#Take That Sexism

[throesofincreasingwonder]

Dean would not be femme as a woman because his hyper-performance of gender is entirely based on the deification of masculinity send tweet

[whatwhywhowherewhen]

SVSSS au in which in denial trans woman Shen Yuan transmigrates into a not medically but very much always has been socially transitioned trans man Shen Qingqiu. Shen Yuan internalized transphobia double reach-arounds him(...her?)self into coming out to all the Peak Lords and the sect and the cultivation world because "he" (she?) can't just not reveal the Scum Villain was a woman all along?! What a plot twist that is definitely the most important and relevant thing.... she... is meant to discover. System: *side eyes*

They do not have transphobia in PIDW, but the only person who knows Shen Qingqiu isn't cis is Yue Qingyuan. The Peak Lords all think Shen Qingqiu has just come out as a trans woman, and are mostly just surprised Shen Qingqiu has a gender that isn't Rage and Spite. Yue Qingyuan is surprised Xiao Jiu has switched genders??? Somehow?? Qi divinations can do that now???? Mu Qingfang is surprised when Shen Qingqiu refuses the Ever Blossoming Transformation Peony on the basis of "of course not! Haven't I already said I have one of... those things..." and now neither Mu Qingfang or Shen Yuan have any idea what conversation they're having

Shen Yuan expects this to massively change the plot, and is actually prepared when Binghe goes goo-goo eyed. However, she fully believes she will be a plot-relevant but mostly ignored redeemed villain wife, and is still shocked when Binghe is heartbroken and pleading rather than just betrayed and seductive. "Binghe why do you care more about this old crone than all the pretty little sisters vying for your attention huh?!?! And if you want me so bad why am I still in the dungeon!?" The treatment (which she doesn't know is how Binghe acts when actually hurt and caring about a person rather than just wanting to win) leads her to fear she might have imagined Binghe's feelings and have an angst session about it, leading to the escape attempt and the self-sacrifice

She also has to contend with sexism and heteronormativity in the trial. Every motivation is attributed to romance and irrationality. Shen Qingqiu is being accused of being in love with Qiu Jianluo and murdering him out of jealousy when she was engaged to Qiu Haitang instead. Shen Yuan: "that doesn't sound right but I don't know enough about Shen Jiu to argue"

During the years when Binghe's in the abyss, Yue Qingyuan tries to talk to her about what she's comfortable with now compared to before the "qi divination", during which she gets the big hint that Shen Jiu was not, in fact, secretly a woman. Confirmation comes from a chaotic and mutually politically incorrect conversation with Shang Qinghua (tentatively, he would be a trans man in his first life who was happy with his gender presentation, but cis in the second. He feels weird about it and is on his own journey to realize gender identity and presentation do not have to match up to societal expectations. He/him gender-exploring queen.)

Shen Yuan, rather than having to accept being gay with and for the protagonist, has to accept that she is a woman even though the Scum Villain wasn't. She still grows a mushroom body with Shang Qinghua, meant to look like "Shen Yuan The Boy", in order to get back to her "real" gender (and escape all the awkwardness of Being Perceived, both as Shen Jiu (oof) and as a woman (which she really is? Isn't? Can't be??? (...always was?))). As "peerles cucumber", she then has to accept it doesn't feel right anymore, and with some deeper reflection maybe never did (but that's just because [excuse excuse excuse]!!!). Anyway she willingly returns to the Shen Qingqiu body to live as a woman, peak lord, and the only wife of Luo Binghe. The end is just her beginning.

All this chaos and Shen Jiu is just in the modern world staring at the "Peerless Cucumber" like "...nice"

[inkpotsprite]

Listen, anyone who reads my works, knows I'm a Tim Drake fan. That being said, the way both canon and fanon treats Stephanie Brown is just 🤢 it really shows how much our society hates teenage girls, or any flawed female presenting person. We've definitely got a lot of work to do if people are still unironically hating on an abused teen girl for being flawed or imperfect (or just existing in a way we deem unacceptable for non males 🤷🏾‍♀️)

[littlefankingdom]

Anytime I see people being like "Natalia Knight is Jason's mom! Bring back his goth mom!", I'm baffled at how everyone forgets that she's a creep.

Like, was she Jason's mom? Yes. Did she has maternal instincts toward him? Yes. But also, she literally adopted him only because she wanted Bruce Wayne to be with her.

