad eggs in the mix. I still like G3, but I feel like it needs to incorporate more story beats from G1. The show execs could definitely do a better job at introducing these things like bad parents, bad siblings, and bullies to prep kids for the real world, because things like that and worse exist. And shielding kids from it does more harm than good in my opinion.

Now for my second issue, which is what I've dubbed the Dracudollar effect. It's no secret that Draculaura is a wildly popular character, and arguably the most recognizable from the franchise. And this isn't all Mattel's fault, but they do share partial blame. In Generation 3, outside of single doll releases, Draculaura has been in every. single. doll line. I don't think this needs to be the case. I would love to see more Cleo, or Deuce, or Lagoona. But they've all been sidelined in favor of Draculaura. And Draculaura's dolls tend to be more expensive, too. Again, not entirely Mattel's fault. But I just think it's ridiculous when she goes for 5, 10, even 50 dollars more than other dolls (in the case of VH Draculaura vs SIS frankie, not g3 but worth mentioning).

Anyways. There are my grievances with MHG3. I really like g3 overall!! but there's definitely a few things that id prefer a different way

[3liza]

hey im not gonna spread your weird social media-mediated brain infection on my blog, instead here are some cool studies to look at about how the "beautiful people have an easier life, every day, all the time" is a simplistic view, and is also patriarchal as fuck. more recent studies on "beauty privilege" are finding that the issue is complex, and that perceived beauty acts as a negative pressure in some/many social situations. i have always wondered why my experiences varied so much from the apparent wonderland the pop-science concept of "beauty privilege" paints, and more recent studies (often designed by women this time, imagine) are getting into the complexity there.

you personally may want to think about not reading my social media accounts if they are making you feel and act like this. i think i am not going to interact with you anymore if i can help it because i feel bad about what it is doing to you. anyway.

the short version is that beauty is beneficial in heterosexual social situations when dealing with the opposite sex, but detrimental when dealing with the same sex. this aspect of the research is usually ignored because who needs nuance in their pop psychology, right? not this guy (pointing 2 self)

very simply put, a beautiful woman can flirt her way out of a ticket from a heterosexual male cop. if she tries it on a person who doesnt consider her a potential romantic partner, there may be (and apparenly often are) negative consequences.

similarly in my own life i find that 99% of the apparent opportunities i'd been given for being young and fuckable were predicated on me actually fucking* the person who "offered" them, and most of them turned out to be fake/insincere opportunities anyway. tumblr refers to this as "grooming" when applied to child subjects (which i was, for much of it) but the behavior persists into the target's adulthood, middle age, and even old age if certain conditions are met. i can't find any studies on this because you can't put a Sleazy Guy in a lab setting and ask him "hey were you actually going to hire this woman on hte up-and-up, or were you going to 'hire' her and then spend 16 months making increasingly deranged sexual harassment attempts before reporting her to HR for made-up reasons and then finally firing her or hamstringing her career? just wondering".

i always think about that episode of Always Sunny where Mac goes nuts because every kid in his class was molested by the gym teacher and he imagines this to be some sort of privilege, even though charlie was one of the victims and is clearly devastated by it. thats what this conversation feels like every time it gets to the level of anons making fake tumblr accounts to KEEP pestering me about this stuff. remember that thing i said earlier about blood in the water, and how i dont post about bad shit that happened to me because it attracts the wrong kind of attention??? hehuehueheuheuhuehriuhgfidsrhru

actually thats a whole other realm of study: why victims of sexual assault and abuse are often re-victimized. until recently it was assumed that the victims were making bad decisions in who to trust, and this is sooorrrrtt of true, but doesn't tell the whole story. i read a study once that i am trying to find and will post later if i find it, that took video of adult women study subjects (who had agreed to be filmed) walking normally just down the street publically, and showed this video to male test subjects. if im remembering the study correctly, which i may not be, the male subjects who scored higher on psychopathy indices were better able to indentify the women in the test footage who had been sexually assaulted at some point in their former lives.

