#favorite female characters meme

[universoausteniano]

[v-e-l-v-e-t-g-o-l-d-m-i-n-e]

favorite female character tag game

I was tagged by @marley-manson - thanks for tagging me!

Rules: Make a poll of your top four favorite female characters of all time and see who is the favorite amongst your followers, then tag four people to do the same.

I had a hard time trying to choose only four and deciding if a non human character counted, but she was my favorite childhood female character, so...

let me see, I'm tagging @avaari @thetrekkiehasthephonebox @tirlaeyn @nyanne-cat (feel free to ignore if not in the mood!)

[siriuslysatorusimping]

Kurisaki Rinko in a nutshell:

This is Gojo thinking about her turning into a murder bean: 😍🥵🤤

[redbull-enjoyer]

[misqnon]

inspired by this tweet here’s my mental illness collage. i mean my 5 fav comfort characters

[321spongebolt]

If you recall, I drew Kitty Katswell dressed up as Jenny for Halloween. So, what if it was the other way around where Jenny dressed up as Kitty? The only thing is, I don't know if Kitty's outfit would be too small or too thin for Jenny to wear.

Credit for the vector of Kitty Katswell goes to DeviantArt user, ZArtist2017.

ORIGINAL TEMPLATE SOURCES

“What if Person wears clothing meme” by DeviantArt user,  MagicalKeyPizzaDan

“(Repost) Character Dressed Up As Character” by RednBlueHumanoid

[bellamysgriffin]

get to know me meme >> Favorite Female Characters [36/?] Ava Coleman (Abbott Elementary)

I didn't get ringworm, but I did get a tapeworm. Seafood restaurant next to the gas station. Got it. Passed it. Worth it.

[starcurtain]

I wish everyone collectively understood aventurine’s character like you…things would be so much easier! I genuinely don’t understand how people keep getting his motivations wrong??? Could it be because some of the most popular Aven fanfics were written prior to his release? That could have contributed to some of the takes we tend to see about him…thoughts?

I struggled all day to come up with a concise way to answer this and couldn't think of one, so here, have a long-winded ramble:

I don't think early fic writers have much impact in the situation with Aventurine's character now, since most people can look at when a story was posted and go "Oh, this was before we had ____ information."

I think that Aventurine's problem is being a male character in a gacha game. Gacha game characters are designed to sell. Hoyo can sell female characters very, very easily. Give her huge tits and a visible underwear strap and you're good to go. I love all my guy friends, but I'm not gonna sugarcoat it: straight men are not the hardest audience to please. Hit a particular fetish (feet, spandex, dommy mommy), and you're gucci.

Nah, we all know why Jade's trailer is Like That.™

Male characters in gacha are harder to sell because women as consumers are a little harder to predict. Does every woman want a tall, ripped hunk? Shit, no, small cute boyish models like Aventurine are selling better now? Why?! Would a bad boy be more popular than a nice guy??? It's harder to account for women's tastes, especially because they are often (a little) less visually-oriented.

Hoyo is good at what they do though, and they've figured out that male characters sell very well when they possess at least one of two specific traits:

Endearing vulnerability/helplessness

Gay ship tease

Give a character both, like Aventurine? They might as well be printing money.

That sound you hear is Hoyo's stock prices rising.

So, from the very beginning, Hoyo is incentivized to create a character that appeals to people, a character people will want to crack their wallets open for. And they achieved this, first and foremost, by giving Aventurine traits that female players (in particular, but men too), find especially appealing: emotional and physical vulnerability.

We see Aventurine's pain. We sympathize with his grief. We identify with his struggle to make meaning of his difficult life. He's our woobie, blorbo, babygirl, whatever the hell they're calling it now.

He can't hide his suffering anymore. He's on the very edge. He's a dude in distress. He's surrounded by enemies! He misses his mama! He's been betrayed! No one understands him like you do, dear player!

The ultimate feeling evoked is: He needs to be saved.

When people talk about male power fantasies, I think they forget that women can experience them too, and "Emotionally vulnerable man that only I (or my favorite character) can fix" is actually a female power fantasy.

And from there it's really easy, right: the people who shell out cash to buy warps for their harmed-husbando feel like they've saved him; the people who are into mlm ships look for the nearest hot dude to be the savior Ratio was waiting for his time lol.

