#and the racist misogyny of SO much of her appearances

[galkyrie]

Not to give too many details but one of the fics I'm working on as a future project is going to feature Talia fairly regularly and I gotta say, trying to come up with a compassionate and consistent characterization for her that doesn't make her cartoonishly evil and makes room for Damian to exist really makes a girl want to stab Gr*nt M*orrison with a pencil.

[therealslimshakespeare]

| Ida’s Law

Introductory Part

Summary: The American War Effort had conceded to the enlisting and commissioning of women into the Air Force at semi-integrated status. Deemed a more reliable if not safer combat post, the going rank of officer in the Air Force was intended to secure fair treatment and combatant status for these women, as it had for their male counterparts. Like most things in war -or life, if one is a woman- such recognition must be fought for.

Warnings: disturbing content- if you made it through last one this one should be a breeze, however it picks up where we left off so expect mentions of war, wounds, illusions to past rapes, Nazis being racist fucks, possibly some internalized misogyny about it all and some hopefully very 🥹🤧 reunions

A Note Going Forward: With this part now published, I am happy to open this series up for prompts. Ideally I’d like this series to end up being exclusively prompt-inspired and will be putting out prompt lists accordingly. I think that will be a fun way to keep the interaction going, stretch my own skills and explore all the different scenarios that may intrigue y’all. You’re welcome to come up with your own prompts, too. All are welcome, none guaranteed but let’s be real -I’m obsessed with this AU so I’ll likely do it. For now I’ll be keeping all writing to POW Camp and Liberation and Post-Liberation timelines.

“Well, what do we know?” Ida Brady asked the first officer out on the other side as they began to filter through the laborious processing of the camp. She counted them down, one familiar face after another appearing through the doorway again with no worse indignity than the new identification tags hanging from their necks.

“I hate a guy named Johann, and I like a guy named Fritz, and the lieutenant guy wasn’t bad.” Maureen declared, straightening her precious cap atop muddy auburn tresses. “Who went and named their son Fritz after the last war? I mean really? Who does that to a kid? It’s like he’s making up for it now, though, awfully nice.”

“Mm, I thought so, too.” Ida hummed, “Might keep an eye on that one, work on him a bit. You think, Kendeigh?”

“Work on him yourself, Ida.” Maureen scoffed.

“Not much to work with.” Ida retorted, the first general reference to her disfigurement she’d made. “What do you know? What’s up?” she left off to inquire after Tallulah Smith who came out the other side of processing looking more than exasperated.

“Know? They don’t know squat.” she said, “Never heard of a Cherokee.”

“I’ll be.” Maureen was grinning sharply. “Wasn't enough being a woman for ya Smith, ya had to go and be a brown one.”

“You’re tellin’ me.” She griped, “They kept insisting I was a fighter pilot. That’s what all the ‘dark ones’ are, according to them. Told them I’d rewire their insides and maybe then they’d take my engineering degree seriously.”

“I’d like to see that.” Maureen murmured, drowsiness beginning to take over at the comparative calm of their new surroundings.

“Looks like we got everyone, yeah?” Ida peered over the heads of the crowing room and counted out her charges in a silent tally.

“Looks like.” Smith agreed. “Got billet assignments?”

“I do. Colonel Clark, most senior prisoner here, said the combines are strict but the rooms aren’t. Let’s try to behave until we feel our way, then we can swap, if they allow.”

“It’s going to smell like feet no matter where and who we share it with.” Smith pointed out and Ida heaved a great sigh as if that were the hardest prospect she’d yet encountered.

“Mm.”

“Buck is out there!” Maureen suddenly cried out, grabbing at Ida’s arm, pointing out the window at the muddy yard.

“How nice. Gotta get this sorted first, eyes in, Kendeigh.”

Maureen reluctantly tore her eyes away from her dearly missed pilot. “Yes sir.”

“All right,” Ida’s voice carried as well as it ever had, commanding immediate quiet and attention, “those in the 350th, 419th, -the hundredth!- on me. Gather ‘round. That’s it, come on. Alright, well, we made it, well done. Truly, well done to all of you. Now I know you well enough to not accuse any of you of being pure idiots, just because we made it to where we wanted to go doesn’t mean any of what’s ahead is going to be easy. Be wary, don’t let your guard down, you don’t know plenty of these men and they don’t know you, I’m sure there are measures in place for spying already. Be sensible. I am certain we can rely on the kindness of those in the hundredth, but even then keep in mind, if you are cold, they are too, if you're hungry, you best believe they are hungrier, the last thing we need is a crisis of chivalry in here. Rely on them, except their help, but don’t ever take from them. Understood? And one more thing, since the human spirit is irrepressible I feel it’s warranted to make one more housekeeping note. None, and I do mean none, no inner relations at all are allowed. I don’t care how cold you are, how sweet he’s been, or how much you’ve missed him. The Red Cross aren’t sending rubbers, and don’t ever take the promise of a pull out. Do you want a one-way ticket to a death camp or a bullet to the head? Get pregnant. Simple as that. You think the Jerries think poorly of you now for being female? Try being a matron. The point is to blend in as much as possible, keep that in mind. Whatever you do, keep that in mind. Understood?”

“Yes sir!”

“Colonel?” One voice demurred, raised hand and respectful title only forerunners for an obvious objection incoming.

“Yes? Sanchez, isn’t it? You’re not one of mine, I think.”

“No, sir, 55th -fighters.”

“Yes, well, welcome. What’s your question?”

“No offense sir but- what about the guards?” Sanchez asked.

“We don’t know yet,” Brady replied with typical candor, “I believe so far we’ve seen a mix here. I’m sure our friends can give us tips on who to watch out for.”

“No sir, sorry I meant-“ Sanchez kept her teeth clenched until her thoughts seemed to form better, “-you said no relations. What about the guards? No disrespect meant colonel and I don’t know about yours, but mine -they weren’t pulling out.”

“Mm.” Maureen thought that if Ida smashed her lips together any tighter they’d turn whiter than her skin, the bent aviators she had managed to preserve this entire time did a remarkable job of masking whatever feeling was stiffening her spine to the current degree, but all the same, her spine was stiff, “no offense taken, an excellent point. I’ll inquire about any possible…remedies. Anyone else?”

A multitude of hands shot up and Ida Brady scanned them with bewilderment until she realized her lapse in specificity. “Anyone else with questions, I meant! Saints alive. No? Good, let’s claim our bunks and see about a wash.”

After the dark interior of the building, being processed for hours, the hazy late afternoon light of outside glared painfully against Ida’s bloodshot eyes as she stepped out, leading the way down the three wooden steps to the muddy yard. Monochrome, this place, brown wooden buildings and brown earth and a muddy sky and brown flight jackets one after another.

And there in the midst of it, waiting for them with ever constant patience and thinned stateliness was Gale Cleven and his lost blue eyes and an alarmingly symmetrical set of facial scars.

“Major.” Ida felt her face soften into an odd expression she realized was likely that of relief. Cleven had that way about him, it was better suited to her preferences than Egan’s blustering warm hearted concern, Colonel Harding’s gruff joviality or her John’s perpetually intense concern. Her little brother was, oddly, nowhere to be seen now and that was a comfort in this wide open, highly observed space.

“Colonel.” Gale Cleven’s eyes weren’t a lost blue anymore but a pair of stormy seas and Ida steeled herself for pity. She found smoldering rage in his face instead. Another relief.

“How was it?” he was nodding to the command hut.

“Fine.” she assured.

He was searching for something in her face and Ida was sure it was easily found skin deep along her puffy, purpled left cheek, but if she had anything to do with her expression alone, he’d be kept guessing for ages. “Good.” he decided at last but his smile was tight, “Made John wait in the combine, he’s in there pacing like a madman. They make a note of who’s attached to whom, Colonel,” he explained, “a more discreet reunion seemed in order.”

“We’d appreciate all the direction you—“ Ida had begun but was cut short by Lt. Kendeigh who broke ranks from the processed group and came out of the hut behind Ida like a bat out of hell, running up to Cleven and tackling him in a hug, rather like a dog with their long lost master.

The Major’s lanky frame staggered under her surprise attack, perhaps more from shock and ill preparedness than poor rations and a weakened constitution. Or at least Ida, hoped that was the case.

Well, there went all intentions for discretion about partiality on their part, five seconds had gone by and Maureen still hadn’t let go, her valued cap about ready to knock off her head and his too. Seeing the gig was up, Cleven even belatedly brought an arm up to hug her shoulders, his pleased face bashfully pacifying her intensity. “If it isn’t my favorite bombardier.” Cleven mumbled, his lips failing not to tug upwards in the tiniest of smiles, and he gave her a pat on the back.

“Buck!” Smith was coming in hot behind Kendeigh and knocked Ida’s shoulder in her haste to get around her and join in. “Thank Jesus you’re here.” she grunted as she squeezed him and Kendeigh both, “I mean -we’re sorry you’re here but since we’re here-“

“Glad you’re here, too, Smith.” he assured her gently, another pat on another back and Ida watched Cleven’s composure began to flake as he took stock of their roughened appearances. “It’s gonna be ok now.” he offered, and coming from someone else that statement would’ve sounded a great deal less impressive than it did coming from him. It also sounded hollow without Bucky’s typical parroting of the upbeat sentiment. “Let’s get you girls sorted.” he nodded at Ida who fell in alongside him, if only to distance and displace Kendeigh and her over familiarity just a tad.

“What’s your Kommandant like?” Ida asked by way of conversation as Gale directed them in a trudge along the brown paths towards his specified hut.

“Think I know him as well as you.” Gale admitted, “Tried to stay low, been no reason for socializing. Wouldn’t advise a trip to the camp doctor though.” He added the last part after a beat.

“Why?”

“Your Johnny says he’s got an experimental mind.” Gale smiled wryly but there was a grieved look behind it that made Ida’s pulse pound in alarm, “If you go in with a cold, you might come out with a radioactive arm instead.”

“Noted.” Ida muttured with a shiver, wishing to god her jacket hadn’t been taken off her a couple stops ago, the sun was waning in the dull sky and the breeze was frigid without it. “Speaking of doctors,” she decided to go for it, “is Johnny -my John- is he alright? At the gate it was such a racket, was he…standing?”

Gale paused in his step up into the combine, brows knitted in surprise and she noticed along with him that their little march had drawn quite a little audience from the fellow inmates. Females in a Stalag -what a novelty. “Yeah, John’s fine. He’s fit.” Gale still had that quizzical look on his face.

Ida swallowed hard and gave him another curt nod, one she wanted to come across as grateful but wasn’t sure it did, her battered cheek was responding less and less to her mind’s commands. “Right. This us?”

