#and putting up with misogyny and being sidelined and ridiculed

[langernameohnebedeutung]

Herbert West Reanimator lesbian stage-play adaptation when???

[stupidrant]

Thank you for tackling another facet of fandom's misogyny which is justifying the hatred for and dismissal of story important female characters and their no less important relationships with male leads by means of invented (and often completely ridiculous) M/M ships. Hei**tre*s is a perfect example of that as it's preferred over a canon romantic storyline for Atreus (which is Atreus/Angrboda). Whereas Heimdall is worshiped and prioritized over Angrboda despite the fact that he is a textbook filler character and a stereotypical two dimensional secondary antagonist "who dies first".

Yet Angrboda whose every single scene brings something new to the story or moves the plot and whose interactions with Atreus are so vital to said plot you cannot omit a single one of them without the game becoming completely different and Atreus's arc crumbling and losing logic, cohesion and sense is dismissed as "boring".

This is that "woke misogyny" that we discussed before (and proves yet again how gamebros and "progressives" are in fact the two sides of the same bigoted coin, just like Alphas and Nice Guys).

Furthermore, this "progressive misogyny" pattern often includes those people making up "arguments" as to why male lead's relationship with a multi-faceted female character is supposedly "unhealthy" or "forced" (which is laughable given their own fanon ships have zero basis in canon). But their imagined M/M ship is somehow "complex and inspiring" because they want a male character they (often undeservedly) put on a pedestal (in this case Heimdall) to get a trophy in the form of another character (Atreus). Whom they - and that's the most absurd part - often also hate as much as they do his canon female love interest. But deem this "worthless and annoying fun-sponge" to be good enough to be a prize for their favourite man.

It's the same toxic thinking that, within the non-romantic realm, reduced Atreus to Kratos's prize and then concluded he wasn't worth becoming one. However, trolls decided that Atreus still might fulfill their fantasy of Thrud/Atreus or Heimdall/Atreus and become a prize for one of them. That's why their favourite moments in their interactions is when Thrud or Heimdall exert physical violence against Atreus and "put that runt in place".

Meanwhile, Angrboda is also seen as an "unworthy" prize, just for Atreus. It all boils down to dehumanization and treating one character as an accessory for another (and shoes how sexism affects characters regardless of gender, just in a different way). That's why canon Atreboda makes trolls so angry as it's an equal and supportive relationship for both of them.

You are also correct in seeing the potential in Skjoldr, sadly, likely becoming that glorified secondary male character whom trolls might use as a perfect cover for their misogyny. So they could continue dismissing or putting down Angrboda to prop up Atreus's interactions with Skjoldr and Thrud. Another scenario that isn't out of the realm of possibility is, as you noted, Atreus forming a trio with Skjoldr and Thrud, with Angrboda being pushed to sidelines.

Now, obviously, canonically neither Skjoldr nor Thrud would ever become Atreus's love interests and are most likely going to have a romantic arc of their own, with one another. But before it happens or in the process of it happening the writers/developers might opt for the "bros over romance" route in regards to A/T/S trio vs Atreboda relationship. It's all the more plausible if the other, grim scenario I suggested before comes to pass and Skjoldr is ultimately sacrificed for Thrud's angst (and, in this case, Atreus's as well, in a platonic sense).

With the criticism she gets, i think they will go against the “bros over atreboda” thing. I think atreboda will be a bigger focus and understandably so (or at least im hoping they will. as i said before, they continued with atreus despite trolls. Im expecting them to do the same with angrboda) I’ve noticed most main (or only) love interests get treated like this. And its usually the female ones in particular. i dont understand why so many people hate on them all the time? Its not like theyre always the same yet there is smth “unappealing” to so many people about said love interests all the time. I wonder if it has to do with the “not like other girls” sort of thing..

[yeraskier]

i think the point of the witcher tags in that post and your question is that the witcher has plenty of interesting female characters and revolves around them (literally is about ciri) and jaskier has been brought up many times as an example of a kind of side character being focused on instead of them. the issue of racism and double standards has been noticed and addressed by many people in the fandom (for example the ridiculous excuses that have been used by yen haters to justify racism and misogyny). however this doesn't excuse active hate for jaskier or any other character and it's nice to see you have not been exposed to the negative sides of the fandom (greatly enhanced by twitter and reddit). it is a dark corner that every fandom unfortunately has and has led many people away. it's good to see more people especially after s2 focusing on their favorite characters and not putting them against each other while also exploring fringilla and other characters generally sidelined. also needing a realistical (not fanon based) character development/arc for, say, jaskier or geralt, doesn't exclude you liking female characters who have a satisfying one like yen, fringilla etc and will develop even more (with a bit of good writing). it's good to make sure the reasons you don't like/focus on a character have not to do with their gender or race etc and then just go your own way and curate your fandom experience based on your preferences (uh this is long sorry if it doesn't make sense and wasn't asked for in the first place, you don't have to reply of course i only tried to explain it both for you and myself <3)

i do see what you mean by that. i see a lot more posts about jaskier than any woman in the show despite him having less scenes than them, so it is understandably bothersome. i just feel that it is also unfair to be angry with people for who they find comfort in.

people saying that jaskier stans sideline the main female characters is unsettling for me for the simple fact that this doesn't seem to be intentional on anyone's part. i think that they genuinely just love him more and speak of him more because of it. there are some out there who are genuinely misogynistic and/or racist (i have thankfully not come across those people but i know that they exist) but i feel like there may be a generalization going around that most or all jaskier stans actively put him on a pedestal him to lessen the importance of the female leads (at least that's what the anti posts seem to be saying) and that upsets me. many people adore him and want to express that, so it just makes me feel uneasy when innocent admiration is being skewed into something it isnt.

i really hope none of this came out as rude or offensive, i just wanted to elaborate on why the main reason behind anti jaskier got to me. i feel like i was talking about jaskier as a character a lot in my original post, but because most of the problems with his character come from both parts of the fandom, i thought maybe i should speak of the fandom itself.

[miraculouscontent]

(non-ml asks)

Anonymous said:

So the Pokémon anniversary a couple of weeks back showed two very different takes in the future of Pokémon. What are your thoughts on the Sinnoh remakes and Legends Arceus?

I really hate the Sinnoh remakes. It’s not that I hate the chibi style (I mean, Pokemon started that way), but like--remake the game but just make it “the 2D game but 3D”???? Why? And it feels disrespectful because every other remake has used the style of the other games they were in (so FRLG looked like RSE, HGSS looked like DPPt, ORAS looked like XY, and most of the time, the remakes looked outright better than the style they were based on). It’s a shame because I really wanted to see an improvement from Sword and Shield, which didn’t engage/interest me and... I don’t know if this will make total sense, but instead of an upgrade from Sun & Moon, it feels like an upgrade of XY? Like, XY’s problems but with better proportions.