Morally and intellectually, this type of deep-down-golden-hearted, emotionally-wounded male character is very easy to digest. There is nothing to dislike about this type of character or role in the story: this character is a good guy who has just gone through so many terrible situations, whose victim status makes him endearing, and whose lack of agency means that any of the questionable or downright bad things he does are always the result of someone else forcing his hand, and never something he would have chosen himself.

His motivations are always clear and consistent: get free, heal, and live happily ever after.

Insert the Wreck-It Ralph meme: "Do people assume all your problems got solved when a big strong man showed up?" But to be fair, a big strong man did kind of solve Aventurine's problem, so--

Anyway, it's simple. It's straightforward. Morally, it's pretty cut and dry, black and white: Aventurine is our hero, which means everyone dictating the course of his miserable life is evil.

Hoyo is not remotely discouraging people from literally buying into this emotional appeal.

And trust me, I get it. I'll be the first to admit that hurt-comfort is its own entire genre in fandom because it is so appealing. People eat up Aventurine's tragic backstory like candy! The idea of watching a character go through hell at the hands of bad guys just to finally find a happy end is like the definition of everyone's favorite story.

In fact... people love Aventurine's suffering so much, they have invented whole new ways for him to suffer that aren't even in the game.

This is where we get all the headcanons that Aventurine was a sex slave, every single person he meets hates him because of his race, the Stonehearts are executioners holding knives to his throat, Jade enslaved him to the IPC with a lifelong contract, his material possessions belong to the company, the IPC is forcing him to take only the most dangerous missions where he is being required by his evil jailers to continually put his life on the line... You name it and I promise you, I can find a fanfic where Aventurine suffers from it. 😂

Bro can't even sleep in on his day off; life is so hard for this man.

Being serious: if the game is telling us that Aventurine is a victim... Why not make him the perfect victim?

Why not envision an Aventurine with no freedom, who bears no responsibility for any of the horrible situations he is in or any of the dubious things he does?

It's so natural to like that version of Aventurine, so appealing to see a totally powerless underdog use his own wits and charms to claw his way up to freedom. Or, if you're the kind who really relishes angst: It's even appealing to see Aventurine lose more. To delight in fics where he loses his wealth, where the IPC punishes him for past crimes while he's powerless to stop them... (I assure you, this is many people's cup of tea and the fanfics prove it!)

Ultimately, there's nothing wrong with liking characters who are exactly this straightforward! It's completely fine to embrace characters that are intentionally written to be morally above-board, whose primary role in the story is to generate angst by being a good person who suffers, or those characters who never show unlikable traits, bad decisions, or contradictory actions.

The problem is that that's just not who the game is telling us Aventurine is.

Hoyo may be capitalizing off people who love to envision poor Aventurine still living his life as a slave... But the game also needs to tell a complicated enough story overall to appeal to people who don't care about this specific husbando--Aventurine's role in the actual game's plot has to be interesting enough for almost everyone to appreciate it, not just Aventurine's simp squad. (Don't get mad, I'm in the simp squad with you.)

So his character doesn't stop at just being a pure-hearted victim who is still waiting to be saved.

Aventurine is not that easy to label, and I think the biggest struggle in this character's fandom right now is between people who prefer the even-more-angsty, still-a-slave Aventurine versus people who want a morally grey, self-destructive character instead.

To me personally, while I greatly understand the appeal of fanon!Aventurine and the joy of a really juicy angst fic where characters lose it all, I think that missing out on the depth that canon is suggesting would be a real loss on the fandom's part.

The character motivations that Aventurine shows in the game are complicated. They cancel each other out. They're basically self-harm! He makes almost every situation he's in worse for himself--on purpose.

He is a good person, but also a person who has done unspeakable things. He does have morals, but he's not above allowing those who don't have them to use him to their advantage.

He's both the victim and the victor. He's his own worst enemy. He's a lost little boy who's been making terrible decisions for himself since he was like eight years old, and a grown ass man who is barely managing to fake his way through an existence that destiny is not letting him quit.

This kind of character is a lot harder to embrace. He's done things that most people would find appalling--like willingly joining up with the organization that let his entire race be massacred. He's invented a whole new peacock persona to frivolously flaunt riches he doesn't even care about (Poison Dart Frog Self-Defense 101). He actively plays into racist stereotypes about his people to manipulate others through their preconceived expectations. He's made a mockery of his mother's and sister's hopes and dreams by endlessly trying to throw his own life away.