She's obsessed with having a lover that can benefit her, and she has targeted Bruce this time. The thing is, Natalia wears a drug meant to seduce anyone that get close to her and she uses it to obtain what she wants.

This drug is strong enough that Bruce is disoriented during the fight he has afterward. He cannot resist her, which also makes it sexual assault. She has straight up roofied him. Like, anyone that gets into a relationship with her in constantly drugged, there is no consent here at all.

And maybe you are charmed by the way she speaks or that the narration barely condemns her action, but it's doesn't change wtf she is doing. Comics don't take sexual assaults toward men seriously, so of course it is describes as romantic.

She is an obsessed creep that takes his son from Bruce to try to force him to marry her and drugs him to manipulate him into believing he is attracted to her. Switch the gender, and you would have an issue with a man taking a woman's child from her to have her to marry him, and drug her to make her into him, even tho he is saying they are meant to be. It doesn't matter the poetry she is reciting about being goth lovers, it doesn't matter she's a pretty goth lady, she is a creep.

[remus-poopin]

Wait am I alone here?? Personally I love viewing the marauders + snape as sexist in some shape or form,, do people hate this?

[project-sekai-takes]

mmj and l/n are only hated/ignored sm by the fandom bc they have no male members and more ppl need to talk ab that

as for n25, i feel like most only care about them for angst because their branded as the “sad emo group” even tho a lot of ppl completely ignore l/n and mmj’s stories which are arguably just as if not more “angst-able” and well written.

im tired of blatant sexism in fandom and pjsk is not an exception okay bye

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[real-fire-emblem-takes]

this ask has been rotting in the inbox for like 2 weeks and now i finally have the brain power to argue with it

[defnotkanyewest]

Hot take: 90% of the people who are complaining about the live action ATLA either went into it wanting to complain about it or expected a perfect adaptation which they knew would never happen

[ominousgradient]

please give us the full rant 🤲

My Race to the Edge hottakes (this gonna be a tad long so strap in):

Take the twins for example: Both of them care for their respective sibling, they are codependent really, but what relationship do they have to the other team members, never mind what other relationship do they have that you could call a *friendship*? I'd say Hiccup is mostly annoyed by their antics, a feeling he also has for Snotlout but their feelings for one another are a lot more complex, whereas his opinion of the twins is pretty straightforward, their feelings for Hiccup just vary depending on what joke the episode is going for at the time. I couldn't tell you anything about the twins and Fishlegs relationship because there’s just not really anything there and Astrid generally dislikes them for their behavior. The one actually clearly established dynamic they have is with Snotlout, and it perplexes me that people so often read it as a friendship. Snotlout thinks of them as stupid and beneath him, i cannot think of a single time outside of the Tufflout bromance ep where he had a nice thing to say about either of the two, when Tuff faked his death Snotlout seemed to believe that he had actually died and he wasn't bothered at all. The twins on the other hand see him as a useful idiot for their scemes, they couldn't care less if he dropped dead either and put in him mortal danger on multiple occasions just for the hell of it. What binds them together is not so much a friendship as it is their shared rambunctious attitude and dislike of authority.

1. The riders really aren't that good of friends, if you can call them friends at all. Were you to draw a diagramm of their relationships with eachother, a lot of them either have no close established connection or feel active animosity towards one another.

This doesn’t count for only them ofc: what established friendship is there between Fishlegs and Astrid? Can the relationship between Snotlout and Fishlegs or him and Astrid really reasonably be called a friendship? Sure people can create headcanons and whatnot but if you look at what's provided by the canon, they’re just not that close

2. I don't have any strong feelings on Heather, i just think it's funny that she kind of reads like an edgy DeviantArt Astrid recolor. Oh Astrid fights with a battle axe? Well Heather actually crafted one herself, and it's a cool changeable twinblade. Astrid has a spike shooting, super fast dragon with fire so hot it's tinted blue? Well Heathers dragon can do all that BUT her dragon is even faster AND it's spikes are even sharper AND its fire is all blue actually AND it's made out of metal. The whole construction of her outfit with the single braid, metal shoulderpads and skirt with metal elements is extremely similar to Astrids design. I feel like they could have that be a plot point actually, that Astrid in particular was a huge inspiration to her. You can see it as intentional parallels ofc but it’s so on the nose that it becomes kinda funny, at least to me (also the dragon eye lens on her belt plot point was incredibly stupid)

3. Speaking of Astrid, and this is the take that is most likely to get people mad at me, i do not like her. Like at all. When i was younger i thought i just couldn't stand her because she was mean to Snotlout and i liked Snotlout but as i grew up i realized there was more to it that just that. To me she's emblematic of a trend in writing: (usually male) writers set out to write a "strong female character in a effort to create good female representation, but because their idea of a strong character is a toxicly masculine tough guy, they just slap those characteristics on a female character and call it a day. Said character is then admired by the rest of the cast because that's how to author sees her, even though she's kind of an asshole.