I’m cautiously optimistic for Legends Arceus, if only because, “YES, AN ACTUALLY SINGLE GAME INSTEAD OF THE DUAL STUFF THEY KEEP PULLING” (which was absolutely unacceptable when they got to console stuff). I actually didn’t notice the framedrop issues because I’m used to running games on a laptop that clearly isn’t made for them, so I’m sort of immune to it. I haven’t decided if I’ll get it for sure but the premise intrigues me and I really like Arceus.

Anonymous said:

How is Moroha the Marinette of Inuyasha?

- needlessly tormented by the narrative

- things that other people do to her don’t get addressed

- people closest to her are usually awful

- awesomely overpowered yet narrative will constantly have her screw up and put her down/make her feel worthless

- gets sidelined/ignored in favor of other characters

Anonymous said:

In one of your Askplosions(don't remember which one, sorry), you said that you can't stand the Tomboy Lesbian stereotype, which, to be honest, I kind of agree with. But what about Tomboy Bisexual? I guess it's not as bad if a female character's tomboyishness/girlishness isn't used as a clue as to her sexuality(like "you know she's a lesbian because she's BUTCH!!!"), but there aren't really stereotypes associated with being bi that are based in masculinity or femininity(due to bi erasure sadly.).

kfdngjdfgd I like how you had to had that bis don’t easily get stereotypes as much due to bi erasure because you’re absolutely right.

“Tombis” are fine, I have no problem with them. Any stereotype to avoid then are just the general bi stereotypes.

Anonymous said:

I was just reading TV Tropes' page for "Gratuitous Princess" and holy shit the sexism on display here is really nauseating. It's exactly like "Improbably Female Cast"(there are too many female characters here and it's uncalled for, despite it being okay for characters to predominantly be men), in that it's basically insulting any story that has anything to do with princesses at all by saying it "isn't needed". TV Tropes has always had a way of including underhanded sexism when talking about female-dominated/aimed works or tropes having to do with female characters or anything designed to appeal to female audiences; the more feminine, the more ridiculed it is by TV Tropes, despite claiming to believe otherwise.

Similar to how I complained about their "Improbably Female Cast" trope, Gratuitous Princess claims that stories with "more princesses than is plausible for the setting" are this trope because any abundance of princesses is somehow bad or doesn't make sense, even if it would make sense for there to be that many princesses/all the characters to be princesses.

For example, they claim that an entire school of princesses is implausible and "gratuitous", but if the school is intentionally meant to be a "royal" school for girls to learn to be princesses(whether or not they were actually born into royalty), then it's not actually gratuitous and makes sense within the setting! If the story follows a monarchy, it makes sense to have lots of princesses, especially if it's aimed at young girls.

If the main characters are a group of normal girls who wish they were princesses and the story follows "fantastical" versions of their imaginary princess selves, then that also makes sense, especially if the story has "every girl can be a princess" as their moral or something. There's nothing wrong with stories like that, but TV Tropes claims they're unnecessary because anything involving princesses(stuff little girls like) are automatically shoehorned in.

Just look at the examples, which are all written in an unnecessarily derogatory way, with statements such as "for some reason, she's called a princess", or "the rulers should be queens, and yet they're princesses"(when it COULD just be a principality; do your research, TV Tropes), or "how this has anything to do with princessing is never explained", as if the mere fact that she's a princess is something bad or worthy of scorn.

They even claim Sailor Moon is this trope when Naoko Takeuchi simply wanted the story to revolve around a group of girls who just so happened to be reincarnated princesses who ruled over their respective planet. It's supposed to be a girl power wish fulfillment fantasy that appeals teenage girls by showing all the girly things they like as implements of power!

And yet TV Tropes disses it for just that, because anything that's made to appeal to girls can't ever make sense. Now, if they were complaining about how, in aggregate, shows about princesses or in which every female character is a princess can reinforce the notion that the only way for a female character to be noteworthy in any way is if she's a princess, then that would be different, but that's not what's happening. They're dissing princess stories just for existing. No matter what, TV Tropes always finds something bad to say about female-driven storylines.

Always. Just look at their page for "Most Fanfic Writers Are Girls", "Pony Tale", and "Frills of Justice". There's always a mean-spirited undertone, as if they hate the very idea of these stories and narrative devices existing just because they're designed to appeal to little girls. I'm not saying you're never allowed to critique those stories the way you would any other, it's just the WAY TV Tropes does it. They're not critiquing, they're sarcastically mocking. They're going about it all wrong! And it's especially obvious when they never do it to boys' shows, even though those shows often do have messages that can actually be harmful and even ignore or objectify women. But I guess the latter is why they don't care. Boys will be boys, am I right?

Oh joy, internalized/intentional misogyny!

Ugh, I’ve been lucky enough to stay away from those articles on TV Tropes. I hate it when opinions clearly start seeping into the article.

For example, “Kiss Your Hand” (I think that’s the name) sums up the whole “hand kissing” thing and goes into detail about how nowadays it’s considered more uncomfortable/creepy, which isn’t necessarily an opinion but just detailing how the times have changed.

AND JUST LET US FEMALES HAVE GIRL SHOWS WITHOUT MAKING BACKHANDED COMMENTS.

It’s the same thing with stuff like “chick flicks,” y’know? Maybe it’s just been having to hang out with my father and hearing him make dumb blond jokes and talks about how chick flicks are boring/bad but UGH, I’m sick of it.

Anonymous said:

Hi, so I was thinking about what you said about how there aren't words for guys who act either masculine or feminine, and I agree, it's totally unfair, but technically feminine boys are called janegirls(or femboys, I don't know if that's specifically an LGBTQ+ term or not, so excuse me if it is, but I've heard it used this way before), or tomgirls(even though last time I checked, the term "tomgirl" referred to either a girly tomboy or a tomboyish girly girl, but I digress).

As for masculine guys, I'm not so sure there's a term for it, I guess since deviation from masculinity is less acceptable for men than deviation from femininity is for women(because, you know, femininity=lesser. ;(), although there IS the term "macho"...but that tends to be used in a derogatory sense nowadays. I've also heard "boys' boy", "manly man", etc. TV Tropes has a trope called "Sensitive Guy and Manly Man" as the male counterpart to Tomboy and Girly Girl. So I guess there are terms.

I also just wanted to add that the term "tomboy" technically was originally a male phrase to describe a young boy who was boisterous, loud, mischievous, and out-of-control; in other words, a misbehaved, trouble kid. I don't know how or when it got attributed to girls, I think there was the term tomgirl at one point(though now it's just used for an in-between type of girl), but even that is barely used anymore. Not sure where or when the term "girly girl" came about, though, sorry to say. ;(

Yeah, that’s true. I’ve honestly never heard the term “janegirls” before, but I’d prefer if a “““masculine”““ girl was just called “tomgirl” instead. It feels less like “girl acting like a boy” and--yeah, calling a girl one thing or another just makes it look like they’re “““different”““ from “““normal girls”““ and I just roll my eyes.

