#and it's just so interesting bc Both of those things were misogyny

[menlove]

re that last reblog about women being "allowed to cry" while men aren't and how that's bullshit bc there's absolutely social judgement for crying as women & it just feeds the idea that like oh of Course you're crying you're a woman....

i think what's soooo interesting that i haven't seen a lot of discussion on is that..... women Do often have the same social expectations as men. because you're told from day one "there's this group of people that are just Better than you" and while you may be "allowed" to go against certain expectations for men, it's often with a sort of........ exasperated indulgence. like "yeah, we'll tolerate this with rolled eyes and snickering behind your back, because you're an Irrational Woman"

and like ofc it's not like enforced in the same way, but there's absolutely an underlying "the Better People wouldn't be doing this" and that can oftennnnn lead to a pressure to perform those same social expectations as men.

and ofc this isn't like an either/or situation- oftentimes women Are very much punished for masculinity, especially by other women. but i think this is very often how you end up with "not like other girls" girls/women. bc on one hand, you have people praising you for living up to expectations meant for men and on the other you have feminine women mocking you and sneering at you for not being Girl Enough. and some women will fall back to femininity as a shield to stop that mockery/that feeling of not fitting in, and some will go full throttle into those masculine expectations

when like really the most comfortable space to be is just doing whatever the genuine fuck you want with your body/interests and not worrying about outside validation for it, but unfortunately we don't live in a vacuum

[woman-respecter]

eh, I'm kind of tired of the relentless promotion of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood as feminist when all those female characters exist in relation to men, and that was the message I felt it sent to me: women are great but only if they don't forget their place. Those women are just better written than most because the original mangaka is a woman, but I've read a lot of Arakawa's stuff and it feels like she's really into this kind of promotion of traditional women in a way that has its pluses in showing how fully-faceted those women are, but never seems to really question those roles in a larger sense. I get why it appeals to people but I wouldn't exactly call it "feminist."

(I also have longstanding beef of how people use that to excuse the really fucked up messages about race in that show/manga, especially to dump on the original FMA anime which does that aspect much much better and whose female characters felt a lot more genuinely independent to me, but whatever. Neither is a bastion of feminism lol and don't want to make this about fandom beef)

It's also not necessary because there are a lot of anime that are outspokenly feminist and center women. Revolutionary Girl Utena being the obvious one, and got me through the 2016 election aftermath with episodes like when Utena beats Touga after he defeats her the first time, showing how women can triumph eventually even when the odds are wholly stacked against us. And it has a really probing analysis of the patriarchy and heteronormativity woven throughout the whole show.

A whole bunch of magical girl anime (not the entire genre, some suck and are made for gross dudes, but a lot of them, especially the 90s ones are aimed at women - Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura etc). Sayo Yamamoto's stuff that isn't Yuri on Ice - not that that show isn't great and gay and cute and doesn't say interesting things in its occasional one-off subplots about women, but it's obviously focused on men. But people who liked it who want great women-centric stuff should watch her Lupin III: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine and Michiko and Hatchin, both centered on women and very feminist in their themes, albeit in a way that requires you to pay attention and think and watch the whole show so you occasionally get Tumblrites without reading comprehension missing the point of them. I was really surprised, given the kind of trashy title, by the anime Maria the Virgin Witch, which is all about fighting patriarchal ideas about sex in fantasy medieval Europe. Also, Yurikuma Arashi by the same creator as Utena is a really good analysis of the ways that lesbians are portrayed in Japanese media and by the broader patriarchy.

For as much misogyny as there is in anime, the stuff that does engage with feminism can often be pretty radical and smart and does it better than you'll see in a lot of other media. It's like having that low hum of misogyny in the medium as a whole builds up a rage in some of its creators that just explodes in the stuff they make. Same with how it often engages with queer themes, tbh.

And then there's just that anime has a lot more female-character-centered stuff even if it isn't "feminist" exactly. Like stuff about women where the story and world is centered on women that you can just put on as a comfort watch. Love Live or something lol

you do bring up a good point about fma, i kinda forgot about that bc i watched it like a decade ago. rgu is really great and i defo recommend it even tho it was directed by a man. yurikuma is actually my fave anime of all time but does seem sexist and fan servicey on the surface. and i love love live and the other cgdct anime but it feels like there is always an underlying misogyny of that genre, knowing how the male fans and creators are. if i were to recommend a comfort watch i would go with k-on bc it has a female director.

thanks for the recs!

[carlyraejepsans]

i lowkey disagree w u on ur position on fictional ships and certain portrayals of topics such as incest and pedophilia, but oh my fucking god to have the fucking. AUDACITY to accuse someone of real life pedophila and incest because they MENTIONED being NEUTRAL on a certain topic?? like you didnt even say you think fictional incest is cool and rad or wtvr u afaik (which. even if u did that ask would Still be abhorrent) but ur explicitly Neutral and are VERY carful to tag shit and i just. 1/2

cut for length and also sensitive topics

i cannot fucking imagine accusing someone of such a horrid act with such conviction bc u SLightly DIsagree on a topic. jfc. i block tags and if ur conversations ever drive me over the edge id Unfollow. im so so sorry people are such fucking assholes man. i hope people gain some sense abt these topics im so sorry

yeah no i completely respect your opinion. and i do know where it's coming from. to tell you the truth (basic decency of tagging triggers aside), i DO find most of those fanon portrayals to be cheap and uncalled for a good majority of the time, at least from a literary standpoint. things like dating a minor or your own sibling have serious implications on a character's moral code and interpersonal dynamics where most characters would... not fucking do that! and the moment you don't engage with those implications, it becomes either incredibly ooc or altogether shallow. some people act like a topic being problematic makes it inherently complex and rich, when it can be as tropey and flat as any other "safe" topic. being problematic doesn't make you interesting etc. my point isn't arguing over literary value, it's more like... there's people behaving horribly and cruelly towards the AUTHORS, and making disgusting assumptions like the one that was made against me, all because of fiction you can always filter out at the end of the day (assuming basic tagging etiquette is respected ofc) and like. that's too far. nobody deserves to be treated like this.

not to mention, the "incest fiction recs"/"pro incest posts" those freaks mentioned were literally 1) me gushing about revolutionary girl utena, a deeply feminist and self-aware series that unpacks the misogyny behind anime incest tropes by treating that abuse REALISTICALLY as patriarchal manipulation from a male relative and showing how the female victim suffers and emancipates herself from it and 2) me being annoyed that hs showed one of its characters suffering from csa without acknowledging it AS abuse, even when it would've been not just the morally decent thing to do, but also a genuinely good addition to his character arc (apparently it does do that in the endstory, but i didn't know it at the time). those are both posts about realistic, condemning, and well-thought depictions of incestuous abuse in fiction—which is the only way i ever enjoy the topic btw—but that didn't stop these people from deciding i had an incest fetish and harassing me for weeks on end to the point of accusing me of sexually abusing my teenage brother. like you said, it would be a ghoulish way to treat someone even if their assumption had been right (and it wasn't), but it's like they saw the topic being mentioned and that fact alone was unforgivable, regardless of context. and this crap happens to people all the time! if that's not fucking stupid i don't know what is

[alpaca-clouds]

The Dawn of Everything

I finished reading this very long book, after hearing it being recommended in a podcast a few months back. I thought to myself that it would be kinda nice, given that the topic (the origin of inequality) is interesting me, and the fact that I really like David Graeber. I started reading some of his other stuff earlier in the pandemic. Mainly Bullshit Jobs, a book that I will always highly recomment.

The Dawn of Everything was a very interesting read.

You probably know the story that inspires it: "Humans once lived as hunters and gathers in small bands when they were all very equal. But at some point they invented agriculture, and more and more inequality would rise." This is a thing that is considered to be common knowledge - especially in left wing circles. Meanwhile of course there is a right wing counternarrative that generally goes: "Back when we lived as hunter gatherers we had horrible lives, but ever since we invented agriculture everything got better."

Now, there is of course a big challenge with this: Humans have been around for about 200 000 years. And our actual understanding for history goes back for about 5000 years. The earliest written records we can translate are from Ancient Sumer and were written about 3000 years BC. Everything before that... We know humans were there. We can say something about how humans moved and lived because we find their skulls and tools and art. But the few humans before Sumer who have written anything down, have also used writing systems that we cannot decypher. So all we can say about them is stuff that we can know from the archeology we did.

You might also see where this is going: Doing research for this book, Graeber and Wengrow found, that neither of the "early humans" theories named above, were in any way based in research, but just were two people making up stuff that sounded right to them. So, because of that, they themselves tried to figure this out on the basis of what we do know for certain - both from the archeological record, and from what we know from indigenous groups.

And some of the things they bring up is quite interesting.

They base a lot of their writing on the writing of indigenous people over the last 500 years. Specifically also of how indigenous people compared their own cultures to the culture of colonizers. The book also goes into how early monarchies came to be and why people in some situations might have wanted to have kings.

Another thing the book goes very much into is into sexism, misogyny and also how those ideas often influenced the analysis of archeologists. If there were cultures, where a lot of the archeological finds very much suggest that the rulers were women, for a long while archeologist would go: "But that would be silly. Women cannot rule." One example named in the book is Minoan Greece.

I took quite some interesting things from this book - and I absolutely would recommend it to both my fellow anarchists and my fellow Solarpunks. Because I will once more say: We Solarpunks need to learn more from the past, rather than just hoping that we can solve all our problems.

I will write about some other stuff I learned from this book in the next few days or maybe even weeks, but generally I really enjoyed reading (or rather listening to) it.

While the writing style in this book is at times a bit too wordy, I learned a whole lot from reading this. Heck, while I originally got the audiobook, this is one of the few books I own now as both an audio book and a physical copy.

[horizon-verizon]

You misunderstand me. I'm not saying it has no bearing on the story because it's from Yi Ti, I'm saying that since the Blood Betrayal hasn't yet been confirmed as the official reason why the Long Night began, HotD wouldn't be interested in referencing it. Also I doubt Condal and Hess read TWOIAF.

Anon speaks of this post.

Not sure why you think I misunderstood. I addressed your point about how "we can't know" that this legend explains or thematically explains the connection of misogyny to how we lose the dragons.