He has flaws! He bet everything he had on a ploy without doing his homework to find out if the people he was risking his life for were even still around. (Maybe he already knew, and couldn't bear to admit it, even to himself.) He's intentionally off-putting and obnoxious to everyone he meets (Poison Dart Frog Self-Defense 102). He terrifies everyone who gets close to him by (seemingly) carelessly throwing himself into the jaws of death without the slightest provocation.

He knowingly allows the IPC to exploit his power and talents for profit. Did everyone forget that his role in the Strategic Investment Department is asset liquidation?! Like, his actual day-to-day job is ruining people's lives. Canonically, Aventurine kills people when his deals go bad.

His motivations change off-screen in two lines of story text. We're told in one line that his biggest reason for joining the IPC was to make money to save the Avgin, then in the next line we find out that's impossible. And... then what? What motivations does he even have now? The whole point of his character arc from 2.0-2.1 is that he was on the edge of giving in to utter despair and nihilism because he couldn't even perceive a single reason to stay alive. He has no purpose in life before Penacony, and that didn't start with the Stonehearts at all??

People keep saying Aventurine was held in the IPC by golden handcuffs, but how do you tie down someone for whom profit is meaningless? What can you offer to a man whose only desire is to bring back something already lost forever? How do you imprison someone whose only definition of freedom is, canonically, death?

Working for the Stonehearts is obviously not healthy. But that's why Aventurine was doing it--because taking dangerous missions allowed him to put himself at risk. The job that he originally pursued hoping to save his people became a direct means to self-harm, and the IPC's only real role in that was just happily profiting off the results.

The journal entries for Aventurine's quests are there deliberately to tell the player what is on his mind, and none of it has to do with escaping from his job:

Like... Work is the least of this man's problems.

At really the risk of rambling on too long now, he's also just a massive walking contradiction:

Aventurine is among the most explicitly religious characters in the game, yet he's one of the only people in the entire game that we have ever seen actively question his people's aeon.

You might be tempted to think Aventurine's risky gambles with his life as an adult are a result of giving up after finding out about the Avgin massacre... Butttt no, Hoyo makes sure to tell us that even at knee-high in the Sigonian desert, Kakavasha was already willing to risk himself in a fight to the death against monsters because even back then he found his own life to have less value than a single memento.

He's the "chosen one" who will lead his people to prosperity... except they're all dead.

He's explicitly suicidal... andddd also a pathstrider of Preservation.

He wants to die... He doesn't want to die. He wants to make it end, yet goes to staggering lengths to continually survive. (Every plan risks his life on purpose--but every plan's win condition is also to live.) He life is the chip tossed down, but his hand is trembling beneath the table. When faced with an otherwise unsurvivable situation, Aventurine literally became a winner of the Hunger Games. He beat other innocent people to death with his own chain-bound hands just to come out alive.

He knows the IPC failed the Avgin and left them to die... and he still willingly sought out a position of power in their organization. Maybe he really is after revenge... but maybe not.

He starts his journey in the IPC with a truly noble goal in mind: to help his people using his newfound wealth and power. He's a good guy who did genuinely want to save the Avgin and repay all those who helped him. But once it became clear he was too late, once it was obvious he would have no use at all for that monetary wealth and power he risked his life to get... What did he do with it? Unlike Jade, we don't see him over here donating to orphanages. (I'm not that heartless; I'm sure he does actually do a lot of good things with his money on the side, but the point is that the game does not show us that--it shows us, over and over again, Aventurine putting on a wasteful, over-indulgent persona toward wealth. We've supposed to feel how meaningless money is to him, how meaningless everything is becoming to him.)

He outright refuses to use underhanded tactics or to cheat at gambles, which is meant to show us that's he's more morally upright than his coworkers. There's an entire exchange where he says that he'll never stoop to using manipulation the way Opal does. But... he doesn't have any issue fulfilling Opal's exact agenda. He was never remotely morally conflicted about denying the Penaconians their freedom by dragging Penacony back under IPC control.

