#enjoy reading about women!!!!!!!!!!!

[biblically-accurate-dca]

nessa in the bun suit

[handsome-girl-competition]

btw someone earlier today was kind enough to share some han sooyoung drawings by the novel's illustrator. im a certified han sooyoung enjoyer so i loved all of them and i feel generous enough to share them with you guys in return

[bayetea]

I don't like the judo flip in moa as much as the next guy but in my eyes it's largely the result of rick not taking female violence half as seriously as male violence (a result of viewing women as weaker and inferior to men such that their acts of violence don't need to be taken as seriously) and not so much anything about annabeth herself. like I do genuinely feel that annabeth is a complex heroine and definitely one of the better ones in the realm of ya action-adventure fiction produced in the past 25 years but she is still a girl being written by a man and all I'm saying is that her writing clearly reflects that sometimes (more in tags)

[ninkaku]

annoying conversations happening on twitter this week about dazai and his canonical whoreness .... very ableist delivery of people treating him like a tiny 22 yr old minor who clearly doesn't know what sex is and its getting weeeeeiirrrrd ...........

[thebirdandhersong]

also: not only is June Hur's writing full of research on medieval Korea, shot through with Christian values, bristling with mystery and neo-Confucian philosophy of the time period, and embroidered here and there with the occasional romance....... she's also FUN. She makes Pinterest boards and playlists for her books. She regularly posts on instagram about obscure historical things she finds cool in her research. She wrote a oneshot recently, in which all the couples in her books (...which would make 2 couples, because she tends to focus more on family and friendship) are reincarnations of the same two people. This woman wrote fanfiction of her own work.

[necrotic-nephilim]

for the recent ask game, i’m really curious about your take on 7 + 8 :P

for the choose violence ask game!

7. what character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because how the fandom acts about them?

i'll be so honest: Jason Todd. i know there's a lot of argument of "who has the worst fans" and i think that question is flawed and impossible to answer, but i will say Jason fans irked me so deeply. because i read mostly 90s era Batfam, i admittedly didn't have a lot of exposure to Jason for a while, expect for his New-52 runs i'd read years ago. and since i never liked him based on those runs, i could not understand *what* his fans liked about him, or where they got some of their headcanons/ideas from. i've never been more baffled. it ranges from "oh i don't agree but you do you, i guess?" to "what character are you talking about i am BAFFLED". and it soured me on Jason for so long that i actually hate read *most* of his pre-Flashpoint appearances just to understand what on earth people liked about him. and now i can say, i love him dearly, but i can also say, i still don't know what character his fans are talking about sometimes. and i hate the fanon version of Jason who feels almost, Deadpool-ified? with this self-aware slapstick humor but a sad soft interior but also sassy and will kill a man it's just. it feels very hollow to me and it has made me almost tempted to block his character tag more than once over the years bc sometimes certain takes make it difficult to even like him. i just have to tune it out or yell about it for hours.

8. common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

i'm going to get particularly saucy with this one: that Dick Grayson has Eldest Daughter Syndrome. or more generally, that he was parentified. not a single ounce of Dick's backstory indicates him as being parentified. to be parentified you have to be a child taking care of other children either emotionally or physically because your parents are not fulfilling that role. and Dick was *never* a child at the time that another child was under Bruce's care. he has been an adult for the entirety he has known every other Batkid. and even then, the *only* one he was something you could akin to being a parent figure to was Damian, and Dick *chose* that. Dick was a grown-ass man in his late 20s who had the facilities and capacity to make the decision to be Damian's primary caretaker. he's never been parental toward any of the other Batkids, nor has Bruce ever forced upon him the role of having to raise them. did Bruce do a sort of questionable job with Dick? yeah. but i would argue Bruce did the best job with Dick of all the Batkids, and even if he was shitty with Dick, he couldn't parentify Dick bc there was no one for Dick to be parenting. and Dick wasn't parenting Bruce either. they just had a normal relationship of loving and caring for each other.

as for Eldest Daughter Syndrome i just.. i Do Not Like calling any male character "female coded" or "female rage coded" or "eldest daughter coded" because they're *not*. especially not in *this* medium. these are male characters, created by men, written by men 90% of the time, and written to be *male power fantasies*. nothing about Dick or Jason or any Batboy is female-coded bc they exist to be badass men. just because they show emotion and have complex relationships with Bruce doesn't make them suddenly women. Dick shows his anger in a very destructive, stereotypically "masculine" way. even if we strip it of gender, Dick doesn't exhibit most traits of Eldest Daughter Syndrome. he easily makes relationships with people his age, he has no issues telling Bruce no, he did not have caretaking responsibilities forced onto him by Bruce, he's not even really hyperindependent. Dick has a support system outside of the Bats, the fandom just ignores it. does Dick force caretaking responsibilities onto himself sometimes? can he be an overachiever? absolutely. but these are internal complexes that just come with making a character a superhero, it's a complex they all have. if i have to hear one more fan call him Eldest Daughter Syndrome-core or say he's a victim of parentification, i think I'll explode a little bit.