“Yeah. Figured we’d try to keep as many close as possible.” He explained, “Welcome to paradise.”

“What did y’all name this shack?” Maureen asked him as she stepped over the threshold, it was dark inside and smelled of lumber and smoke.

“We haven’t.” Gale admitted, forlorn at the realization that things like that didn’t occur to people like him. If Bucky had been here, he’d have had it named in an hour, and something awful, too. Something that would make them all laugh.

“Damn oversight, Gingerale.” Maureen teased merrily but Cleven noticed the dimming light in her eyes as she took in the cramped, uninspired utility of the place. One wooden doorway after another.

“Talked it over with Colonel Clark during your processing,” Gale said, “decided it were best if we mingle you all among the men we know. Boys from your squadrons, friendly faces. A few of you in each room.”

“I call dibs on yours.” Maureen unabashedly grinned up at Cleven but Ida saw how a heartbroken look of protectiveness skittered across his features.

“Alright.” he muttered without a fight for once.

“Mm, Smith, Sanchez, Tong, you in here.” Ida decided and having snapped her fingers she was moving on to the next stuffy room. Asking Cleven at each about their current occupants, and with the precision of memory required of a woman who had to memorize her opponents on the promotional ladder, chose their new bunk mates accordingly.

“And where’s Johnny bunked?” she asked him in a low tone as she watched the next set settle in from the doorway.

“In with me, further down the hall, Demarco, Hambone, a few others.”

Ida seemed to hesitate as she eyed up an extra bunk in the current room that the last of her girls were settling into.

“Don’t be a stick, colonel,” Maureen spoke up gently, a surprising liberty even for her, “you need friends right now. Bunk with us. Everyone’s going to be fine. Can’t be all places at all times, ya know?”

Ida didn’t reply but after a moment she admitted, “I should go see John.”

Gale and Maureen exchanged a look and then moved in unison to catch up to her as Ida Brady walked, brisk as if she were back home at Thorpe and about to pick a fight with Jack Kidd, down the long hall to one of the last rooms. “In here?” she asked Gale, pointing at the closed door -they liked to keep it so for warmth and privacy, and to acclimate the guards to it being closed when the radio was out.

“Yeah that’s us.” Cleven replied, reaching out and snagging Maureen back a step as Ida turned the handle. “Let’s give ‘em a minute.” he suggested, referring to the Bradys.

He held her jacket sleeve for a brief moment before turning it to grab her hand, he’d missed those hands. To his horror their usual calloused elegance was a swollen paw of bruises. “The hell, Maureen?” he whispered in shock, turning it over to examine it, grip strong around her wrist before she could pull away. “Who did this?”

Maureen did her best to shrug, “Some bitch stood on them.” she said simply, and surrendered the other hand for a similar heartbroken inspection.

Kendeigh was indeed not as visibly marred as Ida Brady or a few of the others, but still, Gale kept turning her crushed hands over and over, recalling with vivid agony the way he’d admired them at all manner of work before. To hurt them that way, to restrain her so meanly- “Maureen,” she’d never heard his voice dip so low, and his eyes were simmering where they cataloged her hurts, “what’d they do to you?”

“What’d they do to your face?” she shot back, perhaps more perturbed by the immaculately symmetrical scars on his once porcelain face than her own condition. Women expected the treatment they’d gotten, in some twisted way, but this on the other hand, it disturbed her.

Gale looked taken aback by her question and quickly dropped her hand to touch his right cheek as if to remind himself the scar was obvious to everyone. “Flak.” he replied a beat too late.

“Awfully precise.” she snarked.

“I asked you first.”

“I told you, a bitch stood on them.”

“I’m your superior officer.”

“Who it looks like someone had some fun with,” Maureen snapped back, “who did this?”

“What happened to you?” He hit right back but his voice quavered.

“I’m fine now. I wanna go see the boys. Come on.”

“Just- give them another minute.” Gale insisted, pulling her back away from the doorway again, “It’s a lot.” He reminded, “For a brother to see his sister like -that.”

Maureen couldn’t argue with that, besides Gale looked so sad and more fragile than she’d ever seen him, and the gentle hold he had on her jacket was as needy and scared as a child’s. “I’m glad we’re in this together.” she whispered.

“Me too.” he admitted, guilty and sad over how true that was before letting her press her lips to his.

Ida Brady didn’t know what she expected when she opened the door, not much she supposed, just a living brother with any luck. It was a decently tidy room, plates stacked on a rough hewn board at the far end, eight bunks lining the walls, stacked three tall. A table was in the middle and there sat dear old Crank and Hambone too, Murph with Benny. A card game was ongoing.

They looked so fine, quite normal, all in all.

All motion in the small room stopped upon her entrance. Cards were dropped and cigarettes forgotten in open mouthed shock.

“Holy shit -colonel?” Demarco didn’t have a dishonest bone in his body, and his disbelieving horror over her appearance came through loud and clear in his greeting. She hadn’t seen him at the gate.

The same for Hambone’s face, one that had never bothered to be discreet in pleasant circumstances, much less in shocking ones like seeing a notorious superior officer come in looking about as battered as a body could get -although his torn cheek was one to talk. Crank recovered first, in his mild, stammering sort of way, glancing at the lean figure who still stood looking out the lone window.

“Well, if it isn’t Ain’t Pretty Brady.” Crank clapped uneasily, summoning her nickname from basic just to cut the tension, it served to startle John.

He turned from the window abruptly, blank faced and unblinking as he realized the sister he had been watching for had already arrived. If their ole nan from the motherland had suddenly materialized before him he could have hardly looked more haunted or aghast, wide fringed fox eyes and that straight fold of a mouth -always so very held together, her little brother. Even after his third belly landing.

But those startled unblinking eyes...

Ida wanted to tell him to blink, that it was all alright now, that they were both alive and that it was good enough, it had to be. But she seemed to have fully lost all power over her throbbing cheek at last, she could feel her lips move in a motion she realized with supreme panic was likely a wobble of emotion. She ripped her aviators off, as if seeing her eyes might help his to come alive.

“John John?” she croaked in greeting, oblivious of the childish endearment tumbling off her lips in a room full of soldiers. If it were something their family was in the habit of doing, Ida Brady might have rushed him like Maureen did her pilot, or held out her own hand to be held, asked for a gesture from him -after what she’d gone through, surely it couldn’t have been weakness to want a clap on the shoulder, a flick to the bicep, a little “well done” for staying alive.

But she just stood there and watched him clock her shame. She could feel her swollen lip splitting in real time as the swelling and incessant trembling tore the taut skin apart, they’d passed around a single canteen in processing and it wasn’t enough, the walls of her throat felt collapsed together. Maybe she should have asked for a mirror first, maybe Cleven or Kendeigh or Smith should have told her she’d bring a whole room to a frozen standstill by her looks alone. They’d seen her at the gate -were these meager lightbulbs really so much more illuminating?

“Eye-eye.” Johnny let it out in a breathy rush as if he’d suddenly come to, and then he was in front of her, hands cradling the sides of her neck, thumbs hooked gently under her bruised jaw. A calloused pad swiped away the ticklish trickle of blood sliding the crease of her mouth.

Eye eye -his onetime baby babble for Ida, and she’d never let him forget it.

She could have wept at the useless sentimentality of it, of the gentle familiarity of familial hands, at the seething loyalty storming across his face.

“The fuck did they do?” he articulated at last, voice gravelly as shit but also reminiscent of the squeaky olden days when his castrato role suddenly no longer served one Sunday in choir.

“You’ve got legs.” she answered instead, sounding maniacal in her happiness.

He looked at her like she’d gone fully crazy as well as beat, “Yeah? Yeah I do.”

“They said, they said you didn’t.” she chuckled, a bizarre merriment trying to take hold in her relief, “During interrogation, that bespectacled cunt told me you had your legs crushed when you crashed.”

“No? No- no I jumped.” He insisted, then let go of her face to step back and gesture to two fit legs, as long and lanky as she remembered, as long and lanky as her own. “I jumped, I’m fine. They told you that?”

“Yeah.” Ida said, “Told me the longer I didn’t comply the longer you were without medical attention. I -I’ve been so…uneasy…about you.”

“I’m fine.” He repeated, hands back on her shoulders and she was grateful for it despite the bruises he was gripping, grateful for the way he kept touching her like he was going to hold her together with his own two hands, same blood, same flesh, same memories, maybe whatever she’d lost he could supply back like a blood donation. “Those sons of bitches.” he cursed them.

“Plasma for planes.” she agreed.

He kept looking at her, at her cheek and at her ragged hair and at the missing buttons, “You didn’t tell them anything did you?” he suddenly asked, wide eyed. “You know i’d rather die than have you tell.”

Ida scoffed, and gave him a grin, the best one she could manage with her cheek and split lip, “What do you take me for, Johnny?”

“A cold hearted bitch, I hope.” he returned the small smile but his voice cracked, still that hint of something long gone and juvenile.

“That’s what their Lieutenant called me.” Ida confirmed, a little proud, and sensing a renewal of his inquiries, Ida chose to take the offensive and call out for a conspicuously absent Kendeigh, “Candy! Didn’t you want to tell Johnny about your charming admirer? The Lieutenant?”

Kendeigh came round the doorway hastily, her lips puffy and cheeks oddly red. Cleven followed after and matched her, and his blush did nothing but highlight those scars of his. “Brady.” Maureen greeted, boldly hugging Ida’s very stiff brother without care —due to his red cheeks and rigid shoulders Ida concluded Cleven had given his own inner-relations talk to the men—, “Yes, I wanted to -oh hello Crank, Benny you son of gun- wanted to tell y'all about my ticket outta here -hell Hambone, how’d you manage to get uglier? -see my integrator, he found me fairly fetching. I think one of these days he’s gonna roll up in his shiny car and take me away from here and you’re all gonna wish you’d taken time to learn a little know-how about Alligators and their hibernation tactics in the winter. He was enthralled.”

There was an awkward silence hanging in the room, Crank grimaced a smile out of sheer generosity of heart and Benny Demarco still sat with his cigarette neglected on his open lip. Cleven, used to her preening brazness kept a tight lip, though a thousand questions seemed to swirl in his eyes.

“He the one who stood on your hands?” John Brady asked her without hesitancy.

Maureen whirled round then, comedy hour over and an angry flush creeping up her neck at his directness. “No.” she snapped. “Can’t some of them be alright?”

“A German’s a German.” he countered.

“There’s Fitzs and then there’s Johanns.” she disagreed nebulously and only Ida got her reference.