Anonymous said:

Hi, I know the post you're talking about(in your fourth non-ml Askplosion) about a boy who related more to female characters! It was on BoredPanda and it was by Damian Alexander(it can also be found on his official Tumblr), and it was called "Guy Illustrates How Boys Develop Sexism From Seemingly Small Interactions With Adults" and it was all about how he loved female characters like Matilda, Alice, Mulan, Dorothy, Anne of Green Gables, and The Powerpuff Girls, and was routinely made fun of and discouraged from liking them, even from the teacher, who assigned everybody a paper(I mean not really they were probably in pre/elementary school but whatevs) about a fictional character they looked up to, but wouldn't let Damian write about Matilda, even though she let girls write about Spiderman, Harry Potter, and Peter Pan. And he basically talked about how this kind of societal attitude conditions boys to see girls as inferior and not worthy of being looked up to. It's really interesting.

Thank you! Now people can maybe go read it~

Anonymous said:

So you talked about how shows for women are considered lame and overdramatic, while shows for men are allowed to sexualize women and still be seen as good because they're MANLY, and it just reminded me of how TV Tropes has a page called "So You Want To Write A Shonen Series" and one of their points was literally that since teenage boys are horny, they'll relate to a male lead that pervs on girls and peeps on them dressing, but that you shouldn't have the girl be aware or actually hit the boy, because that has Unfortunate Implications. What were those Unfortunate Implications according to TV Tropes, you ask? Double Standard Abuse: Female-on-Male. Wow. So basically they're saying it's perfectly okay for a boy to sexually harass a girl and show absolutely no respect for her privacy because it's what "all" teenage boys want to see/do, but the second a girl actually defends her agency it's a bad thing, and they have the NERVE to say it's sexist against BOYS on top of that. Ugh. I just...

S...sexist against boys...

I can’t--I just--

Also, cue the girl punching/hitting and then the girl is immediately considering “aggressive” for defending herself from being perved on, and even if people say that the girl didn’t deserve to be perved on, they’ll be like, “bUT SHE DIDN’T HAVE TO GO tHaT fAr.”

Anonymous said:

I just realized something: the term "uncanny valley" literally comes from the Japanese words "bukimi no tani", meaning we LITERALLY wouldn't have the English term without the Japanese one. So, yeah, tropers can shut the fuck up now about tropes having Japanese names because "no one will know what it means!". -_-

These people DO know that words in the English language are compromised/inspired by a bunch of other languages, right???

eggchjf said:

someone probably pointed this out but ALSO not only does Marinette have Homura's VA, but Alya is voiced by Mami's VA (Carrie Keranen)

why did you have to ruin everything for me

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh

Anonymous said:

Hi, I'm the Madoka salt anon. And I just wanted to say that I'm really sorry for bombarding you with all those asks. I didn't mean to be a "monster", I guess I just got carried away because, let's face it: there aren't a lot of people who dislike this show. Almost everyone glorifies this show as feminist empowerment while dismissing other Magical Girl shows as lesser than or somehow less feminist despite being written by women for women. These people won't give female authors the time of day and so when a man shows up suddenly they jump on the Magical Girl Fan bandwagon and praise it for doing what the genre has already done.

And when you do hear a different opinion, that person gets told off, insulted, blocked, downvoted, whatever because how dare you hate this show written by men for men rather than the stuff written by women for women? I once saw someone on Quora ask why Madoka was so popular when all it did was use the cliche "time loops" concept in so many other plots, and the response was literally "You didn’t know what you were looking at, so mistook your opinion for relevant commentary."

Let that sink in. If you don't agree with people who like Madoka Magica, it's because you're simply too dumb to understand how deep and complex it is, and your opinion doesn't matter. I've also heard the similar "You have no idea what you just watched" or "You're not smart enough to understand it" or "It's too complicated for you" nonsense and I hate it. Because most of what Madoka does isn't even that twisted or hard to understand; it's relatively simple when you look at it. The show just makes it dark. Monsters stealing energy from teenage girls? Sailor Moon did that and did it better(and didn't just go after teenage girls/women, so it wasn't based off sexism and "teenage girls are hysterical"). Hardships of being a magical girl? Girls uniting against evil? Female friendships/romance? So many other Magical Girl shows did that, too.

Come to think of it, Madoka Magica didn't even have the girls fight back against the system because only Madoka found a way out and purified the girls souls? Girl realizes she's been going about being a hero the wrong way and is confronted with her own selfishness? Look at Utena, which mastered this much more skillfully. Magical girl gets in a love triangle with another girl, vies for the affection of a fragile white-haired boy, and loses? Princess Tutu, except that the other girl was also a Magical Girl, they became friends and actually rebelled against the system together, and Ahiru(aka Princess Tutu) didn't fall into the pit of despair because girls should be punished for their sexualities and compete against each other for men and if a guy doesn't like you, you're worthless.

Even the whole "these girls are liches" thing wasn't very complex and well-handled as a lot of people like to think: the gems are called Soul Gems because your soul is in a gem. Wow. So clever. And they're Grief Seeds because they're seeds released from grievous witches. Also(not) clever. Even the fact that the acronyms are reversed(SG, GS) because Magical Girls turn into witches just made me go "yawn, I get it".

The whole show is just very lazily done and designed and tries too hard to be scary and deep and complex and "not like those other Magical Girl shows" while also trying too hard to make the girls super cute but also super badass so that we both are led to think it's a traditional Magical Girl show AND feel bad when these girls die because whoops they weren't so strong and badass after all!

Not to mention the whole "Magical Girls become witches just like how girls become women" thing really pisses me off because it shits on the whole coming-of-age aspect of Magical Girl as well(strong girls embracing their agency as they prepare to enter womanhood) by instead demonizing the very concept so that "becoming a woman" is a bad, vile, horrible thing(because being a woman makes you "more powerful", so the more powerful a woman is, the more mentally unstable she is) and then topping it off by having Madoka save the girls from becoming witches, aka women, making sure they never achieve a more mature state and maintain a level of childlike naivete.

It has so many misogynistic themes and concepts(girls are emotional, girls are weak-willed, girls are impressionable, girls shouldn't be selfish, girls shouldn't try to be heroes, girls should be pit against each other especially over a guy, girls shouldn't achieve power or become women, and more, and more, and more), that are stated matter-of-factly within the story and always proven right by the narrative, and yet people gobble it up and anytime somebody points it out, they are met with utter hostility.

Some people even defend it by saying those things are true! People only like Madoka because it's written by a man and depicts women suffering, in a genre written by women and meant to empower girls, which they don't like. And also because anything a man writes is automatically deeper and more valid than anything a woman writes.

So that's why when I found out that you didn't like Madoka either I was more than happy to discuss it with you, but I realize now that I was going overboard. I was just so happy that there was someone who agreed with me and actually understood what I was trying to say and found it problematic, and the fact that you say you're not that well-versed in Magical Girl proves my point even more because you don't even have to watch much Magical Girl to know that this is fucked up.