[marzipanandminutiae]

women who were the only girl with F/F ships in their mostly-sapphic teen friend group, and had to feign interest in the Pretty Gay Anime Boys Of The Week to talk to their friends at all, deserve financial compensation

[waitineedaname]

hiiii lily what is this ‘orv’ i have been seeing…..

HIIII MIKE. SMILES. orv is Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint! it's a webnovel with an ongoing webtoon adaption and it is making me Fucking Crazy. basically the premise there's this really unpopular really long webnovel called Three Ways to Survive an Apocalypse, and for years, Kim Dokja has been the only reader. when the novel finally ends, the author sends him an email with the txt file of the whole novel, and then suddenly the novel is wiped from the internet and in that instant, the events of the novel begin taking place in Kim Dokja's world. the apocalypse begins and humanity is subjected to cruel scenarios and challenges livestreamed for the entertainment of these powerful entities called constellations, and as the only one who read the story to its end, Kim Dokja is the only one fully equipped with knowledge of how this story goes (or at least, how it originally went)

it is SO good. it lures you in like "ooh this is a normal reverse isekai" and then ends up being CRAZY. it deals with questions about the boundary between characters and Real People and whether that distinction really matters, and it's one of those stories that looks the audience dead in the eye and dares you to look away first. literary devices are made Real (oh fourth wall we're really in it now...) and it plays with narrative voice and pov and unreliable narration in such fun ways. it is ultimately about the value of stories and the value of being a reader and the choice to wrestle with the story that's been written for you in favor of the story you really want to tell. it's also about Kim Dokja having something Deeply Wrong With Him skdlfjlksdjf the journey i went on with him was "okay he's a reader insert who reads novels as escapism, i get it" -> "oh actually he has something wrong with him" -> "oh he has something Wrong With Him" -> "WHAT. WHAT THE FUCK. HELLO. WHAT WAS THAT." I'm obsessed with him.

I read the webtoon first which I think is a pretty effective onboarding point! some of the art had my jaw on the FLOOR it's so cool. the webtoon has adapted roughly the first third of the whole novel so far, and if you want to read the novel just dm me and I'll hit you up with the epub file lol (not just mike but anyone who is interested!)

[deadbaguette]

You’d think that loving (almost) every character in a media would be great but everytime I think about how much I love every character in the epic cycle I die a little more inside. They’re all so tragic and doomed???? Nothing but misery comes from thinking about them too much

[hauntingblue]

CAUSE THIS IS THRILLER (bark), THRILLER (bark) NIGHT

Usopp's outfit is so funny for reals

He got the whole squad laughing

Luffy enablers at it again.... (Robin.... I know.....)

The humor panels so far have been so good!!! God this arc is so funny

HE SAID IT‼️‼️

They look like birds 😭😭

It's just too good... luffy taking cerberus and zombies what can't he do

It's just banger after banger what can I say

Franky feeling for other people because of his guilt complex and sanji lying through his teeth and pulling out the women excuse to seem unaffected... yeah

Look at them.... look how they ate

Omg joyboy reference?? (No)

Sanji is rubbing off on usopp.... also chopper noticing that is sogeking's weapon akdhaksjak

ANOTHER SLAY!!!!!

Their priorities: I'm not strong enough, there isn't enough food, and nami isn't here

Franky going from wanting to kill brook for his jokes to making a joke like his after he hears his backstory... exactly (Robin was already enabling him before the backstory even fdagjsfha)

Sanji is altering his body and actually being on fire to communicate to us how fucking mad he is..... I need more of him going insane I do I do

My god what is he doing ALDJALAJALA

AHSAHAHQHAH THEY ARE THE SAME!!! naaah sanji wouldn't force a woman to be his wife

You cant see me but I am nodding my head in agreement over and over

You don't understand he altered his body to communicate to us how mad he is. He inploded himself and then reconstituted again. Those germa 66 genes are insane

You tell em usopp!!!! The first of many girls you've scared into defeat!!! Akdjqknql

Zoro zombie regressed to not trusting robin akdjaks he's still in there

ROBI-CHO SUPLEX??? HELL YEAAAAAH

There is zosa- [GUNSHOT GUNSHOT GUNSHOT GUNSHOT]

Super frapper gong.... he is doing combo shots with frobin... omg.... parents....