That’s Astrid to me. I don't find the way she's presented as being in the right for being rude to everyone but a select very few people charming, i don't find the miriad of moments where she wins an argument with violence and it's presented a girlboss moment cool. Keep in mind i don't take an issue with any character, fem or not, being rude or violent, it's how the narrative and the other characters act towards her that make me dislike this.

I also find it bizarre that people defend her behavior by saying that she's a competent person under pressure, as if that justifies being a dick. I can very easily see a version of her that i'd like, an Astrid that's allowed to be in the wrong, that's allowed to be flawed, an Astrid that's largely the same and just not treated like she’s infallible by the marrative. I that's kind of what we get in the first movie and the shorts imo and i do like in those. The way the later movies turn Astrid into a neutered version of herself that purely exists to hype up Hiccup is deeply offputting to me however

4. I'm not a big fan of the twins either, i liked them a little more in the first movie and RoB/DoB but their brand of humor in rtte just doesn't do it for me

5. Snotlouts crush on Thor Bonecrusher is one giant gay joke and and both Astrid and Hiccup find it funny and bizarre because it's a gay crush. They don't react like that when Fishlegs and Snotlout fight over Ruffnut, we only see Astrid be annoyed and weirded out by it but not her finding it actively hilarous. "Well it's funny because it's so over the top" whenever Astrid sees Snotlout crush on/flirt with women she reacts with annoyance/disgust, the ONE TIME it's a guy it's suddenly very funny. I'm not saying this to condemn her or Hiccup, it's moreso to point out that the way this entire plotline was handled was just kinda bizarre and fucked up.

On a character level i actually think Astrid being homophobic kinda works, for lack of a better term. She's very much a person who works within and benefits from the status quo. People like to talk about how Snotlouts world was thrown upside down after the first movie because the standards for what makes a good viking changed but by all metrics he never really managed to match those standards anyways (unlike Astrid, we never actually see him being a good warrior in the first movie and judging by RoB/Dob, he seems to have been generally disliked in the village for a while). Astrid however did manage to meet those expectations. And she continues to afterwards. She's an excellent warrior, strong and assertive. Her being a women would make life harder for her but we never she her face any gendered discrimination, she thrives in the role of the ideal viking. So her holding some normative believes tied to the status quo in which she thrives makes sense to me

6. This is a big one and it will take a bit for ne to explain: I don't think Snotlout's a sexist. Now, first off I should clarify, I'm not just saying this because I don't want a character that I love to be a misoginist. I think flaws, especially grave ones, make characters more interesting and some of my all time faves have some extremely warped views on women. I say this because of the way his supposed sexism is presented. I'd argue that the primary function Snotlouts obnoxious flirting serves is to be an example of what not to do and to make over characters, mainly Hiccup, look better in comparison.

In this franchise female affection is given as a reward to male characters, not necessarily because there’s chemistry between the two. In the Thawfest episode Hiccup gets a kiss from Astrid after doing what she asked him to by letting Snotlout win. There was no romantic tension between them here, there wasn't anything romantic about what he did either. He did the right thing, he gets a reward. Same with Snotlout and Minden: he does the right thing by encouraging her so he gets a kiss. Neither one of them expresses any romantic interest in the other before or after this, Snotlout looks put off the kiss it more than anything, it’s just the thing that happens when you're nice to a girl. That’s the point of Heathers fling with Fishlegs as well. Not to step on any Heathlegs shippers toes here but they don't really have any chemistry. Their episode underlines my point however: Snotlout spends the whole time being jealous and Astrid explains to him that Heather probably likes guys like Fishlegs, guys who are nice. Which is a good quality yes, but it’s not really solid grounds for a relationship. We don't get to see what they like about eachother bejond that, and we don't need to either, because that's not the point. The point is that Fishlegs is a nice guy, so he gets to date a pretty girl.