“And a shower is a shower,” Ida butted in before this became an experiment in an immovable object meeting an unstoppable force “which we need, badly. We’re…filthy.”

“We’ve got working sinks, trough sinks.” Cleven clarified with an apologetic look as if it were his fault the showers only ran once a week and poorly at that, and the water they had was frigid already in autumn.

“Water is water.” Ida reasoned in return, wondering when Johnny was going to finally let go of her arm.

“We’ll clear it out for ya.” Cleven said.

“And we’ll guard the entrance.” John added emphatically.

“Thanks.” Ida muttured, “Some of us could use to mend our uniforms.” she added, refusing to blanch at the subtle inventory of her jagged tears and crusted blood being made by every man in the room.

Maureen at least had her jacket intact. Her cap, too.

“Here, you can have my trousers while I stitch yours.” her John decided and was unbuckling his belt before she even registered the hand gone from her shoulder.

“What?” Ida balked, “You’re going to go ‘round in your skivvies?”

“Not as uncommon around here as you’d think, Ida.” Gale said, a small smile on his face. “I’m afraid order and decorum has gone to shit without you.”

“Well I’m here now.” she replied sternly but didn’t stop Johnny as he stripped.

“And so am I.” Kendeigh grinned and all Ida could do was to bless the saints for having let only one terror into the camp, were Bucky Egan to be here too, things would become intolerably lax. As soon as she thought it she repented it, sending up a prayer for the poor, absent bastard.

“Say Benny, you’re shorter, can I have your pants?” Maureen pleaded.

“Why mine?” Demarco protested, only offended at the height implication.

“Because Cleven’s too tall and I’ve already been in his pants.”

“Maureen!”

“Ida, order somebody to give me their pants.”

“You can have mine.” Crank offered kindly, and then stood up and bashfully began to unlayer. It left him in skivvies, a snuggly sweater and his flight jacket.

“It’s a good look, Crank,” Maureen grinned at the finished product as he handed the trousers over. “I’m seeing you in a different light.”

“Maureen!”

“Just sayin-“

“Take the pants with you to the washroom!” Brady interjected desperately as Maureen looked ready to strip right here and now. “Jesus, Kendeigh.”

“Touchy, touchy.” Maureen ribbed him, out for blood in her tired state and if she couldn’t have that of the Germans she would of her friends’.

“Alright let’s - let’s settle down.” Gale implored, a tired expression firmly etched onto his face and Ida herself considered giving up on the wash altogether and tumbling into the available bunk to court the oblivion of sleep. Were it only blood and dirt she just might, her usual tidiness be damned.

As it was -it was, there was…the filth was so much worse.

And if Ida thought on it too long she’d go mad and want to pour boiling lye on herself to wash herself clean and to kill the shame of it. She’d have to scrub the pants before she gave them to Johnny to be mended, it was bad enough for a brother to see the blood and busted seams.

“Yes, settle down for God’s sake.” she echoed Cleven, and something about her hoarse voice compelled Maureen to temper herself more than any direct order could. “A wash, come on, let’s get the girls. Oh and one more thing, Cleven-“ Ida turned to Gale and found him alert, eager to help. She was afraid she was only setting him up for failure but she had to make an effort to find those “remedies” she’d promised Sanchez. “There any lemons around?”

The incredulous look on his face suggested he thought she knew better, but he was ever polite in his reply, “No, colonel. No lemons.”

“Mm. Nutmeg?” she tried to recall each wicked trick she’d heard condemned when a girl got herself in the family way without the needed family in place.

“No, no nutmeg.”

“Mm.”

“Nothing but potatoes and cigarettes, ma’am. Do you- why?” he asked.

“Nothing.” she assured, “Just, a hot toddy sounds good right about now. You know?”

“Uh,” he floundered, half in suspicion and half in genuine confusion, “never had one.”

“Well then,” she grinned as she passed him, “that’s something to add to our to-do list for when this is all over. Jameson, though, none of that Kentucky stuff.”

“Yes ma’am.” his tone was vacant, smiling concern brittle, “You uh, you alright, Colonel?”

Ida gave him a withering look and then Gale too, had cause to be repentant.

“Come on Kendeigh, let's get the rest.” Ida gestured as she followed Gale back into the hall, aware of Johnny’s eyes still on her, still taking stock, “They better not be in bunks without a wash. Come on, showers, everyone! Out, come on out. You can sleep afterwards. Out! Would one of you be so kind as to wake us up in time for roll call?” she inquired of the male officers straggling behind her in the hall.

“Course! Yeah, for sure.” about five offers went up.

“You wake Me up.” she clarified coming to a full stop, wary of the enthusiasm, “I’ll wake up the rest.”

“I’ll get you up.” Her John said.

He’d probably sit and watch her sleep, too, needle and torn pants in hand, like a creepy little owl but that was one of those things she figured make or break a family, you either find it endearing you have a brother who rarely blinks or you go mad. Today, after all of it, she didn’t mind having a guardian Angel. Or a watchdog. Speaking of-

“Hey,” she asked him, “you two flew out together, where’s Bucky?”

But no one had an answer for that, not even Little John.

💋Hope you enjoyed AND REMEMBER -prompts are now open.

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[diaphin93]

The worst is that those Edelgard haters are bigoted ( misogyny is a very important part of it, but there's also so much casual racism, ableism and queerphobia, but I'm sure you've seen this better than I did :/ ) but they often believe themselves to not be, and so many of them try to make them like they're actually the one fighting bigotry.

For example, Edelgard has the biggest queer fanbase out of all the house leader and appear outside of the fire emblem fandom in sapphic online space ( hell she even had an irl drag performance ). But they can't really acknowledge that, because that would make them look bad.

So they pretend that actually the huge majority of Edelgard fan are straight men... But to pretend that, they have to play with reality. Edeleth is getting reposted really often in yuri reddit community ? That's because those community are actually all straight men fetishizing wlw. Edelgard is the only canonical bi lord? That's because they wanted to attract those straight men fetishizing wlw, so it's actually terrible male-gazey represention. Edelgard fanfiction are by the HUGE majority written by sapphic women? They'll conveniently only attack the one man that got his F!Edeleth fanfic popular. That guy actually has mostly sapphic and often trans reader? They don't mention it. He often talk about his own queer headcanon or analysis himself? They'll make shitty post on how those hcs or analysis are actually queerphobic.

And that's the same for sexism, racism and ableism. Edelgard is a character made for white straight men, so she's bad for minorities despite her own traits diverging from the norm: she's an acceptable target when you pretend to be against bigotry. Her fans are all white straight men, so they're acceptable target when you pretend to be against bigotry. ( And funnily enough, they never acknowledge when a non-negligible part of the fandom they're in, like Dimitri and Rhea, are full of straight white men )

But that's the problem, the huge logical issues they try so hard to bury, is that we're not actually white straight men. It's so alienating to have them talk about the bad white straight fans of Edelgard, while at the interacting with people like us. Like, did any of your detractors even ever genuinely acknowledged when you, a woman, accused them of incel like behavior without immediately scoffing at the accusation? Did they ever acknowledge that uncomfortable place of minorities in the Edelgard discourse, like they do so often with Rhea or Dimitri to portray themselves as fighter against bigotry?

They erase minorities in the fandom, but they pretend to fight for them.

And the worst is that they don't even really fight against bigotry in the fandom at all. There's so many racist, queerphobe, ableist, misogynist in part of the fandom like the Blue Lions. Hell some of them are very openly conservative or far-right! But they'll never attack those.

Even in the Edelgard community, where we do have small group of vocal straight white bigoted men like in Reddit... They don't actually do anything to them! Those guys are often just as busy fighting F!Edeleth and sapphic women in the community as they are engaged in the discourse. And the Edelgard haters, well, they don't like F!Edeleth and honestly they don't like sapphic women who like Edelgard either, so they have no interest in fighting them. Because they don't actually care about bigotry, they just want to shit on the character they dislike, not so rarely for bigoted reason on their own.

Hey, thanks for the message and sorry that I'm replying so late, started to write this up and then got distracted alot. And I feel you. I think many aspects of this whole Edelgard discourse and fandom Drama surrounding it are very symptomatic with issues in fandom in general, that can often be very hostile towards lesbians and sapphics in particular, due to the strong androcentrism that is visible across Fandoms. I think FE3H in this way represents somewhat of a microcosm of Fandom in on itself, due to the fact that Edelgard early on established herself as a fav of Sapphic and Yuri-centric communities inside Fandom, her most favored ships being w/w with m/w ships always being somewhat of a niche.

Like, Edelgards strong presence in the fandom as well as the preference of sapphic relationships surrounding her is quite an anomaly inside fandom which isn't very often seen and in my opinion the result of a perfect storm. I think what partially plays into it is probably t he way 3 Houses is structured, with the eponymous 3 Houses front and center and a chose your own Lord approach, which creats very much a faction system with this game and with it, encourages the development of communities centered around supporting their chosen Lord and House inside the broader fandom of 3 Houses. And the Black Eagles are just perfectly set up to draw out a strong sapphic and yuri fanbase for itself. There is naturally Edelgard as the central female Lord of the game herself, but I think what cemented it is having Dorothea next to her. Both of them are not only part of the, sadly rather small, cast of confirmed and unambigiously canonical queer characters with the ability to marry either Byleth, they also are themselves written in a way that would naturally draw sapphic audiences. Edelgard alone already fits right into typical tastes of both sapphic audiences and the more decicated fandom, being a canonically queer woman who serves as the central protagonist of her playable route and not only subverts traditional writing with her dominant, brunt and guarded personality, but also acts as a morally nuanced character with motivations strongly centered around the revolution against an oppressive religious institution and a heavy hitting backstory centered around themes of loss of abuse, loss of bodily autonomy and societal vilification. It doesn't hurt that her initial students uniform also strongly invokes an association to Utena if you look at her, even if it may happen unconsciously, who stands as one of the definitive icons of queer women and sapphic centric story telling inside japanese media. Her role is also close to the villainess genre, which is highly centered around a critical lense on the way female character usually are vilified and reclaiming them as empowered feminist symbols, often through the heroine subverting the predetermined narrative that sets them up against each other and chosing female solidarity and companionship with the villainess, which is basically the plot of the Black Eagles Route. The Narrative tries you to force siding against Edelgard and only through claiming authority and deepening their bond to Edelgard, can they defy it and side with her. With Dorothea, we probably have the most feminist character in the history of Fire Emblem, whose themes center highly around objectification and misogyny she faced in what hs implicitely a clearly patriachal society.