He's willing to risk his own life, which is one thing--but he's also willing to risk other people's well-being. Topaz accuses him of constantly egging their clients on into dangerous situations; we've actively seen him shove a gun into Ratio's hands and pull the trigger with no care for how Ratio would feel about that on their very first meeting... Dragging the Astral Express crew into the entire Penacony plan in the first place was exceedingly dangerous...

To me, I just think it's vital to understand his character through the lens of these contradictions because they demonstrate the extreme polarity of Aventurine's life: from rags to riches, from powerless to empowered by multiple aeons, from willing to kill to survive to killing himself... He has quite literally lived a life of "all or nothing," and while he is the victim of many terrible situations out of his control, his arc as a character involves facing the truth of himself and the future his own actions are hurtling him toward.

Frankly, the Aventurine that canon is suggesting is a little annoying. You want to grab him by the shoulders, shake him, and say "Why are you like this?!" And he won't even have an answer for you, because he doesn't even know why he's still alive.

In the end, to me, this is so, so much more interesting. I can read an endless supply of hurt-comfort fics where Aventurine escapes the evil IPC and Ratio is there to fill the void in his life with the power of love and catcakes and be a perfectly happy clam online, but I want canon to continue to serve us this incredible mess of a man who constantly takes one step forward and two steps back.

Who is fully aware of his role as a cog in the grotesque profit-wheel of cosmic capitalism and still manages to say he never changed from the rags-wearing desert rat of the Sigonian wastes.

Who over and over again flirts with nihility but, ultimately, even if he has to wrest it from the grip of the gods themselves with bloody, chain-bound hands, chooses life.

[claraswald]

another meme i won’t finish: [3/10] female characters

Ava Coleman (Abbott Elementary)

This is my art. I write, I edit, I direct, I do the music, I lip-sync. Because of me, when people say that their favorite director is that Ava lady, somebody else gotta be like, 'which one?'

[userghouls]

GTKM Meme: Female Characters [2/5] ↳ Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff

@lgbtqcreators creator bingo: ↳ free choice | colour | typography | favorite character

[sourinartt]

nh/hnt fans being completely disgusting is unbelievable, they even surpass their craziness every day

showing homophobia and misogyny because there are people who say that hnt's character meets with patriarchal stereotypes

leave aside that her crush on a boy causes her to be a terrible character, (and yeah, it reinforces a patriarchal idea)these people are calling sns misogynistic but they downgrade their favorite to a girl who gets married

most of the answers are "hnt marries naruto, she won" as if it were a good thing?? what if the guy married your favorite girl out of pity and now she lives crying because he abandoned her I don't understand where the importance of her winning and sasuke not staying with naruto...

they talk about marriage as if Kishimoto didn't mention that marriage is a punishment for naruto to reward hnt

"l love misandrist women" LMAOO are you guys serious? her character is literally a total man-worshipper, she ditches her sister for a man, ditches her family and bodyguard for a man and she even neglects her daughter to be behind that man. what misandric woman are you talking about? If she were misandric, she wouldn't be loved by dudebros first of all

Calling sns a fetishist because they call sasuke with female pronouns is funny to me, they fetishize the gender roles that nh has but ok?

say“just let sasuke be a boyy” in response to people feminizing sasuke. they’ll complain it’s mischaracterizing, as if

1. his gender expression would dramatically change his personality

2. he’s some ultra masculine character canonically?

He’s associated with common symbols of femininity, like yin, the moon, snakes. He has soft features and is drawn to be a bishonen, and was mistaken as a baby girl by kushina. they will bring up heteronormativity, saying we just want sasuke to be a woman in our ship becauseof course, femininity = woman. Doing crazy logic to basically claim gender nonconformity is actually regressive in contrast to what, a masc4masc relationship? As if irl masc4masc gay men dont discriminate against feminine gay men bc of their own internalized homophobia/misogyny

naruto/sasuke being hypothetically feminized in fanon explorations, doesn't make the dynamic heteronormative. queer people reapporiate the social constructs of feminity and masculinity outside of the patriarchal cishetero dyad, it's expansive and resists normative expectations of gender. feminine men and masculine women are not being actively fostered by society, and that's why there are countless stories of feminine gay men and masculine lesbian women, in particular being killed and hate crimed by bigots.

they are also obsessed with sex, thinking like nh always has it because "they have two children" but of course, sns can't publish fanarts, some meme or some content like that because they fetishize!