A)

Rhaenyra -- Amethyst Empress --- woman who lost her throne and life to an evil younger brother through force

Aegon II -- Bloodstone Emperor --- both usurp their elder, chosen sister

Daenerys/Amethyst Empress/Rhaenyra --- women of authority and power

Viserys (III)/Aegon II/Bloodstone Emperor --- brothers who have endangered, abused, or killed their sister and meant to displce them from their own rights, innate or sociopolitical, for their own power advancement.

As for Condal and Hess, they can't do pattern recognition, now? Condal especially said he was a "fan" of this series and world. He didn't read TWoIaF and he claims to be a AsoIaF "fan"?

It is similar here, with the Bloodstone Emporer/Amethyst Empress and that particular legend's explanation for the Long Night. This legend doesn't have to be totally real, and I mean that it doesn't have to be true that there was a 1000 year old emperor as the Yi Ti are told to believe abt some of the known Emperors. These are metaphorical in the first place.

All the legend is clueing us in on is that this betrayal, whatever it was, was one between relatives, a man undoing a woman's place, and thus speaking to how it threw off the balance of the world's magic. That women are a critical part of that balance. That's the central idea being conveyed, the purpose of this legend--everything points to Dany vs the Others (yes the others of the Big Five are still relevant, but they have no chance without her).

We don't need to know the actual details of who these particular people were and what they weren't when they loved or died, just that something like this usurpation definitely happened and there was a notable affect on magic in the realm those emperors ruled over, as Yi Tish people are also very active in magic wielding...most of Essos is, unlike Westeros.

I'm going to repeat myself in this post, but: this is not a real history book where we'll likely not know much of anything...GRRM provides more answers in his fictional history than real history books do.

All this is important to the theme of F&B: greedy men sideline, abuse, uproot women they are blood connected to for power (just as the Bloodstone emperor did), the women suffer for it/lose their political authority therefore their ability to as actively direct the direction of the House, and eventually the entire house and Westeros loses dragons to use against the Others and the world's magical & biological ecosystem is totally thrown off kilter until Dany literally sets it right again by bring the dragons back. The dragonglass candles at Oldtown, they light up again when she does this. The last of AGoT:

As Daenerys Targaryen rose to her feet, her black hissed, pale smoke venting from its mouth and nostrils. The other two pulled away from her breasts and added their voices to the call, translucent wings unfolding and stirring the air, and for the first time in hundreds of years, the night came alive with the music of dragons.

So again, why do you need "more" "confirmation" when there is so much evidence, when that's not how fiction works (that you need things totally spelled out for you to be true), etc?

Honestly, this seems a literacy and latent sexism issue that causes this cognitive dissonance in fans that makes them deny these types of connections as canon, real, whatever. Bc you have people caliming Jon is Azor Ahai up the wazzo simply because he's the son of a Targ and a Stark (fire and ice), male, the "sword" of the prophecy they take as literal, etc. etc. But "song" means "war" and Jon has done nothing/nothing has happened around him to predicate a connection the Azor Ahai prophecy in-text. Yet so many people ride for this stupid idea, this stupid unsupported idea!

This idea that has never been "confirmed" and never will be bc there is and has never been evidence to how Jon Snow, a Westerosi Stark through and through, relates to an Essosi prophecy when Dany--who grew up in Essos and was born in Westeros thus is a connector of the two continents; is actively dealing with dragons and having dragons dreams; in Essos where the Azor Ahai prophecy originates; comes from a dragonriding lienage ("fire"); the enemy of "fire" has always been "cold" and Jon is more Stark than Targ, so "cold" must be the ecological and magical threat that is the Others that even GoT has had us anticipate since its very 1st episode as THE enemy before that atrocious last season!!!; when we know "prince" is a gender neutral term form High Valyrian (Prince that was Promised)--has all the evidence of being Azor Ahai.

And why does it matter they they haven't read it when they could have asked GRRM or just read F&B to properly understand the point of the Dance?

Condal can't clock that this legend is narratively important just as much that the CotF/"those who sing the song of the earth's connection to Dany and Westeros' future? Just bc a thing is in Essos, doesn't mean it will not affect Westeros just as real life Ancient Asian societies have been able to make physical trade as well as intellectual "trade" or influence on stuff in the West. He can't clock Rhaena the BB and Elissa's connection to Daenerys? Condal read how Dany is connected to Braavos and how Dreamfyre's eggs went there and didn't put 2 and 2 together?

This is why you don't bring non-fantasy readers to write a fantasy show. who then, bc of said ignorance, want to somehow "make the story better" or different...the same story they don't even understand. Also why you don't bring a marketing guy to write any adaptive as intricate and rich as ASoIaF and to not understand the depth or the patterns of magical phenomenon that good faith fantasy readers have habitually done since their childhood (most readers anyway have read fantasy since childhood and religiously so to understand its conventions) when that's not what they look out for in the first place.

B)

The fact that Dany's eggs are Dreamfyre's also haven't been "confirmed" by GRRM or revealed in The Winds of Winter or A Dream of Spring. That doesn't make this any less true.

1- from his website

What really happened during the Dance of the Dragons? Why did it become so deadly to visit Valyria after the Doom? What is the origin of Daenerys’s three dragon eggs? These are but a few of the questions answered in this essential chronicle, as related by a learned maester of the Citadel

2- It's pretty much fact with how these are THREE eggs that petrified when they are away from Dragonstone; IIllyrio Mopatis had them to give to Dany and she eventually awakens them; F&B takes the time to painstakingly show Rhaena the BB's conversation w/Jaehaerys abt the consequences of THREE dragon eggs going missing. What other reason was there for F&B--a text that aims to contextualize Daenerys by telling the stories of her ancestors before the loss of the dragons and a little after--to do so hard abt 3 dragon eggs stolen during Rhaena's time, from her dragon's clutch, under her watch?! A text that traces the existence of dragons and their maintenance/use by the Targs? Then there is the fact that Elissa Farman--the egg thief--sold the eggs to the Sealord of Braavos, another thing necessary to Dany's arc. None of this is an accident or a red herring, esp since there is literally nothing as damning as evidence or suggestion for the argument of Syrax being the mother...at all. Nothing in the text.

Not everything in ASoIaF is a great and complex mystery; sometimes GRRM gives you clues to a simple "mystery" to deduce the truth of, esp when we already have much evidence of Danyxher dragons being necessary and critical for the coming Long Night against the "ice/cold" others. That she/her dragons are the "fire" in the Song of Ice and Fire, a coming magical war for the world. This is the type of chain of clues that are retrospective and not anticipatory. We already have the result (Dany and the eggs); you were tasked to recognized the line of causation pretty quickly. This is still a fiction series with correct answers.

All this is evidenced just in the main series, TWoIaF acts as a support piece...Condal is a fan, but he can make deductions? Sure.

[lemonhemlock]

My favorite thing is TB stans calling you a sexist when you say Rhaenyra having bastards she passes off as legitimate (to the point of threatening his 11 year old brother with torture when he tells the truth) and plans to put on the throne is in fact, not the exact same thing as Aegon having bastards with whores in fleabottom.

speaking of myself specifically, TB hate it when i use the bastardposting tag. it gets them riled up like you wouldn't believe. it's always much easier to conserve brain power and chalk the whole discussion to misogyny and bastardphobia (LOL) instead of considering that the very material conditions of feudalism and manorialism, the lack of a diversified economy, the only way of obtaining wealth being via land ownership etc made inheritance laws the way they were. marriage between wealthy people being a literal financial contract that ensured the passing of goods and land and titles to a very specific person and not a rando child who is not related to both families. blood relation being considered the ultimate bond & deterrent from harm in the conceptualization of said culture (hello kinslaying).

they have a mental block in understanding that the reason (in western societies) today we have a much fairer distribution of wealth between living descendants, regardless of parental marital status, is because we are not so dependent on land in the accumulation of said wealth in the first place. generally-speaking, back then, the more you divided up a plot of land, the more power centres would appear - mini feudal lords who were much poorer than the previous generation and would engage in violent conflict with each other in order to acquire more land and wealth. on the other hand, when wealth is consolidated and a clear hegemon arises, the possibility of contestation diminishes bc it becomes much more difficult to displace that specific ruler.

does that make it fair? no, ofc not. there are many unjust aspects about that particular layering of society or about hegemonic stability theory. for instance, i stumbled upon an article that argues that feudal fragmentation sometimes generated technological advancements as a result of the reduced regulation capacity of landlords, which, in turn, stimulated competition between economic actors. however, as the author herself points out, "In the feudal period under investigation, the absence of a strong ruler who could abuse property rights may have made it possible to commit to investment in fixed capital, but the absence of contract enforcement may have thwarted those incentives". in addition, the historical period in question was characterized by great political instability, i.e. "warfare, the breakdown of authority, and a lack of central protection of property rights".

so, the topic is obviously much more nuanced and we should definitely leave some space for the discussion of actual avenues for lasting change, be they incremental or more ample in scope, but i'm not about to be having those conversations with TB any time soon, as they're too busy pretending that the laws and customs of a specific time had nothing to do with the technological advancements, the economic landscape and the interactions between different social spheres. that you could just click your fingers and change the world for the better, instead of considering for a moment that certain changes would require massive systemic upheavals that no one was interested in undertaking (or even had the resources or knowledge on how to initiate such an operation in the first place)

[rogueddie]

"Mate just attacked me for enjoying trans content because other people are being gross about it?? And implied that I'm homophobic bc I hc Eddie as gay?? What the f-"

i'm sorry if you felt like i attacked you and truthfully i don't remember a lot of the exact phrasing of my ask because i was really worked up. i sent the message to you specifically because i felt you had a larger audience if you did decide to address it other than the ask. i said it's sort of weird to hc eddie gay, then steve is a trans girl, so he's suddenly not gay or if someone actually says "she's his exception" or "i like men AND you" because it implies that he doesn't see her as a woman. not that YOU are homophobic, that it's homophobic to make a character gay just for the trope of he realises he's NOT gay, but that entire business is just straight up transmisogyny and that is 100% fact :/ one of your posts DID fit this formula and it was seeing it that upset me right after seeing the robin/steve thing, so i was upset and sent it to you. and i meant my concerns as a trans women are always dismissed by society and that means in fandoms... english is not my first language so maybe some of my phrasing was clunky but i knew this would happen so whatever. trans women will never be respected even to other people because we are not your sisters we are just tools for your arguments and bad headcanons.

I didn't feel attacked. You were attacking me. As you admitted right here, you were upset with me when you wrote that ask. Just because you didn't feel like you were attacking me, that doesn't change the fact that you were.