Both of them also have strong supports with the other two female members of the Black Eagles, whose personal themes go deep into patriachal abuse, misogyny and anxiety as well as xenophobia, imperialism and the loss of autonomy, both on a personal and national level. Them having these strong bonds with other women, but also female characters outside the Black Eagles, like Edelgard with Lysithea and Dorothea through their shared Paralogie with Ingrid, even if the laters support line is sadly cut short, creats an in short ideal set up a strong w/w centric community around the Black Eagles. With the Black Lions, with its extreme androcentrism, focus on male bonds and traditional Bishonen Design, drawing the traditional Yaoi but also het crowd, we have also a male supporting class who have strong queer subtext with each other, while also drawing in more non-conventional m/m shippers. Especially Ferdibert, due to Huberts more striking non-Bishonen features.

Sorry for the deranged long tangent and going so much offtopic, but I think it was interesting to go a bit into the factors that in my opinion lead to Edelgard and the Black Eagles having an by far above average w/w representation and appeal against the typical trend we see in more general non-female or sapphic centered media. And honestly, I think this is part of where the hatred comes from, because Edelgard and the Black Eagles just tick every box, but in a game that also features your typical straight white heterosexual with yaoi-bait possible Protagonist that draws Fandom attention, to which she stands in opposition. So it invokes hostility and ire, because it ultimately reveals the very centrist to conservative milktoast comforts of Fandoms that try to present themselves as bastions of progressive values and queer representation, when alot of m/m is less than an authentic representation of queerness and most often written around the comfort and gratification of a mostly cishet and in the case of western fandom also very white audience (look at how for example the m/m fandom on the Blue Lions side shuns Dimidue in favor of Dimilix, despite a much more tender relationship that can be read as romantic by the former). So they need to recontextualize Edelgard and her Fandom as actually not queer, as rightwing and reactionary but also engaging in the tactic of it being at one hand oppressively powerful and hostile but on the other hand also a niche delusional group that misreads the entire story. It is all to justify their own more conservative or centrist comfort zones and androcentrism, against a queer feminist Icon.

Though I think especially on Tumblr, what also goes into it is this need to recontextualize fandom into activism. We see this alot with m/m fandoms for example, where, what is male on male stories written not for a queer audience but for cishetero female consumption first and foremost, is treated as the forefront of gay activism. I mean, we saw it with the whole SuleMio vs Destiel Drama here, didn't we? Where bitter Destiel fans expressed the view that their Supernatural ship was actually a major influence in the push for queer representation and acceptance, up to claiming yuri gundam from japan owes everything to some male-centered buffy rip-off that featured less explicit queer representation than its predecessor did at the turn of the millenium. In 3 Houses, we also see this as treating opposition to Edelgard as some form of activism, framing her goals as imperialist or outright colonialist in nature and making the divine whiter than white dragon people who are the immortal progeny of a dragon goddess into a representation of every real marginalized ethnic group on earth...in a game that eschews racial allegories in favor of actually depicting xenophobia, colonialism and genocide against human PoC characters. Many of these arguments actually reveal how Edelgards detractors are basically just performative progressive activists focussing their advocacy on wars against fictional european-inspired powers inside a game, while also clearly just repeating leftist words that they picked up without an understanding of their contemporary political context. Again offtopic, but using terms such as imperialism in its contemporary political context or even worse, colonialism, for wars of conquest and ideals between fictional nations inspired by medieval european kingdoms and empires is asinine.

As you also hinted at Captain Flash, I think there is also a hugh double standart towards male yuri fans which bothers me. First off is blanked hostility and accusations of fetishization towards these groups always linked by transphobic collateral, due to how many closeted sapphic transfems first explore their identity and sexuality through the safe confines of w/w fiction and especially Yuri and this kind of rhetoric will inevitably damage eggs. Secondly is it hypocritical as it often comes from white cisheterosexual women who center their media consumption around the blatant objectification and fetishization of male queerness, with the Yaoi Genre having a shit ton of homophobic, heteronormative, misogynist and transphobic baggage. It also shows a clear lack of knowledge and insight into the culture surrounding Yuri in general, with these kinds of detractors usually projecting issues inside the yaoi community onto yuri. Yuri, as a genre, just never had a split between male and female creators that queer male japanese fiction had, which was traditionally seperated into the female dominated yaoi and the male lead bara or gay comics genre. Sapphic women were always a driving presence both as creators and consumers of the Yuri genre and are very well capable of policing fandoms against fetishizing misogynistic influences. It doesn't even fit into consumption trends, gooners, to name them very bluntly, don't engage with fanfiction, yuri asa broader yuri or shipping discourse, they are much more pragmatic in getting off and just straight up jump into porn.

I think its especially nefarious if we look at the queer community surrounding Edelgard. I mean, Monica at this point could be a transbian icon, because I have seen so many trans women strongly identify with her and build their fandom identity around her, because they can immerse themselves so deeply into her love and appreciation for Edelgard due to her being such an important comfort character for them. Edelgards most passionate fans are often also among the most vulnerable people inside this fandom, who feel inspired and comforted by her. Hell, even Captain Flash, who is often heavily slandered by Edelcritical crowds for the crime of writing a f!Edeleth fanfic often expressed in his authors notes how important and comforting Edelgard is to him, due to his own history of trauma and health issues.

Though I will also say, I'm against the idea of pushing the entire Blue Lions Fandom under the Bus and villify all of them. And even if I did just write some accusatory shit against Yaoi Fans, there is no understatement that in this case I talk about problematic trends I noticed inside the broader fandom discourse as well as the subsection of Yaoi Fans who engage over and over again in hostility against lesbians. At this point, I don't really think the people you complain about, which bother me alot myself, are really a majority of Blue Lions and Dimitri Fans, they are just very loud, pushy and aggressive and are good in talking as if they have any authority (look for example at this asshole who goes into his large somewhat orientalist and overall just stretching interpretations of the games supposedly deep buddhist themes and characterizes Edelgard as some evil seductress due to his own misogyny and media illiteracy). We shouldn't forget that Dimitri for many is just as much of a comfort character and inspiration as Edelgard is for her fans, due to his themes of trauma, mental illness, redemption and forgiveness which resonate strongly with them and their lived situation. I also think the very loud edelcrit community really worked towards poisening the waters and radicalize discourse, but overall I would personally assume that the majority of Dimitri Fans can understand and appreciate Edelgard as what she is in the confines of his route, a well-intentioned antagonist who in their point of view goies to far in her ambitions and whose ideals are irreconcilable with Dimitris. Which is true from the point of view AM operates on, just as Dimitri for an Edelgard Fan represents a good man who has fallen victim to the System and its manipulators Edelgard fights against. Theirs is a conflict of opposing ideals and perspective and I would say its where the game manages to execute its themes of connections and outreach as well as differing perspectives the best. Like, normal Blue Lions Fans ultimately agree with what Edelgard wants to archieve, because their reading is that Dimitri wants to archieve the same, they personally prefer his approach and road towards that goal. I think this is a point where people should be able to have fun with heated discussions but ultimately agree to disagree, its a very subjective matter ultimately.

Actually, I would say the worst detractors and most toxic individuals of the community are probably the church of seiros fans and the "Rhea did nothing wrong" crowd. Like, they can be among Dimitri, Claude or Rhea Fans, but those are usually those who try to force their own rather reactionary interpretations onto the community and engage often in rather racist, religious apologetics and pro-eugenics as well as pro-feudalism talking points and have this weird disdain for humans and human autonomy & liberation, as if they really immerse themselves mostly into the fantasy of being from some superior race, lol. Most of them have rather twisted and messed up interpretations of the world and the story which they are adamant about and usually they build their interpretation of the game around what they want it to be, namely being very pro-theocracy, anti-liberation and espousing the idea that humans need divine immortal beings to lead them, as well as often also being super Pro-Crest. I mean, one of the most infamous Edelcrit Fanfics is basically just full on pro-theocracy, pro-feudalism and pro-eugenics. Usually they have a strong hate boner against Hopes because it really ruins their personal headcanons of what the game is, lol. And I think many of them seem to have strongly jumped to the Engage bandwagon, which is closer to what they want out of 3 Houses, playing the idea of a divine dragon ruler straight and justified feudal bloodlines straight.

But yeah, I think I went into quite a few tangents here, I hope it doesn't bother you. If you have any more asks you can hit me up. Ultimately, I call them out when they engage in Incel and Misogynist behavior and otherwise just clown on these trolls. Its also just sad in a way, because its clear, that they constructed this idea of what they think the game is in their heads and everything that came out after te initial release of the game contradicts it.

[daybreakerangel]

I am going to discuss about the Hazbin leaks because I can, and I want to think about something that NOTHING to do with the election. This is just me rambling.

Lucifer being a dick to Alastor out of nowhere make me dislike him to bit. Al is just minding his business and Lucifer insecure ass calls him Bambi and shit. I do not even like Al that much and I understand why he said fuck it and quit. I would too.

That song with Rosie and Al has racist lyrics in it with Rosie telling Al to act like a dog and that he is a part of her zoo. I know all the overlords are slave owners but having lines like that referring to a mixed Black character is a CHOICE.

I am TRIED of the bad dads/daddy issues in the Helluva. Every single father minus Millie’s dad are horrible or neglectful people. Lute saying Adam never liked Abel makes me mad. Are you telling me the FATHER of humanity did not give a fuck about his own son? Bullshit. I am fine with Adam being a shitty person to everyone around him but his saving graced should have been his family. He is the first father, I guess his is the root of all daddy issues too. 🙄

Anyway, I am glad Abel is plus size like his father. Adam is the carrier of the fat gene. Lmao. I wonder if people will debate if Abel is or is not fat too! /s

People are thinking that Abel is probably gay given his Santa Claus line in Emily’s Heaven song and Adam’s dislikes of his own son is because he is a homophobe. The idea of this being canon is probably likely. Given his line about finding Charlie and Vaggie’s relationship “hot”, I guess he is the type of homophobe that fetishizes WLW relationships but hates MLM ones.

This is just me thing, but I dislike when homophobia is in Queer media. I just want more queer joy stories than queer people facing bigotry stories. I just Adam maybe was more of a politically Incorrect villain than a politically correct villain.

Adam being a misogynist in Heaven was already weird, but it tracks since Lute was not allowed to be the new leader, misogyny is a part of Heaven’s core values, I guess. Him being a homophobe would be awful; homophobia exists in Hell (for example: Kate Killjoy) but in Heaven too? Queer people cannot escape homophobia even in paradise?