Snotlouts behavior exists as the counterbalance to that point: if ur mean and pushy = no gf. On the face of it that's a fine lesson to teach in a kids show. The problem is that Snotlouts flirting is so unrealistic and detached from the rest of his character that it fails to send any meaningful message. The way he talks when he's flirting has nothing to do with the way real people flirt or the way Snotlout acts otherwise. It's a weird mix of one-liners and purple pros is more reminiscent of 80s movie villians than real life. He still flirts with Astrid, despite getting his shit kicked in for YEARS and openly being afraid of her at this point. It's very interesting that he never talks to Thor Bonecrusher that way, when he has such an obvious crush on him. The reason for that in my opinion is that the TB crush serves as a gay joke, whereas his other crushes serve as a negative example. Put in a scenario where he's romantically interested in someone and doesn't have to fullfill his role as an inverted moral compass, Snotlout doesn't do his weird flirting. He still fails of course, the argument isn't that he should be getting more tail, he just doesn't turn into a parody of himself for a brief physical gag.

Another problem is that the way he acts is incongruous with how he sees women. The reason why men ignore womens boundaries and don't take no for an awnser is because they see them as lesser, as unworthy of their respect. That’s not the case for Snotlout though. We never see him express that he thinks of women as less competent, more fragile or less intelligent (i think he calls Astrids and Ruffnuts figures "dragon-esque" once during the first movie but one comment calling some women unattractive doesn't really equate to being a misoginist that has so little respect for women that he bothers the same one for years even though she says no everytime). He oversteps Astrids boundaries but he has no doubt in her abilities, it’s the symptom without the cause.

Even if we were to take Snotlout at face value as a misoginist, where does that come from? Misoginistic men aren't outliers, they're byproducts of a sexist culture. But the writers clearly don't think of Berk that way, Hiccup even says so when Throk comes to take Ruffnut (i'll add here that Hiccup is usually presented as being in the right unless him being wrong is explicitly adressed in the plot but i digress). Astrid faces no discrimination whatsoever as a female warrior and receives no pushback when leading a team full of men. In fact Spitelout, the inofficial source of most of Snotlouts harmful beliefs, has no problem whatsoever with having a women less than half his age as his superior.

Now, there is no doubt that Berk is a sexist society, women are litteraly barred from becoming chief, but it’s interesting that it seemingly not thought of and never adressed as such. That would make Snotlouts sexism not a product of his enviroment or of his upbringing but an exception, a singular weirdo, who thinks of women as competent equals but also sometimes has a switch flip in his brain that makes him pester them in increasingly ridiculous ways.

I'd actually argue that the single most sexist thing Snotlout does is that he stops flirting with Astrid as soon as her and Hiccup are dating. Because that implies that her baundaries are only to be respected once another man has claimed her. But the reason was most likely that him flirting with the mcs now canon girlfriend would generate too much comflict, whereas him hitting on her badly before they're a couple and failing just makes Hiccup look good in comparison.

Honestly if Snotlout was a proper sexist and we saw him grappling with- and overcoming that belief Sokka style that would have made for an engaging plotline. Snotlouts' Angels was probably intended to be just that but it failed. Snotlout acts entitled around the Wingmaidens (and yes, him saying that Astrid and Ruffnut should serve him like they do is a sexist statement), but he pretty much always acts entitled. He doesn’t really learn any lesson about women or his own behavior, he just prattfalls all over their island for 20 minutes and then says sorry to Astrid at the end

7. Speaking of the Wingmaidens i find it incredibly funny that 1: One of the only factions containing poc characters (none of them with any lines ofc) are implied to be cannibals, and that 2: they're never actually shown to NOT be cannibals. Like yes, the implication is that they lie to Snotlout to scare him after being a shitty guest, but they never resolve that misgiving. At the end of the episode the gang is feasting with a group of people who threatened to eat one of them, which he told them about, and as far as we know they just never cleared that up.