You did imply that it's homophobic to hc Eddie as gay. That's what you wrote. You finished making your point about how you see it as gross to use a trans woman as a gay mans exception, then added on at the end that you think "it's a little homophobic to hc Eddie as gay when his sexuality isn't confirmed in canon". It was a point you made separate to anything trans-related.

You tried to say in your original ask that shipping trans woman Steve and Robin is another way of saying that the only reason that canon Steve wouldn't date Robin is because she's "a lame lesbian". But that is something based on canon; in season 4 Steve said that he would date Robin, but she isn't interested in him.

That's not him dismissing her sexuality, it's him acknowledging that he does still find her attractive (it was weird and I, like you, prefer to pretend it never happened. But it did). If Steve was a woman, I do think it's likely that they could potentially date. That's not lesbianphobic, that's based on canon.

This is something I'm not willing to argue on because I've seen too many people arguing that Robin wouldn't be interested in trans woman Steve "because she's a lesbian". As if being a trans woman makes Steve less of a woman. Shipping Stobin if they were both woman isn't the problem here, the transphobia is.

The only person dismissing trans people here is you. The only person using trans women as a tool for an argument is you.

You fail to recognize that, as a trans man, I have faced just as much rejection, dismissal and fetishization. I have faced just as much transphobia, just as much misogyny.

You did make good points in the original ask. There is a lot of transphobia and fetishization in fandom. But, hey, maybe don't attack other trans people who have to suffer through those same issues in order to make your point.

[trans-leek-cookie]

I just saw your tags on the unreliable narrator post and I really want to know what character you’re talking about now

Geto Suguru from JJK. I came for the hot Asian guy with long hair and a cool outfit stayed bc I'm interested in how cults and eugenics hurt ppl irl and also how they're explored in fiction. But between heaven and earth I alone am trying to find a fic that actually treats him being a cult leader as the problem it is and also gets fucking Nanako and Mimiko out of their. Uhhh fuck idk if u know JJK so spoilery ranting under the read more that assumes familiarity (so not like. Explaining specific plot shit bc my brain will explode)

so basically ppl have called out the eugenics shit with like "kill everyone who isn't a sorcerer" and generally they're like yeah that sucks but whatever not important lol. And I've seen like 0 shit actually about how he's a cult leader + how cults are Abusive. And some ppl are like "actually he has a point bc blah blah blah" like okay. If sorcerers were a stand in/comparable to real life marginalized groups. WE DONT NEED MORE "MARGINALIZED EUGENICIST" PLOTS. But even within the story they don't seem marginalized? Like, there are Marginalized Sorcerers, but being a Sorcerer isn't something that's consistently oppressed? The closest thing is either misdirected ableism/sanism ("they see things that aren't there and are assumed to be psychotic" which is its own can of worms) or like accusations of witchcraft which... I guess that's sorcerery based on this universe but irl those were usually used either along with or as cover for other shit (racism, misogyny, land grabs, etc). So hes not necessarily marginalized on that level- tho growing up in a family without other sorcerers mightve caused problems for him that's a LOT different from systemic oppression. And, also? In a lot of cases it seems like sorcerers are relatively privileged with a lot of economic, social and maybe political power? Like the big three families are obv examples bc they're fucking Rich and control the sorcery world so. Y'know. Also it's stated at one point sorcerers receive some like exceptions to the law but aren't allowed to hurt ppl who aren't sorcerers so. Yeag

anyways going more in depth on eugenics- okay real quick terms: negative and positive eugenics. That's not in reference to the quality, "positive" doesn't mean "good" But Rather in reference to wether the action is meant to Reduce "bad genes" or Increase "good genes". And obv negative eugenics includes shit like forced sterilization and murder which I don't want to downplay, but positive eugenics is also coercive and fucked up. For example, forcing ppl to have children they don't want. Which isn't Discussed in the series, but the fact is sorcerers a SMALL minority of the population, and they're already having trouble with curses, so. Theoretically sorcerers would be coerced to have more children to bring the population numbers up. Personally I think that's Not Something Suguru Believes In (I'll get into that but main thing is his eugenics isn't an actual strategy but rather lashing out and ego) but like. There's abuse on both sides of the equation no matter what. Eugenics isn't fucking redeemable.

Now onto the cult shit. It's not super expanded on besides needing money and curses to like. Kill ppl or whatever. But my interpretation of Suguru is that he started a cult, and believes in eugenics, because his ego was damaged. Like the trauma impacted him and influenced his actions ofc bc trauma Does That but also I straight up think his ego was bruised and he wants revenge.

Like first of all, the wider context- he's a kid who is alienated from his parents and probably most of the ppl he interacted with due to his abilities, which is understandably damaging esp at a young age.

He is then scouted and labeled as a special grade- he is one of three in Japan and I believe the world, if I'm not misremembering. He is on par with Gojo Satoru (category wise) who. Literally "Gojo Satoru's birth changed the world" like that's a NUTS ego boost to get

Anyway Gojo called the two of them "the strongest" literally pairing them up and positioning them as equals so like. Whoo boy. Also special grade sorcerer is defined as "a sorcerer who could single-handedly take down a nation" which okay! Labeling children as essentially weapons of mass destruction. Normal behavior

Then Toji happens and this random fucking guy beats you up. He kills your best friend and the girl you were escorting. But he doesn't kill you- because of your cursed technique being risky to deal with, but also. Obvious subtext of "you aren't important enough to kill"

Then your friend comes back from the fucking dead. Kills the man who tried to kill him. Discovers entirely me abilities and becomes even more powerful. And you are stagnating, with a technique you fucking hate. Your entire power is the power of Other Things.

So like. Understandly, thought maybe not justifiably, your ego is fucked.

So you start creating a new dichotomy: sorcerers and everyone else. If everyone else is lesser, you still have worth because you're Better than them by virtue of existing.

And then you discover 2 children being abused for the thing you have a victim complex over (<- this is also it's own thing I'll talk about) and you murder a bunch of ppl about it (okay this is a little questionable of My Opinions maybe but I could. Not forgive but understand the mass murder bc there's a lot of shit building up and clearly if 2 young girls being badly abused in a small village that implies the majority of people were either okay with it or unwilling to try and help at all. Anyway it's still Bad but like. Understandble mental breakdown trauma kinda bad for me? Also bc most ppl irl recognize murder as being Bad but are Weirdly Forgiving of bigotry yknow)

Anyway you take over the cult that was doing some other shit and my personal interpretation of this is also an ego thing. Bc lots of cult leaders do it for the money, but a lot of them also do it bc they like the feeling of controlling ppl. And there's essentially 2 levels of the cult- everyday people and the people he considers Family (which includes Mimiko and Nanako, the 2 children from the paragraph above).

On the "everyday people" level, there's a feeling of being a revered religious leader, knowing something they don't (curses exist), and the satisfaction of taking advantage of the people you don't like.

On the Family level, you position yourself as a savior and as The Only One Brave Enough To Do What Must Be Done (eugenics genocide) so even if you aren't the strongest you're still Special.

So that's my main analysis of why he became a cult leader, and now I'm gonna make more comments about why I think his shit is "Ego" rather than a (fucked up) desire to actually help ppl

If you wanted to help sorcerers survive: THE CLANS ARE A MASSIVE FUCKING PROBLEM. They hoard techniques tools and knowledge and the Zen'in clan literally cast out Toji who could've been a fuckin BEAST at dealing with curses. The clans reliance of tradition also generally hinders sorcerers ability to grow and improve in ways that aren't Traditional

When he dies the cult falls apart (which: good) but also the members have different ideals like some of them wanna keep doing eugenics, some of them just wanted Suguru to be powerful, and two of them were basically his adopted kids. If you actually had good intentions: CREATE A PLAN FOR WHEN YOU DIE SO YOUR FOLLOWERS CAN ACTUALLY CARRY OUT YOUR WILL AND HELP PEOPLE INSTEAD OF LETTING THEM INFIGHT

And idk if this is totally Ego or starting to move into a separate thing so I just decided to split it up: even when he was "righteous" his beliefs kinda Sucked

Like "the strong must protect the weak". There are inherent sort of... values being placed there, because weak is negative, not neutral. It's relatively minor, but I think it's important to note with how his beliefs evolve.

It's not like "we need to protect the people who can't protect themselves" it's really reductive. There's weak people and strong people and basically Noblisse Oblige but for strength or whatever which isn't really actual kindness or equality but rather pretty much. Pity.

Also he sorts jujutsu sorcerers into "strong" and everyone else into "weak" for the most part so that's... great worldview my guy. Definitely not going to just worsen your alienation from other ppl

so when he goes to "why should the strong protect the weak?" He jumps to "the strong don't owe anything to the weak, and actually the weak should be Punished For Being Weak" instead of. Just doing something else. Just get a fucking job, my guy

Anyway his plan is just garbage top to bottom total mess morally and logistically and he's a traumatized teen who grew into an abuser and like. The trauma influenced that but there were always fucking problems so it isn't "oh he got hurt and is evil :(" it's "he has some worrying beliefs and his trauma is likely making his emotions and ability to reason unstable, and then he finds an excuse to turn that instability into Violence" like. He's not necessarily abusive bc he's mentally ill or traumatized marginalized he's abusive bc he got to a point in his life where he could justify it to himself and it felt Good

And I just remembered this part: for the characters who interact with him I do enjoy that they still like and love him, even though he fucking sucks, because that's very human. You'll love imperfect people, you'll love horrible ppl who hurt you and/or others, and that isn't irredeemable it's just Human because being a Human and Connecting With Humans is complicated like that

I even like it when they excuse his bad behavior! Bc that's a realistic character flaw, to value the person u consider your friend over the people they hurt! It's not ethical, but it's natural and interesting to explore in fiction.

THE PROBLEM. IS WHEN THE AUTHORS DO NOT TREAT OR ACKNOWLEDGE IT AS A PROBLEM.

Like... listen. Love a relationship where one character sucks and the other character forgives them for the ppl they hurt and just wants their loved one back. The problem is when the writers are like "aww this is so sweet/romantic/beautiful" WHATEVER. Because it's not??