If you want me to stop sending Madoka salt asks, then fine. I'll stop. I didn't mean to bother you with these asks, I just wanted to see your point of view on Madoka Magica when everybody else is singing its praises left and right and never stopping once to actually think about it(while also claiming that people who don't like it are the ones "not thinking".). Hearing someone who's actually critical of this nonsense show is refreshing.

Firstly thank you for the ask! It’s honestly not your fault, I’ve just been struggling a bit lately with ask overloads.

That doesn’t necessarily mean I want you to stop, but I’d rather discuss it over Tumblr DMs so things are more balanced. Walls of text can be a little overwhelming for me (that’s why sometimes I try to balance my own walls of text with screenshots).

Anonymous said:

I've been thinking of how much I hate the misogyny in Puella Magi Madoka Magica, so I decided that instead of just salting about it(even though I still do from time to time because they're legitimate critiques and boy is it fun), I'm going to start talking about what I would do to improve it. Now doing this may mean it won't be the "dark" anime many people have wanted it to be, but I've been thinking of it for a while and it's my personal opinion, so let's get to it:

First, I would still have the Incubators, though they would probably have a different name because the name "Incubator" is pretty skeevy and part of a lot of the misogyny in the show. They would still recruit magical girls(who are called "Puellae Magi" in-universe, at least in the English dub and possibly some other dubs as well), only they do it for a different reason: Incubators go after teenage girls who are leading rough, difficult lives, and the magical girl contracts help them to improve their lives and give them a reason to live. They still make wishes, but the wishes don't screw them over because of their secret "selfishness".

However, if a potential magical girl is unclear or unsure of what she truly wishes for, this may lead things to go haywire. Basically, the whole magical girl thing is more heartwarming and the Incubators truly want to help the ladies in need, not just leech off of them. There's also no Soul Gems, or at least, their souls aren't actually in the Gems. They're called such because the Gems are powered by their Souls, and rather than the girls losing consciousness and "dying" when their Gems are too far apart from them, they simply lose their ability to perform magic and their magic becomes weaker. They still have stronger bodies though, much stronger than average humans, because becoming a magical girl gives them super strength/speed/stamina and all that, just WITHOUT making them liches.

Their Gems are non-interchangeable, so you can only use your own, not another girl's. As for the witches, they still exist, but witches weren't the intention of the Incubators; they're due to a botched experiment and it's up to magical girls to not only fight and defeat them, but return them to their original selves, thus showing that hope always does triumph over despair. I would also have the magical girls fight not only witches, but ordinary criminals as well, because having them fight only witches gets a little boring and predictable.

And finally, while there would still be only teenage girls who are chosen to become magical girls, it wouldn't be because they're "the most emotional" or some Hysterical Woman shit like that. It would be something more empowering, like, maybe only teenage girls are chosen because they're the most capable of magic and are simply more powerful magically than everyone else. They would still have their powers as adult women, but you have to be a teenage girl(well, one with a difficult/horrible life) to be recruited in the first place, if that makes sense.

And maybe older magical girls(well, women) would be able to mentor and assist younger ones(which is very much in-line with the coming of age themes present in magical girl, women supporting and uplifting younger girls as they advance into womanhood). This would make the claim that women such as Anne Frank, Joan of Arc, Cleopatra, and Queen Himiko were magical girls less...iffy, but I still wouldn't make it so that ALL influential women were magical girls, nor that humanity would be in caves without the Incubators. There'd also be transformation/detrasformation phrases of course.

In short, the magical girl system exists more so as a form of wish fulfillment, both in and out of universe, since it's for teenage girls with rough lives who are "empowered" by becoming magical girls and getting to live out a fantasy of fighting crime while looking pretty, as an exchange for getting a wish fulfilled that will help them improve their lives. Only teenage girls have this ability because they're the strongest magic users, not because of "female hysteria". In other words, the magical girl system exists to support and benefit the girls, rather than exploit them.

Now, since I mainly went over the magical girl system itself, I'll talk about the characters. Kyoko still loves to eat, is still relatively selfish, and still has discord with Sayaka, but they overcome it and become friends MUCH sooner and in a much more natural way. Mami and Kyoko's relationship will actually be stated in-universe, not just in some side material. Sayaka still has a crush on her male friend, but confesses to him before Hitomi does. At this point, he either says yes and they hit it off but eventually don't work out and decide they'd be better as friends, or he says no and she's sad but perfectly fine with that, and encourages Hitomi to go after Kyousuke. Hitomi may do it if Kyousuke turns down Sayaka, or she may feel bad about going after him after her best friend just got turned down, especially if she's worried about getting turned down herself, since Sayaka has known him far longer so she has even less of a chance, right? If Hitomi does confess, Kyousuke WILL say yes, but because his arm was healed due to Sayaka's wish, he's more concerned about playing the violin than spending time with his alleged girlfriend and they eventually fall out. This is keeping in line with Gen's claim that Kyousuke isn't a good match for either of the two girls. Though they may get together in the future.

As for Sayaka...well, she gets with Kyoko and it's actually made CANONICAL in-universe. I don't know about Madoka and Homura though, if she's less possessive of Madoka than she was in canon then perhaps she has a shot. Either way, I would really love if the ships were actually canon and not just queerbaiting. Regardless, Sayaka and Hitomi stay friends. Also, on a meta level, I would really love it if there were more female writers on Madoka Magica, and that the show was targeted towards a female viewing audience, which would mean toning down the fanservice(if not removing it entirely), as well as the troublesome aspects, as I've talked about earlier. And no "torturing young innocent girls and restricting their agency" since that's not what the magical girl genre is about and it never has been. This probably means more episodes though. Anyway, there's probably more stuff I'm forgetting, but to sum it up, this is how I would fix Madoka Magica. What do you think?

I think it’s a really good idea!!! Refreshing~ You know I’m all about fix-its.

Plus, all I heard was “Madoka Magica without being edgy” and I’m like, “yes please, I’m here for it.”

Anonymous said:

About Improbably Female Cast, it has come to my attention that Madoka Magica has been removed from the list. Someone in the discussion section of the trope removed it saying that since it's a magical GIRL show, it having a majority female cast isn't "improbable". The Touhou example is still there, though, because there's apparently something wrong with stories that have less men than women or have next to no men in them. Because a prominent male character is a requirement to tell a good story.

They also removed Strawberry Panic! because it takes place in an all girls' school, and Y: The Last Man, because it takes place in a futuristic world where almost all the men died. But still, the fact that those examples were there at all speaks volumes about the double standard there at TV Tropes. Even if the story has a realistic and plausible reason for the setting to be mostly female, as the examples above are, TV Tropes still considered them improbable. It's as if TV Tropes doesn't just dislike/question stories about a mostly female cast when it doesn't "have" to be, they dislike/question majority female casts in GENERAL! And the closest they have to a Spear Counterpart is Cast Full of Pretty Boys, which is a totally different trope: a cast in which most of the characters are "bishounen" aka pretty boys, because it appeals to a female demographic.