I liked to think Adam came up with exterminations to just let out the anger he felted because of Lucifer basically fucking up his line and to protect the family he still had from Hell’s uprising. Abel not expressing any real emotion when learning that his father was murdered and just saying “RIP” is just sad. If Abel knows his father dislike him, why he is taking up his father's role as the leader?

Adam being a shitty person is fine, but he never cared about his own son. Was he always piece of shit since Eden? BOO!! Bad character writing! Adam becoming morality fucked up makes more sense than "He was trash since the start of his creation!" Are you telling me that Heaven knows Adam is shitty and never corrected that behavior to the point he became a manchild? No wonder no one gave a damn by his death, he was rotten from the start.

Eve is still IMA and same goes for Cain and the rest of his children. I swear when Eve finally makes her appearance and she says that Adam was an abuser, I will start to dislike him.

I am glad that Adam is dead. I really hope that he never comes back, I just feel like his character will go downhill even more. I like the idea of him becoming a sinner as a punishment for all the bullshit he done and that he would never allow to enter Heaven. I wanted Adam to SUFFER. I hope sinner Adam stays in fanon.

Lute's song has a cool instrument, but I wish she had more character out of Adam. I do not really care about her being heartbroken by his death because we did not see their friendship that much, so it does not have that much emotional weight to it.

Adam's rizz levels were off the charts to have Lute loses her mind over HIM out of all people. I like Adam but nah he is not boyfriend material at all. It is nice to a character having a crush on a plus size character, Lute wanted that fat man BADLY. It would have been nice if imagine Adam was maskless. It gives me that vibes that Lute only like him when he had the mask on instead of his actual face.

My relationship with this show is complicated. There is stuff in it I like and stuff I just dislike. The writing of the show being all over the place is fascinating but also awful. If the fandom was not so creative and writes these characters with so much care, I would not be here. I am more a fan of the fanon content than the actual show sometimes.

I feel like when Hazbin ends, it is going to remember in such a negative light and a prime example on how to not write a story or characters.

I feel like I will not be a fan before season 3 airs, I hope that does not happen but yeah. If you see a whole bunch of Hazbin shit being listed on the secondhand market after Season 2 is over, that will probably be me.

[fvretts]

Very different from my typical posts, but just wanted to compile a few reasons on why I think Trump unfortunately won the American election, as an American student! I posted the same thing on a burner account on twitter (trying not to get doxxed lmao). I'd love to discuss more about this if anyone is interested! 1. Misogyny and gender gap Unfortunately, there are these internal biases that a lot of men and women don't know that they have. People aren't used to seeing a women in power, ergo, they're not going to vote for one. Harris focused way too much on abortion as her main policy, which also only isolated young male voters. Regarding the gender gap, and also the shift right we're seeing within younger generations, I think during COVID and lockdown, there were a bunch of movements like BLM and LGBTQ+ awareness, and just overall things that helped marginalized groups gain a stronger voice and raise awareness to issues. However, time and time again, there was a common issue with all these communities and straight white men. These men were not used to having to take accountability for either their actions or actions that the society had done for them but against other communities, so instead they fueled that discomfort into hate and raised the platforms of horrible people like Andrew Tate. BTW I'm not at all saying that this is ALL straight white men, or it's only white men or it's only straight men. The common factor is being a man. Typically, in my experience, when it's regarding race or gender or sexuality, the men, typically, are either straight, white, or both.

2. Democrats really didn't differentiate themselves. Harris aligned herself more moderate when she should have aligned herself more left. The "undecided" and center votes were going to go to Trump, so she should have taken a more leftist stance, especially on issues like the genocide in Gaza. Most Americans, no matter their stance, are against the the "conflict" (genocide). Had Harris been more concrete about a ceasefire on Gaza and not giving aid to Israel, she would have gained a lot of leftist voters and perhaps convinced others to vote for her. My third, and arguably most influential reason to why we lost. 3. People associate life being better 2016-2020 related to Trump. I'm especially talking about the economy here. To the average American, the economy is the most important thing. Lower income POC voters aren't going to care that Trump is racist towards them, they care about how much it costs to live, and the economy dictates everything from employment and life of living. Trump, very fortunately, had inherited Obama's economy. Hence, unemployment rates were down and cost of living was affordable. In comparison, in 2020, we had a global pandemic, which completely shut down the economy. This is obviously not Biden and Harris' fault--we've actually recovered quite well from the lockdown, but we did have inflation and unemployment rates go up a lot due to this. Lots of people correlate inflation and unemployment rates TO Biden and Harris, rather than the extenuating circumstances there were. As they say in statistics, correlation is NOT causation, but it may appear that way, enough so, that it swings a lot of people's votes. And people are just not educated with what tariffs are.

[woman-respecter]

the similarities between hatred of women and hatred of jews is crazy because misogyny and antisemitism are both treated as "a weapon meant to silence" and if people especially on the left are accused of either, they immediately jump to "everything is antisemitism/misogyny now🙄"

of course this applies to all hatreds but it's worse for us because to the left racism is inherently important (even though they are RACIST AS FUCK) but misogyny and antisemitism to them feels made up and stupid lol (in some cases people even treat homophobia this way by saying you can play straight but you can't hide your race).

i wish i could put this better but the example that comes to mind is leftist men. leftist men do not take misogyny or antisemitism seriously (or anything tbh). when i talk to "leftist" men in music forums and i tell them hey you're being misogynistic (women have to teach them how to be human beings apparently), they go "nooo i can't be. also. white women like taylor swift cry misogyny all the time!" THIS PISSES ME OFF SO BAD.

it gets worse. this one time a gay guy tried to tell me he couldn't be misogynistic because he had a stan account for women LOL. he also said "women on stan twitter call everything misogyny when it comes to their faves". so? SO?! (off topic but as a lesbian, queer culture is so misogynistic and it's such a shame because yes this does include drag queens/trans people but how can we even try to fix it when you have the conservatives on one side and the terfs on the other ugh. i want to criticize my people without those groups thinking i'm one of them! this is a serious issue because every time i do, a transphobe appears like fawk off but then other queers don't want to acknowledge the misogyny)

i could go on and on but anyways i hate men and the gay community is a mess!

oh yes i feel this completely, i feel like misogyny and antisemitism are so much more widely accepted than any other type of bigotry on the left and it drives me crazy. at this point it’s almost REQUIRED to belittle women/jews to be taken seriously as a leftist.

and holy shit many such cases of those leftist male “music fans” with terminal taylor swift derangemenr syndrome that use her as a target/excuse for misogyny. i kinda wish all of them were tied to a chair and forced to listen to me! until they blow their brains out

[asm5129]

So

It certainly seems this opportunity for the democratic part is not being wasted.

Kamala appears to be truly revitalizing the Democratic Party. There is an energy that I haven’t seen in ages for a presidential candidate.

She’s been making strong headways in her campaign, highlighting all the right things like her track record as a prosecutor taking down men exactly like trump and the destructiveness of Project 2025.

She’s raised tremendous amounts of money for her campaign very quickly and has already secured presumptive nominee status.

She’s being memed but in a way that’s making her seem likable her rather than making her out to be incompetent or that feed into misogynistic or racist narratives, which is building the youth vote.

The republicans are scrambling to find a way to demonize her and struggling to without dipping into explicit racism and misogyny, and shockingly the fact that there’s only three and a half months left until the election might actually be working in our favor because they built so much of Trump’s campaign around making Biden specifically out to be unfit for the presidency. Now the nominee isn’t Biden, so a lot of their arguments are just…gone. And they have very little time to figure out how to counter the new energy.

Kamala seems to be likable, charismatic, intelligent, confident, have a real backbone and presence, and most importantly she seems to be inspiring genuine unity.

Obviously we shouldn’t get complacent and even if she wins there’s plenty of work to do on the ground level, and obviously a republican majority can still cause a lot of damage to her ability to do anything truly meaningful as president so we still need to secure wins locally, but despite those concerns…I think we’re in a good place.

[11queensupreme11]

I just love how everyone collectively looked and piper and were like “ yes this bitch is crazy “ to be fair she is 💀

Also I keep on forgetting that Jason is a victim 😭Like someone save him, I littery went and bought the TOA books just for this one specific scene.

Ok so when piper dumps Jason she doesn’t explain the breakup and makes it seem like he dumped her ! And when people ask she doesn’t like correctement then and shit😨

Also Jason the poor boy literally doesn’t understand why she dumbed him and even still has feeling for her…..

I need that poor boy to live his best life without this crazy lady 😭

Pipers the type of person who would’ve had the freshman stick used on her in my old high school ( it’s just a stick used to push and trip the annoying freshman’s down the stairs none have ever been injured but like still wild stuff from my old school 💀)

someone talked about this before (i think it was autumn from quotev), but putting piper in toa might've been rick's way of doing damage control 💀

a lot of ppl actually didn't like piper in hoo, but their reasons were more so "she's a mary sue" and all that and not the actual internalized misogyny (this was back in the early 2010s and "internalized misogyny" wasn't a widely talked about/known thing yet). there was also the talk about the racist way rick wrote her character (giving her more european features, not doing proper research about cherokees, etc).

BUT ANYWAY. instead of listening to their criticism, rick doubled down and ADDED HER INTO TOA when he really should've just kept her out (he really REALLY likes piper ok).

if i made a character and ppl HATED them, i would either A) cut them out of future stories or B) listen to the ppls criticism and actually give my character a character development my readers would like. ESPECIALLY if i was SELLING these books. i might lose some money if i keep them around!

a lot of ppl complained about jiper/jasper, so rick broke them up but framed it in a way that PIPER looked to be the victim. she was "pushed into the relationship by hera and aphrodite", when in actuality aphrodite had nothing to do with it and all hera did was give her the fake memories. throughout hoo we SEE piper constantly pursuing jason and the fake memories. SHE was the one who kept pushing the relationship, not hera or her mom. but rick wanted her to be likable by the readers, so he made her out to be the victim to earn some sympathy

rick also made her bisexual. this was during the time lgbtq+ was starting to gain acceptance from the populace and rick REALLY REALLY likes piper and wanted everyone else to like piper too, so he made her bisexual despite her never showing any signs of bisexuality in hoo. even in toa her bisexuality wasn't even written properly cuz her relationship with shel (her gf) was very rushed. shel literally just appeared out of nowhere and piper was dating her. it pretty much got off-screened

and then.... jason got killed off 💀 like damn, what a way to go.

[niamflopped]

 

Leave Taylor Russell Alone, You Racist Creeps

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Celebrity | October 3, 2023 |

This past weekend, actress Taylor Russell, star of Waves and Bones and All, appeared at Paris Fashion Week. Wearing a stunning metal coat sculpture by Loewe, for whom she is an ambassador, she sat front row by Josh O’Connor and Anna Wintour, giving her one of the most sought-after placements of the season.