I still remember how obsessed they were when naruto and hnt were in another dimension because in their heads they would fuck and make the "red-haired uzumaki". talking all the time about how nh fucks, but if sns talks about how beautiful their relationship is, how they love each other...it's just fetish....

reminds me...

although they consider sns as misogynistic, it won't change that hnt's character is for the male consumer, as her character only revolves around one man and nothing else. "She- she decided to be a housewife!" no? She's a fictional character, and her creator, a misogynistic and sexist man, chose for her to remain a housewife. he even says that if you like hnt, it's because of her big breasts.

and even if they want to defend her by making her a boss, it doesn't change the fact that she is a submissive doormat... which even feminist women have criticized.

[siriuslysatorusimping]

Rinko be like:

👀👀👀

But aren’t we all?

[maxdibert]

It shouldn’t surprise me that the Arcane fandom has a hefty dose of internalized misogyny, but honestly, it’s exhausting to constantly see how female characters are judged, condemned, and demonized for the simple "sin" of being complex, layered, and morally questionable, while the fandom favorite is a drug lord who used a populist, nationalist rhetoric to justify child exploitation and drug trafficking that poisoned the very people he claimed to defend. Yes, I’m talking about Silco. The same Silco who threw a little girl in prison and took her younger sister, making her believe her older sister didn’t care about her anymore. The same Silco who projected his traumas onto a kid and manipulated her into being his weapon. The same Silco who posed as the "people’s champion" while being one of the main reasons the people were dying in the first place.

And don’t get me wrong—I love Silco. He’s a fantastic villain, and his relationship with Jinx is as fascinating as it is deeply uncomfortable at times. But it feels incredibly cynical to see people excuse all the atrocities he committed, or at least try to understand them, while they spent all of season one attacking characters like Mel for being ambitious and power-hungry, doing morally questionable things. Sorry, but none of Mel’s actions in season one even come close to Silco’s level of ethical depravity with the whole shimmer situation, yet Mel got dragged.

Vi—perhaps the series’ ultimate punching bag of suffering—who lost her parents, stepped up to take care of her sister, carried the responsibility of being the eldest (as tasked by Vander to protect the group), lost her "siblings" and "father" in one night, got wrongfully imprisoned as a kid, spent years in jail for nothing, only to come out and see that her sister had turned into a monster and that the man responsible for their adoptive father’s death was now the kingpin of the Undercity—was treated like absolute crap by the fandom. Why? Because she didn’t understand or accept that her younger sister was suddenly cool with a man who was poisoning the city? The same man who killed their father figure? I remember people calling Silco the "Father of the Year" and Vi the "Worst Sister of the Decade," and I was genuinely floored. Like, as a meme, sure, it’s funny. But as an actual take? The level of cognitive dissonance is wild.

And now, in this season, of course, the hate is all directed at Caitlyn. Why? Because instead of being the idealistic nepo baby who dreams of coexistence like in season one, she’s dealing with severe PTSD after being kidnapped and witnessing a missile nearly obliterate her mother. And people just can’t seem to grasp that. They can understand a man going from revolutionary to drug lord, using the idea of freedom and the people’s anger to expand his shady business and exploit children, but they can’t understand a young woman becoming incredibly violent out of a thirst for revenge.

What these reactions tell me is that men can be the absolute worst scum narrative writing has ever birthed, and it’s fine because everyone will bend over backwards to understand their motivations or at least where they’re coming from. But if we’re talking about women who aren’t compliant, who overreact, who struggle to manage their emotions or trauma, or who don’t behave the way women are "supposed" to behave, there’s no room for understanding. No excuses, no empathy. They’re just bitches, villains, or—like people are now saying about Caitlyn—"fascists."

Look, the fact that people are calling Caitlyn a fascist while never using that term for Silco—who was literally a despot—isn’t just cognitive dissonance; it’s hypocrisy at its finest.

[tsams-and-co-memes]

Introducing….

….TSBS Ladies Appreciation Month!