So it's "justified" but female casts aren't. And the playing with section reeks of "Stay in The Kitchen" sexism, with statements can be okay or even exist is if it's a harem or exists to titillate men who crave girl-on-girl interaction(and in fact, the main page lists this as their FIRST reason such a cast would exist, appealing to little girls and/or queer women is secondary/tertiary in their eyes), and the situations they propose in which the trope could be played with almost all involve the few boys attempting to hook up with as many women as possible or manipulating the women to fall in love with them, with the so-called justification that "the viewers just like their lesbians". And almost all their quotes(same on the Playing With page) are about people whining and complaining that the cast has too many girls in it. The Image Links section even has a link to a picture of two boys griping and bleating about the lack of boys in whatever show they're watching("They don't appeal to our demographic!" "Why are there no boys in our story?"), which TV Tropes has the nerve to call a "witty observation".

But what pisses me off even more is the fact that a predominantly female cast even NEEDS a justification in the first place. They only pulled specific examples of shows that supposedly dictated that the cast MUST be mainly female: Magical Girl shows, all-girls school settings, stories in which the entirety of men were killed off...only in extreme circumstances can you "resort" to using female characters but if the situation was reversed, the male equivalent wouldn't be considered improbable to BEGIN WITH. And this is despite the fact that the discussion page is FULL of people saying the trope should be renamed because of sexism, detailing many things I'm detailing right now, to the point where it's even gone off TV Tropes and is right here on Tumblr itself(one troper called it "PC whining", just ugh)! I just wish TV Tropes would realize the inherent sexism in calling such a cast improbable, since it makes it look like they're unhappy with the representation. Then again, they might be.

I’VE NOTICED THAT TOO, YEAH.

show: *has predominately female cast*

people: oKaY I guess that makes sense bUT ONlY BECAUSE--

And because misogyny isn’t as widely discouraged as... example, people would be absolutely crucified for complaining about a show having “too many POCs”... it means that those comments usually get ignored.

Anonymous said:

The Improbably Female Cast talk, especially the part about men complaining when stories have mostly female characters/seeing spaces that are 1/3 female as "majority female", reminded me of how I saw a study somewhere talking about the differences between how men and women dream, and it was saying that men's dreams tend to have more men than women in them, while women's dreams tend to have an equal amount of members from both sexes. Yikes. Even in their sleep men want women out of the picture.

And just in case you're curious, I found the study itself! It's called "Gender Similarities and Differences in Dreams", though if you look up "differences in how men and women dream" it should be the second thing under the link that also includes a snippet of the article. To quote the study itself: "there is a gender difference in how often men and women include male and female characters in their dreams: men dream twice as often about other men as they do about women(67% vs. 33%), and women dream equally about both sexes (48% men, 52% women). This is the largest difference between American men and women." Ouch. Granted, it's specifically talking about Americans, but I don't even want to imagine how even more skewed it probably is in men's favors for men in other countries(not gonna name drop any ACTUAL countries obviously.)! Internalized misogyny runs deep, to the point where men can't even conceive of women having a more significant role than them in anything, even in dreams.

And it runs deeper than that, too. I saw a post on Micechat called "The Smurfette Principle" by JMora. You probably already know what that is, but just in case you don't(or anyone else reading this doesn't), it's a trope describing the tendency for works to have a disproportionate amount of male characters with only one female in the group, if not the whole cast(named after Smurfette, the only female Smurf). The entire article is really well written and it discusses the gender disparity in fiction quite nicely, but what I'd really like to call your attention to is near the end, where they talked about how this effects kids, especially boys.

Movies that make most of their characters male while shoehorning females in female-specific roles are treating maleness as the default while femaleness is a special case, and this leads to films about men being seen as "unisex" while films about women are seen as "for girls" only. As a result, this leads to little girls being willing to watch movies about boys AND girls, while little boys watch movies only about other boys.

This also extends to the stories they write. Girls write stories with male and female protagonists equally, while boys almost exclusively write stories with male protagonists. Girls' stories tend to have a mixture of boys and girls, whereas boys' stories have all boys in them. It relates to what I was saying earlier about how men's dreams have mostly male characters while women's dreams are equal: how our society conditions boys to think that girls just aren't important and don't matter much. To quote the article, "Girls already know they can be the main pirates; it's the boys who aren't getting the message". Thankfully my little(male) cousin likes shows about girls and shows about boys just as much: he likes Pirates of the Caribbean, and he also likes Enchanted. But the majority of boys still dismiss shows for girls as "girly" as if girly is a bad thing but boyish isn't, and when they don't it's weird.

The best part is that this led someone else to realize their own mistakes regarding overrepresentation of men vs underrepresentation of women. A guy named Mouse Macabre realized that the comic he was working on had 8 main characters, 6 male, 2 female, and had to go back and work so that there was an equal amount. All he had to do was make two of his male characters female, and there you have it! Four male main characters, 4 female! Then why is it so hard for the majority of men these days?

Ugh, I don’t know. Like, as soon as people hear “we’re adding more characters for equality/to give women more attention,” it suddenly becomes “““forced.”““

Alright then I guess we’ll just have a bunch of white male shows then because adding diversity is forced and uNnaTuRaL.

We had POCs and more female characters and suddenly certain white males feel ignored and disenfranchised. :|

Poor things, not like there are ten millions other things they could be watching instead.

Also, inevitable response to the dream thing: men agreeing to dream more about woman... but they’re sexualized.

[castielcommunism]

prefacing this addition with a disclaimer that I’ve also only seen s7 once and am in no hurry to rewatch it, specifically because this portion of the show is so deeply uncomfortable to watch.

I know “sera gamble your gender politics are simply diabolical” is a popular meme and tends to convey jokingly what a lot of people acknowledge about s7 (which is that it has a very distinct brand of homophobia that is remarkable in comparison to other seasons/eras of spn), and most of the time the homophobia in spn is funny and generally much easier to brush off than its other various bigotries (such as the rampant racism and misogyny). imo part of what makes s7 cas so deeply uncomfortable to engage with is that it fuses this bizarre brand of homophobia with ableism, at which point it’s no longer “haha fruity angel” (which isn’t good either, to be clear) but something much more openly malicious and violent and hateful.

Like Never said above, the honey Cas stuff reads as deeply ableist, reducing a character that was portrayed consistently as autistic (&/or neurodivergent in some visible and persistent capacity) and was generally presented as sympathetic, complex, and well-liked in the narrative, into a naive child who is mocked and abused not only by various characters (primarily Dean) but also by the narrative itself. The ableism and the homophobia are intimately connected. Cas is emasculated, and he is humiliated for that emasculation (commonly through dramatic irony - the audience is supposed to be laughing at how ridiculous he’s being, and the joke is that he’s not aware he’s doing it). AND, crucially, part of the way he is emasculated is by infantilising him and making him “insane”. His trauma is now a joke, a thing to be humoured/put up with instead of understood or engaged with. The “boop” thing with Kevin in the car is something a lot of people find cute, but it just makes me fucking cringe, and is an example of what I’m trying to get at.