Russell is a daring fashion figure as well as a celebrated actress currently receiving rave reviews for her West End theatre debut in Lucy Prebble’s The Effect. There’s a lot to be excited about with Russell, from her fascinating sartorial choices to her work with the likes of Luca Guadagnino to her impeccable charm in interviews. Oh, and she’s also possibly dating Harry Styles.

As you can imagine, that last part has become probably the defining part of her current public image. Styles is wildly famous and his love life has been obsessed over since he was a teenager. Every woman who has ever been even remotely connected to him has been subjected to a barrage of misogyny and hate from a vocal subset of his fandom.

Olivia Wilde, who he dated after working with her on Don’t Worry Darling, was labelled a groomer hag for being in a relationship with a man who was pushing 30. Tess Ward, a food blogger who was merely rumoured to have dated Styles, saw her cookbook review bombed on Amazon and faced intense hate on social media, as did model Camille Rowe, who Styles apparently had a year-long relationship with.

So, alas, it’s not surprising in the least that Russell, a beautiful Black award-winning actress with a famous boyfriend, has become the subject of such attacks.

It doesn’t take long to find the hatred online, whether it’s sad creeps on Twitter claiming she’s an ugly social climber, TikTok conspiracists insisting she’s the latest PR beard keeping Styles away from his true love Louis Tomlinson, or Reddit pages spinning dramatic tales of her sultry wiles that will devastate poor millionaire Harry.

The cycle of being the girlfriend, confirmed or otherwise, of an internet boyfriend begins anew. Same as it ever was.

With Russell, there is also the horrendous typhoon of racism on top of the misogyny. She’s a Black actress dating a white man who is more famous than she is, and therefore she is somehow the enemy to the white women who cannot let go of their inflated fantasies of Styles.

All the screeds about her ugliness (which are so astonishingly and objectively false that it boggles the mind) are thinly veiled insults regarding her race. Her career achievements are invalid in the eyes of those who view any woman connected to Styles as a fame-hungry vulture using his spotless image to inflate their own egos. They love to claim that nobody knew who Taylor Russell, an award-winning actress and muse of a luxury fashion house, was until she met Styles. Then again, they said the same thing about Olivia Wilde, too. Facts don’t matter. These insults don’t even need to seem true. They’re just the same old insults used over and over again, to be recycled with every woman who dares to approach their beloved.

I doubt many of these so-called fans actually care about the person they spend so much time devouring. At the very least, they’re so wholly consumed by their conspiracies that they’ve grown more attached to a delusion of utmost misery than a true desire for happiness for their favourites.

[zahri-melitor]

Wonder Woman by Messner-Loebs (#63-#100, #0)

Well. That was A Lot.

This is a difficult run to read, and not just because it backs up straight off George Perez’s iconic run. It’s a slog with writing that is painfully outdated and that will throw you out of the story if you’re not paying attention.

It’s very much a run in which I feel one of the biggest problems is that it’s written by a man who wants to believe that women have interiority and motivations, but is hopelessly out of touch with what actual real life women think and believe and act. Interesting concepts, poor execution. I have to believe he didn’t understand the sheer level of all the misogyny he portrayed characters as experiencing, and that he thought it was a good power fantasy to see those women overcoming that systemic and specific misogyny.

Let’s get into the good aspects.

Christopher Priest gets a two-part story (#88-89), which is used to bring Circe (in her traditional appearance) out to explain why Themyscira has been missing for the whole run so far and what happened. I quite enjoy Priest’s writing and this story had enough twists to it to be interesting, but also leaned into an aspect I love seeing pop up in Wonder Woman stories…the inevitability of fate and prophecy. Circe promises Diana that she will restore Themyscira…but Diana must sacrifice an innocent’s life. The story tangles with this well. Truly a lovely little tension release in the run, and shifted the story arc from the first 25 issues over to the last dozen.

Circe as the overarching big bad of the whole run is actually a good shout. Circe’s a manipulator, and having a run where she’s pulling the strings all over the place while also cosying up to Diana in disguise is quite fun.

On that vein…honestly I enjoyed all the ‘Donna Milton’ stuff, despite how much I was ragging it as I read it. Someone taking advantage of Diana’s trust in that way was a betrayal, but you can also see her affected by the role she took on. Also it was just really funny to offset Ares being so hamhanded about his incarnation in comparison. Plus, the existence of Lyta Milton is going to pay off into the future.

While I’m STILL going on about Circe: it’s fascinating to me that multiple of Diana’s female villains not only want to bang her but are compelled to be friends with her, even as they also run around being evil. Like it’s a lovely redemption arc for the 30 seconds it will be permanent.

I don’t hate the idea of The Contest, and it’s one of the better conceptualised stories across the whole run. The concept (has Diana lost her skill and her direction compared to the wishes of the Amazons? How does she compare to champions of Bana-Mighdall? What is the direction that the Amazons should be pursuing in Man’s World?) has a lot to chew on and Artemis as a character does a fair chunk of rehab to the concept behind Bana-Mighdall and moving it into a part of the mythology that writers can actually use, rather than being the racist stereotype Perez created. There are additional valid reasons for the Banas to feel betrayed, and Herakles screwed over both Amazon tribes (Unfortunately at the expense of Hippolyta’s characterisation, but she’s all over the place in this run). The execution however, didn’t measure up to the concepts.

Things I think didn’t work:

The run had three overarching arcs that I think can be approximately broken down into: the space pirate arc; Ares and ‘Donna Milton’ screw with Diana’s life; Artemis as Wonder Woman. They’re not really coherent with each other? Stuff that was happening in one arc just gets dropped and ignored to move onto the next arc.

I think Messner-Loebs had a vision of taking Diana down to see the gritty hardship and violence of women’s lives. Unfortunately, I don’t think that particularly worked as a run for Wonder Woman. It’s a book that at its best is imbued with hope and connections to mythology and epic plots, rather than street-level storylines. Diana running around worrying about paying her bills and working in a fast food restaurant and for a private investigator taking on cases like shaking down men for unpaid child support? I had Common People by Pulp running though my head the whole time. I do like Diana to be concerned with even small scale problems and outraged by institutional sexism. I don’t think this was the right approach to show it.

Then there was the way Messner-Loebs contrasted this with Artemis, by using Artemis as a foil to say “you can’t just go out and beat up institutional sexism and misogyny, the work is harder than punching people in the face and declaring that women should be strong!” Thank you, Messner-Loebs, we really needed that strawman created for Artemis as a character. Artemis and her plot once she leaves Themyscira is just a series of take that strawmen using some very 90s plot ideas (not helped by Deodato literally drawing the sort of Image Comics villains that it is railing against, and giving them stupid names). It’s a very, very blantantly obvious, Captain Planet sort of approach to ‘why are women treated differently to men’ and it needed a lot more subtlety and interrogation of the concepts involved.

Messner-Loebs is also struggling with the fact that he simply doesn’t have the language or conception to describe a lot of the feminist and queer themes he is playing around with. There are several storylines or offhand comments that, were they written today, would be explicit trans storylines or discussions of intersexuality and assigned gender, but in what we get, written in the early nineties? It’s stereotypes about what makes someone flamboyantly gay, or ‘secretly’ female.

Downsides of the run:-

Mike Deodato Jr’s art. It’s everything people rag on about 90s art. He’s not Rob Liefeld, but that’s almost worse, because as I’ve said previously, Liefeld basically only does Hawk & Dove work for DC (with an occasional foray into Deathstroke and ‘projects Jeph Loeb asked all his friends to contribute to’), while Deodato here is getting to draw DOZENS of women and particularly Amazons in that extremely Image House Style way. Not a lot of internal organs, a lot of wedgies. I suppose he was picked for the end arc in that his art style played with the messages Messner-Loebs was trying to convey (“stereotypes bad! Image Comics villains silly! Feminism involves hard work!”) but is let down by the fact that, yanno, all the characters are drawn in that style.

Messner-Loebs just forgetting what his plot involving Cheetah was. At the start of the run, he banished Barbara Minerva into a demon dimension. She then reappears right near the end of the run, with the extremely boring villain I have avoided mentioning this entire write up (sorry, Asquith Randolph is SO dull) having pulled her back and…sent her out to attack Diana? Caged her? Great work there Messner-Loebs, no notes.

Just so much blatant misogyny and violence against women, and the way Diana and Artemis were portrayed as fighting it was nowhere near sufficient catharsis for putting me through reading it.

Do I think you should read this run?

Hmm, it depends. It’s an interesting introduction to Artemis and is probably important context to know about her for any story going forwards. I can see how the Donna Milton stuff is going to pay off in the future when other people draw out the storyline built in here. The choice of classic villains in this run is actually solid. Dr Psycho’s appropriately horribly creepy, Circe’s turn is triumphant, Ares is causing problems, Cheetah is sympathetic but wrong in all the right ways. On the other hand, we start with the process of fridging the Kapatelis family, it’s just chock full of storylines that you stare at going ‘why is this HERE?’, it tends to pick up an idea, play with it and then drop it without pulling it back to develop a theme, it gets bogged down in feminist concepts that were outdated even for the early 90s, and it just felt unpleasant to read. This is some storytelling that desperately needed a woman in the room to consult and talk ideas over with, and as close as they got was the colourist.

[ardentpoop]

What r ur thoughts on Kaia Nieves? Honestly her characters death probably affected me more than any other characters death. I think its partially bcuz her characters arc was so unabashedly racist and unnecessarily violent. But i also think that her character couldve been so much more so im curious to know what u think...

-@xyberangelzparadise

I loved her introduction, her powers, and her potential for a friendship (or enemyship) with jack who was wrestling with his own powers when they met. the “bad place” alter ego plot didn’t do much for me but it could have been interesting if the s13 writing team knew what they were doing with their characters overall. this is one of those seasons that could have been great if there weren’t far too many disparate plot threads competing for attention and a lack of any sustained focus on the characters - especially jack and his individual relationships with the members of tfw after he’d just been added to the show.

specific complaints about kaia’s writing:

that scene where dean yells at her and pulls a gun on her is absolutely horrible to watch and should have been treated with more narrative weight if they were gonna include it at all. ghastly look as usual by writers who couldn’t have seriously pondered the implications of the racial dynamics they were portraying if you paid them to do it.