This is an event meant to show appreciation and love to the ladies of TSBS, both to the characters and their respective VAs! Female characters often get more hate and criticism than male characters, which isn’t cool, and I felt that the VAs deserve to know how much we value their work, and that a large majority of the fandom doesn’t take them for granted

The rules for this event are in the picture, but just in case it’s hard for anyone to read, the text says:

All ladies are fair game! This includes trans and gender-fluid characters, as well as lady characters who have male VAs (ex: Puppet and Monty, when they’re in their female forms) and the female VAs themselves

Keep it PG, or PG13 at most! This month is about appreciating these girls, not making spice of them

Pieces can have characters that identify as anything other than female or gender-fluid in them, but the pieces themselves should be focused on the ladies

Mix and match these to your hearts content! There’s no need to do everything in this exact order

Have fun! :)

(Not included in the image) If one of the female VAs has a personal Minecraft series on their own channel, if they have OCs or a sona you know of, or if they stream, you can incorporate things from there as well. If you do this though, just make sure the piece stays mostly focused on TSBS

(Also not included in the image) If you do anything for any of these prompts, use the tag “TSBS ladies appreciation month 2025”, that way we can find everyone’s work :)

I’ll post the prompts under a cut as well, for anyone who needs that!

Favorite episode/video they’re in

Favorite moment of theirs

Favorite arc of theirs

Favorite quote/line of theirs

Favorite friendship they have with another lady

If you could give them a gift, what would it be?

Upgraded body

Upgraded or new outfit

Them with a different color scheme

Based on song lyrics

The VA meets a character they voice

Their favorite food

New job

They meet your self insert/OC

Create a candy/food themed off of them

Body swap w/ another lady

Outfit swap w/ another lady

Them as a fantasy/mythological creature

Vacation

Mall trip

Them as royalty

Costume party

If they were a different model (ex: Earth as a Ballora model, Roxy as a Puppet model, etc)

Spa day

Put them into a meme

Baking day

Girls night out

If they were evil

Comfort item

Family

Freebie

If you have questions regarding any of the prompts or rules, feel free to ask :)

[proton-wobbler]

Great Backyard Bird Off - Europe (poll 6)

Bird Info & Submission Reasons

Great Spotted Woodpecker (Dendrocopos major)

"no support was submitted for this bird"

Widespread black-and-white woodpecker with a range that covers much of Eurasia. Note the big white shoulder patches, extensive red on vent, and black crown. Male has a red nape patch; juvenile (both sexes) has a red cap. Size and bold black-and-white plumage distinctive in most of range. Inhabits almost all types of forest and woodland, parkland, gardens, even farmland with hedges and scattered larger trees. Feeds mainly on trunks and larger branches; also visits feeders. Gives a sharp “kik!”, often in series. Drums frequently, often giving a short, fast series that trails off quickly. (eBird)

also found in: eastern Asia, as well as portions of the Middle East

Eurasian Blackbird (Turdus merula)

"PRETTY"

"theyre my favorite songbird, I always listen out for their songs in the spring"

"They have character! Sassy. Loud. They chirp a lot. Male has cool yellow eyeliner while the female watches from the fence. Iconic. Also in that confused bird meme."

"It is commonly seen where I live, and you can hear their song frequently"

"These guys aren't native to my country, but I'll admit I have a begrudging endearment for the pair that frequent my backyard. They are such messy foragers (like me!) and my thornbills are pretty friendly with them."

"they go bounce bounce. sing well. shaped like friend"

"The males are really pretty with the soot black body and bright orange beak and the females are just little brown gals"

"funny opinionated guys who argue in front of my house every day"

"They sound so beautiful! And they look beautiful, to me they are the Ultimate Bird Shape. I keep calling them the Beautiful Blackbird"

"We've been domesticated by one. It churps until we fill the bird feeder."

"Have them in my backyard, they steal my cat's kibble "

"My favorite bird. I love these creatures <3"

"Their songs keep me company on my morning commute. It's a good way to remember there's beautiful things in each day, right from the start"

also found in: central Asia, northern Africa, and Oceania

Image Sources: Blackbird (Yann Kolbeinsson), Woodpecker (Volker Hesse)

Areas which are italicized represent the non-native range of the species. Whether introduced on purpose on or accident, these species may have become invasive in this range. Despite their potential impact on native wildlife, please do not leave disparaging comments on these polls. Their purpose is to celebrate people's love of these species.

[bellamysgriffin]

get to know me meme >> Favorite Female Characters [35/?] Deborah Vance (Hacks)

You have to scratch and claw and it never fucking ends. And it doesn't get better, it just gets harder. So don't complain to me that I'm making your life hard. You don't even know what that means.