The ableism in the show isn’t localised to just Cas, either. Bobby’s physical disability is treated like a death sentence that needs to be resolved or cured (which it eventually is); Eileen’s sidelining as a romantic interest, and having to endure ableist comments from people like Chuck; the general way that disability and deviance are interconnected and how that is textually established as people growing closer to the status as monster, as seen with Sam’s hell trauma and his demon blood plotline; etc etc etc. So avoiding s7 will not allow you to find relief from the ableism in the show, but I think it’s especially uncomfortable with somebody like Cas because it is, again, a very mean-spirited intersection of homophobia and ableism. And there’s no meaningful subversion or resolution to it either - he ends up in Purgatory with Dean and is magically “cured” of his “insanity” and general infantile demeanour, at which point Cas openly admits that Purgatory is some kind of penance he must pay for the aftermath of the godstiel arc. That by itself isn’t necessarily bad, but it coming on the heels of Cas acting “insane and child-like” is just such a weird fucking thing to do. The way to “snap him out of it” is to send him to a Hell-adjacent dimension where he’s constantly hunted and tortured, I guess?

so tl;dr I fully agree with what’s above, I think honey Cas is a genuinely vile plotline whose conclusions are simultaneously unsatisfactory (from a narrative standpoint) and eugenicist (from a social standpoint), and I try to forget it ever happened in the first place.

I saw your comments about honey!Cas and if it's not too much trouble, I was wondering if you can elaborate (I felt uncomfortable with honey!Cas too so you aren't alone in that regard)

So I had to sit and think how to explain this because I haven't watched season 7 in several years, and I've only seen it the one time. So I was definitely not watching it and taking notes on how Cas was treated by the writers in that season so to speak, I was more pushing through to access that sweet sweet destiel content in s8.

That being said, my discomfort with Cas' writing, and the way other characters (primarily Dean) are written when interacting with him in season 7 stems from the fact that Cas was written and performed as autistic prior to that point in the show. Cas' unfamiliarity with human social norms, with pop culture, and Misha's delivery of his lines and certain acting choices come off as flat, or very purposeful, which makes it easy to read them as a surprisingly realistic portrayal of an autistic person. At the very least, Cas reads as neurodivergent, both to the human characters, some of the angel characters, and certainly to the audience. Simultaneously, Cas is a very capable strategist, and a powerful soldier who feels deeply for his comrades in arms and for the Winchesters. I have to admit that my issues with season 7 are therefore somewhat personal, because it is not often I see a character who reflects multiple traits commonly found in neurodivergent or autistic people who is also respected as competent and not infantilized, and that means something to me as an autistic viewer.

Season 7 starts off with a somewhat interesting portrayal of Sam's Hell trauma. He suffers from psychosis and post traumatic stress, and Dean cures him of both by asking Cas to take on Sam's memories of Hell*. It is at this point where I began to feel uncomfortable with Cas' writing. After taking on Sam's trauma, Cas becomes incredibly childish in nature. He seems to lack critical thinking skills, is entertained by children's games, and their humor, and becomes incredibly averse to violence. Dean reacts to this punitively, which upsets Cas and causes him to flee. Cas was transformed, from a nuanced portrayal of an autistic person to something far more stereotypical**. Worse still, much of this was framed as funny and played for laughs. Watching this was a deeply uncomfortable experience for me, as the character on the screen was hardly reminiscent of the Cas in previous seasons (or the one who would follow) and was supposed to be the comedic relief for the season.

*Sam's Hell trauma, in my opinion, should not have been something that the boys could "cure". At best that was unrealistic, and at worst it was also ableist. Psychosis and PTSD cannot be magically removed, or even cured through any kind of physical intervention most of the time. Instead, they are treated through therapy to address the past, and learning new coping strategies to address the present. Psychosis in particular is highly stigmatized and I was uncomfortable with the way it was handled.

**There ARE autistic people who behave similarly to honey Cas, and those people deserve respectful representation just like the rest of us. The portrayal of Cas in season 7 was far from respectful, however.

[a-minimalistic-blog]

Blog Post #4: Digital Citizenship - Trolling and Social Media Conflict

When I hear the word ‘troll’ I still think of a big, hairy, smelly mythical creature, lurking under a bridge somewhere, waiting for unsuspecting victims to fall into its trap. And while some ‘internet trolls’ are setting metaphorical traps online, the word ‘trolling’ has become something of a blanket term for any ‘problematic or aberrant forms of participation’ (McCosker 2013).

A trolls intention and motivation may vary, but their comments are designed to start arguments, upset and provoke people and are often off-topic. Trolling is a term also used alongside online bullying and a lot of research is being conducted into the way that young people are using online platforms to interact and shame one another. 

But really, who has the time?

Source: http://modernmelly.com/2015/09/04/top-internet-troll-trash-talker-tactics/

I often come across comment threads on Facebook where I find myself thinking, ‘why would you bother?’ And this thought applies to both people in the argument: the troll, and the person engaging with them. The topic is usually trivial, the troll seems only to be trying to get a rise out of people. People are usually making uneducated remarks, often proving themselves wrong with their stupidity. Oh, the internet.

Take, for example, the recent announcement that a certain artist will appear at this years Dark Mofo Festival in Hobart, and and part of the show (the ‘art’ if you will) will involve the slaughter of a cow. As a previous resident of Hobart with many friends who will attend different events at the festival, my newsfeed has been jammed with articles and opinions on various sides of the argument. (Check out http://www.limelightmagazine.com.au/news/animal-rights-groups-slam-dark-mofo-slaughter-artwork for a reasonable unbiased article.)

Source: http://themusic.com.au/news/all/2017/04/21/dark-mofo-ignites-massive-controversy-over-its-plan-to-kill-a-bull-for-art/

These are the sorts of images that are attached to articles: pictures from other works of Hermann Nitsch. And they are inspiring trolling at both ends. People who are upset that this could be considered art; people who are upset at people for wanting to censor art. MONA itself has always meant to shock, to make its viewers uncomfortable. It always does...perhaps MONA is the real troll here.

As users of the internet we love that we can be heard by many and by anyone, but detest that anyone and many of these viewers and listeners may not enjoy what we are saying. My experiences of trolling are always from the sidelines, so up until this point I have been happy just to spectate. No need to ‘feed the trolls’, as they say. 

But this, according the Stephanie Guthrie, is the opposite of what we should do. And if I was in her shoes, I would tend to agree.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KHEkR5yb9A

Her experiences of trolling are fairly in line with traditional misogyny. The only difference being that they happen online, and for this reason she argues, why is it called trolling instead of misogyny? Trolls and bullies need to be stood up to, put in their place and called out on their behaviour. The internet allows us social distance and some anonymity but this should not allow shitty and sometimes dangerous behaviour. 

Because it can be dangerous. People kill themselves. People give up their social media accounts. Kids change schools and lose friends and are ridiculed. Our legislation on online safety is targeted at children, but what about everyone else? Some celebrities may be able to laugh it off on Jimmy Kimmel—

Source: http://bgr.com/2015/12/17/celebrities-read-mean-tweets-9-video/

But we’re not all that tough.