I appreciate that they were trying to give the audience a tiny crumb of wlw with kaia and claire but to be frank we really didn’t get enough of them together for it to feel impactful, and on top of that it fucking stinks that they sacrificed kaia to generate angst/revenge-plot fodder for claire in “wayward sisters.” claire really is a dean mirror huh 🤪 (disclaimer for other readers who might stumble upon this post: I am not talking about d*stiel even a little bit - for all intents and purposes it doesn’t exist to me)

I remember that they briefly bring her back in s15 but truly they did not do Nearly a good enough job of integrating her into the plot in a meaningful way so by that point it feels…. tangential. as did many other characters’ appearances in the final seasons due to the extremely scattered writing.

overall I enjoyed the setup for jody taking in alex + claire + patience + kaia but I wanted more from it thematically. it was so obvious to many viewers that the writers were belatedly trying to correct the show’s notorious track record of misogyny, but that problem ran Far Far too deep for them to be able to fix it by simply adding more female side characters to the already-overflowing cast. alex’s intro episode and patience’s intro episode are two of my favorites in the late(r) seasons, but beyond their introductions we just do not see any of these characters focused on for long - besides (arguably) claire who got more screentime than any of the other girls.

and back to kaia as an individual character: I would’ve liked for the writers to have explored her as a jack foil. tbfh I wouldn’t have shunted jack off to apocalypse world so soon after his introduction; I would have kept him in the bunker with samndean and maybe cas. but if they were gonna go the AW route I think kaia should’ve been transported there with jack and it could’ve been her instead of mary who fought with him through that landscape. on top of the two of them getting to develop a relationship built on teamwork and embracing/refining their powers, this way jack could’ve used kaia’s dreamwalking abilities to try to communicate with sam, dean, AND cas if he wanted to. could’ve pulled out some interesting insights about the characters and their converging relationships that way. I would’ve mostly/entirely nixed the “dark kaia” plot tbh and focused her future appearances on her interactions with claire, alex, and patience - in a world where they were all recurring guest stars in MOTW episodes so the audience had a chance to get properly attached to them as characters.

sorry for how rambly that got lmao feel free to share your thoughts with me in the comments/tags if any of this sparked your interest :)

[stitching-in-time]

Voyager rewatch s3 ep 22: Real Life

Another Doctor episode that somehow didn't end up making me like him any better. While it was meant to humanize him, he didn't end up altering his backward attitudes much, and it was a huge downer at the end. It just made me sad, more than anything.

The Doctor creating a holographic family for himself in an attempt to be more human is an interesting idea, but despite living on a ship full of real people, he for some reason thinks that a family is some sort of 1950s 'Leave It To Beaver' nonsense. It seems far fetched for the Doctor to have even encountered the sort of 'Father Knows Best' attitudes he displays here, since they would be way out of step with the 24th century society Star Trek presents. Though the actors are very good, and the over-the-top sacchariness of the opening scene is funny, it makes the Doctor look very self-absorbed to design such a subservient adoring famliy for himself that lives only to praise him.

When he invites B'Elanna and Kes to meet his holo family, B'Elanna calls him out on his gross old timey attitudes, and offers to adjust the program to be more realistic. When she does, and the Doctor gets confronted with children that argue and cry, and a spouse who has her own life outside of him, the Doctor clings to his weird 1950s attitudes and attempts to rule over them by telling them what they are and aren't allowed to do, which obviously doesn't work. Though it's a valuable lesson for the Doctor to learn, it feels anachronistic that he would have these attitudes to begin with, especially the edict that his holo son isn't allowed to have anymore Klingon friends- um, wtf?! I could understand if he'd said, 'you're not allowed to see these friends, specifically, because of your behavior when you're with them', but 'no Klingon friends, Klingons are bad and violent!' is just... insanely racist. The Federation has been allies with the Klingons for a while at this point- that someone would program a medical hologram with such backward attitudes, and that Starfleet would give it a pass, is just plain bad. Idk why Voyager displayed such crappy attitudes toward Klingons when Next Gen and DS9 spent so much time and effort expanding Klingon culture and lore so well. (My suspicion: misogyny. Worf's Klingonness was always something wonderful and noble that everyone respected, whereas B'Elanna's Klingonness was often presented as an obstacle to be overcome. The message is very clear: it's cool for men to be Klingon, but for women it's 'too much'. Smells like sexism to me.)

Meanwhile, the rest of the crew is busy investigating a series of spacial anomalies in the hopes of harvesting some energy from them. In the middle of this, we have a cute scene in the mess hall where Tom catches B'Elanna reading a romance novel, and decides to read it too, so he'll know what she's into in the future. (Knowing Tom, he'd probably dress up and roleplay it with her- idk why Tom has so many haters, he's doing it right! If I met someone who'd read my silly escapist romance fiction so they could better act out my fantasies with me, I'd marry them on the spot!) They have a Bogie-and-Bacall-ish exchange of very obvious double entendres, but their cute flirty scene is interrupted by the appearance another spacial anomaly. Back on the bridge, they try to figure out how to get close enough to it to collect the energy without damaging Voyager.

Tom ends up taking a shuttle, and getting trapped in the eye of the anomaly, which has some gorgeous visual effects that look like a glowing sunset. It's one of the best cgi effects they've done. His shuttle is nearly destroyed on the way out, but Voyager gets him out with only minor injuries, which send him to sick bay. The Doctor gives him an angry lecture about his reckless thrill seeking, and Tom realizes that the Doctor is upset about something other than him. He admits to Tom that his holographic daughter suffered an injury playing Parises Squares, and is about to die. The Doctor shut down the program and plans not to go back ever again. Tom once again steps up with compassion and insight that he rarely gets credit for, and tells the Doctor that if he wants to truly understand what family means, he has to take the bad as well the good. He urges him not to give up on the program and end up stuck in that moment forever, but to face it, and say goodbye to his daughter, and find solace in grieving with his family, the same way the Voyager crew find strength and comfort in adversity together.

The Doctor goes back, and it's one of the most utterly heartbreaking death scenes you will ever see in any Star Trek episode. The child actress who plays his daughter does an absolutely amazing job portraying her fear and panic so convincingly, I cannot watch her without crying. The Doctor shows the most genuine concern and sensitive bedside manner he's ever displayed to anyone as he tells her that she's dying, and stays by her side. His wife and son come to be with her too, and the three of them are there together when she dies. It doesn't matter that they're holograms, it's an unbearably painful scene, wherein the Doctor learns an extremely hard lesson about what living a real life means. The episode ends on the three of them crying over her body, and it's just... a lot. It's so sad, and it's such an emotional wallop to end on that. This is one of those ones you really have to take a bit of time to emotionally recover from afterward.

The one thing that takes away from the ending is knowing the Doctor doesn't continue with his family program ever again after this. I get why they didn't, from a Doylist perspective- it would be a lot more work to add two more characters to give him the wife and son throughout the show, but it feels like a bit of a let down that the Doctor abandons it after fighting so hard to get through the worst of it. Still, it's an important character study piece for him. I'm just not sure I want to be that emotionally devastated for the sake of the Doctor's character development, which I actually feel kind of stagnated, and even went backwards, over the run of the show.

Tl;dr: This story was well acted and had some good things to say, but I feel like it didn't actually do enough to make the Doctor a better person to justify the emotional wallop it hits us with at the end. Well done, but a downer.

[oathofkaslana]

I saww someone ranting about it earlier today; and since you’re the #1 collie fan I know, how do you feel about her treatment from the comics to her appearances in game??💜

GOD. DEAR GOD. ok this will take a moment. be patient w me

short answer: 2 me. in game collei is a poorly done adaptation of webtoon collei (which. i feel the need to note. was not perfect at all i just think her story was done better there). in game collei is wasted potential and mischaracterizes her for the sake of profit over artistic direction which honestly. leads to a bit of ableism and misogyny.

long answer: DEAR GOD. COLLEI. ok. the comics are in no way perfect. they're incredibly racist (particularly with barnabas's design), and they're not at all the perfect portrayal ever of a kid with cptsd. but with webtoon collei we got this story of a little kid who was so angry at everyone because she'd been hurt time and time again to the point where she genuinely believed that other people would always hurt her and she was just inherently a bad person. she believed her chronic illness was a sign of the archons hating her. she believed that the archons didn't care about her. she believed that she was inherently worth less than other people, ESPECIALLY those with visions. so we start off w that lil kid who's so rightfully angry and had to fend for herself using powers she was forced to have (the archon residue that actively feeds and stokes her negativity)! she literally kills people without remorse the first three pages we see her!!!!!! and it only turns around when amber (a vision user!!) is unrelentingly kind to her and keeps reinforcing this idea that collei is a human that is deserving of good and is capable of good. amber makes collei believe that she isn't doomed for some awful destructive fate. amber is the first person that shows collei that she believes her life matters. amber is the first person collei has met that unrelentingly believes in her humanity and goodness and makes an active effort to reinforce it. that kindness! and the want to believe she can do that! (the want to believe in amber) is ultimately the thing that spurs collei to action!!!!! her arc os essentially about kindness, finding humanity in yourself, and finding and believing in agency for yourself. and obv cyno plays a big part here and its the start of her rebirth symbolism ofc. etc etc etc.

then the game. i do think the game got some things correct! like i do generally like the change in character and i think that's expected for someone like collei who idolizes amber so much to the point of wanting to be her. i also really enjoy her character stories and a lot fo ehr voice lines. and i really really like how she's still obviously dealing with her cptsd. i like that it didn't go away! she still has triggers! she mentions anxiety! our first introduction to her was her having a nightmare!!

lsBUT the game also does a lot wrong imo. i think the game has a tendency to reduce collei a lot. while i do think the initial direction w her sweet nice girl facade was intended to show her admiration towards amber and lack of real identity/faith in identity for herself, i think it's been too. vague. and led to this becoming her Actual personality instead of a facade she's attempting to become. like while i don't think its inherently insidious i do think it's kinda suspect that they allow characters like scara (who's very similar to collei) to keep the asshole parts of their identity with their healing arcs but never let collei express that part of herself when it was such a huge part of her original character. (her cynicism being fostered by her environment and a protective thing for her and made her a nice character foil to amber). also the magicuring. i fucking hate how they handled eleazar in the game. like even if it weren't incredibly ableist for them to be treat chronic illness as a narrative device that's always meant to be cured, it was actively corrosive to collei's character bc so much of her arc is realizing her own worth and healing mentally even while her eleazar was getting worse. it means so so much for collei to be at a better state and actually have some sense of compassion for herself when she's experiencing flare ups from her chronic illness that everyone told her was the reason why she was worthless in the first place! and taking that away from her! taking that away from disabled players in general! sucked a lot!!!! i also think the game just does not want to acknowledge what collei's arc actually was and how much anger and exploitation it involved. especially in the 3.5(?) windblume event where she was compared to sucrose because of anxiety when their anxieties are so different (both being incredibly valid ofc but sucrose's social anxiety and fear of abandonment can not aptly be compared to collei's anxiety thats a byproduct of her cptsd from yk. experiencing discrimination and almost dying multiple times and human experimentation etc etc..) it often feels like they're rebranding her entire character to be more focused on this particular anxious nice girl image for the sake of consumerability (its how the fandom sees her and its easy for her to fit into tropes like that), this easy to sell found family w her tighnari and cyno (like i love their unit but dear god. i hate the way they've been written sometimes bc it feels like she's an accessory to those two who are also being flanderized), misogyny (again. collei is so much more similar to scara than she is sucrose and the difference between how they’re treated makes me so sad). AND because she's a four star she's so often side-lined! it's really disappointing to see how little of a role she played in sumeru when. honestly i think adding her to a larger part of sumeru could've benefited the story esp bc she's literally the first sumeru character we've seen and has been teased in the game since 1.0.

basically. collei is colleinations collective oc now :3

[sasukesun]

Idk if you’ve noticed this, but when people talk about body shaming online, you always have those guys who are like "body shaming is bad if you are attacking something the person can’t control" because they don’t want to be shamed for their dick size…. BUT of course they’re the first one to bodyshame fat people, or even really skinny people because they "can easily control their weight"

I find this infuriating because while it’s mostly acknowledge online that being racist, sexist or homophobic is going to get you in trouble at some point, body shaming (and the shaming of mental illness too by extension) is still largely accepted.