Someone defending their fucking abusive partner/friend/family member, especially when they aren't victims themselves, isn't fucking sweet it's scary, either for them or others!!!! And I want either to see the characters grapple with the way they excuse their loved ones' abuses and how that reflects on them and their morals, or, if the characters don't do that, for the author to acknowledge it as A Flaw!!!! I'd that too much to fucking ask

Especially with cult abuse, I don't want to say it's necessarily treated worse than any other type of abuse, but it feels really hard to find things related to fictional cults that actually acknowledge the Real Life Damage and Abuse cults do instead of having the cult be 1. Faceless evil 2. A joke 3. Fetishized/romanticized. And like all forms of abuse are similarly distorted in media + fiction, but I feel like ive almost never seen cult abuse portrayed respectfully/accurately, especially in fan works

Anyways for the wild TL;DR I think Geto Suguru's personality is comparable to an anti-sjw trans guy who is getting scarily close to Actual Fascist beliefs and is hurting all the people around him and his ex mutuals are like "he's not that bad" when he is That Bad and I'm so fucking mad about what happened to Nanako and Mimiko. If I think about their canon treatment I get so upset I start to have a headache

[yunwooz]

Damn, saw that apparently Sakura also talked about watching the show 😭 I'm not surprised considering its popularity. People are shocked, because she's a woman, while it can feel more bizarre it's definitely not uncommon for women to enjoy dark media. Take all the women who love problematic shojo with toxic leads and uncomfortable age gaps. I was also taken aback by my female uni friend calling the series interesting and engaging, but we have to remember that women can be problematic too or at least have questionable tastes and interests. This is not the time for misogyny though. Bg stans need to understand this isn't a gotcha moment, and gg stans got a reality check, because guess what "that's why you should stan women not men" isn't the gag they think it is. The truth is TONS of people read/watched that shit, famous people, people we know, so acting superior is just dumb as fuck 🤡

yeah atp now that i know the popularity of the show, i wouldn't be surprised if tons more have also watched it and are just being intelligent and somewhat doing the right thing in not talking about it to their impressionable fanbases. i'm surprised that people are shocked tbh bc like you said it's very common for women to enjoy darker media, which is why problematic shojo is so incredibly popular. i keep going all sorts of different ways in trying to find a firm opinion on it but as i'm learning more and reading more from people who both disliked the show heavily and people who enjoyed the show, it seems to me like a good chunk of those who critically engaged with the show were disturbed by it. not all, but many (if not all) of the people i read posts and such from who found issue with the show are ones who were critically engaged with it. those that seemed to sort of just watch it for the sake of watching something and not to really think about it beyond it being a dark fantasy adventure did not seem to find issue in it.

i agree, this certainly isn't a gatcha moment and it's not about trying to conduct a witch hunt to find the next idol who said something about the show, and gender shouldn't even be part of the conversation because that only serves to push the conversation further away from what's important which is the conversation about the blind consumption of dark media and where a line needs to be drawn for it

[missfingers]

ok i don't know much about yakuza but i gotta know for the choose violence ask game: 3, 8, 11, 16, 22, 24? (you can also do these about another fandom instead if you want, i just chose yakuza bc those are ur little guys)

HI AUSTIIINNN. forgive me this will get long

3. screenshot or description of the worst take you've seen on tumblr

ohh my god theres been so many. but okay i will specifically pull up an example from the server i run. no screenshots cause the conversation was way too long but essentially yakuza has a massive misogyny problem with its female characters (of which there are. barely any). the conversation was specifically about the hostess mechanic, which is this minigame that appears in almost every game where you go to a hostess club and have a date there (a hostess club if ur unaware is basically softcore sex work its paying a woman to talk to you at a club). ofc nothing wrong with hostessing but people were specifically talking about how it was Kind Of Creepy that all the protags are like.... 40+ and all the hostesses / other female love interests are a lot younger.

and then this guy came in saying something along the lines of... if you criticise the way hostesses are objectified in yakuza then actually you hate women and sex workers and youre saying its not a real career .....? NO ONE WAS SAYING THAT. it was really one of those situations where the person was acting like these fictional female characters have their own agency to do sex work and flirt with older men ignoring completely the Old Men Writing The Series. they are not real people making their own decisions these are women written by men. it was bizarre. this guy also eventually said that if you criticise panty shots in anime youre racist or something because "japanese culture is like that" okay.

already answered 8 here! <3

just realised i completely got switched up on numbers and i already answered 11 and thought it was 10, so my answer for 11 is here but i will also answer 10 for @kasugas since i fucking. didnt.

10. worst part of fanon

majima woobification. and the worst part is its in the games now too like they straight up woobified him in kiwami and i cant STAND IITTTT. hes literally a yakuza boss he violently beats up his men he canonically married an 18 year old and hit her when she aborted their fetus hes not a good guy and i love when canon shows that. but then fanon is just like solely fucking majima everywhere characterisation of ooo hes just a silly little faggot who loves kiryu and kiryu hates him <333 (even though kiryu. does not. and finds his antics hilarious in every other game. and treats him as his closest friend.) and also the uncle majima stuff....... i like thinking about his relationship with haruka as much as the next guy but when people just. slap them together with no consideration to the fact he KIDNAPPED HER. AT 10 YEARS OLD. like dude shes going to be traumatised you cant just Ignore that for the sake of giving her two dads?

16. you can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)

oh i fucking know. i KNOW why they like it and the answer is theyre uncreative yaoi loving freaks but so much nishitani content is just him acting like some borderline rapey daddydom and its soooooo Eugh. they make majima into this uwu baby who doesnt want any of his advances until the relationship is literally liek something out of a fucking yaoi where he "really wants it deep down but hes going to act like he doesnt so its going to feel so uncomfortable and hes going to get borderline assaulted". the entire appeal of nishimaji to me is that nishitani is literally so down horrifically bad for majima and majima actually likes him back even if he thinks hes weird as shit. theyre both insane for each other.

22. your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores

ok im going to sound deranged here but his relationship with mirei. thats the 18 year old i mentioned. a lot of people choose to ignore he did that and like.... i get it its very uncomfortable to accept your favourite dude would prey on a kid like that but like. i feel like it does a disservice to his character to ignore that? it shows how he perpetuates the cycle of abuse and its so incredibly interesting to me but so many people just say "he wouldnt do that!!!!" when like.... yes he would. im sorry but he would.

24. topic that brings up the most rancid discourse

fuckig hell idk theres so much horrible yakuza discourse. ig its relevant rn but like whenever anyone genuinely critiques how fandom acts (misogyny, racism, woobifying a genuinely morally reprehensible character, ableism, just anything) and then the people who do this shit get all up in arms about it and act like its pointless infighting when its... genuine shit that makes a community unsafe

[horizon-verizon]

Counterpoint, bc it is long and it is early morning, but all of the points on OP's post are...misguided at best.

*ADDITION* (still not as long as linked post above)

Aside from that, this post also speaks to the very idea that it says it isn't talking to: the supposed moral inferiority of those girls and women who do not religiously follow the patriarchal rules to a T or good-naturedly obey her father's wishes and orders-- pun intended. Apparently, Rhaenyra is more immature than Alicent because she expresses she doesn't want to get married whereas Alicent keeps.mum about not wanting to "talk" to Viserys on her father's orders. Rhaenyra is just as subject to her father as Alicent is to her own even with a dragon (as I detail in the post I linked), yet Rhaenyra still managed to arrange for herself what her personal life will look like while still actually following her father's orders in the interest of that prophecy he shares with her and their house (even though I do not agree with the narrative purpose of said prophecy specifically towards the Dance).

What does Otto want in comparison, if we're just talking about the ethics presented in HotD and not F&B/canon lore? Nothing but his own advancement, power, and glory of having a grandson as King. Viserys, while definitely not a good father or person or brother, is still leagues better than Otto or Jaehaerys I. And at the same time, both of these men and the Westerosi society at large are the true entities that victimize and hold back both Alicent and Rhaenyra, not Rhaenyra.

It is the classist, conservative, patriarchal order that puts most official and military power, the more defined sense of human dignity, and social graces towards men like Viserys and Otto that allows them to use and/or abuse their daughters, wives, etc. (as the show AND canon conveys). It gives them too much power over women and girls and young boys, this Viserys and Otto being able to do what they do to these two girls. THAT IS HALF THE POINT OF THE DANCE.

It is often a tactic to blame the girl/woman who refuses to satisfactorily conform to patriarchal standards and behavior, especially sexually, and ignore where the real evil is. Which just reinforces the patriarchal standards as the norms everyone shouldn't question. It is unquestioned that Alicent is a victim of patriarchy, but so is Rhaenyra and there is really little point to put them against each other like Otto does or try to measure who suffered more when their issues and suffering crime from systematic misogyny and concerted practices and ideas against female body and sexual and political autonomy for the sake of male aggrandizement and "communities" of feudal houses and their legacy.

It is better to breakdown, in extraneous detail, what happens to the girls and where these events come from and how they developed by character action and motive with little censure before we jump into criticism unless we have someone like Otto who's motives are beyond obvious. But unfortunately he's already redeemed the eyes of those who castigate Rhaenyra's disobedience because they do not want to actually think about the truth about his words so much as reaffirming the conformist need to obey his word.

Because here's a thing: in all the years that both show and book!Rhaenyra was heir--and even in the very first years--do we ever, ever hear or see hints of any lord of consequence or a group of one plotting against Rhaenyra to overthrow her as soon as she becomes Queen?

What about all those people who lined up to make a play to be her King Consort? In the show we see no performances, all are sincere, and if there were any pretenders, then we should have gotten a looksie, a hint....but we don't.

Which means two things: these men sincerely wished to align themselves with Rhaenyra and accepted she would be Queen in their doing so OR the show writers are really bad at writing, so much so they can't even insert another minute or so introducing a character who actually presents a threat to Rhaenyra through instructing them to express their developing antagonism and wishes to rebel against her in the future.

If Alicent were mature or smart by the people who say "Rhaenyra is a jock", "Rhaenyra is a selfish, immature NLOG" people's definition of "immature", (as smart as her book self)--their definition of maturity-- Alicent is not mature or smart. She just thinks about how Rhaenyra is lucky to be having her choice in suitors, about how Rhaenyra contrasts against HERSELF and her own private woes.

If we argue that she is actually worried about the realm at large, notice how her most passionate or active acts are after or in motivation against Rhaenyra's sexual nonconformity instead of things that actually have to do with helping the people or with politics. Like that suggestion of the fortifications in episode 6?