Everything is so fun I'm having such a good time reading.... and then zosan angst like damn I am being fed well here

[chamerionwrites]

Somewhat more controversially - beyond just well-written characters, I think a lot of people find themselves repeatedly drawn to particular Types of characters. And I think the frequency with which those types appear, and the particular flavor of those types, is often (unnecessarily!) gendered. (Sticking with the espionage theme: it’s pretty difficult to find clever, calculating, socially astute female spy characters whose tradecraft doesn’t hinge primarily or at least very heavily on their sex appeal). TL;DR even very well-written female characters are often (unnecessarily!!!) confined to a much more limited set of narrative roles and archetypes.

And while I’m definitely not saying this is something we should all just accept completely uncritically, I do think it’s a pretty undeniable factor in why a lot of people’s lists of favorite blorbos might be kinda dude-heavy.

[queen0fm0nsterz]

Ended up pirating all of Hazbin for the sake of my younger days (used to be a fan when I was around 14/15, before all the stuff with Viv came out) and I am so surprised by how I felt... nothing for the most part. Like a lot of the show's storylines feel like they was crammed in there with no real pacing. A lot of this should have been season 2 territory, which is a sentiment I've seen echoed around, but also... it feels as if the show is trying to be episodic while also having a long narrative thread, which just doesn't work with just 8 episodes. Especially not when paced like this. So I kinda ended up feeling nothing for the most part. All the events got a "Oh, great, so what?" reaction out of me because there was little to no buildup to most of them.

Sir Pentious was always a fave of mine so I was glad to see they kept him around and, though I think we should have had more episodes with him as a villain, I think how he ended up was fitting for what little of an arc he had. I am livid about what they did to Cherri and Mimzy.

I fucking loved Mimzy, I have no idea why they sent her away -- having someone like her at the Hotel would have been a blast considering how the others are already on the road to redemption. She would have balanced it out by being a regular sinner, someone who doesn't care about redemption and won't probably ever care unless it's in her best interests to. Plus her friendship with Alastor was quite cute, they bounce off of each other very well imo. Plus I could see her have a bit of a conflict with both Charlie and Vaggie because of her ways of acting. I'm so sorry they took that from you girlboss.

And Cherri... dear lord where WAS she? She should have been a lot more present. I used to like her relationship with Angel and I even think Cherrisnake is cute conceptually, but both these relationship had... little to no room to breathe imo.

[lala-blahblah]

I will never make this because it would be for an audience of one (me) but ever since reading "If we Were Villains" (story about serious drama kids in college who perform shakespeare and deal with a murder) I have been entertaining the thought of a crack fic crossover with High School Musical The Musical The Series where the staff decides they will no longer put on shakespeare after the tragic accident that happened at Thanksgiving, because Shakespeare plays would only increase the tension and drama. So they hire Ms. Jen who decides their spring play will actually be High School Musical (which exists in the 90s in this universe) and it ruins the vibe so much that everyone gives up on being dark and mysterious because they're universally pissed at Ms Jen for making them learn choreoraphed basketball dancing.

[gingermintpepper]

I don't want to bother you while you're in your art challenge, take your time to answer! I just loved your analysis and opinion of Branchus, and i saw in the post you said we could ask you for others Apollo's lovers... I want to know (they're not lovers, they're grandfather and grandmother lol, but i would like to see your thoughts) of Koios and Phoebe 👀 Not in relationship with Apollo, just your opinion of them...

We don't know so much about Koios, we know a bit more about Phoebe because of her tie to Delphi and the Oracle.

Oh, how sweet! Thank you so much for the consideration and hey, no worries at all on asking about his grandparents rather than a lover, I'm always ready to ramble about Apollo's genealogical line since I find it extremely interesting!

Since information on a lot of the older Titans in terms of how they were worshipped and seen is scarce (Phoebe does have mentions in her mantic right but very little is mentioned in reference to Koios or her daughters apart from establishing genealogy and Koios himself seems to have been more of an abstract establishment, the way a lot of Hesiod's old gods were) I won't go out of my way to quote or base my opinions here in any literature that I've been exposed to, so just keep in mind that what I'm going to say is very much my own opinions mixed with things I understand and very influenced by my own love of familial and romantic parallels in god-pairs being symbolic of various natural and abstract relationships!

I see Koios and Phoebe, like a lot of the older Titan pairs, as abstractions of the original pair of Gaia and Uranus. Power often originates with and is exerted by women in these older pairs while glory is what is passed on, and consequently fought over, by the men - in Gaia and Uranus' case, it is Gaia who is older and it is from Gaia that Uranus is born. Uranus is her match but is also her subservient and so when Uranus is unable to love his children and seeks their destruction, it's Gaia who bestows the power and means by which to silence him. This 'equal but subservient' dynamic is definitely alive and well with Koios and Phoebe and I even think they mirror their parents from a symbolic standpoint as well.