something to think about is a lot of "attractive" qualities (including proccupation with physical appearance leading to altering that appearance to be more beautiful), especially in the manic pixie archetype, are very strongly represented in trauma victims, especially sexual assault survivors (as is the opposite, intentionally trying to be "unattractive" to avoid further victimization). this includes "seductiveness", one of the adjectives used to diagnose child sexual abuse victims before the verbiage in the literature got cleaned up. obviouly a child cant be "seductive" and thats pretty offensive and fucked up to say. what they meant is that the childs behavior has been altered by trauma to become sexualized to appease attackers. this is part of the "fawn" sector of emergency responses in humans (along with fight, flight, and freeze).

so when we talk so cavalierly of "beauty" and "attractive people" vs "unattractive people" we are simplifying an issue that is so complex it is difficult even to think about. this complexity makes me go "hmm" every time theres a study on it, much less a popular belief. a lot of it sort of doesnt square with easily-observable phenomena: if physical beauty is so correlated to success, why are the 1% of wealthy people, politicians, actual power-holders, hell even the CEOs of normal companies, very very rarely what you would consider physically beautiful, even when they havent aged out of what the culture thinks is the maximum span of time someone can be "hot"? some of this is just personal preference, and it's real hard to study any of this because of how complex that issue becomes. but where are all these hot successful people i keep hearing about? are they all trophy spouses and retired from the public eye? you can definitely cherrypick examples of "influencers" etc but thats an extremely narrow line of work, and not representative.

anyway! lot of the "do beautiful people get more stuff" research is from quite a while ago, wasnt designed well, and was based on a work and social culture that was quite a bit different than it is now. but even older studies document this effect. ive spent like many minutes typing about this stupid bullshit so im bored and annoyed now and i dont want to type about it anymore

1. Effects of Self-Esteem Threat on Physical Attractiveness Stereotypes

2. Does being attractive always help? positive and negative effects of attractiveness on social decision making (cant find the sci-hub version, alas, but documents a negative effect we're actually seeing an anecdotal example of in my inbox rn)

3. Is beauty a gift or a curse? The influence of an offender’s physical attractiveness on forgiveness

* often it wasnt even just a sex thing. it's very very often a romance/relationship that is desired by the perpetrator. it's a misapprehension of the public that sexual harassment/grooming is "just about sex" or even less accurately "just about power", it isnt

[suginoyosuke]

dude u were talking about the Red Sleeve and how good it is. From the gifs I can see that it's a romance, and in some sets it looked like they were really running with the 'i own you' master/servant power dynamics. Since you've actually seen the show can u tell me if there's some other things going on other than the romance, and if they do actually subvert the power dynamics or expound on that?

That or a short summary on why it should be watched since I've seen a lot of hype about it but didn't understand why

Hii

I personally think the red sleeve is a gorgeous show but I can understand why some are put off by the power dynamics. To put in short it is a romance but also an actual drama if that makes sense? Like there's so much more to the story than just the two mains leads. More than a romance I found it more like a character study of two people who love eachother but have their own values that conflict with what eachother wants. Yi San loves deok im and wants her to be his concubine and to stay by his side while deok im also loves Yi San back she doesn't want to be a concubine because she values her freedom of which she will no longer have if she decides to become his concubine. What I personally enjoyed abt the show is that they never sugar coat things. Even if it was unhealthy at times I found it to be a realistic representation of the time period and power dynamics between a king and a servant because even if it is unhealthy and we obviously want to root for them and hope they grow out of it in reality they would never truly be equal even they did genuinely love eachother. Yi San is crown prince soon to be king who grew up with pretty much everything in the palm of his hands so it makes sense for his character to be the way he is and do the things he does even if we don't like or agree with it because that's how he was raised and those behaviors were instilled in him since well probably forever. I also liked that each character felt incredibly human. Almost every character that had proper screen time had motivations rather than just being there because they were connected to the main characters, all of them had their own feelings and values even if they're in the wrong or we don't agree with them. The show never tries to shy away from this and that's why I really enjoyed it. It was unhealthy and it was dark at times but it was realistic imo and I respected that they kept to that. As for if there's more to the story than the romance there definitely is like I mentioned each character has their own motivations and that plays into the story so there's other plot lines but I won't spoil. But to put it bluntly if your looking for a sweet romance or you really can't handle toxic or unhealthy dynamics then I'd suggest not watching this but if you can get past that then I'd 100% suggest giving the show a try for how beautiful the story and characters are written. Idk if you ever watched moon lovers/scarlet heart ryeo but it kinda has that vibe. It's a romance but more than a romance it's a tragedy.