Alicent actually only started to be more against Rhaenyra in an official and wider political way when Otto and Larys (both very selfish and manipulative characters with no concern for any small folk, merchants, traders, or even the other lords' wellbeing) inserted the ideas of Rhaenyra's unfitness or threat to Alicent, like some sort of Iago. Before then she was already jealous of what she perceived were Rhaenyra's complete freedoms (when, again, as I said in the linked post, they really aren't) and these two men really just give her the moral justifications, the excuses, and platform to attack Rhaenyra.

Show!Alicent going after Rhaenyra for 10 years, humiliating her, charging her and her son when her son was the one who she has been telling to disrespect his sister, nephews and cousins for years, and usurping Rhaenyra are all not her trying to take care of Rhaenyra so much as her trying to find ways to punish her for not being as much of a victim as her, as she perceived her plight and compares it to Rhaenyra. When such comparison should have led her to questioning Otto's motives as she finally (but way too late and ignores again) confronts in episode 9, and what her argument with Rhaenyra in episode 4 was supposed to signify.

These are not the actions of a mature person, but a horribly repressed and misogynist one. They are certainly not acts of a person who loves someone or is their friend or even ever was their friend, which just goes to show how illogical and dumb Rhaenicient is.

If they were going to do Rhaenicent, we needed to see the decay of Alicent's regard for Rhaenyra in HD detail and in several interactions revealing the process of her unconsciously defining herself as more future Queen/Queen than Rhaenyra's friend. More scenes with her and Larys. More scenes with her and Otto where she's slowly more and more convinced to set herself against Rhaenyra. And yes, all at court with little violence between them or their reps (that part happens in the actual war more, obviously) with them duking it out both behind doors and less times in public....you know, how they would have interacted even in the canon history. It should culminate in a moment where Rhaenyra realizes how Alicent was never a true friend or that she had changed so inextricably that she could never be her friend. Again, if we actually keep the Rhaenicent thing.

And yes, women, abused, raped, or how else attacked, can still be misogynist and perpetuate patriarchal mores and systems.

(8/21/23):

THIS is a great post by @mononijikayu about medieval queens, female rulers, the history of how women in leadership positions were made and seen as threats to the very structure of social “order”, and contextualizing Rhaenyra thru Empress Matilda. I didn’t even know about Matilda’s husband being comparable to Rhaneyra’s Daemon! PLZ READ!!!!

Excerpt:

just as much, along with these fictitious portrayals, more lies are depicted. these women are considered vixens that cause havoc to men by shifting them into desires and danger. through the written word, we see how women are cast in roles of villains in men’s lives. it is because by their conclusive thoughts, women are the only creatures that are able to turn ‘good honorable men’ into despicable creatures who do shameful, deplorable acts for the sake of women’s pleasures.   [...] itis within this narrative that ancient chroniclers declare that women were in fact the doom of men. if they were not able to control the dangers posed by the wiles of women, then the foundations of the mighty society they had built would be up in flames.  [...] as i mentioned, these factors of community are written down and preserved. and with that, the example of the ancients were the foundations by which medieval society built itself. the same concepts continued to cause the same issue within society and that was the exclusion of women from participating in the bigger picture of community and state, much so with governing states in their own right—without judgment or disapproval. 

Sorry people this is gonna be a long post, but I needed to vent.

A lot of people in the HOTD fandom are so quick to say that everything Alicent does "against" Rhaenyra is because she's judging her for not following the "rules" of the patriarchy, but imo the anger and conflict between them is way more personal than that. After Alicent is chosen by Viserys as his new wife, Rhaenyra, showing all of her immaturity (understandable, she's so young) feels betrayed by Alicent and starts treating her poorly. Of course Alicent in turn feels betrayed by her closest friend cause Rhaenyra abandoned her when she needed her the most. She was too sheltered and comfortable in her privilege to realize that other women cannot simply say no, Alicent was considered her father's property and then her husband's to do with as they pleased. She is continuously raped by a man she did not choose to marry, forced to carry child after child and on top of that she is refused the only comfort she had, her only friend. She never had the luxury of choice, but Rhaenyra in her naivety, still punished her for it. Alicent tried to hang on, still caring about Rhaenyra and still trying to reconcile with her and being constantly denied and judged by her.

Then, the moment Rhaenyra did something that would surely put her in trouble, she lied to Alicent's face. Alicent believed her and defended her with the king, insisting that Daemon must have lied, that her father must have been misinformed. Viserys knew this to be false, he knew Rhaenyra had lied, but still she was not punished for it. Instead Alicent is indirectly punished again, losing her only ally (Otto is a vile person, but still for Alicent he was the only piece of home, of familiarity she had) because of Rhaenyra. Naturally when she learned that Rhaenyra had lied to her, it was another huge blow to Alicent's heart, because trusting Rhaenyra has literally cost her the only bit of protection she felt that she had left. It's only natural at this point, that Otto's claims about Rheanyra's character began to take root in Alicent's mind. Rhaenyra proved that she could not be trusted and Alicent wasn't about to put her children's lives in the hands of someone who had betrayed her so. She realized that no one would protect her, not Viserys, not Rhaenyra, so she must do it herself.

From then on things were bound to go downhill cause Alicent began resenting Rhaenyra as she still remained oblivious to her privilege and she benefited from it again and again, perhaps even using her father's affection for her to her advantage. And Rhaenyra (understandably) grew tired of Alicent's treatment of her.

In light of that, what happened with Aemond inevitably had a massive impact on their situation, especially on Alicent, whose faith in Rhaenyra was already broken. Her son lost an eye (taken by one of Rhaenyra's kids). Rhaenyra refused to even acknowledge the magnitude of this offence, so quick to defend her kids (and their birthright), who would never do anything wrong and were simply defending themselves (despite there being 4 of them against Aemond) And even in such a dramatic circumstance, all Viserys cares about is protecting Rhaenyra from what essentially is, the truth.

So in my opinion Alicent is not only saying "it's not fair" because Rhaenyra constantly did things that were not "proper" and was never punished for it, what she's saying is more along the lines of "Rhaenyra abandoned me, betrayed me, punished me, hurt me, my son and others to fulfil her selfish goals and nobody ever punished her for it or even had the decency to admit that she might have been wrong".

Alicent is not questioning Rhaenyra's claim to the throne because she's a woman, she's questioning her integrity and wether or not she's trustworthy, she's doing it to protect herself and her children, who she feels could never be truly safe as long as Rhaenyra rules with Daemon by her side.

And feelings like these cannot be simply dismissed, not even with an apology, one must really work on rebuilding trust in each other in order to fix years of betrayal and mutual hurt and resentment, and sadly they just didn't get enough time to do it.

[bronanlynch]

managed to keep most of the categories fairly concise this week, please clap (this is partially bc I was busy and not doing as much ~media consumption as usual but shhh)

listening (podcast): as usual I am keeping up with Palisade, which really does just keep being So Much. you would think things might calm down after disarming every single sun-destroying bomb and assassinating a god-emperor but no things have not calmed down and it's great

also continuing to make my way through the Great Gundam Project episodes on 0079, which is making me miss those characters and especially Sayla :( I miss my girl :(

listening (music): did a lot of driving this past weekend which means listening to car CDs which means no new music. shout out to classic staples like Animal I Have Become by Three Days Grace and All Signs Point to Lauderdale by A Day to Remember, which is a genuinely good song but also the first line is literally "I hate this town" so adjust your opinion of my music taste accordingly

reading: once again reading The Death I Gave Him (sci-fi Hamlet retelling by Em X. Liu) which continues to fucking rule. I'm enjoying that the Ophelia figure is getting a little bit of a Laertes arc, which is fun, love it when Ophelia gets to be a bit vengeful as a treat

also, I've started reading The Imperial Uncle, a court intrigue danmei novel by Da Feng Gua Guo (published in English by the same people who published/translated Golden Terrace/Golden Stage, which is how I found out about it). I'm having a lot of fun with it so far, I'm always a fan of political intrigue, especially political intrigue that is also a family drama, and the premise of it is that the main character has a reputation as scheming & untrustworthy that he's leaning into in order to prevent a coup that his friends are planning, all of which is catnip to me personally. also I enjoy that not only is the main character married, as someone in his position in this context would have been expected to be, but he's also textually slept with people who aren't the love interest. I think that's fun! I like when characters have histories and exist in contexts! and also I sometimes get bored when the main couple have never had a single relationship other than each other sorry

watching: still keeping up with Bakeoff. I'm sad that Rowan & Nicky are gone because I really liked both of them, even if I think it was fair that they're the ones who left two weeks ago. I was a bit surprised that is was Dana this past week though, like I get why she was in the running to leave but I didn't think she did that badly, y'know? anyway, absolutely loved the theme. as a guy who loves desserts that aren't too sweet and also floral flavors, I enjoyed that they were doing botanicals. although I think more of them could've afforded to be a little more daring tbh like come on, hibiscus is a flavor that plenty of them already use in other challenges, get weirder with it. I don't blame people for shying away from rose because the judges are always talking about how they hate it when someone puts "too much" rose in something, but I love rose flavor so I think they're all cowards

we have also been watching more ZZ Gundam. we've gotten to the new opening, and I've gotta say, the first one was a lot more of a bop, but alas. I don't have a whole lot that's new to say because it's mostly like, I'm having fun, I like Judau and his friends, I miss Kamille and Char, I wish there weren't so much weird misogyny sometimes, I love to see Haman, etc. actually the main new thing I have to say is that the set of episodes where they're lost in the desert is like, it feels like they're trying to make a point about how it's bad that these people trying to live their lives have gotten caught up in the fighting between two imperial powers neither of whom care about the collateral damage because they're too busy trying to kill each other in giant death machines, but the show doesn't let the characters or the audience sit with that or allow much interiority for the people living in the village (other than the woman who was in love with one of the soldiers and wants to die while vindicating his choice to also pilot a giant death machine which. we don't have time to unpack all that) so Imo it falls flat as a critique and ends up wrapping back around to being kinda orientalist

also saw a play that was a comedy retelling of Dracula which was. well. overall it was mostly fun, it was campy, the costuming was delightful, I mostly had a good time despite a couple of pretty odd adaptational choices. however. there were parts of it that I did not enjoy and those parts were the transmisogyny. I wish I could say I was surprised that something that was billed as "gender-bending" and "for the gays and the theys" had some pretty uhhh blatant transmisogyny in it but. unfortunately here we are, and unfortunately marketing yourself as queer-friendly doesn't prevent you from having a running "joke" about how a female character played by a man is ugly & unlovable. it's uncomfortable and bad and kinda soured me on the play as a whole which is a shame because it could have been so good otherwise. what if we as a society decided to tell jokes that are actually funny instead of relying on transmisogynistic caricatures. what if.