Also if they weren’t gonna eat Snotlout, what was their plan for him? To just keep this man imprisoned indefinitely for the crime of being an annoying little shit, on your all women island? Either send him away or kill him and in that case you might as well just eat him tbh ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

8. The music score annoys me. It's not bad necessarily but every scene, no matter how trivial, has a whole orchestra playing in the background and it just gets on my nerves after a while

9. Finally, i cannot take Viggo seriously. Everything about him just feels like the parts of better villians were hastily stiched together and all i can see are the seams. The chess game is incredibly corny, the pretentious way he talks and the way he walks with his arms crossed behind his back, it all comes across as so deeply unserious that he feels more like a larper to me, rather than an organic part of this world, never mind an actually intimidating villian

thank you for the ask, it's still crazy to me that anyone outside of my friend circle would listen to me talk about Snotlout and rtte in general and i appreciate all of the questions and suggestions, even if i can't get to them all in a timely manner <3

If you've read this far you're super cool and i love you, thanks for listening to me ramble for a bit. Even though i have a lot to critique for rtte i still look back on it quite fondly and it gave me my favorite iteration of my all time favorite character so i'll always be grateful for that

Also to you anon: I'm so sorry that i got back to you this late, i typed this all out in a haze and then put off finishing it once i saw just how much i wrote 😭

[ex0rin]

I really, truly think that all of fandom needs to have a yearly re-watch of the source material so that people don't start agreeing with stupid fandom takes as gospel:

like... are you KIDDING ME with that??? she's so clearly smitten with him you'd have to be blind or literally closing your eyes to not see it

[ef-1]

in the spirit of being a cunt <3

[shiraishi--kanade]

"People would care more about An if she was a boy-" listen you're probably right but you do have to recognise it would be so much more boring. Like An Shiraishi is literally every male protagonist in the shounen anime ever wrt to her and Kohane's relationship. The fact that she's a girl in an obnoxiously and obviously shounen-coded storyline makes her unique we have to recognise that also

[autisticlancemcclain]

Could you explain your position on Shallura? Since Allura was established as a teenager when she started dating Lance and Shiro was very clearly an adult. I can understand the bi shiro headcannon but the shallura thing worries me

i am going to remind yall that i have been in this fandom since 2016. and in the early seasons, allura was not established as a teenager. in fact she was coded as older, as closer to shiro's age -- there was a specific divide between her and the younger paladins that she did not have with shiro. they made her younger (both explicitly and in mannerisms) as the show went on. and i do not give a fuck about voltron like...post s4 and i didn't even watch s7-8. so like. especially with older fics, im going to enjoy shallura.

[real-fire-emblem-takes]

Fire Emblem has a very strange Misogynic issue I've never seen in any other franchise. There are very few female units I can point at and go "This woman was written by a misogynist" , but The plot, gameplay, and male characters are all just weirdly casually misogynistic...? Like Idk. These women feel fully realized and complex, but then There's how Eirika is talked about/treated in her game, All the brainwashed girls through the series, 3Houses/hopes where Everyone's dad's and brothers are super super important to them, but Most character's we're not even sure their mothers are even alive with how absolutely irrelevant they are... Etc. It's all really weird. :(

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[qourmet]

[infinstar]

In this soba eating scene, the gaga subtitles were off regarding the subject/meaning of Hiroko's thoughts.

そうそう ... 本来はこういう反応だよ ( Indeed, Normally that's how people would react )

危うく間違えるとくだった ( I almost misunderstood it )

This is important because it is essential to how Hiroko has been acting throughout this entire episode! From the moment Ayaka declared to pursure Hiroko infront of everyone, she has been gauging everyone's reaction to Ayaka's confession/actions. When the coworkers had a positive attitude towards it, it enabled Hiroko to answer positively to Ayaka's advancements and let her guard down momentarily. When confronted with a coworker?/business partner? who framed Ayaka's confession as a type of identity exploration of the youth "before they eventually settle down", Hiroko felt that familiar/what she had been expecting as the reaction to all of this from her experience in the past. This reinforced her mindset as it fed to her own biases that ultimately the world has not changed afterall and she nearly misunderstood that it was okay to be open about it and be accepted.

Ayaka on the other hand is almost blind/indifferent to everyone's reaction/opinion to her feelings as she bulldozes ahead to the detriment of Hiroko. They are both polar opposites. Hiroko cares far too much about what others think of her and subsequently of Lesbian relationships (either romanticing it through works of Yuri or not taking it seriously at all) that she has not even considered what she should do/want now that she can't avoid it anymore. Ayaka can't seem to understand why would Hiroko withdraw from acting on her feelings when she likes her and definitely needs help understanding Hiroko's worries. Even after Risa questioned her whether it was okay to say it infront of everyone after knowing what happened in the past, Ayaka did not get it.

Again, I dont think any character is particularly wrong in their actions (apart from that old man) they are all approaching it from their own insecurities or lack of it in the case of Ayaka. Not everyone will think about the major consequences of their actions before acting and some will only think of that and I love how this episode depicted it.