Koios and Phoebe are the knowledge duo. They represent the two sources of knowledge/wisdom in the old world - that of heavenly (male) knowledge which pertains to the nature of the physical world and its realities and earthly (female) knowledge which pertains to the nature of intangible and unobservable reality such as time and space. I like having them mirror each other; what with them both being associated with their respective world axes (Koios as the heavenly axis if you syncretise him with the Roman Polos, Phoebe as the earthly axis if you take Delphi as the centerpoint of the world), having serpent symbolism (Koios with the hundred-headed star-serpent Drakon who guards the Hesperides which is sometimes said to be located in the land of the Hyperboreans and Phoebe with Python who guards the fount of knowledge at Delphi) and splitting their essence equally across their descendants (Their children and grandchildren perfectly embody one half of their partnership - Asteria with her heavenly magic and night-prophecies and Leto with her earthly power and wisdom and their grandchildren following likewise; Hecate who works beneath her grandfather's skies and has her grandmother's wisdom but who has chosen to reside neither in the sky nor on the earth, Artemis who could not be more of a daughter of the soil and Apollo who has his place among the brightest of stars).

It all leads back to that really fun dichotomy of equal but subservient honestly! Knowledge (and wisdom/intelligence) in general in Greek myths are female in nature so already that kind of puts Koios in an interesting position as a direct male descendent of Gaia and Uranus who didn't represent some physical, tangible element (in contrast his brothers all had some level of physicality to them - Oceanus the oceans, Cronus the harvest, Crius the winds, Hyperion the light, so on and so forth) but there's also that element of Koios' glory also being female! After all, his only male descendent is two generations removed and what should be his seat of power - Hyperborea - became Leto's the moment she was born there.

In this way, I admittedly find that a lot of comfort in Koios and Phoebe's partnership. There's a lot of respect both ways between them with Koios' respect and regard of Phoebe reminding me a lot of Uranus' original adoration of Gaia (and his return to said quiet, constant adoration after his castration) while Phoebe's overseeing of her mantle being very reminiscent of Gaia's own kingmaking both for Cronus and later for Zeus. For me, theirs is a pair without ego. A lot of the friction and instability in the younger generation of gods comes from the battle between intelligence and power - toes are constantly stepped on, glory is constantly being sought and the efforts made to counteract these moves results in conflict. Koios and Phoebe seem to have it all figured out by comparison. They've both handily passed their mantles down to their children, they've both overseen and instructed them and can rest easy knowing that they will not misuse said mantles and they've both just kind of retired now, content to spend their time in the evergreen Hyperborea, wrapped up in each other's arms like their father and mother before them and like, honestly? Good for them.

[asexualsimonsnow]

A few people in the tags on my Agatha romance plot line poll are voicing the same sorts of thoughts I had. I did not like her romance plot line because she had all these lines in the two previous books that, to me and many others, were implying her aromanticism. To have a chapter from her POV where she expresses feeling broken due to a suspected inability to feel that type of attraction only to later have this “resolved” by her finding the right person was extremely frustrating and disappointing.

Even beyond an aro reading of the character, it’s disappointing to see her coupled up at the end of the third book. So much of the first book was about subverting the expectations that come from these types of stories. One of these expectations seemed to me to be not just that the chosen one gets the perfect girl, but that all the characters are neatly coupled up by the end and have romance as a part of their story. In the first book not only is Agatha not with Simon, the chosen one, her supposed destiny, she’s not interested in coupling up and fulfilling that expectation placed on her by the world in which she lives and by the type of story she inhabits, at all. It feels like backtracking on her character growth to watch a romance play out for her in the third book.

[volfoss]

it is beyond infuriating how anne rice seems to insist on marius being a positive force in anyone's life ever. like she can't fully commit to exploring the fact he groomed armand and has repeatedly taken away his consent for what marius thinks is best (take the end of TVA as an example) and just kind of flatly puts it in the narrative. there's not really much interest in how these horrific events make marius come across as the worst because EVERYONE loves him. for gods sake, lestat learns from armand exactly what marius did to him in TVL and then proceeds to go find marius and be super friendly to him in the same fucking book. even armand and pandora, two of the people who have MORE than enough right to hate him, do not. it doesnt feel like shes trying to explore the toxicity of the abusive dynamic he traps them in, it just is there. and like yeah ofc the toxic vampire romance series but i think that this should be handled with more care. and it is not ever really framed in a way that she is interested in exploring how marius should easily be one of the most horrific characters in this series because it kind of feels like sa/rape/grooming/other things of that sort are just put there to further plot and not to really get the respect that they deserve in a medium.