playing: still on Ace Attorney 5, and now that Pearl is back it really feels like the people making this game were not confident that people would be invested in the new characters so they have to keep bringing back the old ones. I like Pearl! but we've had multiple games with Pearl already and Trucy has barely been in AA5 at all, so why can't we have Trucy as the assistant for the rest of this case? tbh I think this case especially would be stronger if the points of view you got were Athena and Apollo like, you can investigate as Apollo, Trucy tags along and then gives information to Athena even though he doesn't want her to, and then you play as Athena for the trial with Phoenix there for moral support. please Capcom. please I love Phoenix but it doesn't really feel like they're doing much with him here so I would rather focus on the new characters who haven't gotten as a much screentime instead

making: we've gotten to back to assembling Miorine. she has two eyebrows and a torso now (picture taken before we did the torso)

alas, poor Mi-Yorick

drinking: according to the internet some recipes for an aviation leave out the creme de violette which I think is a crime. that's the whole point. anyway. had a very good aviation which did in fact include the violette and it fucked. shout out to gin drinks that don't include tonic water

writing: worked on a fic for a zine check-in, got rejected from a different zine that I was really interested in. the epic highs and lows of trying to get your writing read by more people than your roommate and maybe a mutual or two

[rahleeyah]

So random thing I've been obsessing over all day. Do you think there's any possibility that Rafa doesn't know about the circumstances of Olivia's conception? Like I get that it seems unlikely, but I don't think there's ever been a scene with him in it where it came up. Like she probably told him, right? But what if she didn't and he found out now especially after that thing he said in the finale? Like no one throws her "father" in her face like that.

ohhhh this is really interesting. i can remember nick first finding out, and i can remember a scene with carisi and amanda on a rooftop witnessing liv explain about her father to someone, but i am wracking my brain and i can't remember a moment when she said it to rafa. i really can't.

and you're absolutely right that rafa's line about her father doesn't make any fucking sense; it's unnecessarily cruel, and reductive, and frankly stupid for a man as smart as rafa to say to someone he cares about. now, i don't think tptb were thinking about it this hard - it became apparent towards the end of last season that whoever was in charge had the emotional intelligence of a rutabaga and a quiet sort of misogyny i'm sure they would never acknowledge as such - but if we seek to rationalize their shitty decisions in a context that would actually make sense for the characters, this tracks, actually.

what if she didn't tell rafa? elliot knew from the time she arrived but she didn't tell nick when he came onboard, even when he directly asked about her father; she finally tells him later on, when the circumstances demand it of her. likewise i don't think we got a revelation moment for amanda or peter or carisi; it just came out in the narrative as needed without any fanfare. what if olivia, who by that point has known for years who her father was and what became of him, at this point in time when both her mother and her father have been dead for over a decade, isn't telling people any more? it was necessary in the beginning that she be honest about her motivations in joining svu, but by s13 those motivations have changed. it's not the driving force for her any more, and she has the closest thing to closure she's ever gonna get. she doesn't have to talk about it any more.

and if all rafa knows is that her dad wasn't around? oh that shit is delicious. bc it explains why he made such a cutting, insensitive remark to her, and it deepens the divide between what elliot knows about olivia/what rafa knows. i am here for this actually.

[pammydawes]

Wow! Sry for the wait folks I’m at 4:31 hours left in Hell Bent and I have Thots

🛑!!!SPOILERS BELOW!!!🛑🛑

It’s been so long that tbh I’m a little fuzzy on the details of where I left off but DANG…….that trip to hell???? Everything I hoped it would be!

I absolutely loved getting so many of the main team’s POVs, I’m hoping that on the return trip we can maybe get some more!! I am so curious abt the meaning of Babbitt rabbit being threaded through all their…..dreams? Visions? Experiences? Idk it’s hell man

The insight into Turner’s background left me feeling pretty broken. Cannot personally speak to the accuracy of Bardugo’s representation of the experience of a Black detective, but I thought it was moving.

Tripp’s backstory was intriguing! I actually know how to sail so the whole thing was pretty visceral to me, I wonder if Leigh has experience with boats bc the accuracy was impressive! Also Spencer can eat shit!

Whew….hellie’s POV. That was excellent. Just hearing how much she loved Alex already had me, but it’s rly the details of their relationship that I think Bardugo hits uk? Loved hearing abt Alex from the perspective of someone who loved her, because in NH darlington was predisposed not to care for her, and 90% of the other insight she hears comes from people who are underestimating her, judging her, or trying to kill her! So I’m glad that we got a glimpse of a diff perspective. Still hurt to re-live ground zero tho

In turner, Alex, and to some degree pammie’s cases, I can understand why they meet the criteria for murder, as justified as it was in some situations. It’s a little blurrier with Tripp, though, and I think an argument could be made that Pammie didn’t really murder her victim. So that leads me to think that maybe the murder requirement to get into hell is based more on a person’s own feelings of guilt or regret rather than some objective external judgement, which I think could have some interesting implications!

LOVE that darlington’s personal hell is trying to rebuild a ruined Black Elm, I feel like that illustrates both his love and hate for the house really well!! Nice nod to Sisyphus in Greek mythology also!

FINALLY some good wheelwalker content!!! Basically crumbs but I LOVE the imagery of Alex and the blue flames. I wonder why they’re blue?? Blue fire is supposed to be the hottest after white, right???

Anselm has rly done a magnificent job of disappointing me, which is somehow still very satisfying!! Honestly if he’s the next murder victim…….my condolences to his family ig

Love how everyone basically drags themselves out of hell completely distraught, having come so close to success only to fail, and Mercy is like great job team let’s get them in the next half!!

The demons………oof. Alex reuniting with Hellie was ROUGH man. Kind of cool how as the reader, Leigh put us in hellie’s head, which meant that when you start clocking that something’s off it’s not just like “next logical plot point”, it was like actually realizing something was wrong the same way Alex did. The hellie we got a glimpse of would NEVER say those things to alex!!! And we knew that not just bc Alex told us, but bc we actually got to read it and draw those conclusions ourselves.

I would bet my entire family that my prediction abt Lionel and the praetor is correct. They were 100% in love back in their school days and now demon Lionel is gonna kill the praetor via some gruesome/emotionally manipulative manner as literary comeuppance for his misogyny!

The talismans? Excellent. Superb. Dare I say, delightful. MORE COSMO EASTER EGGS. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I cannot wait to learn what that little guy’s deal is!!

The vampire’s visit…..uh oh. My theory is that Michelle is working for him, bc I feel like I remember her having a white umbrella at some point?? It’s a toss up whether she’s being coerced or doing it for her own benefit, I really couldn’t say. Maybe he’s turning her into a vampire?? And that’s how she’s connected to the murders???

I paused halfway through the return of Eitan, which I have mixed feelings abt tbh. I still keep feeling like his storyline is kinda tacked on needlessly, but I also do think he’s a fascinating character, so we’ll see how the rest of the convo goes. It’s also just like….Alex literally killed a room full of people that WERENT actively out to get her. What is the hold up here.

Love a good Lauren tidbit!! I’m curious to see how the rooming issue resolves. I would like for them to bring her into the fold somehow, but I also feel like the direction they’re going in is that Alex and Mercy are ultimately going to leave her out for her own protection, thereby alienating her and sacrificing their friendship. That’s definitely NOT my ideal outcome, though. Ideal would be Lauren getting to join them and get some character development. What can I say, I have a soft spot for the vinyl girlies bc…..I am one.

Now, to see what eitan has to say for himself! Next you hear from me will be, gasp……the end. I can’t believe it, I’ve been waiting for this book so long and idk if I’m ready for the next wait!!! Hhhhhnnnnng ok bye

[kiefbowl]

i think people (not feminists) find reasons to hate on GoT because it's very "white lady" show about white female empowerment in that sort of culture, which can become a little white savior-y. But i personally like the books and show(s) because they use interesting metaphors to show how women gain power. Like dragons representing Daenerys' propagandized exoticism as a woman, her motherhood, and her pedigree. And how people will overlook a clearly female "messiah" for the dudes with big swords and money.

Hmmm, idk if I completely agree with what you said or even understand it all but I'll go ahead and springboard off this anon to muse a bit about the whole GoT/ASOIAF deal.

To start: I am completely neutral on what other people have to say about ASOIAF. I love those books, I think there's a lot of good stuff in there, I don't think they gotta be read. If a woman (or anyone) doesn't want to read them, totally get it. If a woman (or anyone) reads them and is like "yuck that was bad", I get it! different strokes for different folks! I am also high key critical, too, but I love to be critical. I enjoy taking apart media, whether I like it or not. I don't think there's a single thing on this planet I love unequivocally top-down. Everything has something you can raise an eyebrow at.

more under cut bc it's long....

I think a lot of people, including me, have a lot of good reasons to hate GoT. GoT was a very good adaptation for about 3 seasons, and then dropped off in quality. I'm one of the few who thinks it started getting bad in season 4, while others like to say it was good even until season 6 or whatever. idk cause I gave up on it. They made wild choices that didn't make sense, and they seemed to make choices that were just to be more shocking and violent than they needed to be. For example, the Red Wedding is already insanely brutal and shocking, but for some reason they had to write in Robb's boring love story, cutting the political intrigue of his supposed set-up with his actual wife, just to show some ass and then show a pregnant woman get stabbed in the belly. That fucking sucks so bad. That's bad adaptation, bad writing, bad tv. And that was in season 3, which I already said was still pretty good adaptation. So I got annoyed with GoT good and early, both as a lover of the books and a lover of television in general. I dropped off, but I would keep tabs on it, and delighted in the shitty fuck up it became in seasons 7&8. Still, it's infuriating to know that when it comes to the general public perceptions of some of these characters, the TV show is going to reign supreme.