Sources sited:

McCosker, A 2013, ‘Trolling as provocation: YouTube's agonistic publics’, Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, viewed 16 April 2017, <http://con.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/09/11/1354856513501413>

[ivankahasbeentreatedsounfairly]

Over the course of Donald Trump’s staggering political rise, observers tried to make sense of him by borrowing a metaphor from the internet: Trump, they said, was a troll. He was described as turning presidential aspirants into “Twitter trolls” (by a primary challenger, Marco Rubio), as “the world’s greatest troll” (by the data whiz Nate Silver) and, after his inauguration, as “our Troll-in-Chief” (by the liberal pundit Touré). Each was meant as a dig: The troll is the bottom-feeder of internet culture, not a hero. But Trump himself gladly owned the slur. When a Twitter user called him “the most superior troll” on the platform back in 2013, Trump replied, “A great compliment!”

Trolling isn’t just about manning an unhinged Twitter account. It describes an ethos. The troll is a figure who skips across the web, saying whatever it takes to rile up unsuspecting targets, relishing the chaos in his wake and feasting on attention, good or bad. For Trump, that means inciting political panic with glib news conferences, all-caps tweets and made-up terrorist attacks, shifting his beliefs to suit his whims. During the campaign, the ambiguity of this spectacle worked to his advantage, freeing his supporters from their own responsibilities: When he called for a 2,000-mile-long wall or suggested banning an entire religion from entering the country, the sheer extremity of these ideas let voters view them as goading performances instead of real plans. And with every political shrug, the web’s most antisocial sensibility rose further into the heights of American public life.

Now that the trolling ethos has infiltrated the actual core of government, whole systems are being forced to improvise around Trump’s inscrutable center. He is a frequently insincere and unserious person, placed in the most serious of positions. Politicians on the right find themselves staking claims on Trump’s throwaway accusations, pretending that massive vote fraud exists or that angry constituents at town halls are paid protesters. Journalists wrestle with late-night tweets that carry the weight of the presidency but also seem designed only to enrage and confuse. What does it mean for the American presidency itself to become a fake out?

Troll culture was forged in the primordial ooze of the internet, in a time when online social interaction took place in rolling walls of text. In 1993, LambdaMOO, a popular virtual community, was besieged by a user called Mr. Bungle, a character dressed as a clown in a semen-stained costume. One evening, Mr. Bungle used a programming trick to make it appear as if other users were performing violent sex acts on one another. Later, when his targets demanded an explanation, Mr. Bungle typed: “It was purely a sequence of events with no consequence on my RL” — real life — “existence.” He was just messing with people, delighting in the power to provoke reactions from a remove. And because everyone involved could just log off, those left shaken by words on a computer screen were made to feel silly. As one commentator said during the ensuing controversy, “I think that freedom would be well served by simple toughening up.”

Mr. Bungle was a lone wolf, but trolling could also be a communal activity. On 1990s Usenet groups, users would post in-jokes and provocations in a bid to flush out naïve newcomers. And with 4chan, an anonymous, anime-obsessed message board started by a teenager in 2003, trolling charged beyond its online vicinity and into the offline lives of distant strangers. In the most notorious incident, 4chan trolls latched onto a Myspace page memorializing a seventh-grader who had killed himself, ridiculing the child’s recent disappointments and seizing on grammatical errors in posts from mourners. (One had called him “an hero.”) Soon they were placing harassing phone calls to the boy’s parents and snapping prank photos at his grave.

Trolling was always about the distance between people who care and people who don’t. The people who cared always lost.

Internet trolls work by exploiting the gap between the virtual and the real. They float, weightless and anonymous, across the web, then reach out and rattle people who are pinned down by fixed ideologies, moral codes and human emotions. Any attachment to principles — even really basic ones like “don’t torture grieving parents” — gives the troll an opening. Stretching back to Mr. Bungle, trolling was always about the distance between people who care and people who don’t. The people who cared always lost. Often, they were counseled to detach as much as the trolls had: to withhold their outrage, to not “feed the trolls,” to pretend there was a real distinction between doing horrible things and meaning them. So the trolls scampered on to their next targets, amassing more followers along the way.

It was during the summer of 2014 that internet trolling boiled over into a mainstream crisis. It began with a seething, accusatory blog post about a video-game developer named Zoe Quinn, written by an ex-boyfriend. What seemed like a small, personal conflict managed to explode into a culture war, complete with bomb threats and harassment campaigns. First came the nihilistic trolls, some even hoping to compel Quinn to “an hero” herself — tittering 4chan code for committing suicide. But as #GamerGate, as it came to be called, grew, it coalesced into a movement that looked awfully political. Despite their self-presentation as ciphers, trolls have always had a point of view, and #GamerGate offered a platform for a whole coalition to express its distrust of media, resentment toward women and anger at progressive critiques of racism and misogyny. They had demands, too: They worked to get journalists fired, to pressure advertisers, to silence feminist critics.

To outsiders, #GamerGate looked like a cesspool of angry, entitled young men nobody else wanted to talk to. But some right-wing figures spied an opportunity. Mike Cernovich, author of a hypermasculine self-help blog called “Danger and Play,” joined the cause. (“I use trolling tactics to build my brand,” he later told The New Yorker.) So did Milo Yiannopoulos, then writing for the website Breitbart News, which helped midwife the controversy from a fringe freakout to a right-wing political perspective. (“I hurt people for a reason,” he said recently. “I like to think of myself as a virtuous troll.”) Donald Trump saw political promise in this world, too: As his White House bid seemed on the brink of collapse last summer, he found a new campaign manager in the Breitbart executive chairman Stephen K. Bannon, a sincere nationalist with trolling tendencies of his own.

‘Performance art can be so hard for normal people to understand.’

Now, Bannon sits on the National Security Council, and many Trump supporters are fusing the trolling ethos with old culture-war tropes, amusing themselves by calling liberals delicate “snowflakes” and delighting at being “in” on Trump’s “joke.” As the right-wing columnist John Feehery put it after Trump’s Feb. 16 news conference: “Performance art can be so hard for normal people to understand.” People like Cernovich — who jumped easily from #GamerGate to the Trump train — have taken to calling their political posture “antifragile,” Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s word for systems that thrive on volatility and stress. Trump, Taleb has said, is “heavily vaccinated because of his checkered history” — nothing new can shame him. Nothing matters.

The troll figure feels as new as the smartphones in our hands, but his trail of destruction stretches deep into history. Toward the end of World War II, Jean-Paul Sartre looked at the anti-Semites of Europe and saw something that still sounds familiar. “Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies,” he wrote in the 1944 essay “Anti-Semite and Jew.” They “are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words.” Anti-Semites “delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert.”