(I hope I didn’t bother you. You are great by the way, I love your humor💞)

it’s never a bother, and thank you so much aww 🫶🏼

ah yeah, cis men will raise flags on body shaming as long as it’s about their dicks and their insecurities, they will surely not have the same consideration when it’s about women, cause a woman’s worth is measured by her appearance to those people, simple as that. i mean- have you seen these?

and i know it’s wrong to want them to taste their own poison by body shaming them back, especially because when you do that, you include other people with the same traits that have nothing to do with the discussion and you can hurt them, but some comments i see come from such a dehumanising place and i don’t know what to do with my anger. i’ve been seeing so much body shaming and overall misogyny on twitter lately and it’s infuriating as well as concerning how people nowadays are getting so comfortable with… oppression.

[majorbaby]

tl;dr why i talk about race on MASH so much and why i think it's worth doing inspite of the horrors lol and what you can expect from me re: race on MASH going forward

one of the things that drew me to MASH fandom, and one of the reasons i've persisted in it for so is how much meta is generated by smart, passionate fans who were pulled in by the smart, passionate and political writing on MASH, which did all of that while being damn funny.

disclaimer: "meta" isn't better or inherently more ~intellectual~ than fanfiction or squee or fanart or memes or "two-braincell" content. in fact, i think meta can be all of these things, though i'm biased in that i think critical thought relies heavily on one's ability to make connections and pick up on intersecting concepts and i have a hard time reining in my natural tendency to do that, which is why my posts are so long and convoluted - i am working on it.

i wasn't, and still am not, dismayed by the (perceived or actual) void of long-form commentary on race and class on MASH. tbf there are a few people who note these things as they appear, but not really many who centered it in their meta. still, i appreciate at least an awareness.

if anything, it gave me some confidence that i could add something new and valuable to the collective space. that's why i started writing about race on MASH and tagging it as such. and generally, it's been pretty well received, although i'd be open to more people talking about and sharing their views on the subject.

what does bother me though now though, is that i should've known better assuming that there was no angle on race already being espoused and freely adopted by people. the absence of any statements about race is in fact a loud, clear statement on race. the absence of racialized voices in any public discourse is painfully obvious. and tbh, i'm a little surprised by how little the korean-ness of the korean war features in analysis. yes it's true that MASH might've been about "the vietnam war" but that's less of the jump it takes in the later years, when it becomes about "all war" or even more vaguely "all suffering"

it's been pointed out to me in the past that some people think the racism of the later years is "subtle" and - tbh, it's fine to see it that way if maybe you've not been the target of "subtle" racism in your life or you haven't studied the pervasiveness of racism or you haven't consumed the work of people who have done both. but i think it's pretty shortsighted to openly claim that something is "subtly" racist and not be prepared to defend that position with examples, or quantify what you mean when you say "subtle". and i'm not really willing to hear such distinctions being made unless its first been explained to me why we're using a spectrum of "loud to quiet racism".

additionally, the fanbase has been pretty vocal about misogyny. i believe this is a popular justification "start from season 4", which i've talked everyone's ear off about so i won't do it again here*. i'm glad we know that Hawkeye making comments about nurses' bottoms in OR is harassment - but then again, do we know that? Or do we limit our critiques of misogyny to Trapper and Henry only? Do we know that BJ, as of a result of Hawkeye's advice, deciding not to tell Peg about his infidelity is just doubling-down on BJ's betrayal of her? The show definitely doesn't, and it's troublesome to me that we don't seem to know that either, or we do know, and we just forgive it.

*famous last words.

if I'm being exposed to this shallow criticism of the representation of women on MASH, then i'm raising my eyebrows at the lack of commentary on race - which is the other reason why i persist in writing about it. even MASH, with Hey Look Me Over, lightly acknowledges the intersection of race and gender, and the eternal plight of women of colour having to choose between pieces of their identity in order to show "solidarity" with their oppressors - white women and racialized men. so why shouldn't we? and when i say "we" i mostly mean me, but i'd like to properly mean we.

there's other ways we've talked about race without talking about race and not realized it. and there's one very big example that i'm going to address in a later post. i just wanted to talk to myself about why i think it's important and worth doing, beyond any suspicion there may be about my motives being benign stuff that doesn't actually bother me at all. like who's fucking hawkeye post-war or individual people looking to colonel potter as a father-figure. if it were just that, and if there wasn't so much conventional wisdom floating around that bore no connection to unconscious biases we (me included) have about race, class, gender etc, then i wouldn't be interested in unpacking it.

such posts will be tagged #race on mash, #class on mash

[possessionisamyth]

Is it me or do some fans scapegoat Ada for Capcom not doing anything else with the RE female characters? Even though Ada isn't even allowed to appear in media without Leon (and even then, she doesn't always appear with him).

I wouldn't say it's just you, but I would say the latest Resident Evil content this year is stirring a pot much faster than when RE7 dropped when it comes to how they handle these characters and the franchise as a whole. They want to make everything more serious. They want to pander to certain groups of fans when it comes to character direction. They're trying to bring back the horror without understanding the spikes of comedy and cheesiness whether or not they were accidental is what makes the series so iconic, but that's a slightly different conversation. So, let's focus on Ada.

Listen. Ada has always been a character in a precarious situation when it comes to fandom. There's a lot of "interesting" qwhite people who love Leon so much they see her as a personal threat with their misogyny. She's a visible woman of color, which gets her hit with the racism. She's allegedly Chinese, as she could also be Taiwanese or Cantonese, or a different ethnicity since we don't even know her real name, so she gets hit with xenophobia overseas. She's also not a "nice" person who babies Leon, so she gets hit with the double misogyny from those same "interesting" qwhite people who never draw Leon with brown hair even though that's his canonical hair color. She's a woman so showing her as capable without the sexiness slapped onto her makes her "ugly" and makes the 3% of fans who yell about it the loudest cry and scream so much that Capcom will rope it back into her character however they can.

Then we have current fandom itself, and how it's changed, and how it's not changed at all. I saw a post I can't find at the moment stating the current waves of fandom have this new pattern with people who don't want to seem like they're misogynist or sexist, so they'll say the women characters are great and then do nothing for them. No rambling about them. Barely any fanart. Very little headcanons. The tiniest amount of fanfic, and if they get any of these things there has to be a male character the artist clearly favorites in the spotlight of the piece. The pieces of art that are women focused get half as much attention as the male focused pieces. Those same fandom pieces get 1/4 of that attention when the characters are visible women of color not at their sexiest, cutest, or palest form. The original poster I spoke of was obviously right. If you don't believe me, look at how many notes any "good" Leon post gets compared to the other women, and you'll start to see a pattern very quickly.

Ada is the easiest to vilify because fandom always hates "mean" women, women of color, and women point blank. Hell, the racist's vitriol was so bad they removed Sheva from various editions of the game cover of RE5 and left it as Chris or put Jill there when you can only play with her in the DLC. It doesn't help with how Ada's writing is handled over the years, that fandom loves to put her on a proverbial stake saying she took attention or a possible role from Claire, or Jill, or even Rebecca now that she's getting more attention. But they'll more loudly say how Ada is taking attention from Piers, or Luis, or even fucking Birkin. It's not entirely about how they diss and scapegoat Ada, it's the bullshit all around the diss they're making. It's about who they would personally slot in to replace her or any woman character, and why they would do that which speaks the loudest to me. If you pay attention, you'll see what wavelength their brains are running on when they drop that nonsense.

Now hear me out. I came into Resident Evil after watching all of Lupin III. Quick summary, it's an old manga that got an anime in the early 70s, and is still getting remade today about a group of thieves who steal expensive shit.

There's only 1 woman in the main recurring cast, Fujiko Mine, and since everyone has a gimmick, her's is sex appeal and that there's a 50/50 chance she'll steal the treasure from the group of men for herself at the end. No matter how many times she does this, Lupin III as a character loves her regardless. He knows that changing her means he'd have to change himself, neither of which would be a good thing, because change doesn't always mean improvement. She has been handled by so many men and a few women writers for the last 50 years I've seen all the possible ways a femme fatale can be written super well and super poorly. And even though she does all of the exact same shit as Lupin does, fans(new fans especially) will still call her a bitch. And I've had to call people out a million times with 1:1 canon comparisons to make them see it's the misogyny glasses they're looking through when they make this judgement about her.

This also means I came in looking at the Leon and Ada relationship from a completely different angle than probably 99% of the active members of the RE fandom on this site. I can see where she's written improperly for the chances she does get to appear, but I can see the potential in it, and I can see and understand how their relationship is structured the way it is. I do believe that Ada having time to herself without Leon in the game or Leon even being a priority is desperately needed for her character. I also think this narrative decision will scapegoat her further because fandom will say that attention should've gone to [Insert Male Character Here] that is an old character brought back or a completely new white guy in his 30s on the side of good who talks to another main dude for about 2 times if that much.

However, if anyone who read this far would like to see who's actually taking all the attention in an RE movie or RE game, feel free to do a tally for how many times each character gets to speak and compare the final numbers when you're done. For the games, repeated lines do not count to make it a little easier.