Now, some feminists might be surprised at some of the female fans of ASOIAF since it's also, like, extremely brutal, violent, and full of rape. And it's true, and GRRM also has made some choices that are just blech. I hate Dany's wedding night scene with Drogo. That was a bad bad choice that hasn't aged well and never will. I guess if I had to choose that scene and a brutally violent scene, I'd choose the one we have, but honestly it would have been better if he just didn't write it. It's also such a strange choice bc in her next chapter it makes it pretty clear Drogo is rough with her going forward, so idk if the wedding scene was part editor's choice or what but it just is so uncomfortable to read. So yeah, GRRM makes some choices that I hate.

But honestly, he makes a lot choices I like. He excels at his mission, which is to write "character's in conflict with the heart." He shines there. And he's created this unbelievably detailed world and history that is really astounding. And even his exploration of misogyny and sexual violence is sometimes quite deft, it's just that it can also be clunky or oblivious a few pages later. But, he's a man, it comes as no surprise. Kinda like how Victor Hugo could write about the horrors of prostitution sympathetically and then go and be a frequent john. Men being men.

And I think ASOIAF has gotten a bit of a bad rep unfairly. Not that it doesn't deserve criticisms, cause it does, and not that women should read it or have to love it, because obviously not. But I think it has a misrepresentation that proceeds it because of 1. the show, which is just it's own mess, and 2. the popularity of calling the books "feminist" at the height of the show's popularity as a reaction to criticisms. It's not feminist, it can never be feminists: it is written by a man.

But if you enjoy fantasy, and want a long and winding series that has unbelievably detailed political intrigue (like it's crazy how the smallest actions and characters still impact the story!), with a deep lore that is surprisingly true to life (not 1, not 2, not 3, but 4 different ethnic groups land in Westeros during it's history and they all matter to the culture, story, and plot?? insane I love it), and you want to be in the heads of female characters that treats their pain and suffering as real and important as best as a man could write it, well this has got some stuff for you to like. Otherwise, if you're meh on all of that and you don't want to read about sexual violence, skip it.

[army-of-mai-lovers]

in which I get progressively angrier at the various tropes of atla fandom misogyny

tbh I think it would serve all of us to have a larger conversation about the specific ways misogyny manifests in this fandom, because I’ve seen a lot of people who characterize themselves as feminists, many of whom are women themselves, discuss the female characters of atla/lok in misogynistic ways, and people don’t talk about it enough. 

disclaimer before I start: I’m not a woman, I’m an afab nonbinary person who is semi-closeted and thus often read as a woman. I’m speaking to things that I’ve seen that have made me uncomfy, but if any women (esp women existing along other axes of oppression, e.g. trans women, women of color, disabled women, etc) want to add onto this post, please do!

“This female character is a total badass but I’m not even a little bit interested in exploring her as a human being.” 

I’ve seen a lot of people say of various female characters in atla/lok, “I love her! She’s such a badass!” now, this statement on its own isn’t misogynistic, but it represents a pretty pervasive form of misogyny that I’ve seen leveled in large part toward the canon female love interests of one or both of the members of a popular gay ship (*cough* zukka *cough*) I’m going to use Suki as an example of this because I see it with her most often, but it can honestly be applied to nearly every female character in atla/lok. Basically, people will say that they stan Suki, but when it comes time to engage with her as an actual character, they refuse to do it. I’ve seen meta after meta about Zuko’s redemption arc, but I so rarely see people engage with Suki on any level beyond “look at this cool fight scene!” and yeah, I love a cool Suki fight scene as much as anybody else, but I’m also interested in meta and headcanons and fics about who she is as a person, when she isn’t an accessory to Sokka’s development or doing something cool. of course, the material for this kind of engagement with Suki is scant considering she doesn’t have a canon backstory (yet) (don’t let me down Faith Erin Hicks counting on you girl) but with the way I’ve seen people in this fandom expand upon canon to flesh out male characters, I know y’all have it in you to do more with Suki, and with all the female characters, than you currently do. frankly, the most engagement I’ve seen with Suki in mainstream fandom is justifying either zukki (which again, is characterizing her in relation to male characters, one of whom she barely interacts with in canon) or one of the Suki wlw pairings. which brings me to--

“I conveniently ship this female character whose canon love interest is one of the members of my favorite non-canon ship with another female character! gay rights!” 

now, I will admit, two of my favorite atla ships are yueki and mailee, and so I totally understand being interested in these characters’ dynamics, even if, as is the case with yueki, they’ve never interacted canonically. however, it becomes a problem for me when these ships are always in the background of a zukka fic. at some point, it becomes obvious that you like this ship because it gets either Zuko or Sokka’s female love interests out of the way, not because you actually think the characters would mesh well together. It’s bad form to dislike a female character because she gets in the way of your gay ship, so instead, you find another girl to pair her off with and call it a day. to be clear, I’m not saying that everybody who ships either mailee or yueki (or tysuki or maisuki or yumai or whatever other wlw rarepair involving Zuko or Sokka’s canon love interests) is nefariously trying to sideline a female character while acting publicly as if she’s is one of their faves--far from it--but it is noteworthy to me how difficult it is to find content that centers wlw ships, while it’s incredibly easy to find content that centers zukka in which mailee and/or yueki plays a background role. 

also, notice how little traction wlw Katara ships gain in this fandom. when’s the last time you saw yuetara on your dash? there’s no reason for wlw Katara ships to gain traction in a fandom that is so focused on Zuko and Sokka getting together, bc she doesn’t present an immediate obstacle to that goal (at least, not an obstacle that can be overcome by pairing her up with a woman). if you are primarily interested in Zuko and Sokka’s relationship, and your queer readings of other female characters are motivated by a desire to get them out of the way for zukka, then Katara’s canon m/f relationship isn’t a threat to you, and thus, there’s no reason to read her as potentially queer. Or even, really, to think about her at all. 

“Katara’s here but she’s not actually going to do anything, because deep down, I’m not interested in her as a person.” 

the show has an enormous amount of textual evidence to support the claim that Sokka and Katara are integral parts of each other’s lives. so, she typically makes some kind of appearance in zukka content. sometimes, her presence in the story is as an actual character with layers and nuance, someone whom Sokka cares about and who cares about Sokka in return, but also has her own life and goals outside of her brother (or other male characters, for that matter.) sometimes, however, she’s just there because halfway through writing the author remembered that Sokka actually has a sister who’s a huge part of the show they’re writing fanfiction for, and then they proceed to show her having a meetcute with Aang or helping Sokka through an emotional problem, without expressing wants or desires outside of those characters. I’m honestly really surprised that I haven’t seen more people calling out the fact that so much of Katara’s personality in fanon revolves around her connections to men? she’s Aang’s girlfriend, she’s Sokka’s sister, she’s Zuko’s bestie. never mind that in canon she spends an enormous amount of time fighting against (anachronistic, Westernized) sexism to establish herself as a person in her own right, outside of these connections. and that in canon she has such interesting complex relationships with other female characters (e.g. Toph, Kanna, Hama, Korra if you want to write lok content) or that there are a plethora of characters with whom she could have interesting relationships with in fanon (Mai, Suki, Ty Lee, Yue, Smellerbee, and if you want to write lok content, Kya II, Lin, Asami, Senna, etc). to me, the lack of fandom material exploring Katara’s relationships with other women or with herself speak to a profound indifference to Katara as a character. I’m not saying you have to like Katara or include her in everything you write, but I am asking you to consider why you don’t find her interesting outside of her relationships with men.

“I hate Katara because she talks about her mother dying too often.” 

this is something I’ve seen addressed by people far more qualified than I to address it, but I want to mention it here in part because when I asked people which fandom tropes they wanted me to talk about, this came up often, but also because I find it really disgusting that this is a thing that needs to be addressed at all. Y’all see a little girl who watched her mother be killed by the forces of an imperialist nation and say that she talks about it too much??? That is a formational, foundational event in a child’s life. Of course she’s going to talk about it. I’ve seen people say that she doesn’t talk about it that often, or that she only talks about it to connect with other victims of fn imperialism e.g. Jet and Haru, but frankly, she could speak about it every episode for no plot-significant reason whatsoever and I would still be angry to see people say she talks about it too much. And before you even bring up the Sokka comparison, people deal with grief in different ways. Sokka  repressed a lot of his grief/channeled it into being the “man” of his village because he knew that they would come for Katara next if he gave them the opportunity. he probably would talk about his mother more if a) he didn’t feel massive guilt at not being able to remember what she looked like, and b) he was allowed to be a child processing the loss of his mother instead of having to become a tiny adult when Hakoda had to leave to help fight the fn. And this gets into an intersection with fandom racism, in that white fans (esp white American fans) are incapable of relating to the structural trauma that both Sokka and Katara experience and thus can’t see the ways in which structural trauma colors every single aspect of both of their characters, leading them to flatten nuance and to have some really bad takes. And you know what, speaking of bad fandom takes--   

“Shitting on Mai because she gets in the way of my favorite Zuko ship is actually totally okay because she’s ~abusive~” 

y’all WHAT. 

ok listen, I get not liking maiko. I didn’t like it when I first got into fandom, and later I realized that while bryke cannot write romance to save their lives, fans who like maiko sure can, so I changed my tune. but if you still don’t like it, that’s fine. no skin off my back. 

what IS skin off my back is taking instances in which Mai had justified anger toward Zuko, and turning it into “Mai abused Zuko.” do you not realize how ridiculous you sound? this is another thing where I get so angry about it that I don’t know how useful my analysis is actually going to be, but I’ll do my best. numerous people have noted how analysis of Mai and Zuko’s breakup in “The Beach” or Mai being justifiably angry with him at Boiling Rock or her asking for FUCKING FRUIT in “Nightmares and Daydreams” that says that all of these events were her trying to gain control over him is....ahhh...lacking in reading comprehension, but I’d like to go a step further and talk about why y’all are so intent on taking down a girl who doesn’t show emotion in normative ways. obviously, there’s a “Zuko can do no wrong” aspect to Mai criticism (which is super weird considering how his whole arc is about how he can do lots of wrong and he has to atone for the wrong that he’s done--but that’s a separate post.) But I also see slandering Mai for not expressing her emotions normatively and not putting up with Zuko’s shit and slandering Katara for “talking about her mother too often” as two sides of the same coin. In both cases, a female character expresses emotions that make you, the viewer, uncomfortable, and so instead of attempting to understand where those emotions may have come from and why they might be manifesting the way they are, y’all just throw the whole character away. this is another instance of people in the fandom being fundamentally disinterested in engaging with the female characters of atla in a real way, except instead of shallowly “stanning” Mai, y’all hate her. so we get to this point where female characters are flattened into one of two things: perfect queens who can do no wrong, or bitches. and that’s not who they are. that’s not who anyone is. but while we as a fandom are pretty good at understanding b1 Zuko’s actions as layered and multifaceted even though he’s essentially an asshole then, few are willing to lend the same grace to any female character, least of all Mai. 

and what’s funny is sometimes this trope will intersect with “I conveniently ship this female character whose canon love interest is one of the members of my favorite non-canon ship with another female character! gay rights!”, so you’ll have someone actively calling Mai toxic/problematic/abusive, and at the same time ship her with Ty Lee? make it make sense! but then again, maybe that’s happening because y’all are fundamentally disinterested in Ty Lee as a character too. 