Recently we’ve witnessed a resurgence of this winking Nazi type. PewDiePie, a wildly popular YouTube video-game star, filmed a “prank” in which he hired two men to hold up a sign that said “Death to All Jews.” Pepe the Frog, an online cartoon that morphed into a 4chan meme, has been co-opted by plugged-in fascists who redraw him with swastikas for eyes. And after the white nationalist Richard Spencer, a man who has voiced support for “peaceful ethnic cleansing,” yelled “Hail Trump” at a Washington conference and received Nazi salutes from crowd members, he claimed it was all “ironic.” These days even David Duke, a sincere and straightforward white supremacist, is sharing racist memes and getting called a “troll.” But when Spencer showed up in Washington for the inauguration, explaining his Pepe lapel pin to the press, a masked protester ran up and collapsed all that ironic distance by punching him in the face.

Trolls work through abstraction, leveraging the internet and irony to carve out a space between actions and consequences. Becoming president has blown Trump’s cover: There’s nothing more consequential than this. Trolls are typically outsiders, and sad ones: They don’t fit into the dominant group, so they terrorize it from the sidelines. Part of what makes Trump’s administration so alarming is that the troll sensibility now dominates. And when that happens, it’s reminiscent of what Sartre described: No reason, no principle, just the pure exercise of power.

[fromtheplanethexagon]

VICTORIA......... my underrated fave. Hope you don’t mind if i weigh in on this for a second? Because it was definitely misogyny. I remember once writing a oneshot from her perspective (in 2016?) and getting a comment from a Tobecky shipper saying ‘wow, this is the first time I’ve been able to empathize with her’ and I just... what? The heck?

(I am so sorry for the essay. I’ve missed this show and fandom a lot.)

Victoria is literally just S1-2 Tobey with different powers. Like - they took the ‘competitive in school’ trait from him, and gave it to her when she was introduced, and made his hinted-at backstory her canon backstory. Looking at it objectively, the big reasons for liking Tobey over Victoria are: Tobey’s been around longer, Tobey’s fundamentally a more ridiculous and funny character, and Tobey’s in the big fandom ship (which I’ll cover last).

The first one can’t be helped, but the second is partially due to the show’s own choice in where to put its efforts, and partially due to the fact that even just a few years ago people were really Not Aware of how differently they perceived both comedic and villainous male characters vs female characters. Tobey has a superiority complex, it’s funny because he’s 10 and annoying. Victoria has a superiority complex, she’s being mean and needs to get over herself.

And this difference in ability to empathize with each character’s flaws absolutely carries through to interpreting their overall character. If we are more willing to engage with Tobey, we notice how his actions and lashing out are often due to loneliness and a desire to prove himself. If we are less willing to engage with Victoria, we skim over the scenes with her parents and then wonder why she can’t just chill out or tell them off. (TBH even her backstory is a bit vague here. Her parents threaten her several times, but IIRC we are never told why exactly she’s so afraid of them. There’s a lot of room for... very sad headcanons here, but that requires caring enough about her to create them.)

Getting to Tobecky: I think one of the lowkey reasons for Tobecky fans to dismiss/dislike her is that she has some canon moments that could be taken as ‘getting in the way’ of the ship. It’s not great! It’s misogynistic! But I think it’s one of the reasons for her to be sidelined, completely ignored, or - if she’s actually used in the story - she’s used as an obstacle to Tobecky, or someone who accidentally furthers it.

Another, larger reason I think is that to ship Tobecky in any way that isn’t just straight-up terrible requires redeeming his character to at least some degree. And redemption requires work, which requires engaging with his character and searching for anything that can be used to explain his actions and make you root for him to get better as a person. (It’s out of misguided love for Wordgirl! He has no friends/no father/a strict mother! If only someone could show him that he doesn’t have to be like this!)

On the other hand, there’s no reason for fandom to redeem Victoria; her canon role is a villain, and if she’s thought of at all, having her stay a villain works just fine for Tobecky (etc, I know there’s more ships) shippers.

A couple of final thoughts on that - first, because Victoria’s villainy is usually sliiightly more realistic, I wonder if people see her and remember someone like her that they knew and disliked IRL, while nobody had a fellow fifth-grade classmate that built giant robots and destroyed buildings. Second, I wonder if the fact that Tobey’s age was emphasized for comedy more than Victoria’s was affected anything? Like his schtick is that he’s an evil robot creator, but also he’s 10 and tries to get out of parent-teacher conferences and whines when he doesn’t get his way. Victoria’s age in contrast with her actions/villain status isn’t brought up nearly as often, and definitely isn’t used for comedy, so we’re not reminded of it as often. That would also tie into the redemption thing, as Tobey being 10 is very often used as a reason for hoping that he’ll improve, while... I haven’t seen anyone point out how terrible it is that a 10-year-old is so terrified of her parents that she steals Nobel prizes.

And a final thought on misogyny - this definitely extended beyond Victoria. Like, compare the amount of attention (both from the showrunners and the fandom) that the male villains generally got vs the female villains. Hell, even Becky sometimes didn’t get as much attention as the ship she was in, and she was the main character of the show.

And as a final comment on Tobecky, as someone who was VERY active in the ship. Yeah. Looking back at it after six years, it’s troubling how popular it was, the reasons why it was popular, and how uncritical us fans were of the dynamic. I still love a lot of the canon moments and think the relationship had potential, but personally I wish I’d been a lot less lenient on Tobey and content that forgave him quickly. I could honestly write a whole essay on my thoughts on the ship & fandom, but this is way too long as it is.

So what’s you least favorite Wordgirl villain and why?

I’ve never been a huge fan of Mr. Big. This just being from my healthy dislike for greedy corporations. Leslie however, over the years has grown more and more appealing. She’s just done with everything and it’s very very relatable.

There’s another villain who I, in the past, did not like at all, and I just don’t understand why. I used to hate Victoria, I just saw her as a brat. But what I find odd looking back on this is that I have, and still do love Tobey, and he’s a little brat too. And I always would say to myself “oh I like Tobey even though he’s a brat because he’s a complex character and I understand why he’s acting the way he is.” But like, that logic can be applied equally to Victoria? If anything, that logic is more applicable to Victoria. It’s fun to get deep into Tobey’s psychology and try to connect to his home life, but most of the fandoms assumptions as to why Tobey is the way he is are just that, assumptions. We are guessing based on what we know and have observed. Victoria, on the other hand, we know EXACTLY why she is the way she is. We know how her psychology is connected to her home life, it’s spelled out for us multiple times in The show. It’s made painfully clear repeatedly that Victoria is put under tremendous pressure by her parents, in a way that in some cases seems to cross the line from bad parenting to full on emotional/mental abuse.

So I really don’t understand why I was so much more quicker to cut Tobey some slack than Victoria, when Victoria had much clearer psychological reasoning for her actions than Tobey. Was is misogyny? My ToBecky shipping brain wanting to forgive Tobey (which is arguably also misogynistic). Was it because Tobey was my first favorite villain and Victoria came in later? Was it because Victoria’s was shown point blank and Tobey required theorizing which is fun? I honestly don’t know.

I like Victoria now though, and I just gotta say that poor girl and her brother need to have CPS come save them.