“I love Ty Lee so much that I’m going to treat her like an infantilized hypersexual airhead!” 

there are so many things happening in y’alls characterization of Ty Lee that I struggled to synthesize it into one quippy section header. on one hand, you have the hypersexualization, and on the other hand, you have the infantilization, which just makes the hypersexualization that much worse. 

(of course, sexualizing or hypersexualizing ANY atla character is really not the move, considering that these are child characters in a children’s show, but then again, that’s a separate post.) 

now, I understand how, from a very, very surface reading of the text, you could come to the conclusion that Ty Lee is an uncomplicated bimbo. if you grew up on Western media the way I did, you’ll know that Ty Lee has a lot of the character traits we associate with bimbos: the form-fitting pink crop top, the general conventional attractiveness, the ditzy dialogue. but if you think about it for more than three seconds, you’ll understand that Ty Lee has spent her whole life walking a tightrope, trying to please Azula and the rest of the royal family while also staying true to herself. Ty Lee and Azula’s relationship is a really complex and interesting topic that I don’t really have time to explore at the moment given how long this post is, but I’d argue that Ty Lee’s constant, vocal  adulation is at least partially a product of learning to survive at court at an early age. Like Mai, she has been forced to regulate her emotions as a member of fn nobility, but unlike Mai, she also has six sisters who look exactly like her, so she has a motivation to be more peppy and more affectionate to stand out. 

fandom does not do the work to understand Ty Lee. as is a theme with this post, fandom is actively disinterested in investigating female characters beyond a very surface level reading of them. Thus, fandom takes Ty Lee’s surface level qualities--her love of the color pink, her revealing standard outfit, and the fact that once she found a boy attractive and also once a lot of boys found her attractive--and they stretch this into “Ty Lee is basically Karen Smith from Mean Girls.” thus, Ty Lee is painted as a bimbo, or more specifically, as not smart, uncritically adoring of Azula (did y’all forget all the non-zukka bits of Boiling Rock?), and attractive to the point of hypersexualization. I saw somebody make a post that was like “I wish mailee was more popular but I’m also glad it isn’t because otherwise people would write it as Mai having to put up with her dumb gf” and honestly I have to agree!! this is one instance in which I’m glad that fandom doesn’t discuss one of my favorite characters that often because I hate the fanon interpretation of Ty Lee, I think it’s rooted in misogyny (particularly misogyny against East Asian women, which often takes the form of fetishizing them and viewing them only through a Western white male gaze)  

(side note: here at army-of-mai-lovers, we stan bimbos. bimbos are fucking awesome. I personally don’t read Ty Lee as a bimbo, but if that’s you, that’s fucking awesome. keep doing what you’re doing, queen <3 or king or monarch, it’s 2021, anyone can be a bimbo, bitches <3)

“Toph can and will destroy everyone here with her bare hands because she’s a meathead who likes to murder people and that’s it!”  

Toph is, and always has been, one of my favorite ATLA characters. My very first fic in fandom was about her, and she appears prominently in a lot of my other work as well. One thing that I am always struck by with Toph is how big a heart she has. She’s independent, yes, snarky, yes, but she cares about people--even the family that forced her to make herself smaller because they didn’t believe that their blind daughter could be powerful and strong. Her storyline is powerful and emotionally resonant, her bending is cool precisely because it’s based in a “wait and listen” approach instead of just smashing things indiscriminately, she’s great disabled rep, and overall one of the best characters in the show. 

And in fandom, she gets flattened into “snarky murder child.” 

So where does this come from? Well, as we all know, Toph was originally conceived of as a male character, and retained a lot of androgyny (or as the kids call it, Gender) when she was rewritten as a female character. There are a lot of cultural ideas about androgynous/butch women being violent, and people in fandom seem to connect that larger cultural narrative with some of Toph’s more violent moments in the show to create the meathead murder child trope, erasing her canon emotionality, softness, heart, and femininity in the process. 

This is not to say that you shouldn’t write or characterize Toph as being violent or snarky at all ever, because yeah, Toph definitely did do Earth Rumbles a lot before joining the gaang, and yeah, Toph is definitely a sarcastic person who makes fun of her friends a lot. What I am saying is that people take these traits, sans the emotional logic, marry them to their conception of androgynous/butch women as violent/unemotional/uncaring, and thus create a caricature of Toph that is not at all up to snuff. When I see Toph as a side character in a fic (because yeah, Toph never gets to be a main character, because why would a fandom obsessed with one male character in particular ever make Toph a protagonist in her own right?) she’s making fun of people, killing people, pranking people, etc, etc. She’s never talking to people about her emotions, or palling around with her found family, or showing that she cares about her friends. Everything about her relationship with her parents, her disability, her relationship to Gender, and her love of her friends is shoved aside to focus on a version of Toph that is mean and uncaring because people have gotten it into their heads that androgynous/butch women are mean and uncaring. 

again, we see a female character who does not emote normatively or in a way that makes you, the viewer, comfortable, and so you warp her character until she’s completely unrecognizable and flat. and for what? 

Azula

no, I didn’t come up with a snappy name for this section, mainly because fanon interpretations of Azula and my own feelings toward the character are...complicated. I know there were some people who wanted me to write about Azula and the intersection of misogyny and ableism in fanon interpretations of her character, but I don’t think I can deliver on that because I personally am in a period of transition with how I see Azula. that is to say, while I still like her and believe that she can be redeemed, there is a lot of merit to disliking her. the whole point of this post is that the female characters of ATLA are complex people whom the fandom flattens into stereotypes that don’t hold up to scrutiny, or dislike for reasons that don’t make sense. Azula, however, is a different case. the rise of Azula defenders and Azula stans has led to this sentiment that Azula is a 14 y/o abuse victim who shouldn’t be held accountable for her actions. it seems to me that people are reacting to a long, horrible legacy of male ATLA fans armchair diagnosing Azula with various personality disorders (and suggesting that people with those personality disorders are inherently monstrous and unlovable which ahhhh....yikes) and then saying that those personality disorders make her unlovable, which is quite obviously bad. and hey, I get loving a character that everyone else hates and maybe getting so swept up in that love that you forget that your fave is complicated and has made some unsavory choices. it sucks that fanon takes these well-written, complex villains/antiheroes and turns them into monsters with no critical thought whatsoever. but the attitude among Azula stans that her redemption shouldn’t be hard, that her being a child excuses all of the bad things that she’s done, that she is owed redemption....all of that rubs me the wrong way. I might make another post about this in the future that discusses this in more depth, but as it stands now: while I understand that there is a legacy of misogynistic, ableist, unnuanced takes on Azula, the backlash to that does not take into account the people she hurt or the fact that in ATLA she does not make the choice to pursue redemption. and yes, Zuko had help in making that choice that Azula didn’t, and yes, Azula is a victim of abuse, but in a show about children who have gone through untold horrors and still work to better the lives of the people around them, that is not enough for me to uncritically stan her. 

Conclusion    

misogyny in this fandom runs rampant. while there are some tropes of fandom misogyny that are well-documented and have been debunked numerous times, there are other, subtler forms of misogyny that as far as I know have gone completely unchecked. 

what I find so interesting about misogyny in atla fandom is that it’s clear that it’s perpetrated by people who are aware of fandom misogyny who are actively trying not to be misogynistic. when I first joined atla fandom last summer, memes about how zukka fandom was better than every other fandom because they didn’t hate the female characters who got in the way of their gay ship were extremely prevalent, and there was this sense that *this* fandom was going to model respectful, fun, feminist online fandom. not all of the topes I’ve outlined are exclusive to or even largely utilized in zukka fandom, but a lot of them are. I’ve been in and out of fandom since I was eleven years old, and most of the fandom spaces I’ve been in have been majority-female, and all of them have been incredibly misogynistic. and I always want to know why. why, in these communities created in large part by women, in large part for women, does misogyny run wild? what I realize now is that there’s never going to be a one-size fits all answer to that question. what’s true for 1D fandom on Wattpad in 2012 is absolutely not true for atla fandom on tumblr in 2021. the answers that I’ve cobbled together for previous fandoms don’t work here. 

so, why is atla fandom like this? why did the dream of a feminist fandom almost entirely focused on the romantic relationship between two male characters fall apart? honestly, I think the notion that zukka fandom ever was this way was horrifically ignorant to begin with. from my very first moment in the fandom, I was seeing racism, widespread sexualization of minors, and yes, misogyny. these aspects of the fandom weren’t talked about as much as the crocverse or other, much more fun aspects. further, atla (specifically zukka) fandom misogyny often doesn’t look like the fandom misogyny we’ve become familiar with from like, Sherlock fandom or what have you. for the most part, people don’t actively hate Suki, they just “stan” without actually caring about her. they hate Mai because they believe in treating male victims of abuse equally. they’re not characterizing Toph poorly, they’re writing her as a “strong woman.” in short, people are misogynistic, and then invoke a shallow, incomplete interpretation of feminist theory to shield themselves from accusations of misogyny. it’s not unlike the way some people will invoke a shallow, incomplete interpretation of critical race theory to shield themselves from accusations of racism, or how they’ll talk about “freedom of speech” and “the suppression of women’s sexuality” to justify sexualizing minors. the performance of feminism and antiracism is what’s important, not the actual practice. 

if you’ve made it this far, first off, hi, thanks so much for reading, I know this was a lot. second, I would seriously encourage you to be aware of these fandom tropes and to call them out when you see them. elevate the voices of fans who do the work of bringing the female characters of atla to life. invest in the wlw ships in this fandom. drop a kudos and a comment on a rangshi fic (please, drop a kudos and a comment on a rangshi fic). read some yuetara. let’s all be honest about where we are now, and try to do better in the future. I believe in us.